Real Life and an Old Chickadee

We're on our own except when we're not

Academe (where a weathered historian shares)

This is a brief account of the resources I encountered that led me to leave the social media giants, or, “If this is a midlife crisis, it ain’t so bad,” or, “How to you, too can become convinced a real life is for you.”

I watched “The Social Dilemma” on Netflix. I wrote down the names of the three very different experts cited in the documentary: Jaron Lanier, Cathy O’Neil, and Shoshana Zuboff. I looked up these people and learned more about them. Then I bought their books:

1. Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier (Picador, 2018).

   Here’s a blog post that reviews the book from a sociologist’s perspective. It also lists the ten arguments, which are also listed on the back cover of the book.

2. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil (Crown Publishing Group, 2017).

3. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight For a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power (PublicAffairs, 2019).

And I read them. Somewhere in the middle of reading them, I watched “Snowden.” And I left social media.

I am trying to keep this brief because I believe people ought to make up their own minds about what they think and what they do (which is, of course, one reason I left social media). Power to the people!

There is a future tense with my brief account of resources, too.

I remember watching Joseph Campbell on PBS. At some time, maybe not in the Power of Myth but some time, he said that it takes reading everything by an author to understand what wisdom that author was offering. Of the three authors listed above, I’d say that Jaron Lanier would be the one I’d try to understand in such a manner; he’s rather prolific, so that would take a while.

But there’s also obviously merit to pursuing multiple authors on a topic, and that’s the future tense of this topic for me. Next on my reading list in this area are (in alphabetical order by author, not necessarily the order I will read them):

1. Artificial Unintelligence: How Computers Misunderstand the World by Meredith Broussard (MIT Press, 2019).

2. Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence by Kate Crawford (Yale University Press, 2021).

3. Your Computer is On Fire edited by Thomas S. Mullaney, Benjamin Peters, Mar Hicks, and Kavita Philip (MIT Press, 2021).

---

With Critters, It’s Personal

In February this year, in the middle of what some whimsically call a “cold snap” and I call “don’t-go-out-there / impossible cold” (“to nejde, je zima”), a very old chickadee showed up on my snow covered deck. Let’s call him the Venerable Old Bede.

Old Bede looking Venerable

Chickadees are the fiestiest, hardiest, most tenacious, and most adorable little birds. Bede had seen his fair share of winters and had now decided, evidently, to spend some time on the dark rug right outside the door to the deck.

Recognizing the honor that he was bestowing, I sprung into action and provided all the meal worms Bede could want. That he would sometimes snooze on the rug made me indescribably happy. I mean, just look at him.

Then I constructed a shelter and placed meal worms to entice Bede inside. That shelter was a long box lined with old washcloths and filled with shredded paper in the back.

The story ends as most nature stories do. I don’t know if Bede ever went inside the shelter. He stopped coming after a little while. Nature knows what to do and does what is necessary.

---

Recommendations

Save A Fox Rescue (fox sanctuary in Faribault, MN). They have merchandise and this is the best “commercial” for a stuffed fox toy I have ever seen.