December 17, 2023

by Stephen Stofka

This week’s blog is about perspective as a launching point for understanding current and historical events and our own transformation in this digital age. There is plenty of controversy over the wars in Israel/Palestine and Ukraine, immigration and abortion policy. In 1991 Rodney King was beaten with batons by several L. A. police. In an age before cell phone cameras, a bystander on his apartment balcony recorded the incident with a video camera. When the video was shown by a local TV station, the city brought charges against four officers. When a jury acquitted the officers a year after the incident, L.A. erupted in riots that lasted almost a week. Rodney King famously asked, “Can we get along?,” which became a Why can’t we get along? meme. We don’t get along because we have individual perspectives.

Perspective is a point of view that encompasses beliefs, identity, values and assumptions. Although each person has a unique perspective formed by individual experience, we form groups with those who share a similar perspective. We convince ourselves that our values and assumptions are the correct ones. From the jury box of our values and assumptions we judge the actions of others.

The elements of perspective are the foundation of an analytical framework, a toolset of principles and theories that help us build a community of shared perspectives. A framework prioritizes some values and assumptions to achieve the goals of the analysis. An academic researcher and an advocacy group have different goals and methodologies. The advocacy group uses a framework like that of a lawyer, sifting through facts and opinions to find those that support the group’s policy goals. Substance above process. A researcher will adopt a framework with a sound and accepted methodology that will most likely earn favorable peer review and publication. That researcher may filter out facts that don’t fit the methodology. Process above substance.

Our conclusions are shaped by our attention. Our attention is directed by our intention. We discredit facts that threaten our intention and undermine our self-interest, values or identity. On the other hand, we do not challenge those facts that confirm our perspective. Why should we? We interpret facts to support the assumptions so foundational to consensus within a group. Social media has increased the scope of our conflict and consensus. We can agree or disagree with strangers around the world about the ethical issues of current events. We can hone our skills of ridicule and outrage. We can join a group to exploit trading platforms in the hopes of financial gain, buy almost anything online, and find romantic partners and people with similar hobbies and interests.

The chain of communication breakthroughs began with Gutenberg’s printing press 500 years ago. Broadsheets and newspapers followed in the following centuries but their ideas and sentiments were constrained by geography. The circulation of the Federalist papers supporting the adoption of the U.S. Constitution was limited. The ideas penned by Madison and Hamilton found a wider audience when a publisher bound those op-eds into a single volume. In the 20^th century, radio and TV spread ideas, new and entertainment to a wider audience. The development of the internet in the 1990s led to a revolution in time – information and entertainment became both a good and a service.

Last week I wrote about the four types of goods/services. Many goods are asynchronous. The consumption of the good occurs at a different time than the production of the good. Many services are synchronous. A haircut is consumed and produced at the same time. Social and news media captures both aspects. The content may be asynchronous, produced and stored on a server in the cloud. It may be synchronous – either a broadcast of an event or a Twitter exchange in real time between two people separated by multiple time zones. Social and news media has changed our daily experience. We may cling to the belief that our perspective has remain unchanged, our values and principles intact, but have they? Experience shapes perspective and an evolving set of experiences must surely have some effect on our values, assumptions and the way we interpret events.

Will the internet change history? The printing press changed individual perspectives. Within a few decades it made possible the wide dissemination of Luther’s 95 theses in 1517 that sparked the Protestant Reformation. Luther’s principles challenged the long dominant authority of the Catholic Church in the interpretation of the Christian faith. In 1543 Copernicus’ book on the revolution of the planets and other celestial bodies ignited the Scientific Revolution. His ideas challenged the centuries old thinking of Ptolemy, the second century Greek astronomer and mathematician.

In the political sphere, the works of John Locke led to an uprising in England that challenged the extent of monarchical authority. Those ideas would become the foundation of America’s Constitution. Not only was it the first written Constitution but it had to be printed and circulated to state assemblies as well as the general public in order to win ratification. Almost 400 years after Gutenberg invented the printing press, the United States emerged from the printing press.

It was a country built on confrontation, cooperation and conflict between regional interest groups that threatened to tear apart the new republic. The economies of the southern states were based on agriculture while those in the north were founded on industry. There was so much fractiousness at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia that the delegates fought over the text of the Constitution behind closed doors. America has stayed intact despite a civil war because its Constitution encourages public arguing as an alternative to civil war.

Social media companies have developed algorithmic platforms that support arguing as a way to keep viewers engaged. Arguing fosters new combinations of identities and values and these shifting combinations promote new group formation much like the variety of Protestant sects that emerged during the Protestant Reformation. To a historian in the twenty-fifth century, the historical significance of the internet age may be the development of artificial intelligence, or AI, to efficiently mimic many human capabilities. A set of algorithms cannot replicate the intricacies of individual perspective but it will alter our perspectives. We are becoming not the hardware cyborgs of science fiction movies but the software cyborgs of ideas and perspectives.   

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Photo by Amador Loureiro on Unsplash

Keywords: Constitution, analysis, values, assumptions, perspective