Are We Controlling Our Smartpone?

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The idea tat we're going to just stay as we are in how we interact with this technology is absurd. The deeper point, of course, also you make, is that, ow, people enjoy these things. It's not diction. That's just a word to vilify itnd, it's a puritanical concept to make it sound wicked or evil. And listeners, know, i'm a big fan of letting cultural to this happened.

Writer and management consultant Venkatesh Rao talks about Waldenponding with EconTalk host Russ Roberts. Rao coined the term Waldenponding to describe various levels of retreating from technology akin to how Thoreau extolled the virtues of retreating from social contact and leading a quieter life at Walden Pond. Rao argues that the value of Waldenponding is overrated and that extreme Waldenponding is even somewhat immoral. Rao sees online intellectual life as a form of supercomputer, an intellectual ecosystem that produces new knowledge and intellectual discourse. He encourages all of us to contribute to that intellectual ecosystem even when it can mean losing credit for some of our ideas and potentially some of our uniqueness.