Week 5 Discussion — Academic/Matt

Part One:
Systems of codified information develop hierarchies of value in the unscrambled message, and the pervasive encryption driven by those who would seek to protect or expose communications now dominates the digital economy. These encryptions raise deeply ethical questions about the weaponized retention, consent, ownership and privacy of such messages, where people are the weakest link in the chain, as creators, users and regulators, none of which are created equal across different cultures.

Part Two:
Binary oppositions of good and bad don’t just limit our understanding of technological change, they limit of understanding of change itself. We struggle to place linguistic limitations on technological innovation, because there is no material concept of universal good or bad inside of the technologies we build. They are not good or bad, they are degrees of good and bad. We may find the systems of advertising tracking and gamed engagement abhorrent in the context of privacy and consent, while concurrently enjoying next-day delivery and the discounts such an exchange brings. We may find the kinds of data harvesting in mobile devices deeply unethical while still using them hundreds of times a day. Or we might aspire towards digital experiences which present an unbiased reflection of the world around us, while simultaneously still only visiting those destinations which support our existing world views.

The technological innovations brought by magnetic tape offer the user benefits of portability and convenience while also introducing issues of copyright and unauthorized distribution. Conversations around good and bad often center around the tension between what’s good for business, and what’s good for the user, and these forces can often be felt in opposition rather than combination. The value of magnetic tape, especially the use of cassettes in the car, brought tremendous popular scale to the use of the format, while also giving rise to the mixtape and the concept of playlists. Why listen to the entire album when you can just listen to the tracks you like across multiple albums, or better still, never buy the album at all and record everything off the radio for free? Such activities might hold the promise of good in the short term, but still concurrently actively promote bad in the long term. The duplication of information might have benefits for the immediate intended use, but such copying at scale also erodes the ability for more original content to be produced. If recording artists no longer have the means to support themselves through the sale of their music, what does that do to the viability of being an artist at all? We may think of file sharing as heralding new means of musical discovery and economy, but this continues to be deeply contentious for the music industry, despite repeated attempts at regulation.

So technological innovation doesn’t bring binary oppositions, it motivates binary combinations. And the limbic space created by the two often opposing forces is where we dispute a product’s value. Users often live in this space as those both subject to the benefits of the product in their lives, while concurrently giving the product, often unwittingly, their own information. As the saying goes, if the product is free, then you are the product.

I will be creating an individualized project reviewing Standage’s book from our current vantage point, using issues relevant since 2014 to support why his book is still worth reading in our current era. This will take the form of an animated video with a narrated voiceover posted on YouTube.

Abstract:
Standage’s 2014 The Victorian Internet draws strong parallels between the rich history of the development of the telegraph and our current digital experiences. Concerning technological echoes of privacy, regulation, unintended consequence and erosion of human agency were as clear in the nineteenth century as they are today. But since 2014 a lot has happened not just to technology, but also to us as users. The exponential growth of mobile computing, the pervasive concern of generative artificial intelligence, and the hidden hands of influence over the data we willingly share have all significantly changed since Standage’s original work. While many of these concerns are consistent, we also hold firm to our aspiration and assumption for technology to solve human problems. Standage describes the hopes that the Victorian telegraph would collapse differences between cultures and unite peoples. 2014’s Facebook sought to make the world more ‘open and connected’. 2024’s generative artificial intelligence seeks to put the global power of computing to work in service of solving long-standing problems of disease. These are assumptions which are repeatedly proven problematic. But within our hopes for technological solutions to human problems, comes the need to deal with humans themselves. This project concerns our repeated assumptions, and seeks to explore this delta between the risks of what technology has wrought and the hopes of what humans have brought.

Introduction: The Moment Caught: Ten Years Later

Common themes between Standage’s 2014 book and The Victorian Internet
Which themes are even more relevant or concerning in 2024?
- Role of human agency, privacy, mediated connection, regulation and unintended consequences
- Current technological examples include generative artificial intelligence, mobile connectivity, voice recognition and messaging
What are the problematic human assumptions being repeated over time?
Metaphor as a means by which we can draw lines of distinction and separation between The Victorian Internet, 2014 and 2024

Part One: The Promise Brought: Benefits & Bridges

Human aspiration of unification and exuberance in the cultural benefits brought by the collapsing of time and space between people
Assumption that a more connected, unified world is a source of good is repeated over time
Technology expedites innovation and drives positive economic outcomes through good intention, generates ‘common sympathies’
The promise that technology will solve human problems, bring convenience to lives, and expedite unwanted tasks, develop prosperity
Motivates the myth of progress and the importance of human agency in technological decision making around ‘better’
Who are these promises for?

Part Two: The Consequence Wrought: Privacy & Price

Erosion of human agency and privacy, bad actors and the unintended consequence of increased connectivity
Technology motivates changes in communication between people through abbreviated efficacy
The data-harvested price of engagement and habituation when we are the product
Consequences wrought by unintended outcomes of assumptions which are false
Not all benefit from technological innovation - not all promises are created equal
Weaponization of platforms by bad actors for economic and political outcomes

Part Three: The Future Sought: Acceptable Assumptions

Innovation is incremental, cumulative and additive
We cannot understand the way in which technology is re-shaping cultural norms while we are still living through it
We seek change in the world rather than to add something new to it
Product creators always need to rely upon assumptions about their users and the degree of risk they feel is acceptable
Opposing forces of business outcomes and user needs, who is the product and why? Issues of affordability and adoption
Technologies co-exist for much longer than they are widely used

Conclusion: A Closing Thought

Binary of ‘What God Hath Wrought’ and ‘What Man Hath Brought’ helps us span the ten year gap between 2014 and 2024
What has been brought has the aspiration toward solving the most human of problems, but the problem is always the humans themselves
Assumption that a more connected, unified world is a source of good is repeated over time
The exuberance which we often frame as better is only better for some
All innovation comes with a price. It is up to us to understand if the exchange is worth it.

Mapping

https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVNKbhTms=/?share_link_id=238075232220