As a journalist and daily purveyor of the news, I often see photos that deliver a gut punch. Crime victims. Natural disasters. Still, I don’t recall a more depressing recent image than the one I saw last week in The New York Times.
The story detailed how Elon’s Musk’s Starlink internet is being introduced to the most remote corners of the world, including the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. The photo that shook me is of four members of the Marubo people, who live in huts scattered along the Itui River and, according to the Times, “speak their own language … and trap spider monkeys to make soup or keep as pets.”
All four were staring down at their phones.
It could have been a photo at any suburban shopping mall in America, or any busy noodle shop in Tokyo. Four people. Totally disconnected. Locked on their screens. Ignoring each other. Except these four are part of a culture that, isolated from the rest of the world, had done things largely the same for hundreds of years.
Not anymore. They’re under the digital tent now. People have jokingly asked what happens when we reach the farthest end of the internet?
A better question may be what happens when the internet reaches the farthest end of us?
Feels like the end of civilization
Thanks to Musk’s Starlink, it is happening. His portable antenna units are simple to install. They connect to satellites in the sky, so you don’t need wires, poles, a cable company or even outside electricity. If you have a solar panel, you can plug in.
But such easily spread technology comes with a price. If villagers like the Marubo people can be sucked onto Facebook and p*rn sites — and it’s happened in less than a year, according to The Times — then there is no hiding place left on Earth. No corner where the slow suck of bad web behavior doesn’t infect. We are connecting ourselves into a massive global cocoon, but destroying the individuality of cultures in our wake.
To read that the young people in these remote Amazon villages (Times reporters had to hike 50 miles into the rainforest to find them) are now hooked on soccer videos, sending texts and watching sex videos is sad. According to one elder in the piece, some “just want to spend the whole afternoon on their phones.”
Who knew the problems of West Bloomfield, Michigan, would be the same as a Brazilian rainforest village where everyone uses the same last name?
I find it heartbreaking. And thoughtless. The internet is all about speed, faster is better, fastest is best, but we are rushing the priorities of technology beyond the pace of the people who use it.
It’s the reason some think artificial intelligence will kill us all. And if that sounds too dramatic, at least admit that something precious is being lost in replacing hunting and fishing in a remote village with taking selfies and playing violent video games.
Doing more harm than good
Now clearly there are benefits that come with being connected. Calling for help in emergencies, updating health information, being able to converse with faraway family. And it’s not for me or anyone else to deny technology to a population that wants it.
But while those introducing tech to isolated cultures may push the informational benefits, you have to take what comes with it, like bugs in fruit. And very quickly the worst parts of the internet pull in vulnerable users, especially young people, and there is no putting the fruit back on the tree.
So now the Marubo people are dealing with gossipy group chats, online strangers, addictive video games and kids sneaking peeks at p*rnography in a culture which, The Times says, frowns on public kissing.
Some say, “wait until you see what these people will be able to do with this connectivity.” Well. Here’s one thing such connectivity can do:
Last month, in Vermont’s largest high school, a new app was introduced called Fizz. It is a private message board “founded by students, for students.” Basically, it lets kids post anything about anybody in their school anonymously, with the students themselves doing the policing.
According to the Wall Street Journal, within two days at that Vermont school, the message board had degenerated into nasty gossip, unfounded rumors, mocking photos and cruel jokes about kids’ and teachers’ sex lives. Some kids were already in tears.
Two days? And this program is in dozens of high schools and hundreds of colleges. Are apps like Fizz what the children of the newly connected Marubo people have to look forward to one day?
If so, it’s hard to see how the benefits outweigh the costs. That photograph of those four villagers with their heads in their phones is an image for our time. Not a good one.
The Times piece ends with a quote of resignation from a Marubo shaman. Although he recognizes the dangers, he said, “The leaders have been clear. We can’t live without the internet.”
Yet until last year, they had.
That may be the most depressing part of all.
Mitch Albom writes for the Detroit Free Press. His column is distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
