Whose fault?

The Social Dilemma interpreted the world’s current alarming media epidemic, but it failed 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.

Throughout the film there is a disconnect on the relationship between how technology works and how it relates to humanity (lecture Jan. 28). One of the main respondents in the film, Jeff Seibert, treats social media and tech as the antagonist when really humans are. No matter how advanced technology gets, human beings will always be the most complex entities on the planet. People in the film, including Seibert, 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 predicting 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 and communities, history has shown that we can not handle limitless tools.

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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 system in which it is embedded (Winner, 122). Similar to the gun control sub-argument that guns do not kill people, but people kill people, relates to how tech is not directly impairing our societies, but the way consumers use media and technology can be harmful without some kind of boundaries in our society and even the government.

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.

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