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< | We post in our virtual canvas, thinking that we purposely and consciously decide the content of those posts, but our mental capacity does not drive those actions. The parasite induces them. The parasite give us tools to share, to edit pictures, and to post, but the underlying reality is that we post the only thing we own: our time. | >
> | In the dystopian world of the TV show "Black Mirror," the episode "Nosedive" describes a world where social media ratings determine one’s socioeconomic status and access to essential services. Using a mobile application, everyone constantly rates others on a five-point scale. Those with higher scores can access to better services and exclusive clubs, while those with low scores are penalized in many ways. While this may seem like a far-fetched fiction, the reality of today may be not too distant from this portrayal. | | | | |
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< | Nonetheless, our time is relative. We are drained of freedom of decision every time we click, swipe, and accept terms and conditions from the “free” services we use on the internet. I want to emphasize the quotations marks that I placed besides free. The latter, as we tend to think that we decide over what we post and with whom we share and interact. The reality is different. We lie to ourselves when we say that we control our virtual personalities. | >
> | The first example that comes to mind is China’s Social Credit System (SCS), developed between 2014 and 2020. The SCS uses artificial intelligence "to develop comprehensive data-driven structures for management around algorithms that can produce real time reward-punishment structures for social-legal-economic and other behaviors" (Larry Cata Backer, Next generation law: data-driven governance and accountability-based regulatory systems in the west, and social credit regimes in China, 2018). The SCS in reality does not actually rely on a universal score but rather on a series of blacklists and redlists managed at different levels (municipal, local, or national). Each authority can manage its own blacklist (e.g., on those who failed to pay fines or child support) and they all converge into the National Credit Information Sharing Platform. As mentioned by Kevin Werbach in his 2022 article “Orwell that ends well? Social credit as regulation for the algorithmic age”, this makes possible that "grade A taxpayers receive customs fee waivers and low-interest loans, in addition to the "home" benefits offered by the tax collection authority". Prof. Werbach however believes that western's depiction of the SCS is is exaggeratedly negative, especially in a world where governments and corporations are extensively tracking our behavior. He sees the Nosedive scenario as more resembling to the ratings system on Uber or eBay, expanded beyond the boundaries of one service. | | | | |
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< | The parasite is the only controlling who we are. We feed the parasite with our posts - even when we overthink their content-. We give the parasite control over our capacity to decide. The parasite knows our steps, knows our fertility cycle (it even predicts it), knows our sleep cycle, and suggests what to eat, buy, and like. All these “suggestions” are inductions.
I have realized that even when we reflect on our virtual accounts, controlling and limiting our virtual content Is not enough. In other words, we waste our time trying to curate the life we want to share. We are not curating or deciding. In the end, it is the parasite that grows. It is asfixitiang roots over our brains.
We are not curating for those who benefit from our engagement (social media platforms, stores, advertisement) or those who follow us and want a glimpse of our life. The paradox here is that every time we feed my virtual profile, we deprive ourselves of the ability to keep things private. And with this, once again, making bigger and stronger parasites.
I ask myself: What is the purpose of keeping things private? And my answer is that privacy buys me time to reflect, think and create. Privacy protects how the piece of information about you has been obtained. Marmor's words: "it is about the how, not the what, that is known about you." The latter, as "our ability to control [how] we present ourselves to others is inherently limited."
From that stance, privacy gives us time, and therefore protects time, on when to disclose or reveal something. The underlying issue with the parasite is that it is the curator of our profiles, and in that filtration journey that we gave rise to, we have lost our ability to choose how others are using our time (and life).
Feeding the profiles consumes time. We post because the likes, comments, and virtual interactions affirm or reinforce the virtual being we choose to share with our selected community. We believe we have control over what and who we share. Still, the reality is that every click diminishes freedom, extinguishes privacy, and deprives us of the only thing we own: time.
The outcome is our inability to reflect and pause because our consciousness of time is limited by immediacy, neediness, and over-exposure. And the worst part is that the idea of being infinite humans, in the microcosmic stance, is vanished by the constant of self-reinvention instead of self-expansion.
The parasite is playing the game of “letting us choose.” What we have to realize is that every choice makes the parasite stronger. The parasite is using us to increase profits, is triggering our decisions in the way that serves the parasite’s ends. The verbs to share and post, which are the core of the interactions on the platforms, withered integration, insertion, and social construction. We handed our privacy in exchange for a fake sense of control. We gave our time, memories, and the idea of integrity in exchange for a false self-made identity that lacks authenticity and freedom—a self-imposed view by the parasite.
Humanity has dealt with the eternity/infinity question since we articulate ideas. To overcome the fact that our nature is limited by time, people used to write, paint, have children, and teach. By switching the idea of “eternity” towards platforms that hold and “save” our memories, our approach to eternity is rotten. To lay down this, I want to recall when Don Quixote found out, in his conversation with Sansón Carrasco, that his adventures were a topic of discussion among the students at the University of Salamanca. For him, being public, discussed, and remembered was an outcome, not a decisive purpose. He didn't act to be a topic. By the course of his actions, he became a character and, as a result, a subject of discussion. The lions, the windmills, and the galley slaves' adventures were public, and some read those actions as insanity, others as geniality.
Our desire for control shows that our aim to be remembered is vague because we rely solely on feeding the parasite. If we aim to change this reality, we need to cut ties with the parasite. Disable our social media accounts, the trackings the apps have over our lives. We need to stop posting on those platforms that instrumentalize our time to deprive us of individuality. | >
> | As noted by Yuval Noah Harari, free-market capitalism and state-controlled communism can be regarded as distinct data processing systems: the former is decentralized and the latter is centralized. It shouldn't come as a surprise then that western's versions of social credit experiare being made mainly by private corporations, especially in the financial sector. |
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