David Amerland
as a form of therapy, but I also get to answer questions you ask and post my latest news. The books I write take apart the mechanics of human behavior and analyze the building blocks of this world, though some readers interpret them as being about, search, the web, popular culture, and elite soldier mentality.
I believe that everything we do that is sustainable answers a specific need we experience at a basic human level. Search is information retrieval which is needed to help us make sense of what we see in the world (and there is a version of it inside our head), social networks answer our need for social connection and culture is just behavior that is driven by values, filtered through perception and modulated by context.
Digital technology does what technology has always done: augment existing human abilities and amplify human traits. It is no different, in that respect, to the car or the airplane. It challenges us right now because it is new, fast-moving and it impacts many of us at once. It attracts it because we sense the potential it offers for everyone to matter. For lives that are mostly invisible to feel that they belong. That they make sense.
My books are quoted by academics in research papers and used by universities as primers in classes. I try not to take this too seriously otherwise I won’t be able to write another word. What keeps me writing and evolving are the questions you have too: Why? Why are we the way we are? Why is the world the way it is? Why can we not all be better? Why is the struggle we experience so real? Why is everything just so difficult?
You can keep track of what I write by joining my Sunday newsletter.
You can ask me almost anything here and I hope you can join me as I go looking for answers.
Stay true and keep on reading,
David
“Social media is the empowerment of the individual at the expense of the system.”
“The web and its technologies are digital representations of everything we did before in a more private, bigger, faster and more empowering format than ever before.”
“Social media is addictive precisely because it gives us something which the real world lacks: it gives us immediacy, direction, a sense of clarity and value as an individual.”
“It seems perverse that we can be more social than anyone would have thought possible when we are at our most anti-social, locked away from the world and silently staring at a computer screen, but that, as psychologists will tell you is the way we operate. When we are at the maximum of our disconnect we also are ready to connect and feel the need for interaction.”