The world embraced the Internet with a great rush, relishing in the prospect of the autonomy it could bring to our lives. Freedom of information, freedom of speech, freedom of connection, freedom of access. This revolutionary technology had the capacity to upend everything, to remove so many societal and physical barriers and fundamentally change the way we communicate, learn, consume, and work.
To an extent, this prophecy has held true. We can work for a company on the other side of the world whilst sitting in the comfort of our lounge room, we can learn about emerging research from the world’s leading scientists, and we can watch significant current events unfold as they happen.
But how free is the world wide web, really? I’d argue not enough, and with the Facebook scandal being thrust into the limelight it seems I’m not the only one.
The attention economy
Corporations have capitalised on the digital world as a new and effective medium for selling, advertising, and broadening their customer base.
As vast volumes of data are accumulated, accurate psychological assessments of an individual’s personality and desires are paving way for advertisements targeted with scary efficiency.
Further, the abundance of information available to Internet users has resulted in a neurological bandwidth crisis, resulting in the emergence of a new limited resource: the human attention span. It’s the competition for this particular resource that is leading to some harrowing situations.
Persuasive design
A whole new field of study combining technology and psychology has emerged with the purpose of finding out the best ways to keep our attention.
The effectiveness of persuasive design relies on taking advantage of our innately human characteristics and using them against us.
Techniques to trigger dopamine responses make us addicted to these devices and platforms, and act no different from a slot machine.
The pursuit of industry profit exploits our need for social acceptance, success, and improvement, by gamifying our online experiences and rewiring our behaviour and habits.
In this world, we are the product.
Towards freedom
All of this is done under the illusion of freedom. It seems like our desire to spend more time on sites such as Facebook is simply the product of our own conscious choices. But in reality, our brains are being hacked by invisible algorithms behind our screens.
Technology is not free when its use is compulsive. It is not free when corporations are having to resort to this morally questionable method of marketing in order to maintain market share, and it’s certainly not free when we leave especially susceptible children open to clever manipulation.
Freedom is a value I hold close and dear.
The time has certainly come to rethink the way we structure our technology, and the role we want it to play in our lives.
In doing this, we can begin to redesign the digital world according to humanities best and most wonderful attributes, instead of perpetuating our worst.
Header photo by Warren Wong on Unsplash
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