It is now generally acknowledged that social media is very deliberately designed to catch eyeballs and keep them glued to computer screens as long as possible.
The impact this has on people, and younger people in particular, has been, and is, of little or no concern to the people that own and control social media platforms.
The virtual crowd platforms provided create similar dynamics to those that characterize crowds in public spaces, where muscling and bullying are common phenomena.
Now there is a new player on the block: AI. Controlled largely by the same people that host the social media platforms, and far more subtle and intrusive that their older cousins:
Sensing the trends in your thinking and behavior and gently encouraging them in order to be a valued part of your life. Desired outcome? Control of people. Nothing new there.
Another development is the increasingly intrusive trend of anyone providing any kind of service on the internet: The placement of cookies on your computer in order to extract personal information as we spend more and more time in front of our screens.
So we are constantly being pushed towards "Eloi" status:
"The Eloi are a frail, intellectually diminished, and peaceful human species in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, living in the year 802,701 A.D. as the result of human evolution. They reside on the surface in a state of perpetual leisure, but are secretly hunted and eaten by the subterranean Morlocks".
We are getting increasingly hooked on the screen dependent lifestyle, just like previous generations got hooked on refined sugar, creating a disease epidemic of diabetes and heart disease.
No comments:
Post a Comment