Evgeny Morozov argues that we are now well equipped to use “big data” and technology to manage the effects of the problems that we have, as they manifest in the lives of people who are embedded in sociopolitical systems – but, in doing so, to ignore the causes of those problems in the way the systems are set up. For example, “quantified self” apps prompt us about exercise and nutrition, as if our weight is entirely our responsibility, but don’t address the issues of towns designed only for cars, or the pervasiveness and cultural power of junk food.
Technology companies and governments, he says, try to gamify behaviours that in previous eras would have been driven by laws or by a belief in particular values instead. Here I think he’s being naive; usually, people’s behaviour was and is not driven by abstract values as much as by social expectations, and I don’t see being caught up in a mesh of powerful social expectations as necessarily a good thing. I take his point, though, that this is an individualist, market-oriented model of behaviour modification which doesn’t emphasize taking responsibility for a shared social situation. (He speculates that if the reward was removed, the behaviour might also cease, but that’s not what behaviourist psychology has found.)
He has a rant against Google Now and how it removes causality and narrativity from life (by presenting us with a series of reminders of what we are doing next, or could do next) – I didn’t quite agree with that bit, since to me a system like Google Now seems to be drawing out connections rather than suppressing them. It did give me a story idea, though: a character who doesn’t remember who she is, but is coached through her day by a more advanced version of Google Now, which tells her where to go and when, shows her the speech she is to give, feeds her the names of people who talk to her afterwards, and so forth. She doesn’t need to know anything about her life, because her virtual assistant knows everything about it.
He envisions a future, based on the arguments of some current startups, where we sell the data about our daily lives – and therefore start to try to “optimize” the value of our life data in the market. I don’t know that anonymised data (which is what is usually talked about in this context) would really be open to such manipulation, though.
He’s also concerned that the introduction of sensors and connectivity into every domain heralds the introduction of the logic of the market into those same domains, which previously operated by a different set of values. This ignores the many “open data” initiatives being run by cities, governments and citizens worldwide.
In the second half, another speaker (unfortunately not clearly identified other than as “an AI researcher”) joins him to discuss the issues. He draws attention to what Morozov hasn’t talked about, and how framing the problems differently makes them at least partially soluble.
Questions follow. They’re good questions; Morozov uses them as a jumping-off point to circle round to reiterating his points. He does, at one point, admit that “big data” can be joined to a different kind of political project (as in South America); it’s not so much technology itself as neoliberal capitalism that he has a problem with.
Nevertheless, Morozov is (to oversimplify) a technopessimist, which is a viewpoint I don’t share. It’s important to listen to people who have different viewpoints, to provoke ourselves to thought and check our own tendency to ignore the other side. He isn’t offering much in the way of solutions, however, despite several times speaking as if he’s about to do so.
(1 hour 53 minutes.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba0rIaEftKU&feature=share