Abstract
Members of modern, digital societies experience a tremendous number and diversity of stimuli from sources such as computers, televisions, other electronic media, and various forms of advertising. In this paper, I argue that the presence of a wide range of stimulating items in modern societies poses a special risk to the welfare of members of modern societies. By considering the set of modern stimuli in a more comprehensive way than normative theorists have done so far—as part of a complex system with which members of modern societies cannot reasonably avoid interacting—we can see why the perceptual and informational spaces in which modern life occurs can be sources of disvalue for members of modern societies. This seems true even though the technological innovations that produce these stimuli add great value to the lives of members of modern societies.
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Notes
As St. Claire (2011, p. 49) observes, we are “encompassed in a cocoon of information in the form of image and sound” due to the “stimulus glut” in modern society. My argument defends a new rationale for why this “glut” is disvaluable in certain respects.
There is an extensive literature on the possibly detrimental effects of the stimulating modern life on members of modern societies. Wiener (1954) sparked the field of information ethics decades ago with a provocative investigation of how information technology might alter key human values such as happiness and freedom. More recently, Dreyfus (2001) has taken pains to caution against blithely assuming that internet users can find meaning in internet sociality. Elgesem (1996), Nissenbaum (2004), and Tavani (2007) have made key contributions to a sophisticated debate over how best to conceptualize and assess the value of privacy in an era in which computers and information loom exceedingly large (see Vallor 2015 for an excellent overview relied upon here)). Further, recent work on the health effects of using electronic devices indicates that “excessive screen-time appears to impair brain structure and function” (Dunckley 2014); and Bauerlein (2008) has raised significant doubts about the value of highly stimulating screen time in particular and the digital age in general. Finally, in Alone Together, Turkle (2011) addresses more generally the impacts and drawbacks of digital engagement in our lives and how we might rethink and reconstitute our relationships with digital technology moving forward.
I am interested in discussing our comprehensive system of stimuli, by which I mean two things: for a society, the society’s stimuli taken as a whole; for an individual or social sub-group, all the stimuli that affect that particular individual or group.
The Saver will sometimes also think about how an item would fit into her environment in terms of whether it serves a function that is redundant with functions served by her other items.
One might also wish to inquire about the differential distributions among members of a society of costs and benefits associated with the presence of stimulating items.
Here Hayek adopts Adam Ferguson’s words.
No doubt such penetration can sometimes be valuable, forming memories consumers can later draw upon when making purchasing decisions that add value to their lives.
We can add other possible costs and benefits to the ledger: for instance, the possible benefit of being "in the know" about a product that one’s social companions might discuss, and the possible cost of using up some of one’s mnemonic capacity.
Dunckley (2014) discusses recent studies of the neurological risk of screen exposure.
Huxley’s (1958, p. 44) fascinating insight about the growth of information in his era seems to apply equally well to ours:
In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies—the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.
Huxley, who focuses on information that is distracting and irrelevant, is exactly right that Western media generate a torrent of information, much of it disvaluable (on which more soon). Of course, a system that generates some disvaluable information can still be quite valuable overall.
Such division might be of particular interest to philosophers of mind. Even the “monitoring consciousness” that Block (2002) describes might be affected when, for example, a driver can be aware of a stop sign but not consciously aware of it, knowing he was aware after later recalling that he did stop at the sign. Similarly, we might be aware of perceptual and informational stimuli without being (phenomenally) conscious of it at the time. If so, is this awareness cognitively costly in some important sense?
The only ways to avoid such stimuli are often ineffective, unreasonable, or themselves require constant meta-level monitoring—e.g., altering one’s daily routes or shutting one’s eyes and ears at the first sign of a minor intrusion. Taking such steps seems to require a constant uphill battle against our natural psychological and physiological dispositions to attend to novel, potentially important and interesting stimuli that come into our paths.
There may even be an inverse correlation: As the low-stimuli environments in which one lives become sparser, one’s mentality unfolds in an increasingly choppy way. A full assessment of this claim would need to consider the ability of individuals to adapt to stimuli. For some individuals, the same stimuli, and perhaps also stimuli of the same kind, may become less stimulating with additional exposure.
“Social welfare” is a clumsy term, but there may be no better alternative. I use it to mean the total welfare of individuals in a society.
Unlike previous industrial and agrarian societies in Europe, modern European societies have more robust, technology-heavy service sectors. See The European Foundation’s Second European Survey of Working Conditions, cited in Bradley (2006, p. 178).
A distinguishing feature of the transition from premodern to modern life is the shift from agrarian to urban living. For all we know, this change may have diminished the ability of post-agrarian populations to attend to the details of nature, giving one some reason to think nature may have been more stimulating for more attentive, agrarian populations. Even so, the modern person in an urban or suburban setting still confronts so many more (and more varied) stimuli than does a premodern person living in a rural setting that modern life clearly seems more stimulating.
If he is, it is far more likely than our breaking news to be news that matters to him a great deal: for instance, information about a new major political leader or the outbreak of a war.
However one cashes out “psychologically healthy,” it seems rather psychologically unhealthy to be hearing depressing news to which one usually can do, or does, nothing in response. Even if psychological health were to require some diverse experiences such as those we have in the contemporary world, the diversity and attention-seizing nature of our perceptual experiences seems so great that it would be at least a little surprising if it turned out to be healthful for us.
In addition to the literature cited above, see Scott (2015) for recent discussion of the impacts of technology and media in various domains of contemporary life. See also Rich (2015) on challenges to adolescent development in the media age, and St. Claire (2011, esp. pp. 32–38) on how our attention spans our shrinking, we are reading less, and surprising neurological changes are afoot, all due to our greater use of electronic devices.
Of course, we can inquire about such responses (on which more shortly) without denying that the causal arrow of, say, stimulation and uninterrupted family time sometimes goes in the other direction. A remarkable advantage of the many technologies we have today is that they free us up to spend additional time with loved ones. So, while the stimuli that such technologies put in place can undermine the vitality of our personal relationships, this is not a necessary outcome. The opposite result can obtain depending on the stimulating technology in question and the use to which it is put.
Massimini and Peterson (2009) find that ICT stresses U.S. college students in multiple ways that impair their functionality. See fn. 2 above on important recent discussions including Dreyfus (2001), Bauerlein (2008), and Turkle (2011); Elgesem (1996), Nissenbaum (2004), and Tavani (2007); and Vallor (2015) and Dunckley (2014).
The producers I have in mind are, for example, designers of websites, movies, news, and other sources of stimuli.
A business so described might operate unethically from a consequentialist standpoint if it undermines the ability of consumers to maximize the aggregate welfare. Or it might operate unethically from a deontological perspective if it inadequately respects consumers through manipulation of their perceptions and psychologies solely in order to attain profit, thus using them as mere means. (Such firms would act differently from firms that solely aimed to maximize profits but did not treat people as mere means.) Or the business might be problematic on virtue ethical grounds if its members viciously proliferate messages in society for its own (morally unjustified) gain at the expense of others, or if they hinder others who seek to cultivate the moral or intellectual virtues.
Alternatively, one might contend that whether a given business has a moral duty to desist from certain stimulus-increasing activity depends on whether enough other firms comply with the duty. In a low-compliance scenario, firms would not have moral duties to reduce their stimulus contribution, even though it may still be morally valuable for them to do so when feasible.
Friedman (1970) says that a given business has only this one responsibility “so long as it stays within the rules of the game”.
But presumably it is not nearly as confusing as a baby’s experience of the world, which James describes in Principles of Psychology. Also, I implied above that different people will experience the highly stimulating modern world differently. Whereas many members of modern populations might incur an overall cost from the stimuli they encounter, many others might not.
Earlier I noted literature on the risks generally associated with stimulation from particular modern technologies. Here it is worth emphasizing that other literature further carves up the terrain according to the parties affected. See, e.g., Moreno and Strasburger (2014) on how digital technology affects adolescent development.
As is well known, a member of a modern society can become addicted to these activities.
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Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Ed Donnerstein, Stephen Stich, Bjorn Wastvedt, and two anonymous reviewers for Ethics and Information Technology for helpful discussion and comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Robson, G.J. The threat of comprehensive overstimulation in modern societies. Ethics Inf Technol 19, 69–80 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-016-9414-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-016-9414-0