We've spent the decade letting our tech define us. It's out of control
0Reported today on The Guardian Technology
For the full article visit: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/29/decade-technology-privacy-tech-backlash
We've spent the decade letting our tech define us. It's out of control
Douglas Rushkoff
Technology has grown from some devices and platforms we use to an entire environment in which we function
We may come to remember this decade as the one when human beings finally realized we are up against something. We're just not quite sure what it is.
More of us have come to understand that our digital technologies are not always bringing out our best natures. People woke up to the fact that our digital platforms are being coded by people who don't have our best interests at heart. This is the decade when, finally, the "tech backlash" began.
But it's a little late.
Shoshana Zuboff recently published her comprehensive Surveillance Capitalism to deserved acclaim, but the book is really about some decisions that Google was making twenty years ago to harvest our data and sell it to advertisers. The Center for Humane Technology has called attention to the way that the manipulative techniques of behavioral finance have been embedded in our apps – bringing us all up to speed on the science of captology and addiction, circa 1999.
These are necessary critiques, but they're too focused on the good old days, when the business plans of a few bad actors and the designs of some manipulative technologies could be identified as the "cause" of our collective woes.
That's really only half, or less than half, of the story. It's blaming the developers, the CEOs, the shareholders, or even individual apps, programs and platforms for our predicament, when most of these players have either long since left the building, or are themselves oblivious to their impact on our collective wellbeing. Just because the public is finally ready to hear about these tech ind