ljsinclair

Crisis of empathy

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I quit my job this week because I couldn't stand the idea of contributing to a massive problem. Reports of schoolchildren using technology to generate pornographic images of girls pushed me over the edge.

And here's a thing: I don't think the boy who created the images was being deliberately cruel or malicious. He didn't understand the thing he created would hurt the girls so much. He couldn't understand because he's not held to the same standards as women. He couldn't conceptualise the shame and horror the girls are feeling right now because he's never had to experience it. And the backlash against him, questioning by the police, the shame his parents now feel, the shame he feels, is a result of the society we've created for ourselves, one that values one gender over the other, that values the accumulation of wealth over our own lives, the environment we live in, and the people around us.

All this is leading to my point: we have a crisis of empathy and it's getting worse.

I can bang on about our social system, where one gender is socialised to believe success is based on physical strength and aggression, and making people hear you. The other is socialised to be quiet, accepting and to hold their opinions back, especially when it:

And I can go on about the vast empathic gap between those who have power and money, and those who do not.

The financial gap has existed for thousands of years; kings versus their slaves, feudal lords versus peasants, bosses versus employees. But IMO, both have been made So Much Worse in the past quarter century because now we're living in a panopticon:

Everything we do, everything we say and touch, where we go, our opinions, loves and fears are harvested by everything from smartphones, TVs, websites, the cars we drive; ultimately anything with a computer in it is sucking on our lives like leeches, growing fatter and fatter as they ingest the lifeblood of our very existence.

We're manipulated, by social media algorithms that:

  • feed us things that confirm our biases (they could be cats, right-wing nazis, funamentalist religion or TERFing)
  • to keep us on the site as long as possible
  • so the company gets money from the advertising that appears beside all that stuff,
  • and our personal obsessions become more and more extreme.

We're enticed by memberships that give us very little in exchange for everything we do or buy, all to keep us buying over-priced food or clothes, or whatever from a particular retailer. And they're also making money when they sell our data to third parties to do Who Knows What?

When we search for information in search engines, everything is about money, not about giving us the information we're searching for.

  • Search engines make money at both ends, by taking a small amount of cash from advertisers to display their products based on the search terms (keywords) we enter
  • Websites can make money by using those same search terms in their websites
  • and the search engines make cash from using our data to further manipulate our behaviour, to direct other advertisers to us, to market relentlessly at us.

This was supposed to ensure quality results. But over the years, it's become a way to make more and more money, not just by appearing in searches and having us clicking through, but also by encouraging us to do things we would never have done In Real Life. Would you hand over your personal information to a complete stranger in reality? Probably not, because who knows what they'll do with your passport or your credit card or even your address? So why the hell do we do the same on the web?

And it's only getting worse.

  • Spam and malware can be sent out in billions of SMS, instant message and emails because the systems they're using are being exploited, and the companies that run those systems are constantly playing catch-up.
  • AI can now generate tons and tons of plausible sounding SEO-stuffed text that's flooding the World Wide Web, and making money for the creators. And any blocking by the search companies is worthless because they're blocking single sites and can't catch up with the firehose of crappy content.

That's the consequence of their business model. And we're the ones who pay the price. Well, us and the environment. Or do you think the cloud is something in the sky? Massive energy-sucking, carbon-emitting server farms are creating tons of greenhouse gases, taking water and resources from the people around them.

But returning to the Web of all things created by Tim Berners-Lee back in the 1990s...

History of the Web

... what was fun, interesting and unusual back then has been turned into billion dollar businesses that can't be touched by governments, by individuals or by countries:

And by the same token, the businesses that are the root cause of these problems have grown fat on our data and, short of a joint effort by the governments of the world, will go on exploiting our lives for their gain.

I don't want to be a Monty Python Yorkshireman (things were better in my day!) but it's unavoidable.

The web really was better before it was turned into a way for people to make tons of money.

Communities formed. We talked. There were disagreements but we got over them. We didn't DOXX women for expressing their opinions. We didn't turn people's lives into hell because we didn't like what they had to say. We Got The Fuck Over It and got on with our lives.

Any benefit the web, or indeed search engines and social media provided at their inception is gone.

I don't know what the solution is, short of dismantling the whole system and starting again.

I don't know how many billions these companies will accumulate before someone at the top says it's enough and maybe they could put something back into the communities they're exploiting.

I don't know how much damage they'll do to us humans, and the environment before we wake up and smell the apocalypse.

We're already at an environmental tipping point:

There's also a lot of evidence that we're at a technological one, too:

But it's a deficit of empathy that allows this all to continue.

  • How many women are at the head of a tech company making money off AI, Social Media, Search?
  • What about CALD - Culturally and lingusitically diverse people
  • How many of these people have actually experienced life in the firing-line of these technologies, who have been abused for who they are, what they express, how they live, their gender, skin colour?
  • And how many of these people are continuing faster and faster toward some imaginary future where their systems actually work?
  • Finally, how many of the actual people at the top have billions in the bank, as compared to the rest of us?

We're overdue for a revolution. But it will have to be distributed, or the governments of the world get together to actually fix this problem.

And honestly, how likely is that?

Thoughts? Leave a comment