by Steve Malen (Author)
During my last year in college I chose to leave Facebook for reasons which I'm sure you all understand. I felt like going on Facebook had no added value for my life, and in fact I felt worse the more I used it every day. The positive effect it had on my life abstaining from the social network gave me an interesting idea. I decided I want to join Facebook again however view it from an experimental and observational standpoint. For instance, the way that mob mentality works on Facebook with very aggressive comments. Or the way people search for love and attention by posting certain items. I even started to experiment on my own with certain posts and noticed, as objectively as possible, how comments/likes had an effect on my psyche. I particularly paid attention to how the lack of comments/likes would have a detrimental effect on my mood. This experiment lead to another idea. I became determined that I wanted to write a book that focused essentially on the effect of technology on humans. This is why the book begins with a quote from L. Frank Baum's, The Master Key in 1901, ["I'm not wise enough. Nor is the majority of mankind wise enough to use such inventions as yours unselfishly and for the good of the world. If people were better, and everyone had an equal show, it would be different."] So of course, I went down the rabbit hole of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, coding, future themed podcasts and really any resource I can tap into to understand the effect of technology on humanity. Thus, The AiCo Series was born!