Humanity is Held Captive by Technology
For decades, we’ve built technology to serve us. Humanity, as a collective, has spent an unfathomable amount of time, money, and resources to advance technology to where it is today. Now, this technology is ubiquitous: our computers, transportation and, most importantly, our phones are all vital to us in the modern world. But humanity has created such an incredible invention that we have ultimately lost reign over our creation — and catalyzed our demise.
By advancing technologies — including home assistants and smart advertising networks — that predict behavior and collect data, we have given way for technology to write its own programs and, therefore, make its own decisions. In 2016 alone, tech companies invested between $20 billion and $30 billion in the development of AI worldwide — a number that grows exponentially each year (Forbes, 2016). Our innovative instincts have caused us to push forward and continue building, “regardless of the financial cost. However, in our blind motivation to continue, we may have disregarded the moral obligation as well.”
The most significant development in the modern tech arena is in marketing, advertising, and data collection. Most consumers, such as users on Instagram, friends on Snapchat, or shoppers on Amazon, are unaware of the terms and conditions that they agree to. Private companies like Google collect usage data, bury it in legal terms incomprehensible to an average user, and distribute it to government alliances such as the Five Eyes, an information-sharing collective used to spy on citizen’s communications across diplomatic and governmental borders. If you are online, there is an implicit guarantee that the services you use know absolutely everything about you, from the device you own to the kind of fruit you buy at the store. You are online — and you are property of the services you use.
Ultimately, these services need to make money — take Facebook, for example. Microsoft’s acquisition of 1.6% of Facebook in 2007 valued the company at 15 billion dollars, and the company had little to no profits or revenue to show for their 50 million users (MSFT, 2007). Just one month following Microsoft’s valuation, Facebook launched Beacon, an ad program that enabled Facebook to track users across platforms, even when customers were not actively using Facebook services. Activist groups recognized these programs as red flags due to their invasive nature, but users didn’t care as long as it didn’t interfere with their experience online. As social media strategist Oz Sulton said in 2007, “A lot of [young people] are totally willing to give up tons of privacy information for like, free crap” (Sulton, 2007). Beacon, coupled with Facebook’s News Feed, began to pull users to endlessly scroll through their screens. As a result, Facebook began capitalizing on users’ engagement with the content on their mobile devices and Beacon’s ability to collect data on the same users, turning a profit from the addictive personalized content it was now able to serve.
The advertising epidemic isn’t exclusive to Facebook; while Facebook may have implemented cross-site tracking first, “free” services such as Google, Youtube, and online news outlets were not far behind. Google created their new “Adwords” and “Adsense” programs to rival Facebook’s Beacon — now called the “Facebook Audience Network,” — and the ad race began. Capitalizing on free services (Google search, Instagram [a subsidiary of Facebook] accounts, etc) to draw in more and more subjects to their advertising experiments, both companies began competing for their user’s attention. It didn’t matter whether algorithms were serving real news or falsified propaganda — as long as they kept coming back, they could continue profiting. As long as the content wasn’t hurting anyone, what was the harm?
Sadly, the average consumer doesn’t care. As long as the user experience is seamless from the front-end, it is nearly impossible for consumers to perceive or understand the true impact of consenting to the tracking and collection of their data online. And for most people, it doesn’t matter. But if a company builds a profile on you and can predict your next move in the real world, when will technology finally dominate humanity? If Facebook can predict precisely where you’re going to be, what you’re going to buy, or who you’re going to vote for, then Facebook can figure out how to influence your decisions — as they did prior to the 2016 presidential election with marketing firm Cambridge Analytica (Wong, J. C, 2019). Targeted advertising is merely the tip of the iceberg, a warning of what’s to come. Google is not a search company. Amazon is not a store. Microsoft isn’t a software company. These are all just convenient excuses to collect your data and sell it to the highest bidder, whether that be a small business selling pastries or your government watching you. We are the products, not the customers. Our data is the reward, and our silicon-driven phones are the backdoor into our lives. Rules and regulations don’t work because the interests of our own governments align with the companies collecting our data. Our creation has evolved and will continue to grow into an invention that controls us, not the other way around. We need to think twice before clicking “I agree,” before signing that waiver, before entering our addresses and social security numbers and emails into websites we barely know. To reverse the tide, we must act against these companies, but no one will pause the show. No one will give up two-day delivery or likes they’ve earned on a post, even if it means sacrificing their freedom for these services. We’re on the Titanic, we see the iceberg, and yet we travel full steam ahead.
