The digitisation of the last analogue: Humankind
In the digital world we live in, in which the word cookies has evolved from simply referring to the chocolate-chip filled baked goods, to also including the small pieces of digital data stored on your computer from browsing the web, perhaps a more appropriate adaptation of the popular phrase “you are what you eat” would be “you are what you browse”.
Engagement or Entrapment?
Perhaps the secret to the success of digital-services, such as Netflix with their 100 million plus subscribers, is their deeply individual curated title suggestions, representative of what will keep you watching and using their service based on your streaming behaviour! As revealed in a medium post by Netflix, gathered user data exceeds solely title suggestions by also including the development of personalised visuals!
Online platforms are being unmasked as marketing tools which can be used to predict, exploit and perhaps even influence user’s behaviour following their internet-connected activity — the era of surveillance capitalism is born. Quantifying our behaviour into a translated detailed personal dossier of likes and dislikes blurs the line between directing online users to an optimised experience and what can be used to tactfully target their behaviour to advertisers to cast their bait upon them;
We must ask ourselves: is this use of data is helpful or just downright invasive? Do even our mothers know us this well? After all, none of the data being collected is inherently bad — it’s how it’s used that defines its nature.
Psychographics — we are what we browse
Targeted adverts we encounter are being shown to us in an almost surgical manner. Our interests, gender, and even access to detailed location tracking history are amongst the myriad of details used to target adverts asking us to buy things which surprisingly: you’re inherently likely to buy!
In an era of abundance, this targeted approach is highly effective especially due to ads being mainly present and encapsulated in their own data-collecting catalyst: our Facebook timelines. I believe this gives rise to the perfect data harvesting system: obtaining data in the website which has not only our undivided attention but a complete detailed dossier of our personal information freely provided, we ultimately foster this monetisation of digital human behaviour.
Did we agree to this? The answer, unfortunately, is yes in the form of an “I agree” in the rarely read Terms and Conditions, leaving us all with questions underlying consent issues behind this use of data. As of May 25th 2018 a new law in the EU went into effect — The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) — stating that companies are now required to explicitly ask for user’s permission before collecting their data, and must tell you how they’ll use it (facing enormous fines if they don’t comply).
If a company wants to tailor a Facebook ad to a single user out of it’s 2.2 billion monthly active users, it could, and it could be you!
In the end, I believe that these algorithmic interactions mean that not only are we being surveilled but almost somewhat entrapped in a cycle in which our digital footprints ironically follow our every step (or clicks!).
Herein lies the danger behind this data colonialism: we’re being immersed in a thought bubble in which platforms decide which information we’re shown based on our own tastes, being done to keep us engaged, with results more reminiscent of developing a skewed worldview restricted to our preferences and biases. In 2017 it was found that two-thirds of U.S adults obtain their news from social media sites — such directed content it’s no wonder why we’re riddled by people who trust fake news, and are stuck within a niche of their ideologies fuelled by a simple like, share or angry reaction. This is an immense cause of worry, as Larry Kim gives us a prime example of how easy it is to create your own fake news.
Living in a time of increased use of automated machines to aid us with intellectual tasks, from curating the news we read to even finding trends allowing us to predict future criminals, it’s indispensable to understand the mechanisms behind the algorithms producing these judgements as the abuse of data creates a hostile environment between a platform and its users, with no transparency or regulations it fully transcends into becoming abusive in nature.
Humanising technology and digitalising humanity: The digital society
As with more and more of our lives revolve around our digital presence we’re evolving into a digital existence of sorts, being translated into numbers with defined characteristic traits which are being fully behaviourally analysed. Big data is ‘digitalising’ humans, and I believe this can already be observed in the world.
China operates a Social Credit system in which their citizens are ranked via scores which can move up or down according to their monitored behaviour using their own personal data found on private tech platforms, bank transactions and criminal records to name a few. Infractions which lead to a lower score include bad driving, smoking in non-smoking zones and even buying too many video games! Those with low scores can be restricted in terms of internet speed, getting their children into top schools, getting specific jobs and are ultimately blacklisted by being publicly named a bad citizen as well as being restricted in terms of travel — with more than 9 million people with low scores being blocked from buying tickets for domestic flights. This reputation system is expected to not only be fully operational by 2020, but will also be made mandatory.
Society is moving away from “humanity” in some ways, as we displace our human abilities and behaviour into digital form, and rather contradictorily are endeavouring to humanise technology itself we’re rather terrifyingly being left as the last analogue in modern days.
In contrast, recent developments in the tech-world include the capacity for Google assistant to carry out fully human-seeming phone conversations to answer for the user and even book appointments, following the promotional tagline “just make Google do it”, as well as added features such as the recognition of terms of politeness such as “please” and “thank you” intended to teach kids the importance of manners when communicating with their voice operated devices!
I believe we are deflecting from how these are non-sentient tools which are should not be considered interchangeable with our sentient selves — an issue increasingly relevant when so many humans in the world live in oppressive states, in poverty and hate-crimes ever so prevalent. Do we truly regard each other to a lesser extent than our technology? Taking China’s actions as an example it seems as its perhaps even worse than that — our humanity is beyond displaced, by being replaced.
Time to back-away or back-up?
Prior to joining the Digital Society, I didn’t think of myself as technologically inept in any way, I believed I was fully well versed with the digital-world — what I didn’t know, was that despite this I was blissfully ignorant to the impact and extent of the implications our digital-life beyond the “shop window” presented by these seemly friendly interfaces which I rather simply thought of as freely available entertainment tools!
Coming to terms with my ingenuity was challenging at first, as the awareness of my misplaced trust of how the digital-world operates came to surface, causing me to feel fear and amazement as I came to the realisation of the depth of how our digital-lives holds ultimate power over our personal “real” world. My perception and attitude ultimately evolved into this odd form of what I can only describe as “educated scepticism”. Looking far beyond how and why I interact online, I gained an appreciation of what is the impact of those actions which will far outlive me and my memories — we are immortalised as data. Joining the Digital Society was not only an introduction but an in-depth lesson of the “terms and conditions” of having a digital component and add-on to life are.
Our digital-lives are beyond important and relevant, this is not simply our future — it’s our present. For example, upon reflection of my everyday life, the ability to easily access recorded pod-casted forms of lectures is truly amazement worthy, as well as the ability to publish academic material in such an open and reachable online platform (Medium!) in a learn-critique-create format. We, as digital society students were thrown into the deep end, exposing our thoughts in such a vulnerable way, which was perhaps needed and intentionally done so to make us fully realise and reflect on the presence we have, and how we all leave our digital footprints behind beyond our everyday non-digital selves.
The exploration of “digitalising” life has resulted in the evolution of our personal, educational and professional lives into new dimensions — although impossible to predict the heights it may reach (especially as modern technology constantly makes what only sci-fi thought possible real), what is of uttermost importance is to be conscious of our responsibilities as digital citizens to the same extent as we would in our personal lives, as those are blending into a united entity.
This course has also sparked my fear of the unknown regarding tech: people are losing jobs to machines, world-champions are being beaten at their own games by AI and we become increasingly dependent on these forms of digital attachments to ourselves. I’m unsure of how far we will keep pushing these boundaries, but most importantly, I fear that technology will make us somewhat lose our humanity — which is what steered me to discuss this in my final blog post for DigiSoc: How us as humans have been translated into bits (or bytes!) of data to facilitate this transition into a world in which our digital and human lives merge, and the consequences of it.
Is it time to back away, or backup?
Humankind is, after all, the last analogue.
