User:Max Lehmann/Rushkoff

Douglas Rushkoff - PROGRAM OR BE PROGRAMMED Ten Commands for a Digital Age

INTRODUCTION

We must learn how to make programs, not just how to use them - otherwise we might be very limited in our future choices as computers are not only tools, but living organisms. Programmers still play a huge role in changing our world, but sooner or later digital technologies themselves might shape our world, with or without our cooperation. (In the future network-activity might promote enhanced options of participation, but at the moment they behave too unpredictable to do so.) Society had high expectations of technology to improve established problems, but now is confronted with a very different side to it: disconnected and deprived of sustainable values. If we understood better the technologies biases and could participate in its generation we will be able to change that. Thinking is no longer a process reserved for humans, they are reduced to an unstable external system. Therefore the reaction of humanity must be a universal change in our societies underlying structures. Just like the invention of the printing press didn’t result in a population that writes, but one that reads and as with almost all other technological revolutions so far, we have failed to seize the possibilities of the digital world - and actually lost control to those who understand the underlaying structures, in this case: programming. Therefore most of our society is left behind and the power is with those who control the access to digital technologies. A long term continuation of this could mean that we lose control to the machines, as already today we do not deal with the persons who created the devices we use, but glorify the devices themselves without knowing about their impact onto our lives. As we are actually reconstructing the most underlaying human capabilities in the digital world, we make it easy for them to control us. The digital revolution therefore forces us to overthink the limitations of the human mind and strategies we used in the past to deal with such issues will not work this time. Through the imitation of human thought processes the technologies undermine complex process happening in the human mind, as it was the primary reason for their invention to rid us of these complex tasks. At the moment most of humanity uses these tools finding ways to program other humans and the process of contemplation itself is losing value. Sadly the net is not providing us with the resources to understand its impact on us. (And that even thought freedom, also in a digital world means to chose who you want to reflect with.) There is an urgent need to generate new moral behavioral and economic codecs to be guided by, but most people who would have the insight necessary to do so are too busy exploiting these technologies for their advantages. (The commands following) (Digital technologies) are based on biases/tendencies included with these new technologies (and offer ways)(that we need to) to balance (these) out, because even though one might think it is up to ourself to interpret them, they can undermine our actual intentions without us realizing it.

I. TIME

Human perception of time is completely limited to the present, while computers and the programs running on them, much faster at processing information than a human ever could, live outside of time and only from command to command. . In the early times of the net, when humanity had very high expectations on the internet curing societies many problems, it was a very slow paced environment and the act of going online was a strictly intentional one. It was a net that encouraged contemplation in a very new way, as communication was asynchronous, based on daily, sometimes weekly cycles of time. This encouraged the users to reflect on all of their online responses and communication. The first relevant implication of this was the e-mail. In contrast to e.g. phone calls one could receive this medium when they wanted, which is much slower than todays technological pace and therefore an advantage, as it breaks down time. One of the first interactive devices the broad public was confronted with, the remote control, put them in power over being helplessly manipulated by television programs and enabled us to disassemble their narrative. As internet connectivity increased humans more and more evolved an „always on“ attitude. Our brain though the extension of a device were constantly connected to the world wide web. Trying to cope with this fact we developed into heavily multitasking beings, which, studies show, impaired our abilities to focus on tasks. We abandoned the capacity to memorize not only facts but the ability to call upon certain skills and thereby made us dependable on digital tools. As soon as we store information outside of our brain, we feel like there is no need to keep that information. Through the urge of responding as quick as possible to requests we decreased our effort put into responses, whereas faster reactions will probably result in more inquiries. In the digital world algorithms value recency more than relevance and our brains adapt to that in the same way they have adapted to other major changes throughout human history. If and how we want to connect with the digital world is still our own choice and it is important that we make use of that, even though to many it might seem like they don’t have the right to limit their availability. If we let all these abilities go, we should consider if we are willing to be dependent on these devices and also what improvements will take the empty space left behind in our mind.

II. PLACE

Digital media favors actions that are dislocated, not regional and even when we use tools with the purpose of socializing, the result might actually be the exact opposite as digital networks based work in a decentralized way and are simply not very helpful with socializing with people surrounding us. Since the discovery of written text media has been optimized to work well over long distance, rather than improve local communication. This is also true for e.g. the Judeo-Christian tradition, which pur a universal god over local gods and/or circumstances, as well as for the industrialization which made workers replaceable, dislocated them from the value of their creation. Though newly developed mass-media outlets they can also market their products nationwide and put local businesses under massive competitive pressure. Also nowadays this leads to regional businesses losing their strength of connecting with a particular region. Although connecting to strangers online can offer an opportunity for people to find likeminded individuals in a completely new scale, it cannot replace real interactions as the simplicity of doing so also means that less care is involved. The same goes for the availability of information online, as we most of the time can’t or won’t physically react to them, we get detached to their actual meaning and also lose track of what is happening in our real life surroundings and prefer the usage of these long-distant technologies even when there is no need to do so. We should rather use the advantages only when needed and try to not use it whenever we can actually have real life interactions instead.

III. CHOICE

Comparing an analogue record like a vinyl to a digital one like a CD, the vinyl is an actual record of something that happened once, whereas a digital one is only a numerical representation, a sequence of choices. It is a very different approach where only information that can be measured and processed by a computer will remain on the medium - the other information will be lost, which is not the case with an analogue record. This abstraction, even when its quality exceeds the capabilities of the human ear, seems to have a less positive effect on the listener. In real life it is nearly impossible to divide the happening into segments, but transforming something real into digital information requires exactly this procedure as a computer understands only yes or no. Even if our reality can be divided into this informational chunks, we are not able to record them in the way they occur until now and thus our current digital representations are compromised. In the same way interfacing a computer forces us all the time to choose between options given by the programmers. These choices might make individuals feel excluded as the options might not represent the individuals situation. Despite the fact that we might associate more choice with more freedom that is only correct if we also decide if want to deal with that issue in the first place. Furthermore making a choice means to pause and then let go of all the options we are not choosing in order to continue. Looking at an individual as a consumer every decision made is saved as data used to influence our future behavior and by accepting that we assist in optimizing these systems. With this in mind a choice often represents an attempt to push an individual to make pick the option the code wants it to and thereby limits the variety of actual possibilities. Other systems like ones where the user inputs his own, non default tag are way more flexible. After all it is always an option for the individual to simply refuse to make a choice.

IV. COMPLEXITY

Due to technologies need for abstraction all requested informations are equally easy accessible. This is a very democratic thing but also spares the enquirer of the entire process of getting to more complex answers to given complex questions. They thereby detach the information from its context which leads to a loss in sensitivity when applying it. Also everybody gets to freely decide how to value the available informations and which to believe. By simplifying facts they tend to divide their users into opposing beliefs. In addition online researchers nowadays drift towards skipping most of the information and only absorbing the absolute minimum to only get a rough idea of a topic. As our machines increase in complexity it seems humanity is making the contrary move, through which they are degraded to dependand consumers once again. Technology is learning more about its users than the other way around. Acknowledging the fact that digital technologies are only a mock-up of reality, not a compensation reduces the probability of that happening. Already today studies show kids are having troubles distinguishing between reality and virtual reality and if this increases in the future it will depend on the development of humanities perceptive abilities.

V. SCALE

In the digital world, due to a loss of personal relationships and other real-life, regional advantages, everything is presented on one homogenous level which makes scaling up a condition to survival, especially for businesses. Because of a lack of discriminability every business, no matter the size, is in direct competition with all other businesses, stripped from all competitive advantages other than price. This shifts the power towards the operators of the index of all competitors: search engines, shopping aggregators,... and makes abstraction a necessary tool for success. This leads to a digital economy detached from real life criteria for economic sustainability where financial success is continuously removed from the creation of actual value and a system more and more dependent on a central control entity and familiar brands. The abstraction, going back to many steps during human evolution - disconnecting content from its real meaning, reaches his highest level though the Internet and its completely interconnected structure of simulations of the real world. This digital abstraction on some levels seems to make people desire to connect to the underlaying original content in the real world, which is also where its greatest power should lie. Because abstraction can be a mayor advantage, as long as it doesn’t lose its touch to the real world.

VI. IDENTITY

In the net our identity is our liability, as it connects to our real world personas. As in the net our actions are disconnected from our bodies, we harbor the illusion of acting free of consequences which often results in cruel and disruptive group behavior, as the individuals namelessness serves as a protective shield for these activities. So ideally every user should feel responsible for their utterances by appearing as themselves by default. In some cases being incognito can of course be necessary for survival and should be kept, but after all every person coming out of anonymity helps other likeminded people to follow. It seems that a permanent digital identity doesn’t even have to connect to the persons real life identity, as it will eventually be linked to reputation in an online environment, which just like in the real world takes time to build up. The assumption that being deprived of superficialities will lead to less prejudices proofed wrong, as we are so detached from one-another - it is simply not comparable. Human communication depends on body language and facial expressions to a staggering 93%. Without these online human interaction regresses. Furthermore a lot of users approve a loss in privacy simply to get noticed, knowing it might disadvantage them in the future. Linking out online personas to our actual human identities could tackle these issues and result in a more deliberate and sustainable digital communication.

VII. SOCIAL

Over the worldwide webs evolution it became clear that its actual strength lies in its inter-human connectivity. And it actually always was that way. However it had fend off uncountable attempts to be severely altered into the opposite to keep its validity. While social platforms come and go, humanities urge to connect keeps constant. Disfavor against these platforms emerges from their efforts of monetizing our friendship, which contradicts our basic values. And while businesses try to use our social behavior online for their own good, they don’t understand that transparency is not a choice in the digital age and they are already part of it. Still the perseverance of the entirety of social media platforms has already led to a dulled comprehension of social standard. Societies are more willing to commercially exploit their social connections and once the users starts losing their inhibitions this process only accelerates. Still the webs underlying propulsion is the human need to connect to other human beings. We just have to collectively acknowledge that human beings are no commodity but the essential substance of the web.

VIII. FACT

The human society has always been evolving upon non linear exchange of true information and using them to create value. As this method had been threatening those in power they, as an antidote, put centralized currencies and business models in place out of which feudalism and over the long term corporate capitalism emerged. To substitute for the loss of human connection and to make their mass produced goods more relatable they thought of non factual stories that were then spread by mass media. This changed with digital media, as they allow their users to interact and also they were made for sharing on a global scale. This enabled the consumers to take position outside the classical role of a consumer and to dismantling and correcting the corporations previously untouched stories. But after centuries of being manipulated we are still deeply inclined to believe non-fictional story telling. And as the web is a very confusing space to communicate it leaves barely any control how a message is distributed, reprocessed or received. Still the content being generated by big corporations or nations seems to be distributed significantly better because of their importance to the general public, even though nobody is able to forecast how they will be absorbed. But also some corners of the web are havens for leaked truth about those very instances which results in a paradox of receiving these sugarcoated stories while actually knowing the very truth behind them. In the future it will become evermore important to understand the meaning behind the stories available online and only passing on those that are true and important. To rise above though, one will have to create actual value worth of sharing.