FOCUSING ON WHAT’S RIGHT AND NOT JUST THE POSSIBLE
The Age of Spin
“We do not describe lies as truth and truth as lies,” stated German Chancellor Angela Merkel in her 2019 Havard commencement speech. It was part of the Chancellors’ speech that called on the graduating class to break the walls of ignorance by not focusing solely on what is possible but what is right. She further prompted the audience to ask themselves whether they focus on the human with all its dignity in its many facets or do they see the human, the data source, or the object of surveillance.
Her speech was timely, and considering the thundering applause, it was quite clear what she was referring to. Three years before her address, the Age of Spin was in full swing, marked with two unprecedented electoral wins; the Brexit Vote in the United Kingdom and Donald Trump’s 2016 United States Presidential win.
Age of Spin — the era whereby (significantly) lies are described as truth and truth as lies.
The gap between what was right and possible was the existence of an alternate universe where lies were spewed as truth and heavily driven by conspiracy theories, racism, and hate. The new normal was the Age of Spin powered by Social media, and its use paved way to exponential misinformation, manipulation, and bigotry like never seen before.
However, the scariest aspect of what happened in 2016 was not just the vast dominance of lies in the political arena. It was also the effective use and manipulation of private data sources and surveillance of citizens in both the United Kingdom and the United States through the intentional and well-coordinated spews of lies that dominated both electoral cycles.
At the center of the manipulation and surveillance was a British Political Consulting group known as Cambridge Analytica. In what is considered the most significant proliferation of technology in our lives, the consulting company was able to leverage its alliance with Facebook to access users’ data, which resulted in unfettered and unauthorized access to personally identifiable information (P2) 87Million unsuspecting Facebook users. As a result, the consulting company was able to develop an ability to micro-target individual consumers or voters with messages most likely to influence their behavior.
Cambridge Analytica would wage an onslaught on the world’s most established democracies in epic proportion with little or no regard on what was right but rather the possible — its extent captured by journalist Carole Cadwalladr damning expose in the Observer. She defined the invasion as the unsettling story of our time and showed the power and dominance of Silicon Valley at the center of what could be termed as a global tectonic shift.
Inadvertently, Merkel might not have been addressing the Cambridge Analytica fiasco; however, her speech at Havard was a reminder that any possibility, had to be met with a conviction to do the right thing. It was fundamental for those who interact with technology in the Age of Spin to ask themselves, “Do we set the rules of technology or does technology determine how we interact?”
Merkel believes that the best way to answer ourselves is to apply what President Barack Obama termed as the Golden rule — seeing the world through the other persons’ eyes. If successful, one would be able to draw on the inherent values and further be prompted to do the right thing when using technology especially in the Age of Spin and as defined by Merkel that will require the virtue of patience;
“and if we do not always follow our initial impulses, even with all the pressure to make snap decisions, but instead stop for a moment, remain silent, reflect, take a break.”
