Published on 12, July, 2020
I was talking to a young woman at work this week (she already thought I was odd because I don't have a freezer, so you can imagine the reaction when I told her I don't have a TV or a mobile phone). We were talking about conspiracies.
"What if," I said, "the government, or even just your employer, said to you that they wanted you to wear one of those electronic devices, so that they always knew where you were and what you were most likely up to? But, if you chose to - and for a small reduction in salary, or increase in taxation - you could opt out of wearing it? What would you do?"
"I'd opt out, of course. It's a gross invasion of privacy."
Yes. Good point. But...
"What if I told you that you were holding such a device in your hand right now?"
She looked at her phone. She does that a lot. She was actually looking at it whilst I was talking to her, but she's NT, so she's able to divide her attention like that.
"Not only can it tell people precisely where you are," I went on, "but it can tell them all the details of your personal contacts, your private messages, your internet usage history, the people you call and text, your banking and credit card details, your shopping habits, where you live, what you own, your hobbies, the places you like to go, what you like to eat and drink, how many pets you have, what your boyfriend's doing, and who he's seeing and contacting. They can get access to all your photographs. All your selfies. The list goes on. And not only do you accept it willingly, but you're also happy to pay for the privilege."
She looked at me in a way that confirmed for me what she thought. That finally, I'd completely lost the plot.
"But that would never happen," she said. "There are data protection and privacy laws against things like that."
"And who makes those laws? The very people who might want access to that information."
"But why would they want to do that?"
I couldn't believe I was being asked that question. It doesn't take a lot of figuring out, with the crazy state the world is in now. I tried mentioning the US government's record on surveillance, and how laws regarding warrants are now getting more... erm... flexible? That's a polite way to put it.
"And what about people who don't care about those laws, anyway? People who can side-step them? Hackers? Terrorists? Other criminals?"
"Well..." she went on, "I still have a choice, don't I. And I choose to have a phone."
Really?
Choice?
They're definitely starting to win once people are convinced that addiction and enslavement are 'choices'. That's how it all works.
Am I the only one who thinks this way? Am I the only one who thinks this whole thing has deeply insidious and dangerous implications for us all? Don't get me wrong. The internet has opened up the world for me and enabled me to connect with people I'd never otherwise have known about. It's enabled me to showcase my design work and garner an audience. But I don't need it there all the time. I'll use it in the morning before work, then in the evening for creative work and entertainment. Apart from that, I can leave it alone. It stops at my front door. I don't need to keep constantly checking my 'likes' or texts. In fact, I don't want to. I'm lucky, I guess, because I belong to a generation (fogeys?) that didn't grow up with mobile phones, so their use wasn't conditioned into me. The phone is not, and never has been, and never will be, a dominant part of my life.
These poor sods, though. And they just can't see what it's done. The drastic way it's changed society. For a good many people, it's effectively decommissioned one of their hands - because it's always there in hand: in the car, in the supermarket, on the beach, constantly being checked and updated. I went for a cycle ride in the beautiful sunshine this morning, and I hardly saw a single person who wasn't either using a device or holding one. A woman stopped jogging to check her phone. I passed her again later, after I'd covered about five miles, and she was only about half a mile further on from where I'd first seen her - stopped again to check her phone. The people at work have them on their desks all day, and look at them at every available opportunity. These devices have got us hooked and addicted and obsessed. Young people are suffering without even realising it. They can't afford to miss anything - and by so doing, they miss so much else. Phone-related accidents are increasing. 'Nomophobia' is now a clinically-recognised condition: extreme anxiety caused by the loss of the phone, or going out and forgetting it. Kids are suffering mental illnesses - both through using their phones, and then through not using them.
Yet people still think I'm strange, deranged, possibly clinically insane for harbouring thoughts about where this might all be heading, and the dire implications for all of us.
Lambs to the slaughter. That's what I think, anyway.
But then, I'm crazy.
I don't have a freezer. Or a TV.
Or a phone.
On another thread, I mentioned what I've been reading recently about Facial Recognition Technology (FRT). It drew me back to this. The new Apple iPhone X can be unlocked when its user simply looks at it. It reads the face by projecting a grid of 30,000 infrared dots, and is very hard to deceive. Wired magazine even hired a Hollywood make-up artist to make silicone face masks they hoped would trick an iPhone X into believing it was seeing an authorised user. It failed to beat the system. FRT is making huge advances. Its sinister uses - such as in China, with the profiling of Uighurs, and with the development of algorithms that can even figure out, with high accuracy, a man's sexual orientation... well, frankly, it scares the hell out of me.
Allessandro Acquisti, Professor of IT at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, says: "From a technological perspective, the ability to successfully conduct mass-scale facial recognition in the wild seems inevitable. Whether as a society we will accept that technology, however, is another story." As if we'll have a choice. I don't think it'll come to choice, even. It'll just be accepted.
It wasn't so many years ago that, as a society, we were reading 1984 and probably thinking 'It'll never happen.' Now... the UK, for instance, has more CCTV cameras than in any other European state. It's virtually impossible already to make a journey anywhere in the UK without being tracked the whole way - though people do still slip through the net. For now.
The old argument, of course, is 'If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.' Oh, really? Are we all that naive?
Complete social control. The goal of governments everywhere.
And we're holding the key to it in our hands. And, it would seem, our faces...
I agree with the assertion that, through the use of the internet in general and the more personal uses of phones in particular, insidious social control is being ignored or accepted by more and more people. I'm less sure about the reasons mentioned here for why most people are willing to ignore or accept it, I don't think it's always because of ignorance of the facts. (Although some people definitely are.)
From listening to young people, and others who live their lives through these devices, I'm hearing that it's because the gains outweigh these drawbacks for them.
They need this constant validation of their social position (status, likes, followers etc.), need to constantly feel connected to and a vital part of as many networks of people as possible, like that it projects an idealised image of popularity and connected-ness which they're keen to constantly polish and present to these people, and like that the smarter it becomes the more it knows them and feels like a constant companion.
A real person wouldn't give them this level of constant attention and total devotion and connected-ness, so it makes sense that real relationships will be allowed to suffer in an effort to keep this two-way worship scenario going.
I don't own a phone, but I would also find the idea of a human companion THAT attentive and devoted quite disturbing! I quite enjoy being out of contact with people and often seek that position deliberately, don't enjoy social situations or groups, and quite often like feeling a little bit apart from the majority of humanity. I'd be really interested to know the percentage of people with ASD who don't live their lives hyper-connected compared with the percentage of NT's. The apparent need to be in constant social contact with others is the top NT trait that I definitely DO NOT envy!
Good points, Endymion.
On a similar theme, I was reading that one of the developers of Google's advertising metrics has now effectively turned against the beast he helped create and has founded a company which provides strategies for employers to improve productivity through weaning staff off of their devices during working hours. Continuous partial attention is now becoming a huge problem in many parts of industry and commerce. At work, we have zero-tolerance on phone usage (unless for work) during the working day. Yet staff - principally those in their 20s and 30s, but also those in their 40s - routinely flout it. One staff member in his 20s, who does a lot of casual dating, is checking his phone all the time. Most of my colleagues are on my Facebook Friends list. When I'm at home on my day off, I sometimes look at Facebook - and most of them are connected. It's going to be a really difficult thing to deal with. Some psychiatrists are even suggesting that CPA could lead to a lowering of IQ in future generations.
My niece, sensibly, is holding off with her boys - one 12, one 14 - both of whom want phones. She said she's going to give in soon, though, because of the pressure they're getting from friends at school. They're feeling left out. Very sad. But that's the times we live in now.
My friend was sent a message from Facebook a couple of years ago (when I was on Facebook) to suggest that she consider ceasing communication and contact with me! Who cares who’s snooping, of course the government agencies etc want to know what you’re up to so they can continue to lure you in ever more creative ways to part with your money, to get you to value and love your money, to do things you don’t even like doing to get money etc etc because when people have a (false) god, they become obedient to that god. There’s no harm in it. People are controlled because they want to be and the least they can do in return for that prestigious job (controlling them) is give them (the controllers, governments etc) the information they need to make their life easier. It sounds like a fair swap to me. Fair dinkem!