On the Internet of Things, We People Are the Things
Plants bind energy. Humans bind time. Networked algorithms bind us.
While Team Human may be compromised in the digital environment, team algorithm is empowered.
As our more resonant communication pathways fail us, it becomes harder to check in with one another, operate in a coordinated fashion, and express or even experience empathy. We lose all the self-reinforcing feedback loops of rapport: the mirror neurons and oxytocin that reward us for socializing. Surprisingly, the inability to establish trust in digital environments doesn’t deter us from using them, but spurs more consumption of digital media. We become addicted to digital media precisely because we are so desperate to make sense of the neuromechanical experience we’re having there. We are compelled to figure it out, calibrate our sensory systems, and forge high- touch relationships in a landscape that won’t permit any of these things. We instead become highly individuated, alienated, and suspicious of one another.
Engagement through digital media is just a new way of being alone. Except we’re not really alone out there — the space is inhabited by the algorithms and bots that seek to draw us into purchases, entertainment, and behaviors that benefit the companies that have programmed them. They outnumber…
