Unstable feedback loops

Figure 1. The major disadvantage of modern technological society.

We have an addiction problem, folks. We like shiny things. We like new things. And we especially love shiny new things. Nothing is more exciting than a shiny new technological toy. But we don't understand what the app permissions mean as we load a new thing on our phone. We don't understand how our privacy is slowly being eaten away by big data and the corruption of the NSA. We willingly put our lives online, mash them up, shake them around and see what big corporations whose only interest is to make money off our flaccid eyeballs can do with the data.

I am no Luddite. I'm not saying that the problem is that we can't go back to better times, starving in the woods huddled in unheated cabins hoping bears don't eat our faces. And I'm not saying that the bad part is our ignorance. The bad part is that we can't see that we're caught in a trap, a poison trap taking slow-growing gaseous pieces from capitalism, laziness, and cynicism. We get to the bottom of the cycle and shrug our collective shoulders: oh well, guess Facebook is going to store my data for all time and use it for whatever fun and nefarious purposes they can come up with! Nothing we can do!

Instead of stopping, standing up, and wondering how it could be different, we slog onward and just keep adding more poisons to our plate. An ad-driven internet? Sure, that's pretty nasty. How about we kill net neutrality so that censorship and class divisions can really start kicking into high gear on the internet? Sounds great. Let's let the NSA weaken our infrastructure for their needs, so it's weak against them and everyone else's attacks. Groovy. Nothing we can do about that, now!

I am no cynic, either. I think there are certainly solutions to these problems. We're just not going to find them by frantically flailing around, refreshing Facebook in a narcissistic haze. We're going to have to study things closely, adjust our uses of technology carefully, and stop assuming that the system has our best interests in mind.

The system just wants to keep careening in the direction it's going. We can sit and watch it and wait if we want, because who knows? Maybe it will careen into an interesting place that's good for everyone. Now, that's the kind of optimism we can't afford.