I am a big fan of a new TV series in the UK, called Black
Mirror, which explores how social media and technology of the future will bring
about an info-dystopia — or, at best, land all of us in new kinds of personal
hell. The writers of this series do an incredible job imagining where things
like amped-up versions of Facebook, Twitter, and Google Glass might take us.
The series- named for the way in which our powered down screens appear-
explores different ways in which our future has gone technologically awry.
Arguments for the advancement of technology come from both
directions. Will new breakthroughs, such as implants placed in our brains to enable
individuals burdened by muscular and brain impairments, help to benefit our
society? Black Mirror explores this notion in the episode “The Entire History
of You” by imagining “grain” implants, or downloadable memory devices placed
near the brain, as a way of abusing privacy and detaching ourselves from a
moral and socially functional world.
Many of us do not
pay much attention to the seamless transactions of our online experience. The
algorithmic processes of search engines and social media sites go undetected by
much of the population. However, some believe these guiding binary algorithms
create an impermeable blockade against objectivity. These algorithms are
essentially editors, pulling up what it finds to be of significance, based on
someone else’s understanding of what is important. For those of you who
imagined the internet as a way of breaking through the bias of traditional
media, perhaps it is time to reanalyze how guided our quest for knowledge and
truth currently is. Perhaps the public should consider how easily agenda-based
groups such as lobbyist, political parties, and corporations could flood the “echo
chamber” with facts and information which support its message. At what point
does this concept infringe on human rights to privacy and free thought and
speech?
Samsung’s new Smart
TVs are now equipped with personal recording devices. The disclaimer in the
manual reads straight out of a line from some Orwellian novel- "Please
be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information,
that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third
party through your use of Voice Recognition." Better keep your TV watching
conversation limited to “Please pass the popcorn.”
At the heart of all this is trust. The best and only defense
against intrusion from the likes of Google to Samsung is this: "We don't
really care about your private life. We just want your data, so that we can
make money from it." As long as our privacy is in the hands of profit
driven corporations, we can rest assure our most private extrapolations will be
glanced over. Right?
It's inevitable that the more data that we put out, the more
will be recorded and the more will be known about us by machines which are in
the charge of people- or machines that are people- or…..where does that line
get drawn?
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