Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate, has expressed his concern that technology is giving rise to a new generation of illiterates in Nigerian society.
Speaking at the closing ceremony of the 3rd Intra-African Trade Fair, IATF 2023, in Cairo, organized by Afreximbank in collaboration with the African Union and AfCFTA, Soyinka highlighted the dual nature of technology, Vanguard reports.
While acknowledging the positive aspects, such as the role of the Internet in movements like the Arab Spring, he cautioned against a new Internet culture.
Soyinka observed that this culture, marked by tyranny and abuse, downplays real creativity for cheap and subversive trends.
“This is a marvelous technology; this is a liberating technology. The so-called Arab Spring, for instance, among many movements, was able to take life and be successful where they’ve been utilizing that culture of instant communication; these are positive.
“However, as a new, tyrannical, insolent, and abusive culture, the culture of submental humanity in our midst, which you can give the rough name of the new Internet culture, in which real creativity is being downgraded, even despised for cheap, populist, nasty, subversive, humanly subversive culture.”
He emphasized the emergence of an illiterate generation that devalues meaningful culture, undermining the intellectual growth of society.
Soyinka specifically addressed the situation in Nigerian society, pointing to the alarming degradation of culture facilitated by internet technology.
“It’s creating new generations of the illiterate, who believe it’s up to them that it’s sort of noble, progressive, and populist to despise what I call the real meaningful culture that improves the mind of humanity, expands our horizons, offers numerous alternatives or interpretations of phenomena, et cetera, and leads to a new construct of a genuine new being.
“Now we have to watch this network-facilitated abuse of culture. I speak very specifically to my society, especially the Nigerian society, the greatest abusers of that kind of culture, where you have the real degradation of the real meaning of culture, facilitated by Internet technology,” the Nobel laureate said.
Soyinka, therefore, urged vigilance against this network-facilitated abuse of culture, emphasizing the need to confront the challenges and not trivialize the issue.
