Doesn't it feel like the more information we get, the less we know? And what about social media, is it all it's cracked up to be? Join host Mariam Sobh as she combs through various headlines, touches base with show correspondent Elizabeth Jones and interviews researcher Johan Bollen.
News with a Bite is written and hosted by Mariam Sobh.
It is produced in collaboration with Todd Manley of EarSight Studios.
Learn more about Johan Bollen and his research.
Mariam: [00:00:00] Anyone else missing lockdown? It was great. When it first went into effect, unless you were an essential worker, it was probably very scary, but for the rest of us, it was like, yay, no more FOMO. We are all experiencing the same thing. Except of course, people that still seem to think life was normal and continued to travel and humble brag about all their trips, but there was a sense of unity at the time.
Well, except of course, if you decided to go online to find camaraderie, chances are you ended up feeling worse about yourself and wanting to pick fights with all the obnoxious, no huddles. No, just me. If it's any consolation, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, allegedly designed the algorithm that way. So I swear I am not a petty person.
And on that note, let's get this show started.!
voices: Welcome to news with a bite session one.
Mariam: I'm not sure if the way we report on things in the [00:01:00] news has changed because of the pandemic or if we're becoming too hyper aware of topics like COVID-19 any little update or change has headlines that give a sense of drama and urgency, then you dig into the article and it's the same information reworded slightly differently that you've been reading all year and.
There's a tiny update about a new variant, but you've searched the whole article and nothing matches the headline and the way it warns you of something ominous. It's a bit of a let down. Here are some examples of headlines over the last couple of months. "Early studies suggest Omicron is formidable, but not unstoppable. It erodes, a key line of defense from vaccines, but boosters can help restore protection. The Corona virus attacks fat tissue scientists. Did COVID-19 cause the flu to go extinct? Nightclubs, warn COVID passports will have devastating impact."
The thing is... the more information I get, the less, I feel like I know! it's kind of how I [00:02:00] feel about streaming services. There are too many platforms and options that at some point I say, forget it. I am out it's back to a physical book for my entertainment, or just taking a walk along the lake and staring at the water. Very real. The thing about the lake is that you only have two choices when you're out there, stay dry or jump in and get wet!
It's time for a little news roundup. 5g is making headlines again, and this time it isn't a hoax! 5g could allegedly interfere with air travel due to the use of radio frequencies. According to CNN, some international airlines had to modify or cancel flights at the last minute because of the unknown possibility of interference between 5g and critical plane technologies.
If you've been waiting for a sign, not to travel. I think it doesn't get any clearer than this. First the pandemic ...now technology that isn't so savvy. Maybe you can travel in peace though! Maybe there's a silver lining... emptier [00:03:00] flights.
It used to be that tennis was a sport that was only a sport. Now it seems to have taken a political turn. Tennis pro Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia ahead of the Australian open for not being vaccinated against COVID-19.
Even though he claims he was given a medical exemption, the decision to make Djokovic leave the country came down to authorities, worried that his unvaccinated status could influence others. Now, his coach tells The Independent that Djokovic is being hit mentally with what happened and it's going to take him a while to get over it. Right now we're going to go check in with our correspondent of everything, Elizabeth Jones. Who's at the Australian open. Elizabeth what's happening?
Elizabeth Jones: Thank you. Mariam I'm here enjoying the fresh Australian air. Watching tennis is better than watching paint dry. There's a bit more action to say the least. Lots of attention was focused on Mr. Djokovic, but I can tell you now most of us have [00:04:00] forgotten about the scuffle and are more interested in soaking up the sun. Back to you, Mariam
Mariam: oh, okay. Elizabeth. So how are folks responding to, Djokovic not playing this year?
Elizabeth Jones: Mariam as I mentioned earlier, everyone has forgotten about the scuffle. We're more interested in soaking up the sun.
Mariam: All right. Thank you, Elizabeth. Always a ray of sunshine.
And finally USA today reports a passenger on a Delta flight, allegedly mooned some folks on the plane after a culmination of incidents, including throwing a can, walking into first class and kicking another passenger's seat. Apparently the man did not want to wear a mask and in the end, unmasked his buttocks for all to see.
There's something strange that seems to happen when people go up 30,000 feet in the air. They seem to lose all touch with reality. According to the paper, the incident happened a while back, but court documents were recently unsealed to [00:05:00] identify the individual. And that's the news Roundup I'm Mariam Sobh.
I'm really looking forward to speaking with my guest today. I've had a chance to speak with him on this topic in the past, and I always say it's something I can talk about forever with us now is Johan Bollen, professor of informatics and cognitive science at Indiana university and director of the center for social and biomedical complexity at the Luddy center for artificial intelligence.
Welcome to news with a bite.
Johan: Hi Mariam
Mariam: How did you get involved with studying social media and its effects on people?
Johan: Back in the early noughties, a lot of us were interested in data science, right? And sort of web sciences, what it was called back then. Those are interesting studies of how the web was evolving, how people were setting up web pages. And we we're seeing explosive growth, which is unexpected. These networks have interesting features for scientists at least. And, um, so that was, that was sort of running its course. But then when social media suddenly appeared and I think everybody suddenly understood, understood it was a goldmine there, you know, to model human behavior, emotions, [00:06:00] cognition, et cetera, because millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions of people who are lured into these social media platforms generating the data that, that, that. People like myself, researchers like myself interested in studying human behavior and cognition and emotions at scale, not just through small samples of 10 to 20 individuals in a lab. Uh, but at, at sort of population level, scale became possible. So I think.manyResearchers like myself immediately realized that this was a, this would be a goldmine for behavioral modeling, something, you know, something that had been out of reach, I would say out of reach, but, but at least out of reach at that scale for, uh, decades if not a century.
Mariam: With the years that you've been studying this, has anything changed in a way that has made you concerned?
Johan: Yeah, I would say so. I mean, the, the 10 years ago, 15 years ago, everybody's really smitten with these environments because we all sort of, we said since there was sort of this [00:07:00] anarchic philosophy behind them, right.
You know, that people were going to be liberated from these top-down media systems, you know, like, like the national news. I mean, I grew up in Belgium. We had like, like two. Official government channels. That was it. I mean, private television was not legal. And, uh, I mean, perhaps misrepresenting the legal framework a little bit, but it was just two channels.
That was it. And so that was, that was, that was truth. That was media. That's how people learned about the world and you know, how they formed their opinions, et cetera. And so when social media appeared, a lot of us had sort of the dream of sort of these anarchic online and environments where everybody could freely participate that had no threshold for participation.
And that would free us up cognitively, emotionally, socially, et cetera. So that was the dream. And then I think as these, these, these environments getting more and more commercialized, right. And moved away from sort of the old use net, some of these old, very anarchic, internet based communication platforms and moved into the social media that we know nowadays.
I think a lot of us [00:08:00] started in, well, not just, I can't speak for other people, but I started to, I at least start to feel that something was off. I think, as a society, we've all come to the realization that something has changed as like a little bit like a in Lord of the rings, right. Sort of the darkness in the kingdom.
And we started to feel that things were a little off and five or six years ago. I think that became, you know, when, um, people became, you know, were shocked to, to learn about their fellow citizens, uh, being, if you call it that infected with misinformation, disinformation, and it having. real sort of consequences for our politics, for our governance, for our ability to govern ourselves.
And so, yeah, I mean, I think we all went this evolution from some really being smitten by the dream sort of the philosophy that these systems were based on. And then seeing that turn into something that was both very. important from a societal perspective, but at the same time, also having some, some darker elements that, that could really distort our you know, [00:09:00] public debate or ability to self-governance as I just mentioned.
And, uh, you know, um, yeah, I think five or six years ago, things started to change a little bit. I think I, have you had that same impression?
Mariam: Yeah, I think, I think it's a mix. I mean, it almost feels like it's a luxury these days to not be online. And there's so many things tied to websites or social media handles that if you don't have an account, you're not going to get to see what's going on. And so I feel like I'm in the middle of these two worlds where it's like, I don't want to necessarily be online, but I noticed the, I don't even know if it's repercussions, but the things that you miss out on, because you're not online.
Johan: Yeah. I mean, I've read this, this fantastic science fiction book a while ago, by Vernor Vinge and he's one of those futurists that believe in, or at least use that notion of the singularity in their books. So this idea that cultural and technology, technological changes is exponentially accelerating, meaning that we have increasingly shorter times between sort of what's new and what's [00:10:00] obsolete. And I think the story is based on someone that had to be sort of frozen You know, just because they figured that scientific advances were so fast at that point that they'd only have to freeze you for six months. And so if whatever ailed you couldn't be treated at that point in time, just, just wait a little bit, freeze the person defrost them six months later and they can be treated. And of course, six months, perhaps three months, perhaps two months, you know, depending on how fast, um, uh, medical medical innovation could take place.
But one of the tenants of the book is that the, these people after like six months of being in sort of suspended animation would have to be completely reeducated because they missed out on six months of very rapid technological advances. And, and so perhaps that. You know, perhaps that's what we're feeling as well.
Things are moving so fast nowadays that, that if you're not on the social media environments and you, you, you disconnect for only a short while you've, you've done, irrevocable damaged your ability to keep up. I mean, you, you know, you've, you've turned [00:11:00] into like an old curmudgeon almost immediately, you know, that isn't keeping up with the times.
Um, so I, yeah, I felt that as well, I closed my Facebook account and, you know, I, I don't know what it has been a net positive in the sense that. I, I, I mean, frankly, I, I think I'm happier for not having it, but at the same time, you know, I think I'm missing out on a lot of other things as well. You know, like family and friends and people are posting stuff and mean, yeah, it's like watching the news sometimes it's terrible, but most of us would like to be keep abreast of the news.
Mariam: Just ahead. We'll continue the conversation with professor of informatics and cognitive science, Johan Bollen, but coming up next, it's a rap song by the COVID savior who decided to share it with our show. So enjoy the dance break.
Lori Lightfoot: Some of you joked that I'm like a mom, uh, who will turn the car around when you're acting up.[00:12:00]
No friends, it's actually worse. I won't just turn the car around. I'm going to shut it off. I'm gonna kick you out and I'm gonna make you walk home.
Covid Savior: I saw you at that party. Yeah I took a look. Now don't get mad at me cause I'm an open book. I may be nosy. Yeah. But I am still your neighbor and it's my job to be the COVID savior.
Yeah, COVID savior saving you from yourself.
Hey, little lady there. I couldn't help, but notice you had your mask on wrong under your nose like this. It's not the right way. And I am not a hater everyone knows that I'm just the COVID savior.
COVID savior saving you from yourself 24 7 365
[00:13:00] My oh my look at this awful line, people thinking we're back to normal times. Back it up. We need assistance. That thing we call physical distance. Maybe you don't like it, my strict behavior, but listen up folks I'm the COVID Savior, COVIDSavior.
Don't worry. I got the CDC on speed dial.
Mariam: I don't know if I'll get that song out of my head next time I'm in line somewhere and people start to get too close! Now let's get back to my conversation with Johan Bollen.
You yourself are a creative person. How do you keep up with the world if you're not on Instagram or Facebook or Twitter?
Johan: My philosophy is that that instead of doing social media, sort of this personal broadcasting model, where I'm broadcasting to everybody and, and, and, and [00:14:00] broadly oversharing my, my own experiences and insights, which aren't so great, or at least not to the degree that millions of people need to be aware of it I think. What I've done is that I focused on personal relationships, sort of direct relationships to people that I care about and that I, uh, whose opinion I value. And so I just refocused my sort of my, my socializing and, uh, you know, how I connect to sort of artistic expressions, trends, et cetera. I connect through people. And not through people on social media platforms by simply calling them using WhatsApp or signal to communicate.
And then, you know, that's essentially how I've done it. And honestly, I don't think I'm missing all that much. It's, you know, people love to share. So if you ask them, Hey, what? What's cool. Don't tell you. And so if, if the people that you ask are cool, then you're almost certain to get something nice out of it.
So, I mean, perhaps I don't know whether this is an effective strategy, but at least it's pleasant because you, you socialize directly with [00:15:00] people that you care about.
Mariam: Well, on the flip side, I'll tell you my experience is that once I deactivated all my accounts, um, I think it was in like March or April of 2021 uh, people just disappeared. Like I have no idea what's happening in the world.. You know, it's just so strange. It's like people only communicate on those platforms and when you're gone, they just forget about you and move on to like the next thing.
Johan: Yeah. I mean, philosophically speaking is, I mean, it's that necessarily a bad thing?
Mariam: Probably not. You, you, you see who really is important in your life and you don't get distracted with a lot of outside stuff I guess.
Johan: It's a real conundrum , I would say, right. We like to be exposed. We like, we all like to be in the middle of everything. I mean, I think that's what social media also plays into we're all stars on social media, right.
Because one of the hidden assumptions of having a social media account is that people are interested in learning about what you do. You're important enough to be your own media. You're like your own TV channel dedicated to you. It's like, it's like these old blogs. I mean, I still, I I've mentioned it before in the, uh, the, uh, when we, when we [00:16:00] spoke previously, is that when I first heard about blogs, I was just like, why do you think you're so important that you need your own blog?
And I thought it was a little hokey, you know, like, oh, you got a blog, who's interested in that. You know, why would I need a blog? And then the assumption of course, of having a blog in the first place is that you deem yourself important. . enough well sufficiently important that you need to have a blog to tell people what you think and how you view things that we do. Now blogs are super useful no, one's denying that, but the hidden assumption in social media, I think is still that we're all like stars and everybody needs to know, about what we do and everybody needs to be aware of what we do because we're so important. And the truth is we're not, not most people aren't very important at all. And so I think that what social media does is, you know, you get a lot of the noise level is just really high and my fear is that it would swamp out the things that are really important.
Mariam: I can see, I can see that it would create a problem too, in the way that if the underlying assumption is that everybody's important. It might get to someone that, Hey, I'm posting all this and [00:17:00] nobody's responding. I'm supposed to be important..
Johan: Exactly, you're setting yourself up for failure in a sense. And I think that's what these social media platforms also tap into. So you post something, nobody likes it. Nobody gives you a thumbs up or whatever. Th th that will stick with you. I mean, even if you, I think people who don't, you know, people might not be fully aware of it, but that you will notice you'll notice that nobody liked what you posted.. Nobody responded the next time you post something and get a few thumbs up. I think in your mind, and your brain automatically starts to look for the endorphins and you know, of social approval. And I think we're all being trained to write things that via these algorithms, all being trained to write things or present ourselves in a way that leads to more social approval.
And so, but, but the, the, the hidden assumption there is that we're seeking social approval to begin with. And that's not always very healthy. . I like to think of myself as someone who is not so subject to social approval.that I do what I do and I don't care whether people like it or not. I mean, I think that's a more glamorous [00:18:00] model of myself than, than being on social media, sort of fishing, fishing for compliments for, for people to approve what I do.
It's kind of baked into the cake that we're all going to be disappointed with ourselves to a degree because one of the hidden assumptions of social media is that yeah, we're out there. We are our own . Channel we're broadcasting to everybody and we're seeking the approval of others. It's a little bit like if you're a star, if you're a rock star, nobody comes to your concerts. Are you still a rock star? I mean, you'd be very disappointed if you, if you organize a party and no one comes to the party, I mean, it's painful, but that's essentially what people experience at a micro-scale on social media, you post something and nobody replies to it. They were supposed to be interested. Yeah, you're on social media they're supposed to be interested , so yeah, I think that's a really interesting, and again, I don't think that that's sort of, you don't need a conspiratorial perspective. This is just how things are, right? I mean, you put yourself in a public forum, then you're going to be subject to the [00:19:00] approval of others.
Mariam: I think, too, that, um, there's other ways that these tools are being used that maybe people don't realize, like for example, uh, people that are in the public eye that have important things to share and say, may not be running their social media accounts. They have like teams doing it for them. And. You know, other other folks who are making their own channels, as you say, um, are doing it themselves.
And I can say that as someone who did everything myself and burned myself out and I, and I realized, wait a second, everyone else has.
Johan: Yeah, you're a team of one. Yeah. I mean, that's the, that's the other conceit of course, that this is personal. So it's, it's, you know, if you're on is on Facebook, it's Johan Bolan, right. And so people who do gain some, uh, some fame or, you know, like influencers or whatever... you have to wonder. I mean, it could be an entire team behind the content that they produce, but it's, but it's not obvious because again, we could see it as that. This is a very personal. [00:20:00] Individually sort of a channel for you to express yourself. And so that's yeah, again, I think that, so it's not just that it's, it's, it's not just the idea, the idea that we're supposed to be looking for social approval and it's part of what we do in social media, but there's also the conceit that this is a very personal individualized form of communication.
And it's a little bit like people getting fooled by the covers of fashion magazines and thinking that certain body types are much more prevalent than they really are, but it's simply because the pictures have been manipulated, by professionals to, uh, you know, to look a certain way. And yeah, so that's the second conceit in a way, right? I mean people. Would they be so funny if they didn't have a, uh, a team of writers behind their social media channel?
Mariam: .And another thing, what I, what I've found really interesting. Um, for, from my perspective was looking at old photos that I had on social media. And then. [00:21:00] Just like taking photos now. And I'm like, why do I look so old and aged? And then I was like, oh, because like on Instagram you can just swipe and have a little bit of a filter. And I was like, oh, I've always been me. But these pictures made me look a little bit different. It's kind of crazy.
Johan: I mean, I look old and age because I am old and aged, but so there's that, I don't know, you know, what a filter could do, but yeah, exactly. It's I mean, it's not just, it's not just sort of how these things are socially constructed. Of course, there's, there's a whole layer of algorithms on top of all of that, that make it look better than they soften features a little bit and improve the lighting.
Mariam: Yeah.
Johan: And I had a discussion with a friend a while ago because you know, when I DJ of course I see the crowd in front of me. And I think people look better now than they did 20 or 30 years ago. And it's not just because of any sort of deception in social media in real life that look better too, because when people take better care of themselves, they've got better hairdressers that they've got better dentists uh, et cetera.
And [00:22:00] so. Uh, yeah, it's an arms race. It's an arms race. I think that we're all engaged in, you know, there's these feedback loops and they can take us to very interesting, but also very dark places, you know, because there's both our human tendencies to, you know, present ourselves as you know, to the best of our abilities.
And then you've got these algorithmic layers on top and then these sort of this unseen level of. Historically unseen level of socialization, you know, where people are being exposed to literally billions of other individuals on a daily basis. It's, it's quite something.
Mariam: What do you think is the best way to balance new technology in the ever-changing landscape? Do we. Wait to see how it affects people versus jumping on as early adapters.
Johan: That's a really tough one. I mean, I'm personally a little bit of a cynic in the sense that, you know, , we can philosophize about the effects and the dangers of new technology, but the truth is that technology generally runs ahead of our ability as a society, but also as individuals to [00:23:00] anticipate what that technology could mean.
Uh, or the consequences that, that could result from this technology. And so if we try to sort of be futurists, like if someone in 2004, said, you know, this thing is social media. We really need to walk into this and see what, you know, we don't have to regulate it where they would have probably done it the wrong way.
They would have done the wrong idea. But the, the consequences of these technology very often technology is launched and then society kind of plays catch up. And, and that is. Yeah, I D I don't know, it's a real conundrum. I don't know what to say about that, because I think a lot of these discussions about what technology future technology might represent are not useful because they're wrong that they don't fully anticipate what the technology might, um, mean to individuals or to society.
And, but, but then again, if you're more of an empiricist and you wait until the technology runs, its course, then you're, you're chasing after the fact. So I really don't know what the good balance [00:24:00] is. I mean, I've, as a researcher, of course, you know, I joined Facebook also because it was interested in the platform because I thought it meant something really new, something, very exciting, something that would, that would be quite useful to my own research, et cetera.
So I was a sort of an earlier adopter, um, But, yeah, I mean, I don't know what that meant in terms of what, you know, I don't, I don't know whether that was, uh, uh, an adequate way of dealing with sort of. With the difficulty of anticipating what the technology would mean once it was widely adopted in society.
So I think I'm a little bit of a pessimist with regards to our ability as a society to anticipate what technology will do. It's also because it's an evolutionary process. Like everything runs mechanically, right. But it's not, there's no, there's no linear path from what we have now to where we're going to be in 10 years, because.
This is co created a self grade, this feedback loops and just get it can veer off into any direction at any point in time [00:25:00] without us fully being able to, to, to anticipate where it, where it was, where it would take us. I mean, if you think again, in 2003, I, I think there'd be very few people that would have believed me and said listen, the social, the social, the social media platforms, like Facebook have 2 billion users and they're going to have a uh, uh, a tremendous effect in our elections, there is going to be misinformation. We're going to struggle with disinformation. There's going to be a pandemic. And then there's going to be lots of people who believe that, that the virus is going to the, the, the, the vaccine is going to inject them. with 5g microchips, you can't make this stuff up. And it would be, would've been very difficult to anticipate this in advance. So yeah. I mean, I think to a degree as a society, we're sort of the, you know, I would say the victims, but we're, we overestimate our agency with respect to how new technology is introduced and the effects that it has.
Mariam: There's something that I've been interested in lately that I've been reading about, which [00:26:00] is the metaverse and I'm, I'm intrigued, but I'm also a little nervous. I can see that it could be a very addicting place where you appear how you want living this life, uh, without leaving your home plug and play enjoy the virtual life you've created. But in real life, I'm sure it can cause some serious consequences. Is that something that you're looking into at all?
Johan: In Dutch we have the saying is like the, the cat is watching the bird from the tree and it's essentially, it, it, it says that you're just taking sort of a, uh, a standoff kind of position and, you know, to see what happens because yeah, I know, I wonder about that as well, because w w w will we find millions of people willing to don the virtual reality gear and then engage in these virtual reality environments, where again, you have all of the, the distortions that we're presently seeing the social and psychological distortions that we're presently seeing, seeing on social media. So I don't know how successful that is going to be. Um, I mean, I mean, I like interacting with people in the real world, but. [00:27:00] So perhaps I'm underestimating the the willingness of people to do this, these kinds of things virtually.
Mariam: I think, I think the world is changing and more people are going to be...
Johan: I mean, we're doing this virtually, right? we're doing this online. So I, you know, I've done a lot of zoom zoom calls over the past a couple of years. So perhaps this, this pandemic was also sort of the push that we needed to virtualize even further.
Mariam: Pandemic was planned to make us go into the metaverse. That's what that's what's happening.
Johan: Ah there's the conspiracy. So it wasn't Bill Gates. It was, it was the Zuckerberg. Yeah. I think there's definitely uses for this, like having virtual meetings, et cetera. But I mean, I had a discussion a while ago with someone about sort of the scientific conferences. It is true. It is true. Scientists spend an inordinate amount of time booking flights to some remote locale to get together with 300 or 400 other scientists in their domain and to give presentations and to socialize and to attend keynotes and et cetera. Is that a good use of our time? [00:28:00] Right? I mean, it's tremendously ineffective. I mean, there's a lot of carbon dioxide being admitted on behalf of scientists, traveling the world to meet up with colleagues and, you know, in, in, in, in, in select places, you know, and then there's the wining and dining, et cetera. I mean, I don't want to make it sound like, like scientists lead sort of a, sort of a jet set life of, of adventure and romance, et cetera. But, is that necessary? Could we do this remotely? Could we just have a zoom call? And then we give our presentations on the zoom call and I was arguing that that is that, that is the worst aspect of the conference without all, without the good stuff, because the good stuff is running into someone, in the hallway after a talk say, Hey, I just saw this really great talk.
Yeah. But I've been working on so-and-so. And so, and it's these idiosyncratic in-person moments that make it worthwhile, not the presentation, not the formalities of the conference. And so my fear is that with this Meta verse that increasingly we will, we will mimic the formalities of our relationships and these events without [00:29:00] the actual value, the things that really make them useful and rewarding from a human perspective.
So, yeah. I don't know where that's going to. I mean, I like zoom. It's very useful, but, but I prefer to meet with people in real life. I mean, imagine if I would have to DJ remotely all the time, it would be terrible. It's just, let's just quit.
Mariam: You can DJ in the metaverse or these games like Fortnite, where they have concerts now.
Johan: No, I don't, I'm not interested. I can tell you
Mariam: It's just some cartoon characters,
Johan: but we're in the midst of a pandemic, of course, that's what it is, right. I mean, because we have to be careful with these kinds of mass meetings. I understand that, but hopefully we will return to some normal and, and hopefully that, that will not involve having to dJ in the metaverse I think that would be, I don't, I don't think I would like that very much. Well, I mean, I guess it's, I mean, it's this kind of reasoning where you look at something and you, you, you formalize it, right. You look at it from a symbolic perspective. You're thinking of how, how can we codify this in sort of explicit terms..
Yeah, and [00:30:00] I go, you take a plane and you fly to Paris and then you give a presentation to your colleagues and then, and then you, you, you, you talk to some colleagues and then you fly back home, you know? Okay. That's formally what's happening at the conference. Right. So you can mimic that online, but that is not the conference. It's almost extended the art of motorcycle maintenance. You know, building is not the universe.
Mariam: There's something there about spontaneously meeting with people and going for lunch or just having those, those human moments, which, um, but I don't know. I mean, I, I, I look at the younger generations that they don't know how to communicate anymore, except through social media. And, and I'm not trying to exaggerate this. I see this with my, with my kids and in the schools, even though my kids do not have social media, I do not allow it. Okay. but they're like, I don't know what's going on because everybody's talking about some trend on Tik TOK.
Johan: Yeah. Yeah. They're getting angry. Usually. It's like they get angry about something and it's always very sort of secondary tertiary. Someone said something about someone that said something, you know, it's actually these [00:31:00] multiple layers of you just have to have been there apparently. Uh, yeah. I mean, I wonder about that, what that does to people, not, you know, because a lot of this is sort of written communication where you don't see someone's faces, we'd be the same in a metaverse.
Right. And so w what does that, what does it do to someone to. To communicate like that from a very young age, right? Because the truth is w we have expressive faces as a species. That's how we're put together. You know, we, we gesture. We make, you know, we, we pull crazy eyes when we want to stress a point, et cetera.
I sometimes worry whether some of the anxiety and sort of the, sort of the depression that, that, that we see amongst our, our, , younger people isn't the result of them not being adequately socialized and communicating with real people in real life. You know where yes, some of them are big. Some of those small, you know, you've got all of the, sort of the rich tapestry of, uh, visual, verbal facial signals that you're [00:32:00] missing out when you're doing, when you're communicating via Whatsapp right. And that, that is even lacking when you're having like a call on zoom. So I really worry about that sort of, if that is your main mode of communication, what that does for your ability to operate in the world where you're going to have to deal with,
Mariam: as we get ready to wrap up here, is there anything you're working on, uh, currently or in the, in the next couple months that, that we can look out for?
Johan: The research project that we're running right now, uh, is specifically looking at this theory of cognitive distortions. And like last time we spoke, I mentioned a paper that we published , and we recently published another one that used a, a similar data set. But instead of looking sort of the, these, these psychological phenomena of cognitive distortions, the kind of thought patterns are associated with anxiety and depression and trying to observe these at the societal level here, we looked at sort of changes in languages seem to be indicative of sort of a surge of language associated with, uh, uh, [00:33:00] intuition versus rationality. And so I could send you a link to the paper, but essentially we looked at a variety of archives of historical language, observing that words related to rationale, like system thinking like, uh, you know, government uh, reason rationality, uh, uh, machines, et cetera, declined significantly over the past 40 or 50 years, uh, where terms that are associated with sort of a more individual perspective, uh, such as intuition, feelings, emotions, et cetera, surged over the past 40 years. So I think what we're witnessing overall is a really interesting societal shift towards language that is more idiosyncratic, more individual and less focused on sort of the, the sort of a rational understanding of the broader world
Mariam: and [00:34:00] that's it for news with a bite. I hope you enjoyed this premier episode news with a bite is written and hosted by me, Mariam Sobh. It's produced by Todd Manley of EarSight Studios. If you'd like to catch all episodes, make sure to add this show to your list, wherever you get your podcasts and feel free to leave a review. .