Elon Musk’s experiment

Published 07.06.2024 | By Йосиф

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Elon Musk’s experiment: how long does it take for smartphones to destroy civilization?

futurism.com: A remote tribe in the Amazon rainforest can experience the wonders of the Internet for the first time thanks to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network. But as they connect with the rest of the world, it looks like the people of Marubo are starting to adopt some of our modern bad habits.

The New York Times reports on what might sound a little familiar: Young people scrolling through social media feeds, watching football games and, of course, gossiping on WhatsApp. Evenings are spent messing around on their phones and playing first-person shooters and other video games.

“When he first appeared, we were all happy,” says the tribal leader, 73-year-old Tsainama Marubo. “But now the prisoner’s life has turned into a nightmare.”

Alfredo Marubo, leader of the tribal village association, lamented that the boys, now having their own group chats, were sharing pornography and other explicit videos, an unprecedented phenomenon in their culture, which considers even public kissing a huge taboo.

“We’re concerned that young people will want to try what they’re shown,” Alfredo told The New York Times, referring to what young people see in porn videos.

Marubo has been using Starlink since September, after a wealthy American woman bought them antennas to connect to the satellite network.

Now some tribe members fear the Internet poses a real threat to their culture. Young people kill time by fiddling with their smartphones, isolating themselves from their elders. Having become familiar with the outside world, some teenagers now dream of exploring it. Alfredo fears this could mean the tribe’s culture and history, passed down orally, could be lost.

“Everyone is so connected to their phones that sometimes they don’t even talk to their family,” says the elder.

Tsainama Marubo, the clan’s chief, echoed these concerns but was more forceful:

“Young people have become lazy because of the Internet and do not want to do anything from their daily responsibilities. That’s enough, take your Internet back.”

Commentary from the Editors of The Big The One: A lot has been said and written about the fact that after the advent of smartphones, the generation that got hooked on them went a little crazy. However, no one except the good Elon Musk has ever conducted a pure field experiment, that is, so that there was a village of good natives who did not know digital goods and suddenly became acquainted with them.

As we can see, nine months of using smartphones was enough for the elders to raise their eyebrows, seeing that life in the village was sliding into the abyss. True, the poor fellows don’t understand that this is exactly what it was all designed for, no one can get away now, because now even in Africa they go into the jungle to fight with a telephone.

The civilization of the rest of the world has been using smartphones longer – about 10-15 years, since they became accessible and widespread. We don’t even know how far the degradation of society has gone in our world. But we can guess how it will all end, so we’ll keep an eye on the developments.

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