Thought and Freedom in an Age of Third Screens and 5G

• In Event: Democracy, Freedom, and Pluralism in the Digital Age

Abstract

Does the ubiquity of internet access today exacerbate the social and political problem of thoughtlessness?

Hannah Arendt defined thoughtlessness as the absence of conscience. Thoughtless individuals lack internally plurality. They are incapable of inner dialogue. They lack the ability to question themselves, their actions, and what they see happening in the world around them. As a result, Arendt argued, a thoughtless person’s moral compass is set externally, by authorities’ commands, the positive law, and public opinion. Because of this dependence, thoughtless individuals become capable of a peculiar form of Kant’s radical evil. They can violate the moral law unconsciously. When coordinated, thoughtless individuals can unintentionally commit morally abhorrent acts on a gigantic scale. She defined this form of immorality as the “banality of evil.”

This paper uses Arendt’s work on thoughtlessness, deepened by insights from Habermas and Rosa, in order to sketch a through line from recent research in cognitive and behavioral science, to communications and media theory, to other fields analyzing the impact on human society of digital technology, particularly that of the internet and social media.

Smart phones and unlimited high-speed cellular data (“third screens and 5G”) have democratized information access and the ability to communicate publicly. Some thinkers, such as contributors to Landemore and Elster’s 2012 edited volume Collective Wisdom, argue that such broadened access can improve the foundations of liberal democracy, for example by promoting individual freedom or by enabling civic discourse to be better-informed. This paper pushes back against optimism about the potential of digital technology. It argues that the internet revolution has exacerbated thoughtlessness in two ways. It has deepened the forms of thoughtlessness that Arendt theorized. In addition, the internet revolution has also created new forms of thoughtlessness, which Arendt did not anticipate at all.

This paper develops that argument in two sections. In the first, it analyzes and unpacks Arendt’s concept “thought.” Building on the work of Bernstein, Ophir, Schiff, and Burdman, it argues that there are two causes of thoughtlessness: an internal cause in human nature and an external cause in state and society. On the one hand, individuals simply cannot think all the time. In order to act, we must suspend our thinking. On the other hand, powerful social and political institutions can incentive or even compel the suspension of thought. In this regard, Arendt believed that there were similarities between mass society in Western capitalist democracies and in totalitarian states. This first section concludes by looking more closely at external factors that cause of thoughtlessness. It does so by expanding on Arendt’s ideas using Habermas’ sociological theory, in particular his work on public opinion and manipulative publicity, and using Rosa’s work on social acceleration.

The second section analyzes how digital technology contributes to thoughtlessness today. It focuses on three interrelated ways that digital technology can cause thoughtlessness. First, it analyzes how digital technology erodes the “private” sphere, allowing greater surveillance and data extraction from individual life, which is used in turn to manipulate thought. Second, it analyzes how digital technology is a powerful mechanism for capturing users’ attention, interrupting and impeding thought. Third, it analyzes how digital technology can condition and even automate human behavior, precluding thought entirely. In sum, this section argues that the ubiquity of internet access today exacerbates the social and political problem of thoughtlessness.

This paper concludes with a warning. As conceived by Arendt, thoughtlessness is a social and political problem because it is enables unintentional evil at scale. In addition, thought is a fundamental aspect of being human. To be thoughtless, then, is to be dehumanized. For these reasons, this paper implores policymakers to consider ways to limit digital technology’s inhibition of thought.

Author

• Benjamin A. Schupmann, Yale-NUS College