Jammin’ Our Way to Better Human Connection
We as a society are trending towards a crisis of connection. It wasn’t so long ago, after all, that we connected meaningfully with each other more or less by default. Though technology is largely to blame, we can leverage that same technology to figure it out again — especially now that we know what is at stake.
In “The Great Silence”, humanist sci-fi author Ted Chiang writes about man’s search for signs of alien life. The story, a succinct four pages that somehow spans the Fermi paradox, the definition of ‘aspiration’, and Hindu mythology, is narrated by a parrot living in Arecibo, Puerto Rico, home to one of the largest radio telescopes in the world.
The parrot opens the story saying,
“their desire to make a connection is so strong that they’ve created an ear capable of hearing across the universe. But I and my fellow parrots are right here. Why aren’t they interested in listening to our voices?”
At the center of Chiang’s work is the tantalizing question, why are we so interested in finding intelligence in the stars, and yet so deaf to the many species who manifest it here on earth? From that question, Chiang all but forces the reader to question the sources of intelligence and inspiration that surround them. While applauding the inherent greatness that defines humans, Chiang challenges the reader to question the sources of intelligence and inspiration that surround them. “The Great Silence” leaves readers with the sobering reminder that despite being beautifully talented creatures, we humans are also crippled by a blissful ignorance to crises emerging right before our eyes.
As a naive 24-year old terrified by the fact that I’m now closer to my 30th birthday than my 18th, I largely accept the fact that I don’t know what I’m talking about most of the time. Despite that reality, and the fact I lack sufficient data points to make a sweeping statement about society as a whole, I believe there is an imminent crisis facing our society. A crisis that should we fail to act, will come to define not only the personal relationships of our daily lives, but also the political, economic, and social institutions that shape humanity.
I believe that to be a crisis of connection.
Stranger Danger
To provide a personal framework, if you think back to earlier days there was probably a moment in your life when you were conditioned to believe that talking to strangers was a bad thing. Whether it was a parent, teacher, or neighbor, we were told that a stranger meant danger and for our own protection it was in our interest to avoid unfamiliar situations. While this served a purpose in our childhoods, it subconsciously set an unfortunate precedent for how we engage with that which we do not know. It created a mental framework that associates the unknown as something negative. Something to fear. Something to avoid.
As a consequence of this early teaching, the mindset of stranger means danger has been extrapolated throughout our entire lives leaving us as a society struggling to engage with this idea of strangeness. Whether it be strange cultures, or the strange people that make up those strange cultures, we’ve created processes that incentivizes sticking to what we know. And though many, like Sebastian Junger in his book “Tribe”, have argued that we as humans were designed to operate within small groups of people with everyone relying on one another, advances in technology and shifting cultural dynamics have blurred the lines between distinct groups of people. Lines blurred to the point where it is now incentivized to fear any type of strangeness that threatens our own conceived notions of reality.
And yet, as Maria Bezaitis, a Principal Engineer at Intel argues, that is not when we as humans are at our best. This negative association with strangers has created a special type of social norm. A norm that tells us who we should and shouldn’t relate to and therefore who we should and shouldn’t engage with.
But how unappealing is that? Is it not what we as humans were designed to do.
Our Relationship With Technology
Human nature is a messy, capacious concept. A concept that technology has altered and extended throughout history. It has always been the case that the integration of technologies in everyday life has had profound effects on human relationships, in both positive and negative ways. From the creation of the printing press in 1440 to Facebook’s now pervasive and increasingly controversial reach, technology has continually changed the way we as human connect with each other.
Technologies, of all sorts, greatly influence how individuals not only initiate, engage, and sustain relationships, but project feelings and meanings such as displays of vulnerability and love. If you’re a culture determinist and believe that we as humans are defined by our social and emotional relationships with one another, then now more so than ever, the current evolving technological landscape defines what it means to be human.
As Tom Chatfield argues in his address at the launch of the Humanities and Digital Age program at Oxford University in 2016, technology makes explicit the degree to which we are not only defined and anticipated by others, but also how we see ourselves as humans. Technology connects us to each other in ways such that our ideas and identities do not simply belong to us but are a part of a broader collective experience. More so, it forces us once again to define what it means to be creatures of language, self-awareness, and rationality.
Though this has always been true, it has rarely been more evident than in today’s world. For the first time in human history, the majority of the world’s population is not only literate, but also able to actively participate in written and recorded culture, courtesy of the connective devices in our pockets. As Chatfield writes, the reality of ‘the crowd in the cloud becoming a stream of shared consciousness’ is truly an astonishing thing.
This is all to say that though we have never been more connected as a collective species via the technology we depend on, we have never been more disconnected from one another.
Recent studies show that roughly 40% of Americans identify as being lonely. 92% of Americans have never had a genuine conversation with their neighbor, and 19% of millennials don’t trust the people around them. If you take the stance that we as humans are social creatures, defined by our environments, and that we need connection with other humans in order to prosper, then by those metrics we are beginning to fundamentally fail as a species.
In April of 2016, Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, addressed a room of developers about the importance of his social network. Facebook, he said, has the power to bring people together who might otherwise never have the chance to meet. “The internet has enabled all of us to access and share more ideas and information than ever before,” he said. “We’ve gone from a world of isolated communities to one global community, and we are all better off for it.”
Bologna.
The way we’re wired as humans tells us that’s bologna. If you buy Maria Bezaitis’ argument that we’re wired to be at our best when we reach out to those who are not like us, all that social media platforms like Facebook have done is make it easier to tune out the people we don’t agree with. Zuckerberg says that Facebook has enabled all of us to access and share more ideas? Sure. Only the ideas that we want to hear. It has become evident that our digital experiences are largely defined by content that addictively reaffirms our preconceived notions on how the world works.
But in many ways, the world isn’t working. And the reality is that we’re not a loving global community. I’m not even sure what that means, but we should stop pretending that’s what we’re working towards. The issues we are facing today, and the dialogue we’re attempting to use to solve them, makes it evident that we as a society struggle to genuinely understand and connect with one another.
So while technology has without a doubt brought those farther away closer to us, it has done so at the cost of driving those close to us farther away.
We’re Jammin’
Once again, we’ve arrived at a point where digital technologies have challenged to define what is means to be human. As Chatfield argues, if we wish to build not only better technology, but better relationships with and through technology, “we need to start talking far more richly about the qualities of these relationships; how precisely our thoughts and feelings and biases operate; and what it means to aim beyond efficiency at lives worth living.”
It wasn’t so long ago, after all, that we connected meaningfully with each other more or less by default. We can figure it out again — especially now that we know what is at stake.
Imagine if instead of claiming to offer us the best things in life and changing the world while doing so, tech merely saw itself as providing mediums of real-life engagement. That instead of promising us better news feeds or the possibility of moving to Mars, technology and its innovations focused on facilitating greater human connection. What if technology could help us safely get offline and experience the things in life that define us as humans? What if technology could actually help people lead happier, more meaningful, and fulfilling lives simply by facilitating the experiences we are hard-wired to desire?
We as humans are defined by our desires. We’re hardwired to desire connection. Connection to not only the ones we love but connection to the world around us.
Jam is the platform that will facilitate greater human connection.
Leveraging the same technology that many have argued is making us less social, less human, Jam will connect us with the individuals that can provide the sources of inspirations and discovery that we need right now. Beyond just meeting people that we may otherwise never encounter, Jam will allow us to safely disrupt our zones of familiarity because that is how we as humans grow. It will help create meaningful connection by way of facilitated vulnerability, automated logistics, and the occasional reminder that sometimes we learn the most about ourselves and our desires by interacting with people who are nothing like us.
Ted Chiang’s parrot ends ‘The Great Silence” on a somber note, stating
“human activity has brought my kind to the brink of extinction, but I don’t blame them for it. They didn’t do it maliciously. They just weren’t paying attention.”
This isn’t to sound the alarm that society is burning down. Undoubtedly, it is one hell of a time to be alive. If there’s one thing our hairy, chaotic existence as a species brings home, it’s that people care, above all, about other people: what they think, do, believe, fear, hate, love, laugh at — and what we can make together. Like Chiang’s parrot, the people we need and the conversations we yearn for are all around us. We can start harnessing those connections but we first need to realize that we are all heading in the wrong direction.
Jam is an effort to get us back on path.
Jam will be launching it’s beta testing this week in Charlotte, North Carolina. If you have any questions, concerns, criticism, or general thoughts please do not hesitate to drop me a line at shea@joinjam.io.
