constant feedback loop

From Yuval Harari, author of Sapiens, A Brief History of Humanity, in the Guardian:

“I don’t take capitalism and neo-liberalism for granted. I teach all these 20-year-old students and they were born into a capitalist world. It’s the only system. There’s no alternative and nobody can even imagine that there could be. But I remember the time when these things were really hotly contested.”

Could just as well be talking about materialist realism. Also:

“When people talk about merging with computers to create cyborgs, it’s not some prophecy about the year 2200. It’s happening right now. More and more of our reality exists within computers or through them... we will see real changes in humans themselves – in their biology, in their physical and cognitive abilities. It was the same with the agricultural revolution about 10,000 years ago. Nobody sat down and had a vision: ‘This is what agriculture is going to be for humankind and for the rest of the planet.’ It was an incremental process, step by step, taking centuries, even thousands of years, which nobody really understood and nobody could foresee the consequences.”

Not for how our brains respond. They are clearly deeply effected by exposure to constant digital stimulus, hooked into a constant feedback loop of desire and its unsatisfaction. But that doesn't change the essence of being human. Maybe it even causes a quicker than traditionally-conceived breakdown of tolerance for delusional consumerist contentment.

Ultimately, though, this has to be seen as an impersonal process playing out beyond our control, with its naturally-arising antithesis built in. Look at how we are simultaneously turning to interior experience, witnessing our own minds at work. Learning how to process stress and anxiety, recognising what depression is, and by doing so, affirming the presence of a deeper ground of being that remains stable beyond the fluctuations of desire. 

Pic from here