By Reem Ahmed
It is so mind-boggling if we give it another deeper look at how the world is now connected through a click of a finger. People now sleep off that fact, forwarding their life with new technologies as they were always there for them since the start, neglecting any counterproductive outcomes of such platforms.
It has never been quite debating about technology and social media industry as the new agenda. In fact, there is a cacophony of grievances and scandals from data tracking and stealing, fake news, addiction, to polarisation, and so on.
Beyond all that, all of us know precisely there is a problem of us giving much to social media and technology thinking we take more, however, we cannot name it or define it.
Some would argue the fact about people being addicted to social media or not, but does anyone ask himself or herself whether you can live a day without using a smartphone?
“I personally felt addicted to e-mail, and I found it fascinating there was no one at Gmail working to making it less addictive” as Tristen Harris (former design ethicist and co-founder of the Centre of Human Technology) stated.
Inside those technology companies are people like us who see the change and face the problem themselves, and some others admitted to the existence of the problem but people are not aware of it and the industry, on the other hand, has made little attempts and take responsibilities to figure it out.
Tristen later added that one notification made by a couple of designers can affect billions of people’s decisions and thoughts about something they did not intend to have before.
Roger Mcnamee (Facebook early investor) who has been investing in technology for 35 years pointed out that it seems a simple business operation on the surface of making products like software and hardware and selling them to customers but in fact, the businesses now are selling their users instead. Therefore, advertisers are the customers and people are the products.
The classic saying is “if you are not paying for the product, then you are the product.”
Likewise, the intentions of such an industry with all of its social media sites, are to keep people engaged and drag their attention as their business model, Tristen added.
“It is the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception, that is the product,” Jaron Lanier (founding father of virtual reality computer scientist) highlighted.
On the other hand, Dr. Shoshana Zuboff (Professor at Harvard business school) has clarified the aim of those businesses as they sell certainty and great predictions and it only begins with one imperative which is a lot of data.
We might think that people or pages we follow, the likes or comments we add, and even things we only view, are simply personal and meaningless to others, but indeed those trivial movements we make are very important data for business to track and predict our behaviour to simply place a successful ad.
Dr. Shoshana mentioned this is the time for the new marketplace that trades human futures making internet companies the richest companies in the history of humanity.
I myself, writing this article while checking up my phone every single time in between, thinking I am not part of this rather looking for my own business and interests just like any of you have been thinking. Having zero intentions to pull out any of my social media accounts, convincing myself they are for other purposes.
It is quite hard to just take off one important fundamental of today’s life, there are definitely undeniable benefits of those technologies in our life. However, change is a collective well starting from a reformation of those technology companies, to the change of our acceptance and recognition of such a problem because the change begins with us being aware, changing our behaviour, and raising our voices.***
Reference: The Social Dilemma movie
(This article is written as part of individual assignment series for Feature Writing class)