Step Away. Don’t Get Modified by Your Devices

Photo by David Levêque on Unsplash

Our relationship with the internet is now an abusive one. And it’s the worst kind of abusive relationship–with someone far more powerful than you that has no force acting upon them to produce change.

The internet used to be a tool for connection across space and time as it still claims to be. It was also a handy tool for indexing information and accessing it from anywhere in the world. Now the internet is the tool of industry, instead of ours, its users. It’s their tool for surveillance (of us), propaganda (for us) and behavior modification (of us). Technologist and virtual reality founder, Jaron Lanier calls social media companies “behavior modification empires.”

The Silicon Valley culture Lanier helped shape in the 90s and 2000s had the idea of making the internet free and open. But they were also still in love with capitalism and never actually reconciled this conflict. Instead, they adopted the advertising model as the business plan for what became the Meta and Google we know today. It produced the greatest ad selling machine to ever be conceived; it tracks ad responses and interest in real time and with a comprehensive set of data about each human being interacting with the ads. In this way, the machine can analyze the psychology and behavior of each individual human being and actually change the content surrounding the ads (not just the ads themselves) to make that particular human engage more.

Imagine if this super ad system got into our televisions. It would change the channels, the programming and the content of the programming automatically to make sure we watched the most ads and spent as much time as possible on the tube. Or imagine if this super ad machine got into our transportation system. It would change the routes we drive so that we would see certain billboards. Then the machine would change the location of popular food stops, alter speed limits and move traffic lights to target routes to individual drivers and groupings of drivers based on their psychological profiles, driving records, eating habits, and so on. Then it would work to phase out other forms of transportation and to strategically close certain streets and lanes in order to produce permanent gridlock–the optimal operating condition.

Meta and Google, and increasingly the internet as a whole, work in this way. They are turning us into a society of adjustable, customized human beings — being continually tweaked and changed in order to integrate us optimally into the system’s outcomes. About social media and the ad model, Lanier says:

We cannot have a society in which if two people wish to communicate the only way that can happen is if it’s financed by a third person who wishes to manipulate them.

The manipulation we are currently experiencing through our devices tampers with our time, our attention and feelings. It works to move us away from ‘other useless stuff’ that doesn’t have ads such as…cooking and eating well, taking full breaths, expressing ourselves thoughtfully and artfully, hugging each other, paying attention to our children when they want to be seen and heard and played with, using our limbs, reflecting on our feelings, solving problems around us, making love, thinking…Our human experience gets in the way of the super ad machine–unless we post it of course. Then it gives us a little fist bump and a hit of self-confidence.

The internet ad system also runs on evil. The production of evil content is what makes this version of the internet competitive in capitalism. There doesn’t have to be a grand conspiracy behind this. It’s just a weak feature of human nature that hopefully our species will evolve out of over time. If there’s a fight happening outside one window; in the other window two people are hugging; and in a third window people are just hanging out, most of us are going to watch the fight; a few of us will watch the hugging; and no of us are just going to look out the window with no action.

The stuff that makes us want to stay on the internet and nearest to the ads, is the evil stuff. Happiness and joy don’t keep us looking at our devices very long. But cruelty and fear and gore and hatred and perversion make us look at our devices for a long time. And meanwhile, ching ching ching, the ad machine is doing its job making money.

Lanier is still part of Silicon Valley. He is a technologist and he believes it’s possible to undo this terrible new crisis (that we’ve added to other existential crises we already have) if Meta and Google are forced out of the ad business model and into something else–most likely the subscription model that TV and film have adopted. But Lanier also says that until this happens, we must delete our accounts.

Deleting them is a good start, and, in theory if enough of us did it, maybe that would force Meta and Google to depart from the ad model. I’m talking to my family and friends about deleting my accounts, mainly Facebook and Instagram. It’s not a simple conversation, but I’m not going to give up given how consequential it is for our future. I’ll probably set a date for deleting them and encourage others to do the same or at least be supportive of my decision.

Have a plan to delete yours?

All of this should be prompting us into a bigger conversation about what we are giving in exchange for the Gig industry era upon us. Like all industry eras before, it wants to extract something it has found ‘untapped’ (our time, attention and feelings) and convert them into windfall profits and fortunes.

Behavior modification and surveillance via the internet is the 4th or 5th new industry era that capitalism has produced and which have roughly coincided with the turn of each new century. The first was slavery and luxury mercantilism. African people were bought and sold to Europeans and their American colonies to produce a mass market for sugar, tobacco, alcohol, and other new lifestyle pleasures that would make a few companies and their owners hyper rich. Then there was Big Cotton which produced a modern world of clothing and fabric–also on the backs of enslaved African people, particularly with the conquest of Texas by slave owners who made it the ultimate plantation paradise. Then Petroleum which made the 20th Century fast, mobile and hyper individualistic with everyone moving through the world in enclosed boxes isolated from each other for hours most days. We realized a century later that we had created a climate crisis from the carbon output of the Petrol era. Each of the crises produced by industry eras took centuries to fix or even just to reduce the immediate negative impact. It’s obvious that we’re still in the Petroleum era and struggling to figure a way out of it–-and we only care to try because of how existential the crisis is that it has produced.

Like Big Oil that found more and more ways into our lives during the last century–filling our homes with plastic, for example, the Gig industry now is looking for as many ways as possible to make itself irresistible and inseparable from our lives. For some, the offer may be the thrill and amusement of virtual reality spaces. For others, the feeling of being connected and having their loneliness assuaged. For some, being part of something bigger that protects them, their possessions and brings them food on voice command. For some, all of these. And there are more offers to come.

For cheap personal transportation and cheap electricity made by burning coal, we exchanged a stable climate on earth. What are we exchanging for all the offers of the Gig industry? It’s too early to know the true cost of it all, but if you step back and look at what is being built, the outline of one big thing is on the table: our free will.

Yes, it is. The juggernaut being built now is asking us to surrender our human agency in exchange for convenience, thrills, amusement, meaning and relationships, protection and more. It’s offering to replace our previous human experience ‘with something better!’ Every new app and service we log into is contributing to this grand construction that we are invited to step into. It welcomes us in with a smile and a little dopamine hit. We put our feet in and then our whole body. The water is warm and comforting. We look around only for a brief moment to see the walls of the grand construction which circle around us and millions of others sitting comfortably, soothed and amused. The water slowly starts to bubble and tickle us like a Jacuzzi. It’s irresistible. We let go of everything.

At some point, we will no longer be able to assess and discern the temperature of the water. Very gradually, our decision-making power that makes us human will begin to shut down like HAL having each circuit unplugged one at a time.

Yes, that’s dark. But it’s absolutely our own doing–and that means it doesn’t have to get that bad if we have the will to stop it. We still have choice and agency now. To login or not to login. To scroll or not to scroll. To carry the device on our person at all times or leave it behind sometimes. To delete some accounts, like Lanier says, especially Meta. Let’s start treating our devices like the tools they are supposed to be. Put the hammer and screwdriver in the toolbox when you’re not using them. Dare I say it. Turn it off. Off Off.

It’s not just good advice to improve your general well being. These are small acts of resistance that can help move us in the direction of a bigger revolt that will probably be needed.

Then there’s the future. The one we actually want. We need to start imagining a human future that is independent from devices and apps–where they really are just tools that can be put away and turned off when not in use instead of something wired to our veins and our brains.

Ask yourself: What is that future that I can start working toward now?

• Instead of scrolling and clicking, how can I use my time and attention today to actually feed my soul, to nurture my humanity, to take care of my body, to get close to other people and share life with them?
• In addition to myself, which other human beings can I invest my time and emotional energy into? Is there someone I need to be there for who is struggling or alone? Is there a child that needs another adult in their life? Do I have family and friends that I could move to live near to so we can eat meals together and spend time together in person?
• What things aren’t being taken care of on the street outside my home and in my zip code? Are trees and plants being cared for? Is the snow and ice being removed daily so people can walk places? Is my city or county actually creating the jobs that are needed to make things work or is everything non-digital, non-Gig being neglected?

Then ask: What is that future that we as a society can start working toward now?

• What are the human nurturing activities we need to learn, relearn and make part of life for the masses? Can we make gym memberships and masseuses as affordable and accessible as a Netflix subscription? Can we make vegetable garden and local farming skills at least as valuable as computer skills?
• What items shouldn’t be delivered to our doorsteps? What items should we be walking down the street to get where we can stretch our bodies, feel the sun, breathe the air and interact with other living beings?
• What things should all of us be growing on our window sills, rooftops and backyards and nearby fields instead of depending entirely on industrial farms that are thousands of miles away?
• Can we start defining progress in more ways than just the advancement of digital and physical technologies? What does that look like?

My goal every day is to step away. As it’s turned out, I’m rediscovering life. Books printed on paper are amazing! Vinyl records and CDs are still amazing too! Most of all, my relationship to myself is becoming a real thing, and thus so much more to my life partner and my kids and friends.