A Strange Dream
A few nights ago, I had a vision of an Earth where somehow a global society was emerging. It was not necessarily cohesive but the human populations of my dream-world had had a sudden and shared epiphany that united them despite their differences.
They basically became aware that there were two forces they should be most concerned with. One represented technological change, and the other represented the exertions of money. The problem for people was that they were so involved with technology and money that the functioning of their society depended on them both.
Against the backdrop of this understanding, within the dream, I felt forcefully that this version of humankind could overcome the powerful shaping structures of tech and material wealth through transcendental efforts. What was strange is that although I often have vivid dreams, they don’t usually involve such macro-level world creation.
My interpretation of this dream is a futile endeavour. I don’t suppose dreams mean anything by themselves and subjective interpretations are endless. However, there was something in this occurrence which inspired me to think further.
The Potential Relevance
Technology is typically thought of as applying scientific methods to specific purposes but in the abstract is essentially adaptation – finding a solution to a problem. Money in the abstract is a symbolic agreement on a shared value. Money itself is a kind of technology.
Underlying our now everyday interactions on the Internet are endless lines of code shaping the running of software. At the same time capital (or the amount of money we earn/have) is a powerful determinant that shapes our life choices. There is a line of sentiment which was conveyed to me recently by a technology podcast. I think it captures something of the cultural moment we find ourselves in for a number of reasons. I can’t remember the quote word for word but the essence is essentially this:
Code shapes computer programs while media shapes human thoughts.
There’s no denying the first part of this is true, but how much of our thinking is determined by pressures from external media? Furthermore, how much do the traditional broadcast and print media still exert influence versus social media? Whilst the influence of traditional media is undoubtedly great, the growing sway effect of social media can not be ignored.
Social Media’s Micro Effects
The very actions we choose to take are shaped by what we see and are exposed to whilst going about our daily lives. For the billions of social media users across the planet, there has come to exist a profound way of interacting with the technology which has been likened to dependence.
The scroll of social feeds is a techno-optimised spin of the gamblers wheel, a hi-tech version of the pull of the one armed bandit. We are not just in the information age, we are in the age of information addiction. As the thought-provoking show The Social Dilemma put it, behind every handheld screen lies almost endless terra-bytes of computing power working persistently to keep you online and engaged with the device.
The Effect of Recent Social Distancing Measures
Over the last year or so, the lack of social contact has reduced every individual’s social capital. People are a diminished version of themselves when the social context for their being is removed. Lack of face-to-face interaction means that conversations have been mediated through text or reduced to FaceTime and WhatsApp calls. The situations thwarted my plans to forgo Facebook’s offerings.
I don’t have access to research on this but my hunch is that every idea that one is trying to convey has only a small fragment of the impact when the bandwidth of the medium is cut down in this way. There’s no substitute for reality.
It is true that the natural laws dictate that voids should be filled, or as Aristotle held, nature abhors a vacuum. In the absence of our social world’s normal interactions and interpersonal relations, technology has moved insipidly into the space.
So In Step the Advertising Companies and Data Gatherers
Here is an alternate reality scenario. The year is 1990. Everything is normal except your age. You are young but old enough to comprehend the world and your place in it. There’s a colour television set but it has only one channel. You watch this channel endlessly. It is a strange but familiar channel. There are no programs, only adverts. Every fourth advert is interspaced with a picture of your friends having fun or something arty they have produced.
The channel is increasingly captivating, the more you watch, the more you feel like there’s nothing else you would rather be doing. Your head gradually rolls to the side and eventually you feel numb. All motivation gone, inspiration gone, originality gone.
This is almost where we are with social media feeds. Platforms such as Instagram increasingly just exist for the sale of goods and services to ‘users’. These users, you, me, anyone who uses social media give up data which is sold on. Our information and preferences are recorded, bundled up and sold on to third party companies. We are producing data which has a value and are being influenced by the technology in order to do it.
It seems the more I think about this issue the more I see that big tech have been harvesting fields of data and selling the produce almost on an open market. The system isn’t broken, it was adapted to work that way and the events of the last year have only exacerbated the problem. Whilst the middle men get rich off the feeds of the crop, the minds of the users are increasingly starved and additionally there is no economic trickle down.
Final Thought
Clearly there is a global market for social media platforms and the networked socialisation they create, but the information eco-systems urgently need to be improved to work for individual users. There needs to be a privacy-centric disruption in this space which makes people realise the value they provide and reimburses them for what they are giving up.