https://rushkoff.medium.com/dont-get-people-to-do-anything-9d59a1cf29a0
"Nearly every time I’m on a panel or in a conversation about civic harmony,
social change or economic equality, someone eventually asks, “I agree, but how
are we going to get people to….?” And that’s when the conversation turns to
education, publicity campaigns, memes, or some other well-intentioned form of
social engineering. If only we could get people to…
We all hope to steer our society away from the inequality, extraction,
externalities, and power imbalances of the industrial economy, but — not
surprisingly — our first impulse is to impose the same sorts of top-down,
command-and-control solutions typical of the industrial age.
Tech developers and entrepreneurs, in particular, have become aware of the
various harms and externalities of the technologies they have built, and want
to reverse some of these media effects. As if seeing the light, they now want
to create apps and platforms that undo the problems that their original apps
and platforms caused. So they create meditation apps to calm minds that have
been intentionally made anxious by social media, or wellness platforms to
“nudge” people toward healthier uses of their time than doom-scrolling on a new
app. There are even whole organizations and institutes dedicated to developing
“humane technologies” that treat people more benevolently than their
predecessors.
But the orientation of these efforts is all wrong. They’re all about using
technology on people, rather than people using technology. “Humane” is the way
companies claim to treat cage-free chickens: a commitment by an industry to
raise and slaughter its living commodities as painlessly as possible. That’s
not good enough. The question should not be about how humanely our technologies
program human beings, but about how well human beings can program technology."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
