Threats and questions of the Zuckerberg era
By: Roberto Savio: This year the World Web reaches its thirty years. For the first time since 1435, a citizen of Brazil was able to exchange their views and information with another in Finland. Internet, the communications infrastructure for the Web is a bit older.
It was developed from ARPANET, a project of the United States Department of Defense hosted by the Agency for Advanced Research Projects. Designed by the military to decentralize communications in the event of a military attack, the network allowed scientists to communicate via email at universities.
Then, in 1989, at the headquarters of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland, Tim Berners-Lee invented the hyperlink and the World Web (the Web) quickly moved from automating the exchange of scientific information between universities and institutions Research to the first websites available to the general public.
In 2002, the first social networks appear as specialized websites: LinkedIn is launched in 2003, then Facebook in 2004, Twitter in 2006, Instagram in 2010, among others.
My generation received the arrival of the Web as a great opportunity for democracy. We come from the Gutenberg Era, an era that in 1435 changed the world. From the manuscripts written by the monks to be read by a few people in the monasteries, the invention of reusable mobile types meant that in just 20 years about eight million copies of printed books circulated throughout Europe.
Among many other things, this advance also meant the creation of information. Those who until then barely had a limited horizon beyond their immediate environment, could suddenly access information about their country and, even, all over the world. The first newspaper was printed in 1605 in Strasbourg. From that moment until 1989 the world was filled with information.
The information had serious limitations. It was a vertical structure. Only a few people sent news to a large number of recipients without the possibility of feedback.
It was not a participatory process, required large initial investments and was easily used by economic and political powers. While in the Third World the media system was part of the State, in 1976 88% of global news flows emanated from only three countries: the United States, the United Kingdom and France.
International news agencies based in these three countries included Associated Press (AP), United Press International (UPI), Reuters and Agence France Press (AFP) and the world's media depended on their news services.
Some alternative news agencies, such as Inter Press Services, could make a dent in that monopoly. But what these western media published, in general, was like a biased window to the world.
Then came the Internet, and with it, horizontal communication. Each receiver was also a sender. For the first time since 1435, the media was no longer the only window to the world. Like-minded people could participate in social, cultural and economic exchanges.
This change was evident at the United Nations World Women's Conference in Beijing in 1995. Women created networks and arrived at the conference with a common action plan. Governments were not so prepared, but the contribution of women's movements allowed the Beijing Declaration to be a turning point, completely different from the soft statements of the previous four World Conferences.
Another good example was the campaign to eliminate antipersonnel landmines, initiated by Canadian activist Jody Williams in 1992 and, in a very short time, became a large coalition of non-governmental organizations from more than 100 countries. Under increasing pressure, Norway decided to present the issue to the UN, where the US The US, China and other landmine manufacturers such as the USSR tried to block the debate, stating that they would vote against it.
But the activists did not care and, in 1997, 128 countries adopted the Mine Ban Treaty with the vote against the United States, China and the USSR. A vast global movement was more powerful than the traditional role of the Security Council. The Internet had become the tool to create global coalitions.
Those are just two examples of how far the Internet could change the traditional system of state sovereignty of Westphalia, as defined at the Westphalia Conference in 1648. The Internet crossed national borders to enter a new era. Let's say, symbolically, that it brought us from the Gutenberg era to the Zuckerberg era, to mention the inventor of Facebook and one of the main instances of those who went wrong in this medium.
Internet came to us with unprecedented strength. The radio took 38 years to reach 50 million people; the television took 13 and the Web, only four. It had one billion users in 2005, two billion in 2011, and now has three billion five hundred million users, three billion of whom use social networks.
Thus, the two traditional pillars of power, the political system and the economic system, also had to learn to use the Internet. The United States is a good example. All US media (national and regional publications) print a total of 50 million copies daily. Quality newspapers - large conservative newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, and progressives, such as the Washington Post or the New York Times - together add up to ten million copies a day. Trump has 73 million followers on Twitter: followers read Trump's tweets, but they don't buy newspapers.
The Web has had two unforeseen developments. One was the dramatic strengthening of the consumer society. Today, advertising budgets are ten times higher than educational budgets and education only lasts a few years compared to a lifetime exposed to advertising. With the development of social networks, people - now more consumers than citizens - have become the objective of the commercialization of goods and services, and, recently, also of political campaigns.
All information and communications systems extract our personal data and sell us as consumers. Now the TV can see us while we watch it. Smartphones have become microphones that listen to our conversations.
The notion of privacy disappeared. If we could access our data, we would discover that they follow us every minute of the day, even in our bedrooms. Secret algorithms create profiles of each and every one of us. Based on these profiles, the platforms give us the news, the products and the people that these algorithms believe we will like, thus isolating ourselves in our own bubbles.
Artificial intelligence learns from the data it accumulates. China, with 1350 million people, will provide its researchers with more data than Europe and the United States together. The Internet has given rise to a digital extractive economy, where the raw material is no longer the minerals, but we, the human beings.
The other spoiled evolution is the unprecedented wealth created by the digital extractive economy.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently divorced his wife. As part of the agreement she received 36 billion dollars, but Bezos is still among the 10 richest people in the world. This is just a story of the increasingly sad reality of social injustice, where 80 of the richest people in the world have the same wealth as almost three billion poor people.
A new sector is evolving, the surveillance capitalism sector, where money is not obtained from the production of goods and services, but from the data extracted from people.
This new system exploits human beings to provide the owners of this technology with a concentration of wealth, knowledge and power unprecedented in history.
The ability to develop facial recognition and other surveillance instruments is no longer in the field of science fiction. The Chinese government has given each citizen a digital number, where all their good and bad behaviors converge.
If a citizen descends below a certain level, their children will not be allowed to go to a good school, and the citizen himself, even if he can still travel by train, will not have access to airplanes.
These technologies will soon be in use across the planet. The city of London now has 627,000 surveillance cameras, one for every fourteen citizens; in Beijing there is one for every seven. A study by The Rand Corporation estimates that Europe could reach one chamber for every seven citizens in 2050.
The interrelation between democracy and the Internet is now creating a late consciousness in the political system. The European Parliament has just published a study on the negative impact of the Internet. These impacts are:
Internet came to us with unprecedented strength. The radio took 38 years to reach 50 million people; the television took 13 and the Web, only four. It had one billion users in 2005, two billion in 2011, and now has three billion five hundred million users, three billion of whom use social networks.
Thus, the two traditional pillars of power, the political system and the economic system, also had to learn to use the Internet. The United States is a good example. All US media (national and regional publications) print a total of 50 million copies daily. Quality newspapers - large conservative newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, and progressives, such as the Washington Post or the New York Times - together add up to ten million copies a day. Trump has 73 million followers on Twitter: followers read Trump's tweets, but they don't buy newspapers.
The Web has had two unforeseen developments. One was the dramatic strengthening of the consumer society. Today, advertising budgets are ten times higher than educational budgets and education only lasts a few years compared to a lifetime exposed to advertising. With the development of social networks, people - now more consumers than citizens - have become the objective of the commercialization of goods and services, and, recently, also of political campaigns.
All information and communications systems extract our personal data and sell us as consumers. Now the TV can see us while we watch it. Smartphones have become microphones that listen to our conversations.
The notion of privacy disappeared. If we could access our data, we would discover that they follow us every minute of the day, even in our bedrooms. Secret algorithms create profiles of each and every one of us. Based on these profiles, the platforms give us the news, the products and the people that these algorithms believe we will like, thus isolating ourselves in our own bubbles.
Artificial intelligence learns from the data it accumulates. China, with 1350 million people, will provide its researchers with more data than Europe and the United States together. The Internet has given rise to a digital extractive economy, where the raw material is no longer the minerals, but we, the human beings.
The other spoiled evolution is the unprecedented wealth created by the digital extractive economy.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently divorced his wife. As part of the agreement she received 36 billion dollars, but Bezos is still among the 10 richest people in the world. This is just a story of the increasingly sad reality of social injustice, where 80 of the richest people in the world have the same wealth as almost three billion poor people.
A new sector is evolving, the surveillance capitalism sector, where money is not obtained from the production of goods and services, but from the data extracted from people.
This new system exploits human beings to provide the owners of this technology with a concentration of wealth, knowledge and power unprecedented in history.
The ability to develop facial recognition and other surveillance instruments is no longer in the field of science fiction. The Chinese government has given each citizen a digital number, where all their good and bad behaviors converge.
If a citizen descends below a certain level, their children will not be allowed to go to a good school, and the citizen himself, even if he can still travel by train, will not have access to airplanes.
These technologies will soon be in use across the planet. The city of London now has 627,000 surveillance cameras, one for every fourteen citizens; in Beijing there is one for every seven. A study by The Rand Corporation estimates that Europe could reach one chamber for every seven citizens in 2050.
The interrelation between democracy and the Internet is now creating a late consciousness in the political system. The European Parliament has just published a study on the negative impact of the Internet. These impacts are:
Internet addiction
There is unanimity among doctors and sociologists about the arrival of a new generation, a generation very different from the previous one. More than 90% of people between 15 and 24 use the Internet, against 11% of those over 55. Young people spend 21 hours a week on the PC and 18 hours on a smartphone.
This leaves little time for social and cultural interaction. 4.4% of European adolescents now show signs of a pathological use of the Internet that affects their lives and health.
The American Academy of Psychology has officially included Internet addiction as a new ailment. MRI studies of people with Internet Addiction Disorder (ICD) show the same changes in brain structure as those who suffer from drug or alcohol addiction.
Damage to cognitive development
There is a special alarm about children under two years. Using the screen for more than 20 minutes a day reduces part of your neuronal development. People pushed into isolation tend to develop symptoms of anguish, anger, loss of control, social withdrawal, family conflicts and an inability to act in real life. In the tests performed, Internet users were faster than non-users in the search for data, but less able to retain them.
Information overload
The condition of having too much information hinders the ability to understand a problem or make effective decisions, an important issue for managers, consumers and users of social networks.
According to Microsoft, the attention time in a title has gone from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2016 and attention in reading, from 12 to 8 minutes. Two new terms can be used: first it would be "emerging brain" that describes a lower brain capacity to adapt to the slower pace of real life, and, secondly, "neuroplasticity" or the ability to modify behavior after a new experience.
Frequent immersion in virtual worlds can reduce neuroplasticity and also make adaptation to the slower pace of real life more difficult. The need to compete in speed between social media channels is well known. For example, Amazon estimates that a second performance delay would cost 1.16 billion losses per year in sales.
Harmful effects on knowledge and belief
The fact that social networks deliberately tend to bring together users with similar views, tastes and habits, is fragmenting society in a negative way for democracy, resulting in closed systems that do not allow alternative views.
Teenagers no longer discuss important issues. They go to their virtual world and, if they meet someone from another group, they tend to insult each other. The Internet is full of false news and misleading information and users face great difficulties in distinguishing accurate information from inaccurate information.
The resonance chambers seem to be much more pervasive and can unite people with more extreme and partisan political and ideological positions, undermining the possibilities for civil discourse and tolerance, supporting radicalization.
Damage public / private borders
Internet blurs the distinction between private and public. Private life becomes public. This is especially negative for teenagers who lose the concept of privacy, for example, when sending private photos via the Internet.
An important observation is that teenagers now get their sexual education through pornography, where women are usually an object to satisfy men's sexual fantasies.
This in turn creates a lack of respect for women and a new generation at risk, for new reasons, of returning to a patriarchal society. The adolescent group rapes are clearly the result of this trend.
Damaging social relationships
The Internet is clearly a powerful instrument to create new communities. However, when used negatively, it can also harm communities by migrating to the Internet many human activities such as shopping, commerce, socialization, leisure, professional activities and personal interaction. That migration creates impoverished communication, uncivility and lack of trust and commitment.
Damaging democracy
The Internet has been a powerful tool for participation and, therefore, for democracy. However, the study notes with concern that an increasing number of activities are also detrimental to democracy.
This leaves little time for social and cultural interaction. 4.4% of European adolescents now show signs of a pathological use of the Internet that affects their lives and health.
The American Academy of Psychology has officially included Internet addiction as a new ailment. MRI studies of people with Internet Addiction Disorder (ICD) show the same changes in brain structure as those who suffer from drug or alcohol addiction.
Damage to cognitive development
There is a special alarm about children under two years. Using the screen for more than 20 minutes a day reduces part of your neuronal development. People pushed into isolation tend to develop symptoms of anguish, anger, loss of control, social withdrawal, family conflicts and an inability to act in real life. In the tests performed, Internet users were faster than non-users in the search for data, but less able to retain them.
Information overload
The condition of having too much information hinders the ability to understand a problem or make effective decisions, an important issue for managers, consumers and users of social networks.
According to Microsoft, the attention time in a title has gone from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2016 and attention in reading, from 12 to 8 minutes. Two new terms can be used: first it would be "emerging brain" that describes a lower brain capacity to adapt to the slower pace of real life, and, secondly, "neuroplasticity" or the ability to modify behavior after a new experience.
Frequent immersion in virtual worlds can reduce neuroplasticity and also make adaptation to the slower pace of real life more difficult. The need to compete in speed between social media channels is well known. For example, Amazon estimates that a second performance delay would cost 1.16 billion losses per year in sales.
Harmful effects on knowledge and belief
The fact that social networks deliberately tend to bring together users with similar views, tastes and habits, is fragmenting society in a negative way for democracy, resulting in closed systems that do not allow alternative views.
Teenagers no longer discuss important issues. They go to their virtual world and, if they meet someone from another group, they tend to insult each other. The Internet is full of false news and misleading information and users face great difficulties in distinguishing accurate information from inaccurate information.
The resonance chambers seem to be much more pervasive and can unite people with more extreme and partisan political and ideological positions, undermining the possibilities for civil discourse and tolerance, supporting radicalization.
Damage public / private borders
Internet blurs the distinction between private and public. Private life becomes public. This is especially negative for teenagers who lose the concept of privacy, for example, when sending private photos via the Internet.
An important observation is that teenagers now get their sexual education through pornography, where women are usually an object to satisfy men's sexual fantasies.
This in turn creates a lack of respect for women and a new generation at risk, for new reasons, of returning to a patriarchal society. The adolescent group rapes are clearly the result of this trend.
Damaging social relationships
The Internet is clearly a powerful instrument to create new communities. However, when used negatively, it can also harm communities by migrating to the Internet many human activities such as shopping, commerce, socialization, leisure, professional activities and personal interaction. That migration creates impoverished communication, uncivility and lack of trust and commitment.
Damaging democracy
The Internet has been a powerful tool for participation and, therefore, for democracy. However, the study notes with concern that an increasing number of activities are also detrimental to democracy.
These include: a) the uncivility of many online political speeches, b) political and ideological polarization, made possible in a unique way by the use of the Internet; c) misinformation and, in particular, false news, d) voter manipulation through the elaboration of profiles based on the information collected on social networks.
We all know what happened in the US elections with Cambridge Analytica data, collected by Facebook, and how the thousands of fake web users and bots now strongly interfere with the elections.
We should add other considerations to this study. The first is that finances are now also executed through algorithms. The algorithms not only decide when to sell or buy shares, but also decide where to invest.
The Publicly Listed Funds (ETF) last month reached 14.4 billion dollars in exchanges, more than those negotiated by human beings.
This trend will continue with the development of artificial intelligence and soon the finances will become even more dehumanized. Even when Internet users invest for themselves, they will also be under the direction of machines and algorithms.
A second consideration is that young people read less and less. Reading a book is very different from scrolling through a screen. We are experiencing a progressive reduction in culture levels.
It is not uncommon to have university students who make grammar and spelling mistakes. Remember that when the Internet was still new, its defenders told us: the important thing is not to have the knowledge but to know how to find it.
We rely more and more on search engines, learn less and less and are unable to connect that data in a logical and holistic personal system.
The need for regulation to reduce the negative aspects of the Internet and reinforce positive values is evident. The owners of social media platforms are now under increasing scrutiny, so they have taken the path of self-regulation.
Twitter, for example, has decided that it cannot be used for political purposes. Zuckerberg is an exponent of market myths when he tells us that good news will automatically prevail over false ones.
With the exception that the platforms help users to read and find only what they like, in order to keep our attention, giving us what is surprising, unusual and provocative. This is not a free market.
The Zuckerberg era is clearly creating a very different generation from the generations of the Gutenberg era. This raises many questions, from privacy to freedom of expression (now in private hands), including who will regulate, what will regulate and how. A five year old is now very different from a five year old from Gutenberg's time.
We are in a transition period. The meaning of democracy is changing. International relations move away from the search for common values through multilateralism and fall into a tide of nationalist, xenophobic and selfish views of the world. Terms such as peace, cooperation, responsibility, participation and transparency become obsolete.
It is clear that the current system has ceased to be sustainable. Policies disappear from the debate, now referred to only as "politics." Vision and paradigms are increasingly scarce.
Despite the imminent threat of climate change, last year toxic emissions from the five largest countries increased by 5%. Young people are largely absent from political institutions, as evidenced by the vote on Brexit, where only 23% of the group aged 18 to 25 participated. Right now we have large demonstrations in thirteen countries around the world.
In these streets, young people participate and often do so by showing anger, frustration and violence. If we cannot return horizontal communication to the Internet and do not free it from the commercial breakdown of young people, the future is hardly promising. However, as the marches against climate change clearly demonstrate, if young people want to change the world, values and vision will return.
It is clear that the Internet can be a very powerful tool. But who will repair the mistakes? Will the Internet become a participation tool? How will it be done? These are questions that political institutions, if they really care about democracy, should address as soon as possible. The Zuckerberg era must make this decision now, in a few years it will be too late ...
We all know what happened in the US elections with Cambridge Analytica data, collected by Facebook, and how the thousands of fake web users and bots now strongly interfere with the elections.
We should add other considerations to this study. The first is that finances are now also executed through algorithms. The algorithms not only decide when to sell or buy shares, but also decide where to invest.
The Publicly Listed Funds (ETF) last month reached 14.4 billion dollars in exchanges, more than those negotiated by human beings.
This trend will continue with the development of artificial intelligence and soon the finances will become even more dehumanized. Even when Internet users invest for themselves, they will also be under the direction of machines and algorithms.
A second consideration is that young people read less and less. Reading a book is very different from scrolling through a screen. We are experiencing a progressive reduction in culture levels.
It is not uncommon to have university students who make grammar and spelling mistakes. Remember that when the Internet was still new, its defenders told us: the important thing is not to have the knowledge but to know how to find it.
We rely more and more on search engines, learn less and less and are unable to connect that data in a logical and holistic personal system.
The need for regulation to reduce the negative aspects of the Internet and reinforce positive values is evident. The owners of social media platforms are now under increasing scrutiny, so they have taken the path of self-regulation.
Twitter, for example, has decided that it cannot be used for political purposes. Zuckerberg is an exponent of market myths when he tells us that good news will automatically prevail over false ones.
With the exception that the platforms help users to read and find only what they like, in order to keep our attention, giving us what is surprising, unusual and provocative. This is not a free market.
The Zuckerberg era is clearly creating a very different generation from the generations of the Gutenberg era. This raises many questions, from privacy to freedom of expression (now in private hands), including who will regulate, what will regulate and how. A five year old is now very different from a five year old from Gutenberg's time.
We are in a transition period. The meaning of democracy is changing. International relations move away from the search for common values through multilateralism and fall into a tide of nationalist, xenophobic and selfish views of the world. Terms such as peace, cooperation, responsibility, participation and transparency become obsolete.
It is clear that the current system has ceased to be sustainable. Policies disappear from the debate, now referred to only as "politics." Vision and paradigms are increasingly scarce.
Despite the imminent threat of climate change, last year toxic emissions from the five largest countries increased by 5%. Young people are largely absent from political institutions, as evidenced by the vote on Brexit, where only 23% of the group aged 18 to 25 participated. Right now we have large demonstrations in thirteen countries around the world.
In these streets, young people participate and often do so by showing anger, frustration and violence. If we cannot return horizontal communication to the Internet and do not free it from the commercial breakdown of young people, the future is hardly promising. However, as the marches against climate change clearly demonstrate, if young people want to change the world, values and vision will return.
It is clear that the Internet can be a very powerful tool. But who will repair the mistakes? Will the Internet become a participation tool? How will it be done? These are questions that political institutions, if they really care about democracy, should address as soon as possible. The Zuckerberg era must make this decision now, in a few years it will be too late ...
No comments:
Post a Comment