"Politics of Infrastructure"
Circular reasoning
may lie at the heart of why all the criticism hurled at Facebook (and to a much
lesser extent at Google) doesn’t trigger any change. Fred Turner elaborates by explaining what
Facebook and Google believe in… truly:
“It started with, “Don't be evil.” So then
the question became, “Okay, what's good?” Well, information is good.
Information empowers people. So providing information is good. Okay, great. Who
provides information? Oh, right: Google provides information. So you end up in
this loop where what's good for people is what's good for Google, and vice
versa.”
Replace
“information” with “connecting people” above, and you get Facebook.
Turner has a
pretty good description of the current “ethics of engineering”:
“The ethics of engineering are an ethics
of: Does it work? If you make something that works, you’ve done the ethical
thing. It’s up to other people to figure out the social mission for your
object.”
But today we
increasingly see the “politics of infrastructure”, says Turner:
“(Engineers need to recognize) that the
built environment, whether it's built out of tarmac or concrete or code, has
political effects.”
The problem is
compounded because Silicon Valley is full of young people:
“Our society tends to give permission to
younger people to do certain kinds of experimenting.”
When those
experiments then produce some of the largest companies in history, you have
young people at the helm. With little experience of the “real” world. Who don’t
realize or appreciate the dangers of their companies influencing politics (with
or without manipulation).
The situation gets
worse when the people screaming about the dangers believe that “expression is
action”. No, mere expression isn’t
action. They need to build or modify institutions, and put checks in place. But
for that, they need to understand how the tech (including smartphones) and
algorithms work, what’s feasible and what isn’t. Unfortunately, both the media
and politicians are totally unqualified for that role.
Which is probably
why there is an increasing push to teach ethics to programmers, a la the Hippocratic Oath. One variant has these
points:
“I will respect the privacy of my users,
for their information is not disclosed to me that the world may know.
I will remember that I do not write code
for computers, but for people.
I will consider the possible consequences
of my code and actions. I will respect the difficulties of both social and
technical problems.”
All of this makes
me feel that the problem, while solvable, isn’t going to get solved as fast as
many would like.
Ultimately it all boils down to the way of human mind. Behavior, social or personal, is expected to be within some limits, although any such limit would still be an arbitrary or even whimsical notion. In the meantime, since all beings are self-centered. Thus, the extent to which to take advantage of others will forever lead to manipulation and exploitation. While this blogs focuses on some part of this scenario, it is actually more extensive than that.
ReplyDeleteWith respect to the finish line, "All of this makes me feel that the problem, while solvable, isn’t going to get solved as fast as many would like", I think this is an euphemism. I mean, "All the social/political problems, of which manipulating information to suit vested interests, is not solvale, hence I call "while solvable" euphemism for that! Further, the point that it 'isn’t going to get solved as fast as many would like' is an euphemism too, because it puts behind the inexorable: it won't be solved ever!"
=============
My conclusion is not pessimism or any immersion in negativity. I continue to endorse the spiritually wise people's suggestion, "Do not insist to set the world right, even if putting in the right effort should be done and we should not shrink away from it. The truth is that the world will forever remain the same - mixture of good and bad". That is not pessimism but acceptance of reality without forever reacting or resisting.
The wise suggestion therefore continues with, "Aim to redeem yourself personally for which you need to set a high standard of caring behavior. "Caring" is the keynote here, and it has the necessary insistence that "care for everything, not oneself and one's own interst only". People may not easily believe this but individually it is not only attainable but actually it lends support to the realization of the most crucial truth which we ignore or reject without any evaluation about its veracity. That is indeed the question of what is the truth of my real nature". We may choose to ignore this question, but the question is far too deep to be buried through anything and certainly any wishful preferences. This question is at the root of it all and it will forever non-negotiable.
Why I keep rambling is because this is my truth - the only truth that has haunted me for decades now. All our problems have their roots on one single thing: our identity resting on false premises. Now, the immersion into false identity needs to go non-stop so as to occupy the mind, which abhors vacuum - the pure nothingness, the very basis of all identities. Life is nothing but our desperation to buttress our false identification, to keep it going by feeding the mind non-stop (which thrives and keeps deluding us about our identity actually). We never realize that it is that 'mind rakshas' who is our master demanding constant food for his own survival! :-)
It is for us to choose whether we want to serve our mind like slaves or make the mind serve us, its master.