Amanda Reehuis

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Did it ever happen to you that you had a conversation about a specific product or service, and the next time you opened your smartphone, this exact product or service showed up in an ad? The first few times I just thought this was a coincidence, but the more it happened, the more I got to think about it. Are our conversations really being recorded and listened to? But more questions like this come up when I think of current technologies. Are we constantly being watched?

This example especially made me think about the book 1984, written by George Orwell. Many of you probably read -or at least know the concept of- that book. The book was published in 1949, and in that time George Orwell wrote about an imaginary dystopian scenario of how the year 1984 would be. The book describes the totalitarian superstate named Oceania. This state is ruled by the “Party”, and the leader Big Brother. The main concept of the book is that everyone is constantly being watched due to mass surveillance, and it describes the consequences of this within the society.

Although in 1949 this was clearly an imaginary future perception, due to all the current technologies, it might be closer to reality than you would actually think. Almost everyone has at least a smartphone which is able to record your behaviour. But not only in your house, everywhere on the streets you can find cameras. These cameras are constantly recording, so you are constantly being watched.

And think about the current pandemic. It basically forces you to be even more online, which makes you even more exposed to situations in which technologies capture your behaviour. We work and study online, via Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype etc. People buy their clothes, or even food online, and we hardly pay cash anymore. This even makes it easier to track what people are doing. In addition, a new COVID app arose, which tracks where you are, where you have been, and even who you sat next to in the train. It is designed to notify someone when they have been close to an infected person (“Hoe werkt CoronaMelder?”, 2020).

These are only a few examples among many others to name. Think about the face recognition in China, where even paying is possible by only showing your face (Ng, 2020).

All these new technologies are raising concerns about how this data is used. Are they only served for good purposes? Or is there some sort of underlying purpose for capturing all this data? Just like in the book 1984, that a totalitarian world is created and people’s behaviour is literally engineered.

What do you guys think about this topic? Are you concerned or do you think the capured data is only used for good purposes? Let me know!

Amanda

Hoe werkt CoronaMelder?. Rijksoverheid.nl. (2020). Retrieved 7 October 2020, from https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/coronavirus-app/vraag-en-antwoord/hoe-werkt-de-corona-app.

Ng, A. (2020). China tightens control with facial recognition, public shaming. CNET. Retrieved 7 October 2020, from https://www.cnet.com/news/in-china-facial-recognition-public-shaming-and-control-go-hand-in-hand/.

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As many of you may have noticed, the new Netflix documentary ‘The Social Dilemma’ recently appeared on Netflix. It is a documentary, -or maybe rather a drama film- about all the negative effects that social media have on our lives (Rhodes & Orlowski, 2020).

In the documentary, a series of interviews with the creators of a lot of popular applications – like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Google – are shown. These tech-insiders talk very badly about the platforms, and explain how AI and the algorithms literally control our lives.

To alternate with the interviews, scripted scenes from the life of a certain family are shown. They show that social media have a lot of impact on their lives. The main figure, which is Ben, is literally illustrated as the marionette of three fictional insiders of a network. They control what he sees and what he does. In this way the documentary makes these social media platforms look kind of like the Truman show. Without you knowing it, people watch everything you do, and in the mean time they determine your actions.

The business model of many of these big tech companies is described as keeping the user scrolling, let them coming back, and use advertisements to make money. The ‘like’ bottom of Facebook for instance, was meant to do good, to show people you like their content. However, it turned out not as good as it was supposed to be. It leads to insecure young people because they don’t get enough likes. The featured tech-insiders also explain how the users become victims from fake news, conspiracy theories, depressed youth and manipulated elections trough these platforms. People don’t know what is real and fake anymore. We think that what we see on our feed, is the same for everyone, but this is not the case. The algorithm works differently for different people.

An interesting quote that Tristan Harris (2020) -president and co-founder of the Centre for humane technology at Google- mentioned got me thinking. It was as follows: “If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product”.

It sounds unbelievable, but the more I think about it, the more it makes sense.

Have you guys watch the documentary yet? What do you guys think of it? Is the documentary exaggerated in your opinion? Do we have to be aware of what is happening to us through these platforms? Does social media have us that much under control? Is our society turning into the Truman show?

I am curious about your opinion!

Amanda

Netflix Documentary:

Rhodes, L. (Producer), & Orlowski, J. (Director). (2020). The Social Dilemma [Documentary]. United States: Exposure Labs

“1984”: Fiction or a prediction?

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The Social Dilemma

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