Tuesday 26 December 2017

Christmas TV and the Entropy Pump

I had a nice family Christmas with everybody being together. This year, it was noticeable that we didn't watch TV. There were a couple of moments where someone said "What's on telly?", and after perusing the available 100+ channels, we concluded that the answer was "nothing"! When I think back to our childhood when my brothers, sister and I had opened our presents, we inevitably settled down to watch the TV, and usually, there'd be something on that we could all watch (even if we didn't fully agree). Then there were 4 channels to choose from, and the programming between those channels was carefully planned so as to gain the best possible audience.

The other striking things about modern TV is the sheer complexity of turning the thing on. Ever since satellite broadcasting we have had to work out which remote control to use, how to get to the programme guide, and so on. We used to simply turn the thing on and that was it. The business of choosing something from 100 plus channels has become the process of watching: and it has become a process where eventually (after about 10 minutes of deflation) we decide there is nothing to watch. Then someone says "What about Netflix? or iPlayer?", and round we go again...

Technology adds to the available options for doing things. The uncertainty involved in choosing anything, as a result, increases. Another way of looking at this increase in uncertainty is to say it is an increase in disorder, or entropy. More technologically driven choice increases entropy: it is an entropy pump.

Entropy pumps are useful for controlling people. Where totalitarian regimes used to ensure through propaganda that everybody got the official message, now social control can be effected by ensuring that there is so much noise, nobody gets any message! When the entropy pump is focused on a family group deciding about what to do with their time, then it results in a pointless 10 or 15 minute activity of arguing about nothing, and in the end deciding to do something else (whilst still feeling disappointed that somehow they must be missing something). When the entropy pump is focused on the individual, the result is different.

What limits the family discussion is a balancing of the chaos presented by the TV with a collective awareness of each other and an exploration of other possibilities for communication. When we retreat into our mobile devices, we are faced with another kind of entropy pump... but we seem to get hooked on it rather like a drug! Why is this?

An increase in entropy in the environment leads to a search for identity of the system that finds itself in that environment. When the device we are using is both the source of entropy, and presents itself as the means of finding identity, preserving one's sense of self, then the relation between the individual and the device will be addictive. Even by writing this blog, this is what is happening in me: I am defining or reinforcing my identity in the face of the electronic noise around me.

All systems exhibit this behaviour in the face of the increasing complexification produced by technology. The most dangerous responses are by traditional institutions as they engage in all kinds of pathological measures to try and keep their structures stable. In some cases (government, media companies), the command "generate more entropy!" is given.

What we do as individuals to defend ourselves against this is a critical question. It has, I suspect, a simple solution: we need to look at each other. Christmas is such an interesting time because, for all its faults and distractions, we cannot avoid doing that!



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