The Case for Kicking the Stone

HOW MUCH BETTER is the world since the arrival of what Nicholas Carr calls our modern “technologies of connection”—cell phones, personal computers, the internet, social media, artificial intelligence? As we watch these systems undermine democracy, flood our lives with misinformation and deepfakes, transform our children into screen-obsessed zombies, and threaten to eradicate us entirely, we might be tempted to respond with a hollow laugh.