“a peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is an improbable world. It is a world in which the idea of human progress, as Bacon expressed it, has been replaced by the idea of technological progress. The aim is not to reduce ignorance, superstition, and suffering but to accommodate ourselves to the requirements of new technologies. We tell ourselves, of course, that such accommodations will lead to a better life, but that is only the rhetorical residue of a vanishing technocracy. We are a culture consuming itself with information, and many of us do not even wonder how to control the process. We proceed under the assumption that information is our friend, believing that cultures may suffer grievously from a lack of information, which, of course, they do. It is only now beginning to be understood that cultures may also suffer grievously from information glut, information without meaning, information without control mechanisms.” ― Neil Postman, Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, 1992
I relate to this hard. One of my own best friends got super pissed and accused me of lying simply because I naturally cannot hold eye contact for long, especially when someone is already being confrontational. If I am holding eye contact with you that is not a good thing, that means I’m assessing whether I am gonna have to fight you.
Police officers all over the world are trained that anyone doing odd eye contact can instantly be considered a liar / criminal and in no way acknowledge the entire body of work on autism and other science that contradicts this.