The Internet as a synthetic drug

 

(Header image by Steve Cutts)

Why are many of us in the digital world more than we want and than is good for us?

Do you remember any specific moment from all those hours in the digital world, or is it all a blur?

Have you learned a language, played an instrument, some deep life lesson, or laughed your guts out through the digital world?

What does the Internet bring you? If all your digital devices were broken, would we lose anything important?

If the Internet limits our ability to pursue what is good, we are not free, just as an addicted person is not free.

Persuasive design

"Persuasive design is an area of design that focuses on influencing human behavior through the characteristics of a product or service" (taken from a website that offers persuasive design courses).

"Customer engagement is the direct route to all relevant business objectives. It's the path to all the good a business could want" (a Consumer Experience Expert)

The persuasive design makes use of colors and brightness in the same way as slot machines. Companies are turning the Internet into a drug designed to sell our attention to companies that put ads on the Internet.

"With eye-tracking, we get a very detailed picture of what people do when they look at a screen" (Jen Romano, about the research she does for Facebook and Instagram) [1].

A Facebook pitch to advertising companies is leaked saying they can detect when young people are feeling 'failed', 'stressed', 'defeated', 'anxious', 'stupid' etc. [2].

A humanity enslaved by the Internet and corporations?

"African Americans living in poor neighborhoods are likely to respond disproportionately to ads for payday loans with high interest rates. Hispanics between the ages of 18 and 25 are likely to engage with ads that sing the charms and benefits of military service” (former Facebook executive, Antonio Garcia-Martinez) [3].

Technology gives companies and the State the ability to do what they want without any coercion. The researchers and executives who are forging our chains think only of maximizing profits and making discoveries in their field, as Ted Kaczinsky predicted. They have no moral impediment to doing what they do. Only if we separate ourselves from the digital world can we avoid slavery.