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The feedback I received on my last essay said that it was a bit general. And it was, so I initially tried to make this one more specific, to give more focused insights about a narrower topic. But I eventually realized two things. One, I still lack the granular understanding of the individual issues this course covers that I would need to say something worth reading about any one of them in 1,000 words. Two, whatever value my current perspective has stems from the combination of how recently I was ignorant of all of these issues and how shaken I am by my new knowledge. So, spurred by Thanksgiving-conversation-induced shame, I rewrote this piece, trying to use a 10,000-foot view to make a specific argument. I wanted to use this essay to explore why a seemingly simple question seems to baffle everyone, from industry and academy experts to neophyte technology skeptics, and to argue that this collective sputter embodies a limitation of the proof of concept that this course illustrates, a weakness that must be addressed before we can run code.
So What, Exactly, Is The Problem?
-- By TheoTamayo - 26 Nov 2023
This class has provided no shortage of frightening discoveries. Shadowy figures seek to read and control minds, algorithmic engines of perfect despotism abound, and governing institutions currently prove unable to protect human freedom. But these revelations did not scare me nearly as much as a question raised by a three-year-old docu-drama and then posed to me this week.
About three minutes into The Social Dilemma, an interviewer asks the assembled array of former tech executives—people who had quit their jobs and agreed to be interviewed for a documentary out of concern that the companies and products they helped build posed real and imminent dangers to society—the question they must have known was coming: why? Or, more specifically, "what is the problem?"
None of them can give a straight answer to this simple question. Some start speaking and then stop; some ponder furiously as the camera rolls; some just give up and laugh. This thirty seconds of footage already felt ominous. But it wasn't until my cousin asked me the same question at Thanksgiving dinner that I absorbed its depth, and personally experienced and replicated the interviewees' reactions. Their and my silence, more than the rest of the film or my own knowledge of computerized conspiracies and cabals, profoundly scared me. And I believe that this impasse manifests the immediate, formidable hurdle on the path towards a better Internet Society.
I. Vast and Amorphous
I can identify two distinct reasons why those smart, informed, and well-meaning insiders struggled to respond to this innocent-seeming question. The first is an issue of scale. The second is an issue of obscurity.
Size
The problem the question identifies is almost inconceivably huge. Professor Zuboff has spent decades researching and hundreds of pages describing a single facet of it, and even then her opus can do no more than set the scene for a debate about how to frame and address the problem. Professor Turkle has filled her entire, lengthy academic career cataloging just some of its visible symptoms. This course takes a semester to sketch the situation and outline the path towards a solution; its companion course takes another semester to demonstrate how to build and use the components of that solution. The problem is so large that those who do not know to look for it cannot see it. Even those who do look must be primed, educated, and willing to question fundamental aspects of their lives in order to begin to grasp its scope.
The very scale of the challenge shocks and awes. The architects of the problem's infrastructure, aided by a documentary film crew, take ninety painstakingly-produced minutes to summarize its basic details. I stood no chance of doing it justice at the Thanksgiving table, and my unavoidable failure will cost family members some measurable amount of their freedom.
Silhouette
The problem also defies categorization and precise description. It is completely novel not just in magnitude but form, crossing and blurring areas of study that universities and societies treat as distinct. Business, psychology, computer science, and so many more fields fit comfortably within its dimensions. Not only do we struggle to see the shadow it casts because we all stand in it together, we lack the narrative tools to capture, dissect, and report on it. So we must develop the capability to effectively diagnose, articulate, and collaborate on a solution to the problem. And I believe we must aim to be able to do all three in a few hours, possibly over turkey.
That few recognized the problem until quite recently, giving scant time to let blown whistles reach ears, would have provided plenty of mountain to climb. That it operates under cover of trade secret protection and mostly-private ownership makes it not just imposing, but phantasmal. That even its creators cannot fully comprehend how or why it works as it does pushes it towards deific.
But it is not a god, nor any other kind of aware or intelligent being. It is a system, made of pipes and switches and surveillance instruments and human beings, that we created and that we must fix.
II. Pictures, Tools, and Persuasion
To fix a system, we need a clear picture of what is wrong with it, one that can impart the crucial messages of "what is happening," "what is wrong with it," and "what can be done about it." Our immediate task is forming that picture and sharing it with as much of the world as possible. The scale and shadowy form of the problem require the picture be painted with specialized brushes. Inertia requires that our picture be more compelling than the landscape of the status quo.
Imagination and Vocabulary
To address the enormity and ambiguity of the problem, we need to learn from Professor Zuboff's example and develop terminology to describe the details and stakes of the situation. The term "surveillance capitalism" is brilliant for both its reach and its brevity. It describes an immensely complex system succinctly but completely, allowing the message of the dense and lengthy book to coalesce around a memorable and usable phrase. We need more language like it, vocabulary that may not yet exist but that captures essential aspects of the problem, to set the scene of our picture so that we can effectively discuss it. Given the damage already done to humanity's collective attention span, we cannot afford to waste any time getting our points across.
Art
And the picture we paint must move people. Art has played a decisive role in getting us into this mess, and we must accept that we cannot overcome its influence with reason, no matter how right we are.
It does not need to be beautiful. It needs to be powerful. It needs to break the hold that beautiful but dangerous devices have over our civilization. Rather than compete with the beautiful works of the mighty, we must paint a picture of the stretching sands that await us if we fail to effectively answer the question.
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