If you listen to tech evangelists (is it just me or are they getting fewer in number?), you will hear that the sunlit uplands of the metaverse are just around the corner. By contrast, doommongers warn of surveillance capitalism and robot overlords. Who is right? Can I just enjoy the ride – or should I be joining the resistance?
To some extent all inventions bring with them a similar anxiety. By their very nature, they involve a change to the status quo and new and unknowable futures. We cannot know how things will play out and even the most rigorous preparations cannot fully protect us from unintended consequences. And without wishing to be too defeatist, genies almost never go back into their bottles. Today’s new becomes tomorrow’s normal, whether we like it or not.
Robert Good – Phone Me (Red)
What is different this time seems to centre around addiction. On every high street, in every train carriage, at every music festival you will see people speaking into, looking at or watching through their phones. We seem to be unable to disconnect in a way that was surely not the case with books, telephones, cars and other previous life-changing new technologies. You may say that we have become addicted to our cars: well we certainly live in a car culture and many would find it difficult to function without one, but most of us don’t nip downstairs to the garage to sit in our car one last time before bed and we don’t decide to spend a spare five minutes driving to the end of the road and back. We are hooked to our tech in a way which we have not been hooked before.
Tech addiction seems particularly difficult to shake. First of all, tech is now virtually essential to our being functioning citizens. It is no longer possible to just ditch our phones and our tablets. Many people do not own a car; a lot of people do not read books. But try to book tickets, renew your passport or pay a utility bill and it soon becomes apparent that we are being funnelled online towards a digital identity. Once online, our tech interfaces are actively designed to maximise screentime (see for example ‘Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products’ by Nir Eyal). So we have no choice but to use tech; and tech then manipulates and exploits our behaviours in unhealthy and addictive ways.
There are similarities to the food industry. We cannot do without food, but proecessed meals frequently contain way too much salt, sugar and fat. We are being offered a tasty, desirable (and addictive?) product, but one which is ultimately not good for our health. But at least there are still alternatives, healthy eating options, fresh food, home baking. With tech it feels as though we are only being offered the processed food.
But to end on a positive note. My visit to the San Francisco Mint to see an exhibition of augmented reality artworks was a pure joy. I put on the headset and before my eyes sprang mythical creatures in bright psychedelic colours that I could walk through and around. Unfortunately I could not take any pictures: ironically, the tech wouldn’t work on my phone.
New tech is undoubtedly a modern miracle and beneficial in so many ways. I could just do without the manipulation.
