Sublime

This drive toward totalitarian technocracy is what educator and media theorist Neil Postman called technopoly, the “submission of all forms of cultural life to the sovereignty of technique and technology.”

On another level, the story of the New Internet is a story of individuals and their psychologies. Over the last decade, technology workers have opened themselves up to a tremendous amount of value drift (the process in which previously steadfast values are compromised over time).

When the tech fetishist’s childlike hope for a digital womb combines with the billionaire’s faith in a winner-takes-all competitive marketplace, look out. It results in a brand of activist futurism that sees the present—our reality, including us—as an impediment to their vision of what could and what should be.

Farrer argues that our collective attention is like a public pasture: It is valuable, it is limited, and it is being depleted. Everyone from advertisers to politicians to newspapers to social media giants wants our attention. The competition is fierce, and it has led to more sensationalism, more outrageous or infuriating content, more alg