“How do you wake up from the matrix when you don’t know you are in the matrix?” Tristan Harris (Center for Humane Technology)
I seem to be unusual when it comes to my electronic joy. Friends try to contact me via my cell phone (phone, text, email, etc.) and more often or not cannot get me directly. That’s because I don’t live with my phone always around me and I don’t continuously check it. For me it’s a tool not my master. Using the internet for me is the same – it a mode of communication not a definition of who I am. It always amazes me how many people want to get into arguments about a simple and straightforward meme I might post on Facebook. It’s like trying to justify a metaphor to its extreme. Simple statements that express something personal but do not convey the full realm of the desired expression. But, like a metaphor, people can see something that isn’t there or wasn’t meant once you extrapolate the idea out, and they want to tell me I’m wrong. Yet, they accept memes they believe in without question.
In earlier posts (The Dumbing Down of Humanity – Controlling the Information 1-2 {May 2018}), I explain how one of our greatest tools and also one of our greatest problems is the internet. Recently I re-watched the documentary, The Social Dilemma. The internet is now a system that biases towards false information deliberately using a ‘Disinformation for Profit’ business model. The potential for weaponizing social media has never been greater. Sociology researchers have told us for years about how the big social media companies manipulate users with algorithms that encourage addiction to their unregulated platforms. These platforms run on a business model that harvests personal data to target users with advertisements. Up to now, this whole system has largely gone unregulated. The designers didn’t set out to make a problem, the system works as designed, but it is the business model that controls the system that has created the monster that will take us to the proverbial abyss.
As an academic I frequently did blind peer reviews on submitted articles for scientific journals in my speciality areas. As a reviewer my task was to assess whether the author(s) had done a thorough job of explaining their protocols of research, their logic in elucidating the findings, and the discussion of how their findings fit within the paradigms of the known science. Of course, if an author was reporting new and unique findings that fell outside the known data system, they had to thoroughly discuss the research and logic that showed the uniqueness to be valid. On one occasion I reviewed a biochemically based article that made a specific finding and definitive conclusion that was totally new. The problem wasn’t the author’s conclusions, but that the paper that was riddled with an extremely flawed research protocol, little prior evidence to back up the rationale being use to argue a new model – except for the author’s assertions in previous unchecked theoretical editorials about the topic – and research findings that were based on personal conviction instead of interpretations using hard biochemical data. I rejected the paper, but included a whole list of things that could be done to make it a valid research paper, that if followed, would more than likely validate the authors assertions – if the valid data could be determined. Needless to say, the author never followed through with this research. What I’m getting at, is that everything can be checked, and should be to ascertain its potential validity – and that requires real evidence and not just opinion. It requires work and a willingness to explore your own beliefs (something I go on a lot about in this blog). It requires discernment and a willingness to suspend instant judgment because it differs from what you think about reality.
I love new ideas and read them all the time, but I do not simply accept them just because I like them. It all comes down to responsibility. The ‘Attention Extraction Model’ is a major issue of the corporate controlled internet that works to push your emotional buttons. A healthy society means we take back our right to think for ourselves and our willingness to actually do so. We need to demand not to be treated as an extractable resources. Your consciousness is the most valuable and personal aspect of who you are. Do a deep dive to check anything (and everything) you read to verify its validity to you. Not to confirm your beliefs, but to confirm, no matter how much it may go against your beliefs that it may be valid and worthy of you taking a deeper look.
Protecting ourselves against A.I. is a big theme for modern living. One way is to be fully aware of what you are reading online. Avoid the social media recommendations that always pop up. Always choose for yourself what you watch, and read and know why you are selecting a specific choice. Your clicks create the pathways for the A.I. algorithms’ – be careful what you click on and look at sites you would not normally look at to confuse the algorithm. Be discerning on what you read (even if you agree with it) and check the sources. Is there a money trail? Telling me a website is valid simply because you like it doesn’t impress me. Likewise, telling me you like a website because it is ‘official’ also raises a red flag in my mind. Be discerning, does the site have an agenda to persuade you to a specific viewpoint? This past year with the lockdowns and extreme censorship has been really problematic in this regard.
If we do not make ourselves understand the problems of the Internet, we risk creating a monster that destroys the very fabric of our society. The internet has gone from a tool to help us communicate, find information, and facilitate interaction, to a master of how and what we think. We need more social critics (see earlier post Social Media Promotes Polarization of Beliefs – parts 1-3 –Social Media {August 2019}) because your data is being mined for Nefarious Purposes, and too many people in positions of power, authority, and the corporate world have agenda’s that do not include your well-being. Free yourself to use the internet and not be used by it! If you worry about your number of likes, thumbs up, or getting only positive responses, then you are trapped within the system. Freedom comes when you think freely, and can let yourself think freely without worrying about what others think. It’s not only OK to disagree, but desirable. Your individual expression is important, especially when it is based on real rationale. Many of the founding fathers in the newly formed U.S.A. disliked each other intensely but were willing to talk out their differences for the benefit of the whole.
An internet that merely confirms your beliefs is a controller that polarizes and separates. An internet that you use to search out all perspectives is a tool that brings understanding, tolerance, and a willingness to find common ground. Use the internet to express your free-will and not the views of an algorithm.
I repeat here a comment I posted earlier: Social Critic and film-maker Sut Jhally says, “Can we envision a society which values not ‘collectivity’ with its dreary implications of conformity but what I can only think to call conviviality, which could, potentially, be built right into the social infrastructure with opportunities, at all levels for rewarding, democratic participation? Can we envision a society that does not dismiss individualism, but truly values individual creative expression including dissidence, debate, nonconformity, artistic experimentation, and in the larger sense, adventure. The project remains what it has always been: to replace the consumer culture with a genuinely human culture.”
To Be Continued …………………
0 Comments