DIGITAL INTRUSION?
Last
June I posted an entry titled ‘Google As Pied Piper’. That chronicled an
experience with Google maps that I found to be not only alarmingly but intrusive
to the point of being definitely dangerous. The good news that time was that we
were able to reach home unmolested. But it could have been anything depending
upon how the so-called algorithms behind Google Maps functioned. However, much
has come into public focus since then and it turns out that large sections of
people all over the world are coming alive to the real danger posed by social
media to the fabric of society. It has been recognised that it poses a clear threat
to democratic processes and that it has played no small role in muzzling the
voices of millions of people across the world. Most recently it has been Facebook
and Chinese apps that have been facing flak. Mark Zuckerberg was summoned by
American congressmen after the Cambridge Analytica uproar over sharing of
personal information. But other bigwigs of the digital world like Amazon,
Facebook and Google were also summoned by the Intelligence Committee of the
American Senate on the apprehensions of foreign interference in US elections. Curiously,
neither Alphabet CEO Larry Page or Google chief executive Sundar Pichai
appeared for the hearing, raising suspicions about what they may have had to
hide.
The
Watergate Scandal it may be recalled involved the bugging of the US Democratic
Party headquarters by President Nixon and his Republican boys. So huge was the
Watergate Scandal that it resulted in the unceremonious exit of President
Richard Nixon. The book and the film ‘All the President’s Men’. (Those
interested in knowing more about it could see an interview of Richard Nixon by
Robert Fox, ironically available on the site of another social media giant –
YouTube). Earth shaking events by any standards, considering that in those days
the United States was one of only two super powers in the world. In terms of
economic might, it was the only super power. The ripple effects of a drastic
regime change there was sure to be felt all over the world.
But
the world has changed vastly since those days both in terms of US power and the
value of privacy. Soviet Union, the other Super Power, disintegrated in 1991
apparently leaving the US as the unchallenged power. In terms of technology the
internet has seemingly trapped the entire world in its so-called world-wide net
but instead of a spider there are several giant corporations that have become
the biggest private media companies ever known to man. The older seven or eight
giants have paled into insignificance compared to new companies like Google,
Facebook and Amazon all of which gather enormous amounts of information from
individual human beings who also happen to be their customers. Getting bugged
or spied upon is no big deal any longer, partly of course because of the fact
that few people are actually aware that they are under close surveillance. People
just walk around nonchalantly with such scandals literally in their pockets. I
am of course, referring to the ubiquitous mobile smart phone loaded with
applications or apps and “wonderful” high definition cameras on both surfaces
of the phone which are actually two-way cameras. You use it like an ordinary
camera while images are passed on to the various software operators on the
phone.
And
to top it all, the bugging is even considered to be prestigious if your grossly
overpriced device carries the sign of a moth-eaten apple on it!! Reminds one of
the economics propounded by that Wizkid who helped Obelix market his
practically useless menhirs in Asterix comics. The tragi-comedy of it all is
that most people who use smart phones are not even aware that the wonderful
multi-megapixel cameras with which they click those cute selfies are also used
to spy on their every activity and gather all manner of information. Do you
want an example? Well, my phone informs me every evening ‘ten minutes to home’
just about half-an-hour before the end of work time. No such messages now as I
work from home. Un-nerving, for it rubs it in that my movements are not only
being tracked but also recorded.
Its
laughable to think that not so many years back one of the indicators of development
was the number of phones per thousand of population – the higher, the more
developed. India, of course was way down in the list and dismissed variously as
underdeveloped, least developed or developing, according to taste. After a
great deal of ‘progress’ Indians own an estimated five to six hundred million
phones, roughly one for every 2.5 persons (the .5 possibly referring to
children)? Now it seems virtually impossible to get rid of that instrument
somewhat in the manner of Mary’s little lamb. People responded to Arogya Setu
app with great suspicion and only about a hundred million downloaded it, and a
large number had it forced down upon them. The Orwellian ‘big brother’ seems to
have become a reality.
A
rather startling declaration in this connection was made in recent television
documentary ‘Social Dilemma’ by Tristan Harris, a former Google employee. According
to him, eventually technology is destined to overtake human intelligence and
strengths and replace them. But that is in the future. The tipping point it
seems has already occurred. Technology, he asserts “already exceeds and
overwhelms human weaknesses – and is at the root of polarisation, radicalisation,
outragi-fication and vanityfication…. this is checkmate humanity.” In simple
terms, what Harris is saying is that machines have already crossed a threshold
that will enable them eventually to take over (or overtake) man. Are Harris’s fears
well founded or was he overstating it? Was it just a digital social media
marketing ploy? “Don’t even try…you don’t stand a chance,” most of the
characters seem to be saying in the documentary. Remember, he is a former
Google employee and part of the team that created the behemoth. So it is
surprising that about the only thing that he found objectionable in the whole
Google project was that there was no one thinking of making it less addictive. So
why should, to draw a parallel, a cigarette manufacturer think up ways to make
cigarettes less addictive? Or cocaine cartels seriously working to reduce dependence
on hard drugs? D..n it, their business model works on the human weakness of
addiction.
As
I watched the documentary, I definitely got the impression that most of those
who were interviewed were convinced that technology and social media were
unique events in human history in which machines would simply push human beings
to the second spot. But it also had a participant who pointed out, sensibly in
my view, that humans had successfully negotiated new technology in the past and
would do so in future too. But Harris sounded like he was roughly the first
person, an insider at that, who had noticed this very grave danger though no
one in the entire documentary offers any way out of the apparently inevitable
social dilemma. In fact, I did not see any evidence of analysis of the problem,
always the first step towards dealing with it. But perhaps Harris and his colleagues
would be happy to know that the problem had been recognized and analysed long
back by not an American but by an eastern philosopher - Rabindranath Tagore
(1861-1941). The answer too lay in the analysis. Alas, only if it had been
heeded.
Delivering
a lecture 88 years back, ‘Asia’s Response to the Call of the New Age’, Tagore
accurately diagnosed the problem of Western Civilization. He said that Europe had
made science the vehicle of its greed “hurting the very spirit of science which
is disinterested and high above all clamour of profit-hunting. When excess of
passion in any form becomes the principal motive power in man’s nature then he
is wire-pulled by it like a mechanical doll and is powerless to check its blind
movements even when urged by reason. Such uncontrollable spasms of greed or of
anger, or jealousy or of suspicion are truly materialistic, however intelligent
may be their method and means.” It was not the use of machinery itself that was
responsible for this “degradation”, Tagore said, and identified the cause in
the “spiritual lacunae, in emergence of primitive barbarism in some civilized
form. When a free lunatic hurts himself, then it is not the external freedom
which is the cause of his hurt but lunacy itself, and if he is a skilful one
his danger is all the more fatal.”
The
plot in the Silicon Valley contains all the ingredients mentioned by Tagore and
like a mechanical doll it seems powerless to check its blind movements even
when urged by the reason of the likes of Tristan Harris!!
