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Neal Stephenson (the author of Snow Crash) wrote an article that was published online some years ago called “why I am a Sociomediapath”.

It would be sensible to pay attention to Neal Stephenson, because he is a genius.

In one of Neal Stephenson’s book’s he writes about a 21^st century world, where there are only a few corporations left. The land in which they are retail units are sited are countries in their own right.

Everything is automated and much of humanity now lives in containers, with not a lot of joy associated with their living environment.

A very wealthy American businessman has become extremely influential in politics and eventually bought a decommissioned aircraft carrier, which he used to bring millions of Refugee’s from the developing world to the West Coast of the United States.

The book though, is centred around an online universe where everybody dives into it, to get away from the sickness of reality.

The book is Snow Crash (link above) it was published in 1992.

Stephenson has been writing matters on science fiction for a very long time, but even better than his writing about science fiction is him writing about his own life. In 2013, he published an article, (article linked above,) at that stage Stephenson was in his mid, 50’s and he references Mezzo Cammin “middle of the road” a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Worth reading that poem a few times, especially if you’re getting to my age.

It would be worth paying attention to people 10 years older than me who are respected wouldn’t it?

I certainly respect the work that Neal Stephenson has done and therefor I was keen to read this.

It’s taken me a while to get to it on my to-do list.

There was an urban myth that Neal Stephenson didn’t touch social media and he was in fact a reclose, but this is not the case, but what he did do in 2013, was to begin to understand the impact that it was having on his ability to produce work.

Read the article if you can and if you can’t be bothered, it is summarised in the poem, if you can’t be bothered with that, here it is; Once you’ve found your self refreshing your browser, to see if there are anymore messages on your social media channels which have landed in the ten seconds since the last time you refreshed your browser, it is probably time to start devoting as much of your waking hours to something that you are good at.

Remember, at all times, that the social media world is controlled by the algorithm.

The algorithm is not a human and it is designed to filter what you click on and to give you more things to click on to keep you online longer, clicking to see more adverts.

Once you understand that, you understand that by refreshing your browser, means that you stepped across the line and your tool has now become your master and you have become the tool.

Stephenson understood this in 2013 and re-shaped how he engaged with social media and remembered that he could see the future in 1992! While I completely appreciate that I have now in certain quarters a representation of a sociomediapath and I now meet people who introduce me to other people as “that guy who doesn’t do social media” (quite proud of that). I’m acutely aware of the fact that you might be reading this on social media too.

Just try to imagine where it is going and just how much of a grip it has on you now and then just look forward to 10 years and wonder, what it will be like when the algorithm really gets going.

I write on this subject from time to time in the hope of saving somebody’s life from the catastrophe that is “trying to be everyone’s friend”.

It would be hard for me to pick out any strategic decision I’ve taken in the last 5 years that has more positively affected my health mentally and physically than that of stepping off social media.

Blog Post Number - 2068