Evolving with Technology.
Evolving with Technology.
From Gutenberg Press to Meta. A basic understanding of our regular mode of communication and how to deal with it..
Ah! Tech. The last frontier of man.
What a time to live in, don’t you think?
From self-cleaning robots, self-driving cars, to wireless earphones and AI-induced phone cameras. Humans truly have come a long way. This year, an AI-generated painting has won an art award. This is a clear indication of what is to come in the future.
We might not notice it in our day to day lives, but we have already started to live with technology. Let’s just say technology has become an integral part of the human experience. It is like an external body part. Along with tech we have reached a new low and a new high into our experiential dimension.
Let’s start with tech is good for a moment.
It is undoubtedly clear to us that technology has advanced the human race. Can we try to recall any other time in history, where we would find the answer to,
452x22/3=3314.666
in seconds! Yes, I used a calculator that was on my mobile device to get that answer. Mobile (something that is able to move from one place to another). First we had telephones, people used to make calls by dialing numbers in circles. Now, we ask Siri to call our Dad for us.
Technology is everywhere, from out banking systems to our cars, from our kitchen table to our study desks. We cannot miss it. Tech has brought the basic human need, to stay connected, to be in a commune, at the forefront of our civilisation. I remember when I was young and new to this android phenomena. It felt as if we had transported our physical selves and turned into a digital self. We were connected to a database which connected me to some teenager in Indonesia or China. WeChat was an early app that featured a function, to write a message and put it in a digital bottle, that bottle would then be thrown into the sea of internet. It kept floating until someone in some random country picked it up on their end, read the message and replied. All this, because we shared the basic human emotion, curiosity. Curiosity about the other. Teens from Mumbai were getting connected with teens in Sao Paulo. Youtube was a fun platform to watch vlogs of gamers and to spend free time with friends watching funny video compilations. I remember my first computer, the big-ass desktop, the rectangular CPU, wired mouse and keyboard. I hardly remember myself, sitting alone in front of that computer. It was always in the company of friends. Instagram was a cute app to share pictures. Tiktok and Snapchat seemed like a fun little experiment providing online private spaces for individuals. All this was happening on our side, the consumer. But what were the creators, the techies working on?
Facebook and Google were increasing their market share, new companies and apps were growing and Android/ PlayStore gave the necessary freedom for everyone to compete. No one really seemed to be in this race to create monopolies. Everyone rather raced for perfection, to fix bugs, to create better-functioning apps. Wikipedia was a great online resource which turned itself into an online library that could be updated by common netizens. It was late 2010’s and Julian Assange was now making headlines with Wikileaks. Something fundamental about this new technology was changing and common netizens had no clue what that was.
So what was really happening behind the curtains?
The thing is, we the consumers are always standing on the tip of this tech-iceberg. The field looks so wide and open from up there that we forget to look what we stand upon. We stand upon the piles of rubbish and deceit which makes our online experience, a pleasant one.
Tech was supposed to bring about a truly global civilisation. The Global citizen who shared a common-grief and a common-laughter. This was the motive of tech and internet in general. And yet, there remains a wide array of population that lives in despair, which experiences that same tragic life as before.
So what happened here? Did something go wrong?
Okay! All this sounds like a nighmareish situation, and to a proportion, it actually is. But not entirely.
So let’s start at the start.
What is Technology/Internet?
A platform where people can come together and share a space to work, to chat, to spend time, to share and receive information. The first form of mass-information sharing was not technology. Actually, it was a mechanical machine called the Gutenberg Press. The first mass-produced and till-date the Global bestseller book to be printed is and was the ‘The Holy Bible’. Gutenberg Press paved the way for a religion to spread all over Europe. Before Gutenberg Press, however, there existed only the oral word; the oracles, the Vedas, these were the messages from the Gods, passed down orally, through centuries. Yes, some people did write on papyrus leaves, but none of that was mass-produced, in terms of today. Why I bring this up is because, this was the first instance of mass transfer of information in human history. Let us refrain from calling this knowledge for a moment.
What came next, was the radio. This made one man speak to a million people in real-time; and thus Hitler was born out of this excessive spreading of information. We all now know how information was circulated through Nazi-Germany with the help of radios. Then came TV sets. This was the first time ever that common people were able to control the information that they consumed. Although limited, they could the channels if they wanted to. Now, capitalism had to find a way through this, and hence came sponsors and advertisements to create revenue streams. During all this, a new form of communication was taking shope. Internet was designed by the U.S. Military as a safety measure during the cold war era. Computers were enclosed in huge rooms, there were no mouses and keyboards, only wire, buttons and flashy lights.
As the modes of communication were developing, science was making great leaps into the nature of human mind. Psychology was the top-dog amongst sciences and was a preferred subject amongst the nerds creating these technologies. Afterall, they were creating a device that was unlike what God had created. This was better than us humans in all aspects. So, the human mind was an ideal topic of study.
Ivan Pavlov and B.F. Skinner were making considerable leaps in behaviorism. Ivan, a Russian psychologist, had taught a dog to salivate at the sound of a buzzer, which was previously associated with the sight of food. Skinner and his famous Skinner box experiments with pigeons created a leap in behavior studies, wherein, human behavior could be viewed as a response to environmental stimuli. These responses would later turn into the most direct means of elucidating human nature.
Why is everything turned dark all of a sudden? And anyway, how is this relevant to any of us today?
Well, this is the part where we say, tech is bad for our mental-health.
According to the technologist, philosopher, and as credible as it gets, one of the forefathers of Virtual Reality, Jaron Lanier predicts that this very flaw in the human psychology was used by the geniuses in the Silicon Valley to make profits. The algorithms at Facebook, Google were tailored in such a way, that they would make more income by using this flaw. They completely overrun this possibility of a disbalance in the general population due to these algorithms that were tailored for behavior modification. Hence, more hateful content was promoted and as recent studies suggest, companies like Facebook were the prime epicentres through which targeted attacks were constituted on populations like Myanmar and United Kingdom. In turn, compromising internal politics and changing the outcomes of elections.
WOW! All this is grim and scary.
Information that is based on poor statistics and where someone’s opinion can be considered as a fact, this can be the major talking point between people in any given country now. People, throughout the world, are watching someone else in order to form their understanding. A baseless fantastical world that has no core to it.
All this was also shot up as covid hopelessly turned even the not-so-informed person into a full blown techie (not in reality of course). The number of people making stupid shit for entertainment has exploded in the past couple years. Cultures are being disrupted with the introduction of Whatsapp and Facebook. The one who holds the data, Meta and Alphabet become the new Gods of this Digital Age.
Wait.. Don’t you think we can use this knowledge to turn things around?
Afterall tech in not all bad, it is how we use it right? Right??
Absolutely!!
Although we can be sure of that the governments and politicians are not going to help us with this.. we can always make sure that we do not fall prey to their agenda. Politicians are people after all and if my behavior can be modified, then theirs too. This is why we have leaders who have turned into narcissists, believing that everyone likes them because they have millions of followers on social media. This is why young girls think that Instagram and TikTok likes are making them instant celebrities, when it is actually corroding the morality of the former as well as the later.
But tech can be a cause of good. The only thing we need to make sure, is that we should not get lost into a war that is being fought on the battlefields of our mind. We will have to peacefully resist this war by staying low, so to say, for this moment in history.
Humans are ingenious, we will make better technologies and create better ways to stay connected. Ones that do not use our data as their fuel.
Better spaces are already coming up on the internet, which provide an alternative to the Google, Facebook umbrella. Things like Substack- the place where I write this article, Mastodon- an alternative to Twitter, DuckDuckGo, Tor, are bringing privacy to our doorstep.
Technology has proved that we are a Global Human Race. We cannot be contained in nationalities and labels. To evolve as life forms, we have to hold hands with all the good that technology offers and leave behind the bad. We are a race of transcendental humans fighting for a new kind of coexistence, one with tech and mother nature.
So, to conclude.. to have a free mind; not giving into any cycles, feedback loops, understanding the ever-evolving technology rather than getting absorbed in it, to find peace and solitude in one’s heart and mind, and to have breaks from this tremendously interconnected web of internet, this, in such times, is the act of absolute freedom..
Ptah out.