Philosophy and Technology Writing Project: "Why Silicon Valley can’t fix itself"

"Tech humanists say they want to align humanity and technology. But this project is based on a deep misunderstanding of the relationship between humanity and technology: namely, the fantasy that these two entities could ever exist in separation."

Famously, Socrates did not write anything down, and most of what we know about his teachings come to us via his student, Plato. He did not write anything down because he was suspicious of that new invention of writing, that it would separate him from his words, which could then be used to misrepresent him. As Ben Tarnoff and Moira Weigel tell us in "Why Silicon Valley can’t fix itself", Socrates warned us that writing would make us forgetful in Plato's Phaedrus. And there is no question that our brains, and our human nature, has evolved to adjust to our technical innovations. This is not necessarily a bad thing; as the authors put it, "we lose certain capacities, we gain new ones."

"The nature of human nature is that it changes."

Given this, to speak of technology as if it were separate and apart from human nature is a mistake for which the authors criticize a new group of technologists (we might even say technocrats) who are leading the way in thinking about the repercussions of our current technological landscape. In their opinion, they also tend to dehumanize the user of these technologies (speaking of their reptilian brains) and to speak from a place above and beyond the fray, in what they call a paternalistic tone, often "invoking the language of public health" and pathologizing the very use their technology is meant to produce (i.e., addictive behaviors). That is, blame is laid at the foot of the weak individual rather than the powerful companies that have amassed great wealth by creating mass addictions.

"Pathologising certain potentially beneficial behaviours as “sick” isn’t the only problem with the Center for Humane Technology’s proposals. They also remain confined to the personal level, aiming to redesign how the individual user interacts with technology rather than tackling the industry’s structural failures."

One such group is organized itself as The Center for Humane Technology, headed by one Tristan Harris, "a former 'design ethicist' at Google who has been hailed by the Atlantic magazine as 'the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a conscience'." Another group is the Tech and Society Solutions Lab launched by Pierre Omidyar, the billionaire founder of eBay.

There is no question that technocrats are currently all of our "daddys." We have given them so much power to define and find solutions for our current human problems, even those caused by the very same technologies that they would like to propose as a solution. The authors nail it when they write:

"Far from challenging Silicon Valley, tech humanism offers Silicon Valley a useful way to pacify public concerns without surrendering any of its enormous wealth and power. By channelling popular anger at Big Tech into concerns about health and humanity, tech humanism gives corporate giants such as Facebook a way to avoid real democratic control. In a moment of danger, it may even help them protect their profits."

There is a problem even calling these individual technocrats and technologists "tech humanists." Why? Because they are not humanists. Being trained in the humanities, and being a humanists, is a way of being in the world and a perspective that cannot be adopted overnight. It creates the possibility of ignoring and quashing any discussion and critique from actual trained humanists, including philosophers, about the impact of our current technological landscape on our malleable human nature.

Thesis

There is an alternative. If being technological is a feature of being human, then the power to shape how we live with technology should be a fundamental human right. The decisions that most affect our technological lives are far too important to be left to Mark Zuckerberg, rich investors or a handful of “humane designers”. They should be made by everyone, together.

"Rather than trying to humanise technology, then, we should be trying to democratise it. We should be demanding that society as a whole gets to decide how we live with technology – rather than the small group of people who have captured society’s wealth."

I would like this idea if I trusted that a collective, politicized "we" were in a position to demand better technologies, which we are not. After decades of technological capitalist assaults on our personal lives and psyche, are we capable even of imagining otherwise? No, I think we need actual humanists and artists to lead the way in thinking through our current technological moment. Not leaders already entrenched in technological ways of being in the world, however well intentioned, but philosophers, literary folk, historians, social geographers, techno-science phenomenologists, and artists as well, we all need to take our place (outside of academia) and at the very least have a place at the tables where these issues are being discussed.

As someone trained in philosophy who has become a web developer, I have acutely felt the way that technologies are being developed in a mode that is dehumanizing. Interestingly, when I have pointed this out, I don't think my points were well understood. For example, the use of data to manage people and their performance at work or at school; sociology studies have shown that this doesn't work or end well, and it is dehumanizing. And yet, more and more companies are using algorithms to tie dubiously obtained performance data to evaluations and promotions. It has also been used in school to track teachers' and students' performance. The uses and misuses of data is too important a topic to be left to people who make a living from collecting and selling it.

Repeat after me: Data is for managing systems, not people.

There is a chasm in perspective and understanding that technologists need to become humble enough to hear from others. Another area that has recently been in the news has to do with privacy. I know some say that there is now a generation that does not value their privacy, and who might say my views on privacy are old fashioned, but I'm willing to bet that within the next 20 years we will all come to re-value our privacy and come to understand what humanists already know - that privacy is necessary for the development of "individuality" (in philosophical terms, it's not individuality but specificity...). Ironically, it is the ability for us to develop original ideas and to innovate that is in peril by the current direction of our technological innovations. Humans need space, specifically psychic space, commonly in the forms of privacy and boredom, to flourish as humans.

Politically there is a question here: is it a mistake that our interior spaces are being eroded, rotted out by the use of these technologies? What interests are served by us being technologically captivated as we are? A critique of technology today is also a critique of capitalism as expressed through our current technological landscape. Is more, better alienation not the point?