Most of our so-called knowledge, familiarity and expertise in modern technology is merely a brief acquaintance on the last gadget that was marketed to us.
It will all be obsolete before we can learn how to profit from it, much less get really good at using it. We are a symbol-using and tool-making species reduced to memorizing invented alphabets and learning dead languages which are forgotten long before we can become truly literate in them.

We cannot build on what we have learned because what we know is constantly changing–and changing in unpredictable and erratic ways for primarily commercial reasons. And if you cannot accumulate knowledge and experience, reflect on it and incorporate it systematically and critically into a coherent world-view, then you will never really understand anything except at the most superficial level. True understanding and wisdom depend on being able to integrate past learning and experience, seeing it in perspective and arriving at a true synthesis, a meaningful integration over years of processing and making connections and seeing relationships.

With our hand-held communicators we can call anyone in the world we want, but all you’ll get is voice mail or an answering machine. Everyone’s talking on their phones all the time, but they never pick up when you call. Who the hell are they all talking to? And when the robots call you, it is only to sell you something you don’t need and can’t afford, or to demand even more information so they can exploit you better.

Every new communications technology; writing, the phonetic alphabet, paper, the printing press, the telegraph, wireless, and broadcast, has had its nasty surprises, but they have eventually paid for themselves by their benefits. But at least, the individuals who were affected understood the process and could adapt to it.

Sky and Telescope serves the astronomical community. It pays for itself by carrying advertising for merchants who also serve the astronomical community. The merchant prospers, the reader prospers, and the magazine and its contributors prospers. That is a good thing. But over the last few years I have seen it, and many other specialist and hobby (and news!) magazines, gradually change from a means of communication into purely vehicles for advertising. The mission of the publication has changed, from being a service to the target community to a delivery system for the advertising community. The golf or sailing magazine we read no longer is written by golfers or mariners for duffers and sailors, it is now just an advertising mechanism for the sporting goods and boating industries aimed at a broad demographic, and it is run by a publisher and editor who may care nothing about golfing or sailing. And the writers have become yet another commodity, to be bought and sold on the marketplace. The scribbler now spends more time and effort marketing his work than in mastering his subject or perfecting his craft. Text has been replaced by “copy”. It’s like buying books by the pound.

Welcome to Clickbait Nation.

Are we betraying our age by the mere act of buying a printed magazine?

Ask your doctor if See-allis is right for you!