How ‘The Social Dilemma’ Misplaced the Blame.
The Social Dilemma interpreted the world’s current alarming media epidemic, but it failed to address the crucial root of the issue. This has led me to agree with most critics about the failed plot of the documentary film.
In the documentary The Social Dilemma, the core problem of media and technology use today is prediction algorithms keeping people addicted to their screens. While most of the interviewees, who were former big names in Silicon Valley, take modest blame for this issue, the villain of the film seems to be the technology itself. However, I would blame humans and human nature before electronics and algorithms. One of the respondents in the film, Jaron Lanier, treats social media and tech as the cause of the issue instead of humans.
Lanier claims negative human behavioral changes were a product of the harms of social media. However, I would argue that human behavior is the cause and the problems with social media are the effect. Throughout the film there is a constant disconnect on the cause and effect relationship between how technology works and how it relates to humanity (lecture Jan. 28). Interviewees in the film, including Lanier, discuss humans as if they are neutral beings in the issues with media and tech when in reality humans are just as, if not more, responsible.
I believe humans should take the blame for two primary reasons. First, people created the tech and media industry without considering the non-technical faults that could come with endless communication, political outreach, and accessibility for human beings. Since tech creators failed to recognize the darker and misanthropical qualities of mankind, it has allowed for disinformation and screen addiction to be staple concerns for media use. Langdon Winner argues how objects can have political qualities when they are designed to settle and participate in political and social communities. Tech did not inject itself in human livelihood without the help of humans. Even if the only goal of ‘media’ was to connect people, human history shows that we can not handle limitless tools and materials. Humans have exploited nearly every resource on earth, from clothing to water, so why would technology be any different?
Second, users of tech and media have the self control to not cause harm through these tools and distance themselves from them whenever they become addicting. Therefore it would be foolish to blame hardware when what matters is not the technology itself, but the social and economic HUMAN system in which it is embedded (Winner, 122). Technology is not directly impairing our societies, but the way consumers use media and electronics have proven to be harmful without some kind of boundaries.
In the end, I’m concerned that the solution to the machines and media problem is more machines. It is important to establish that humans are more accountable for the issues of media and technology than the technology itself so we can begin fixing how people use and create technology in the future.
Sources
Do Artifacts Have Politics?Author(s): Langdon WinnerSource: Daedalus, Vol. 109, №1, Modern Technology: Problem or Opportunity? (Winter,1980), pp. 121–136Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & SciencesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20024652Accessed: 06/10/2009 20:50
Pasquetto, Irene. SI 410 winter 2021, Tuesday, January 28, 2021. Google Slides.
Orlowski, J. (Director). (2020). The Social Dilemma [Video file]. Exposure Labs; Argent Pictures; The Space Program. Retrieved from https://www.netflix.com/watch/81254224?trackId=13752289&tctx=0%2C0%2Ca7e9d3ab-17f9-426a-9dd1-95e44adb67d3-13650076%2C61befdfd51a87430c7993aff4899850b16c72f1d%3Aa2e7895bd1127cf6ac10cff93d2ac771e0b0364e%2C%2C
