Publicly,
every technology unlocks a new class of responsibilities and starts a race that will end in tragedy if uncoordinated. We only learned about the right to control personal data when social media companies began controlling them for us. A new set of liabilities arose with terms, conditions, and legalities aflame. Big Tech fought to control their perch in user’s lives and conscientious objectors spoke up against targeting and manipulation. This fight is still underway… but it doesn’t look good for you and I.
The race around social media is remarkable and at the forefront of the battle for human attention and dignity, but everyday, innovations uncover signs of new sets of harm. The proliferation of AI chatbots in all spheres show how accelerated distribution through API’s and social media can skyrocket a tech to ubiquity. Short-form video content reignites the race to feed upon user attention and causes every platform to shift their model in favor of virality, scattered-attention, and the obliteration of context. Whether tragedy or transformation comes of these tools depends on our ability to understand them and coordinate a prudent response…
Personally,
devices make a proposition to us. A trade of talents, an exchange of encumbrances. “Now, you’ll be able to do this, but not that. You’ll no longer have to do this, but you’ll start having to do that.”
This bargain is predicated upon the innate human god complex, the inbuilt desire to perform magic with our minds. There is an age-old ache within all generations of inventors that reaches for the impossible. In an attempt to transcend our heavy hands and broken bodies, we shape the resources of our world to bend around this impulse. But magic comes with a cost. Like the proverbial touch of gold, our innovations can come with a heavy, personal toll.
When Google was invented, we gained the ability to summon any bit of information with a query. Simultaneously, we began to lose the ability to remember and understand the information we so desperately sought. We no longer had to wait to know an answer until we could return to our books and libraries, but we now have to know that answer at once, regardless of context, company, or consequence.
If we examine the technologies we have adopted, what bargains do we find we have made? Have we traded away parts of our humanity, time, or attention? Do we feel the ache of buyer’s remorse about integrating devices that seem to numb the ache increasingly less over time? Would we go back and make a different trade if we knew what it would cost?
