We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Two billion minds are being hijacked by technology

Click here to access article from Time Well Spent.

I suggest a much better, more accurate title for this post: "Two billion minds are being hijacked by capitalists using digital technology". With a little reflection, it is so obvious that technology is neutral. It's like a tool, it can be used for a variety of purposes. Unfortunately in our social-economic system of capitalism, technology is being used to enrich the One Percent--and mostly at our expense.
Products designed around engagement-based business models hook people for as long as possible. Each interaction teaches these products how to glue us more perfectly to our screens, steering us toward their goals while vanishing ours away....
It's clear that people at this website are very well-meaning, but also are trapped in a mindset by many years of indoctrination to believe that capitalism is our natural environment, like water is to fish. They believe that we simply must accept it and naively believe that we can make technology serve social goals within a system which was designed to serve only an inevitably shrinking, and now tiny, class of people (capitalists) in societies consisting of billions of people.

You might also be interested in this 3:48m video as an amusing illustration: