Day 18: Benevolence

The Chapter begins with Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg stating in the 2016 Social Good Forum that "Facebook has always been about building community and relationships and, in recent years it's become clear that a core part of helping grow a community is helping to keep you safe” Vaidhyanathan sees Zuckerburgs play towards services that the state and the government won’t provide on their own as a perfect distillation of the ideology of social responsibility. As Facebook realized it had built a large enough community of people from different cultures, ethnicities etc. Zuckerburg rightfully realized that Facebook had a growing responsibility of making sure the people within its community were safe from harm from others (an elaborate way version of a neighborhood watch program if you will), could mark themselves as safe to their friends and family who were also on Facebook. In my opinion, Zuckerburg’s comments on Facebook’s duty to its family of daily users should be no different from any other large corporation in the world.

Zuckerburg also stated that when Facebook had first started it was originally intended to be a platform that would help the world be more open and connnected, a goal to which Zuckerburg has arguably achieved over his extensive career as social media overlord. To this point, I would like to comment that I believe that in order for a buisness to be successful, the buisness A) has to address some sort of need that the public is in need of and B) must come from a place of love and passion from something the entrepreneur is passionate about. Think of a buisness today that is thought of as souless, a place where little to no happiness could ever be found, a place where dreams go to die, lost in a corporate nightmare; for naming purposes we will call this place McDonalds. When Maurice and Richard McDonald opened up the first McDonalds location in the year 1940, do you think that they had any idea that their buisness would be the soul devouring monster that it is today? Probably not, as it wasn’t until buisness man Ray Kroc took over the buisness and introduced ways of faster service that McDonalds began to take shape as the giant that we know it now. Think about it: like Zuckerburg, the McDonalds brothers originally started off their restaurant with the goal of serving people food at a faster pace then previously thought. They had no idea or intention of the consequences and responsibilities that the modern day McDonalds would have in terms of notifying people what they were actually putting into their bodies.

Later on in the chapter, we learn of something known as the ‘shareholder primacy’ which is the idea that businesses should be focused much more on the idea of creating revenue for themselves rather than creating their company for the betterment of themselves. Adolfo Berle, a supporter of this theory argued that “if we look to companies to fight societal ills , we grant them too much power and influence, and the glow of benevolence might shield them from power and scrutiny.” (114). What Berle seems to be arguing is a classic argument of the 1% vs the 99%, the bourgeoisie vs the proletariat, the idea that a small minority of the population hold the vast majority of economic power while the people below suffer in poverty. In essence this idea of shareholder primacy is directly attacking companies like Facebook before they even existed. Because Facebook has made betterment of society such a primary objective in it’s mission statement, it is one of the biggest online companies in the world and has the funds to do basically whatever it wants to do.

Day 16: Surveillance

Day 16: Surveillance 

Lets face it, no one is reading these at this point but I'm still going to give you my typical mediocre blog post.

If you didn't get a chance to read this chapter I really recommend going back and looking in to it. From this reading you should assume that essentially none of your info is safe. Facebook collects, uses and shares our personal data without full or clear disclosure.

The chapter starts with discussing revenge porn in a Marine Combat Stress support group. A picture was posted of a female cadet and in comments someone posted a picture of her topless (we can assume an ex of sorts). It was later discovered that this was essentially a revenge porn group!! With google drive links dedicated to countless private and personal images of women. Facebook eventually had the pics and links were removed along with the group but people still had the opportunity to download and keep these on their phone. The author argues that "men exploit power that visual exposure of women grants them." making social media anti social for these targeted women. "According to the research institute Data and Security, 4% of American Women and 10% of those under 30 years old have become victims of revenge porn. In the additional reading we see that there were very very few laws in regards to this topic until around 2015.

The other important points to cover are the three types of Surveillance that Facebook exposes us to (you can call these perches or viewpoints) which include: Commercial Surveillance, Audio and Visual Surveillance, and Cryptopicon Surveillance.

Commercial Surveillance is commonly used by Facebook  to provide our information to advertisers, and to use geo location to track you. There is no way to opt out of this. The book provides an example of a user who shared little personal information on facebook, finally decided to put his relationship status as married, was exposed to ads encouraging having an affair, deleted his relationship status and stopped seeing the ads. 

Audio and Visual can be better understood through movies such as "The Conversation" (1974) and "Enemy State of Mind" (1998) In "The Conversation" the character uses audio and visual surveillance to investigate private citizens while the character in the "Enemy State of Mind" "deploys the digital tools and techniques that have come to characterize our era of surveillance." The character later goes off the grid after doing high level work for a government organization. The biggest difference in the films is that the "Enemy State of Mind" is in the dawn of the of the Big Data era. With the advancements we have made in the past 20 years both of these films seem comical.

Cryptopticon Surveillance is  essentially an ecosystem of massive corporate and state surveillance. These are more "cryptic, hidden, scrambled and mysterious" Big Data is usually turned to as a tool of choice. "Scholars and analysts tend to emphasizes the availability of appropriate technologies"

mid term

Spencer Bierschwale

COMM 339

Mid-Term

           The FBI has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”  Political activism interests me, so this will be my main focus.  I believe that my future will be in politics because that is the way I see my existence.  I am an out, proud and vibrantly gay man in 20gayteen (2018 pun). I live in a world where one of the justices who helped to give me the right to marry is retiring. There is the possibility that the current president will be able to appoint someone who could take away my right to marry if he has the chance.  If Obergefell v Hodges is challenged, and the supreme court takes the case, this could be reality. However, that is the least of my worries. What worries me most is the possibility of hate crimes for openly gay individuals. Everyday I leave campus to travel in Seguin and the surrounding areas for my job.  It is still legal to discriminate against me and others like me based on our sexual orientation. At times, I can become anxious, nervous and worried that this is a real possibility for me. There could be people at any event I might attend that have homophobic ideas and this could create a situation that would might bring me harm.  Every single day, as I go about my daily life, I realize that I look, act, or talk “gay.” I look, act, and talk “gay” because it is who I am. Everyone should be able to be who they are and everyone should have the right to feel secure in being who they are. One in 12 trans people will be murdered for being transgender. This statistic and many more similar ones prompt me in my duty to be out, proud and visible, for those who can’t do it for themselves.  There are many people who aren’t able to be out proudly. They aren’t able to push those boundaries because they aren’t a white gay cisgender male. 

Hate crimes have increased by %11.7 from 2014 to 2016.  And yes, 2014 was the lowest since the FBI started tracking this data in 1992.  Should anyone ever live in fear of a hate crime being committed against them? Absolutely not.  Just to be clear, no one should have to live in fear of a crime committed against them. But hate crimes in my opinion, are especially heinous.  In 2017 hate crimes rose another %12.46 from 2016, so in 2 years they rose %24.16

Monday motivations can be inspiring, uplifting, positive, insightful and genuinely get your blood, brain, heart and desire to get going and have a great Monday.  I personally like these kinds of posts because I am a positive and excitable person. It doesn’t take much for me to have a great day. I love life and I love helping others enjoy it.   The ones I have found make me feel like I can solve problems, move those “mountains,” give positivity out to the world and get it back. I like to be reminded that what I’m doing in my job, how I can and do make a difference, even if I only register two new people to vote, that is two more votes.  Every vote makes a difference. What I do when sharing myself with others means something, not just to me, but to others out there who may not feel like they can be themselves. 

Me being me, not being afraid to show who I am every single day while registering new voters and getting our surveys filled out, could show someone else that it is okay.  I realize two votes won't make a difference alone, but when coupled with real political activism and extreme power at the polls, millennials make up the largest generation ever.  Millennials are 98 million people, the second largest is baby boomers, and at their peak they were only 78 million. One tweet I found is of someone doing hurdle drills. As a hurdler for our Bulldog Track Team, this tweet is super important to me because everyday I go run or lift I'm working towards the goal of winning a conference title.  It isn’t just a workout for me. It’s for my team and my school. I have to workout every day because someone else from Trinity, or another school will be doing the same thing and have the same goal. I have to work harder. I have to do the best I can to make a difference. It may just be hurdling to some, but to me, it’s making a difference for many. 

Day 17: The Attention Machine

                I want to make todays blog post fairly simple. First, because I am sick and don’t have a lot of brain power at the moment, and second, because today’s topic of discussion isn’t too complex of a concept. Today we talk about getting attention. I like to think about Tinkerbell, if she does not get attention, SHE DIES! This is the same concept with trends circulating the internet, such as the Ice Bucket Challenge example Vaidhyanathan gives, if these trends and challenges don’t get the attention or circulation from the media, they die off. These trends can be good in that they provide a way for awareness to spread quickly, but they also have their downfalls. The trends only last for so long.

            Recently on Facebook people are given the option for birthday fundraising. The first I saw of this was a lady I used to nanny for started one for childhood cancer for her birthday. One of the babies I looked after, Lennon Marguerite Walther, passed at 3 months old due to cancer. Since then, I have seen SO MANY of these Facebook birthday fundraisers. And after so long, the effect begins to wear off. I am sure we don’t see much about childhood cancer, except maybe those pitiful St. Jude commercials, but as Vaidhyanathan states, “Was the incidence of the disease rising? No, it was like any other year.” (Vaidhyanathan 95). It’s not hard to donate to a cause that resonates with you. The attention lies with what is being paid attention to, or what is trending at the moment. Facebook has been made a place for trying to gain attention on each organizations cause. “Publicity makes all the difference.” (Vaidhyanathan 96). The cause that has the best fundraising tactic online, gets the best funding. And I tend to agree with the author on this one, it is a terrible way to determine which cause should get more funding. It has become more about their presence on media and paying for ads, than about compassion for those involved. And many just participate in trends because, well, they are trends, and not for the compassion in raising the money for a good cause. The organizations attention has become their form of currency.

            This leads into the next attention seeking tactic; advertising. We have all become victim to googles advertisements at some point. For me, it usually has to do with camera equipment (Canon 5D Mark IV *drools all over keyboard*). I will be surfing the web for a recipe or for a class, something completely unrelated, and one of those stupid banner ads will pop up with my dream camera… and what do I do? I lose my attention of the task at hand and spend another 30 minutes dreaming about when my budget will allow my next purchase. How does google and Facebook get into our minds though? Kind of a creepy thought to most.

            Google has changed the way they do advertising. The company keeps careful records of searches and purchases we have made and then creates targeted ads that are made to pull our attention away from our tasks. It’s like they know what we like and what we just have to have! They do this because of the attention economy. Early advertising was made to see what you liked and they would spend so much money advertising to EVERYONE. But with the way our society works, Google wanted free. Or less money spent anyway. They now advertise to the individual. They know what will get you to buy something. And they advertise what YOU might like, not to everyone. Facebook does much the same thing. The use of “filter bubbles” helps Facebook fill your feed with things you pay attention to. The more things in common you like, the more Facebook will fill your feed that similar thing. A pretty simple concept, but still pretty creepy. It’s all about money!

            Being from a military family with a father who can hack any government computer system at any given moment, I am not concerned with the technology or systems we have in place. I am confident the government will protect us and not use our personal information to harm us. Like I said before, it’s all about companies getting their money. My mind always goes back to Orwell’s 1984. So perhaps in the future it could harm us, but as of right now, I don’t think we have anything to worry about.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing has become quite popular over the years. Especially with the rise of social media and the need to get data and input from many different people at once. I myself am totally for crowdsourcing. Me personally, I think it is a great way to get different perspectives and opinions on a topic from many different people. I myself am guilty of crowdsourcing; especially on facebook. When it comes to the nail polish and make up department, I am clueless. I don't know how to do makeup nor do I know which color nail polishes coordinate well with certain color dresses. Which is why when I have attended two weddings where I would have to dress up and look all nice, I turned to facebook to ask which color nail polish I should get. Sure it's not a serious question but it is a simple question that many different people can answer which allows me to eventually come up with a solution. By asking people's opinion on something such as nail polish color, it gives people the impression that I care about their opinion. I do care about certain people's opinion but not as many as some people may think. I have seen the good that crowdsourcing can do. Take for example Buzzfeed. One of the Buzzfeed posting concerns unsolved mysteries. Some include Jack the Ripper, missing people, spontaneous combustion, and the famous JonBenet Ramsey case. Most of the videos end with different theories of what happened to these people. What Buzzfeed unsolved has people do is post questions or comments on their social medias. What that allows is new theories to arise, possibly leading to more clues, and a high chance of the case being solved or maybe even the ability to point things out they may not have been caught initially. Maybe one day these videos will help solve one of these cases. Anyways, there is also the cases of where crowdsourcing has really helped people. There is this group of biker gangs that block the westboro baptist church. That way when the families are grieving their loved ones, they don't have to see that awful "church" picketing the funeral of their loved one. That I think is a great example of crowdsourcing doing good. It probably started from someone with an idea t shield families,  other people jumped on that idea because it helped people and now there is a whole biker gang of people doing this good deed. However, it's not to say that crowdsourcing is perfect because nothing is truly that perfect. I don't doubt that it has been used with bad intentions but all I have seen it do so far is more good than bad. I understand why companies do it; it's a quick, easy, and convenient way for them to reach out to their customers and then in turn the customers feel valued because the companies show that their opinion matters and so you get happy customers and happy companies and so everyone wins. Sure it's less personal but they get the results they want and they get them fast.

To Document or Not To Document

Looking at the amount of impact that people’s photos can have on not only yourself, but others is a very interesting concept because it is not something I have really ever thought about. But after reading these two articles, the authors both brought up very good points and reminded me of my own personal experiences with instagram and looking at other people’s vacation photos.

            With relation to pictures in general, I have noticed that people are so camera focused. Whether it be a concert, their kids play, or even a dinner with friends, people love to document almost everything in their lives. Whether it be to show others what they are up to or just for their own purpose, people tend to have this compulsive need to whip out their phones anytime something exciting is happening or if their kid is doing something that they deem document worthy. While I understand the need to document things for the later purpose of having it documented, sometimes I do wish people would just be in the moment. It’s not just the compulsive need to document everything that annoys me but people’s obsession with social media. I knew someone that whenever we hung out she would be on her phone the entire time which got very annoying. We could be at dinner, watching a movie together, or just even hanging out and she would be on her phone the entire time and wouldn’t even be involved in the conversations of others around her and the fact that she thought her phone was more interesting than the people sitting in front of her was quite annoying. I try my best when I am with my friends to not be on my phone. I don’t want to be that person who is remembered as the friend who was never able to hold a conversation because she was too invested in staring at her screen. I want to create these long-lasting memories and the only way for me to do that is to not be overly invested in my phone. In relation to the compulsive documentation, too often I come across peoples overly long snapchat stories where they have decided to document the entire concert or parent who wants to film their kids entire concert. I get wanting to document these sorts of things because they are exciting but by doing so they miss out on being in the moment and just enjoying the concert and the ability to see their favorite performer live and in person or just simply enjoy seeing their kid attempt to play an instrument or sing and while they may not sound great, it is still cute to see them try. I have been to too many recitals where the entire room is nothing but phones and iPads and it just kind of ruins the beauty of the moment.

            I have no doubt that social media can alter one’s memory of an event or moment. When people take pictures of things, what it ultimately does is that it forces us to focus on one specific thing and as a result we may miss out on other things. Henkel conducted an experiment where she led a bunch of undergrad students around a museum and they looked at all sorts of cool art stuff. Some were told to take pictures while others were told to simply observe. The next day, they were told to recall what they saw, and the result of this test was that those who were told to take pictures remembered less than those who were told to observe. I think that just goes to show the importance of being in the moment because by doing so you are really able to take in the scenery and see all the small details as opposed to being photo focused and just getting your “instagram worthy” shot. That is one the reason why they don’t want us on our phones at my job, because when you are on your phone, your ability to  properly supervise the children deceases significantly and you may miss something important; whether it be a fight between campers or an injury. If you properly supervise, you can properly assess the situation and figure out how you want to handle it and if you have to rely it to a higher up, you are able to do so because you witnessed it and were able to get both sides of the story by being invested in the conversation. In the end, I do understand why people take pictures and whatnot but I also think that being in the moment and taking in your surrounding is just as important because it allows you to enjoy things more and you remember more of what happened.

https://www.citylab.com/life/2013/12/how-camera-phones-modify-our-memories/7829/

Identity Work: Weighing on the good and the bad of performing identity work via social media (Blog Post 1)

Performing identity work is nothing new it has been around since the use of scrapbooks and the start of the photographic snapshot. It is an important piece when it comes to explaining the media traces people leave behind today, whether that be posting a picture of someone’s birthday in the family, it helps with the ritual model of reinforcing the social order or simplified as the “maintenance of society overtime.” This allows for roles to be played within the social world whether it be a brother, sister, mother, or father. The rise of snapshot adds to this showing the many ways one can use a photo to explain family ties and identity within ones family but it is the idea revolving around representations of identity work that creates a better understanding of what it means to perform identity work via media in todays society but there is one piece that makes identity work a little more complicated than expected and that is representation that is found in social media. On page 73 where the media scholar Nancy Thumin is quoted that there is a better understanding of what it means to share a post or image on social media, “When people perform their identities through media accounting, they create representations. The media traces they write or create become texts which can be read by themselves and others. Thumin argues that mediation of those traces matter because unlike performances which may be fleeting, representation is defined by mediation.” Representation defined by mediation helps answer why people portray themselves the way they do on social media due to outside framework of institutions and peers opinions like the “me” in chapter 1. You may wonder why representation is such an important theme to me. We use representation almost everyday with millions of photos being shared everyday on social media, it makes it hard to grasp the reality of what it means to perform an identity in society due to the constant changes in the social world one can get lost in with their own self-representation. Sooner or later finding them in an identity crisis. Neither performing the identity they want to nor understanding what identity is needed to perform for their peers around them. This is one of the most pressing issues for the next generation especially young teens trying to perform the roles given to them by society as well as the ones given through social media due to the way their representations are mediated by their peers and followers online. “Reclaim your Domain” found on Refinery29’s website is an article that explains this in detail. (https://www.refinery29.com/2017/03/146733/identity-crisis-causes-social-media-fake-world?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email_share) A good quote summing up the article is from Jill Walsh about social media and how some people (teens) are portrayed on it, “ It is definitely changing how we grow up and figuring out who you are. Teens are always having to manage the highlight reel of their life. That’s really hard because they’re trying to think about audiences they don’t even know.” The argument trying to be made from this article is where does the mediation of representation stop and the use of performing identity work start. Lizzie Steimer is a great example of this issue that is happening on all media platforms, she has tackled this identity crisis that can come from too much representation in media. ((https://instagram.com/p/BAdxSK6O7ES/?utm_source=ig_embed) Her instagram post defining what she represented before and what she is performing now in a more personal manner i.e. her own personal identity of herself)

This draws the fine line that we as social media users cross everyday posting online. Are we really representing ourselves or what others want us to be? Or are we following the identity work found on other sites like pinterests where we are consistently posting things that define us personally? In todays social world it has become common for many people to lose that ritual of interaction in the use of relational identity performances due to so much representation through mediation of posts that it can lead to negative outcomes like a loss of identity and how to perform it properly. How does one really know what identity work is and how to perform it successfully in our social world today when social roles and models are continuously changing on social media?

Paying the Price for Pleasure (Day 15)

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, all pleasure machines for the masses of the twentieth century. Reading the first chapter of Anti-social media by Siva Vaidhyanathan puts things in perspective for what it truly means to be online and what could come of it in due time. Broken down into comparisons to games like Candy Crush and chips to cupcakes in a given scenario the use of media today is turned on its head. In a sense through the important study of images on social media like the hotornot.com trend to the rise in Instagram over Hipstamatic, the pleasure of being online can be shown in a different light. I think the best way to sum up this dangerous system of time consumption for commerce in attention can be described on page 68 where Siva Vaidhyanathan describes the reasoning behind images shared on Instagram and Facebook,


 “ The experience of posting images to Facebook and Instagram is habit forming. “People often desire approval, or at least acknowledgment, from their peers. Clicking “like” on a photo says, “I’m thinking about you.” A comment could indicate even deeper attention. The commerce in attention—a sort of “gift economy” of time and energy—is powerful and valuable. Like a gambling machine, rewards (likes and comments) are intermittent and unpredictable. A photo posted to Instagram could garner dozens of responses, while the same one posted on Facebook could generate none. The algorithms that determine which photos pop up on whose feeds in both services are opaque and unpredictable—just like the algorithms that fix the cards in video poker or fruit on a fruit machine" (68).


 This so called “gift economy of time and energy” is the pleasure system that merits caution in the use of these media platforms. A great example is the 50 passengers found on the plane playing Candy Crush showing no real emotion but the constant effort and time the entire flight matching different colored candies together for hours on end showing the dangers of posting to this new media form not just with images but with any post. Driven by the system of likes and comments it can be unpredictable almost like gambling but with connections you make online and the content you put out there for them to look at. Keep pulling the lever to the game and you just might go for broke, taking away your life, your friends, your family. All your relationships to others outside of the ones on social media are at stake with this trend in media. “Social stickiness” is the game media platforms are playing today, the more you put in it does not necessarily mean your going to get the same out of it. That is why I would like to introduce the new studies and research being done on this new phenomenon of determining social media as a pleasure machine. This idea is no different than any other pleasure we seek in society, every one of them coming with negative outcomes especially with addiction. We need to tread carefully as we continue the use of images and other posts on social media because it can eventually hurt us in the long run. I think the best way to argue the importance of this pleasure machine we use constantly today is finding parallels in other areas of life where people try to find pleasure. A good example would be the use of coffee; a large majority of people uses this everyday, some even not able to start their day without it. As with any pleasure system there are setbacks just like with coffee, although most of the time you only get really bad headaches after not consuming coffee for a day or two, the affects of the pleasure system on social media can have lasting effects. I know it sounds crazy but hear me out media has become so popular and used it is like any other thing that we find pleasure in and that is put time and effort into it sometimes a little too much time. One could say you could lose touch with the world around you in a sense. Parallels have been drawn to this pleasure on social media as being the new opiate for the masses of today’s youth and society as a whole. An article by Noah Smith with some data on the matter as well as a few good points gives a good direction for the argument I am trying to make on the subject matter of social media being a pleasure machine and with any pleasure machine there is addiction which if not controlled and treated properly can become an large scale issue/epidemic especially one where nobody even knows they are addicted. Here is the page so that you can do some digging yourself into the article as well as the data and theories surrounding the idea of social media addiction.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-04/social-media-use-bears-similarities-to-drug-addiction

 Through the data one can understand the parallels between the two from the anxiety from nonuse to the decrease in real life social participation and academic achievement to the constant daily use of media it is hard not to see this pleasure machine as addicting. If given enough research like any other addiction whether that be from drug use to other pleasure machines this problem can be caught before it gets out of hand. Hopefully by sharing this parallel to drug addiction, the viewers of this blog post will proceed with caution and help others not fall into the trap of the new pleasure of the twentieth century social media.

ATTENTION MONOPOLY

Attention Monolpoly

Today's reading was very focused on how technology monopolizes our attention, and the negatives of that. When I think of something always having my attention, and bugging to keep my attention, I think of our cell phones. We get notifications of what keeps us the most distracted, and what we like to see. Some of these set to notify us when we've been away for a while. This always brings us back to what controls our attention. Williams mentions a DDoS attack where an attacker controls computers all at once and disengages them from communication. He then relates this to technology being a DDoS attack on humans (88). I liked this relation because it really makes me think about how technology really does control our attention and what we miss around us. 

ATTENTION CONTROL

Chapter 10 mentions a technique of attention control that YouTube has enhanced. 

In the red box at the top right of the page is an "UP NEXT" video, showing what video will be showing up next. They are always videos related to the video that you are watching at the time. A viewer would notice this, and be ready to watch the next video. Keeping them from leaving the page or going onto something else. Now, say a person didn't notice this in the corner of the screen. YouTube has it all covered. At the end of the video, a screen showing that same related video pops up, again, keeping the viewer interested. This is a very effective way of keeping people attention fixated on their site. I'm sure we've all been struck on those random YouTube video binges that seem to go on for hours. This is a main reason why. 

Now what could possibly be so bad about technology having so much of our attention? I get that it can keep us from experiencing the outside world, but isn't that a choice of the user?

Williams argues that technology moves and upgrades way to fast to keep up with. We never know the true effects of such digital technology because of that (98). This can be something that has a very negative effect on all users. Because we don't know the effects, we are unable to warn users of harm that it may cause. I think because we see technology being upgraded so rapidly, that we come to the assumption that it is constantly getting better for us. The newer upgrades make things easier and faster than the older ones. But since we can't take into account the negatives that come with it, how are we supposed to know how to upgrade the next piece to make it a better use for us? 

Day 14: Reclamation

I am really enjoying Williams' book. I think he addresses valuable points of thought but puts it in ways that are a bit easier to understand and process.

In his section of chapters titled "Freedom of Attention" we explore the topics of: The "fierce competition for human attention" influenced by technology, our behaviors in different environments and how technology plays a part in that, and how we can assert our freedom of attention.

From Chapter 10, "The Ground of First Struggle", we explore the topic of technology distracting from human interaction. He points out that these distractions have become more of annoyances than actual problems. I think that's because it has been so normalized to have a conversation with someone while they have a cellphone to their face or in their hand so when it does happen it isn't unheard of and it isn't a new experience. He expresses that it seems we can't fully admit how we actually want to be distracted. I thought this was an interesting point to make. Before this class I'm not sure I would have admitted that I specifically get on my phone to distract me but in just typing up this post I have found myself reaching for my phone and clicking on any app to avoid typing anymore. So, I decided to leave my phone in the other room while I finish up to eliminate that option. I think we can all agree this isn't even something we are aware of. We wake up in the morning, check our phone and scroll through social media and before you know it 30 minutes have passed.
Williams argues that this is political in two ways. "First, because our media are the lens through which we understand and engage with those matters we have historically understood as "political". Second, because they are now the lens through which we view everything, including ourselves."
He continues to bring light to how reliant we are on computers and discussed devices such as the amazon echo and google home. These all "help" people by becoming part of their home. He predicts that these models will advance and people will question their design. But people already have. I frequently wonder how much these devices are listening and have heard stories of them recording and sending private conversations. So as a shorter summary this chapter is essentially saying the goal of creators isn't to distract despite that being what happens but they are a business and they are fueled by our purchases and we continue to give in.

The biggest take aways from this reading come from chapter 12 & 13.

In chapter 12 he starts by asking if there is a point of no return for human attention. While I'm not sure if we still have that option Williams gives a few different ways we can get attention back. For this book he touches on "(a) rethinking the nature and purpose of advertising, (b) conceptual and linguistic reengineering, (c) changing the upstream determinants of design, and (d) advancing mechanisms for account- ability, transparency, and measurement."
In regards to advertising he makes a great point that it's hard to say what advertising is for when we don't even know what advertising is. Although I think we can agree it is us who fuels advertising through our interactions. We are constantly exposed to ads everywhere we go. Think about it, everywhere. Our first step for freedom of attention would be to have freedom of ad blocking. While we have that option on social media through blocking paid ads, you still have the exposure through billboards and through other people so that is not a freedom we yet posses.

The final big point I would like to discuss is the topic of "Designer's Oath". Williams recognizes it will be difficult to implement but we can conclude this oath wouldn't be legally binding. He states, "

It could be suggested that “design’ is a level of abstraction too broad for such an oath because different domains of design, whether architecture or software engineering or advertising, face different challenges and may prioritize different values.". Williams creates a version of the oath that I feel covers a lot of ground and would be effective if applied. 

"As someone who shapes the lives of others, I promise to:

Care genuinely about their success;

Understand their intentions, goals, and values as completely as possible;

Align my projects and actions with their intentions, goals, and values;

Respect their dignity, attention, and freedom, and never use their own weaknesses against them;

Measure the full effect of my projects on their lives, and not just those effects that are important to me;

Communicate clearly, honestly, and frequently my intentions and methods; and

Promote their ability to direct their own lives by encouraging reflection on their own values, goals, and intentions"

The risk with this is obviously that someone will break this promise. Williams admits that he knows people will think his ideas are too ambitious, too idealistic, and too utopian. And I have to admit I am one of those people. I don't think we can ever achieve not having distractions form technology and I don't think the Designer's Oath would be upheld which is a risk you run with any oath. As a society and a democracy I feel that we are too far from a utopia for this to even be an option... what do you think?