Second Base: From Heart to Hertz
Today’s Heartbeat of Technology:
True Love or Bad Blood?
Step-by-step, technology is weaving itself further and further into our environment. The expansion impacts our interactions with everyday life and reaches as deep as into our most intimate conversations: with ourselves. The desired comfort of progress and the highly-addicted innovation cycle of ‘Something New’ are rapidly speeding up the pace of the global economy. Entire systems, businesses, and languages focus on the capacity to read, collect, connect and integrate big data obtained through the study, measurement, and tracking of people, with or without [conscious] consent. More and more, experts and computers are taught to interpret human behaviour and our subjective state through mining data based on any possible level of interaction. Their capacity to value, influence, controle and shape our interactions with the world - whether in the name of feelings, actions, thoughts or relationships - is growing. Our social surroundings and most intimate spaces are being converted into 24/7 touchpoints, data collectors and virtual questionnaires, and we are continuously providing them with psychological information and interaction feedback. Tools that try to define our reality by reading how, when, why, where and with whom we interact [or not] are taking the world by storm; from Facebook, Whatsapp, TikTok, Tinder, Clubhouse* and Alexa to face tracking, voice recording, wearable technology, blockchain and AI. As the barriers between the physical and virtual world are disappearing, a new exciting world of opportunities presents itself. However, in this in-between reality, when, why, how and where does public space end and private space begin? When can we claim lines have been crossed or speak of “grensoverschrijdend gedrag”? What is perceived as an invasion of personal space similar to [physical] assault, abuse, theft, or a break-in in a virtual world? How do concepts of sovereignty, ownership, legality, privacy, intimacy, and consent fit into these new yet undefined dimensions? And, on what grounds do we promote and protect our rights, freedom of choice and expression if we don’t speak the language [yet]?
Back to First Base
Although today’s technology might be great for establishing connections, increasing touchpoints, and sharing information beyond physical barriers and in times of isolation*, it can’t replace human interaction [yet]. Although we definitely shouldn’t fear technology, its possible long-term impact on and radical transformation of social interaction are topics that urgently need our time, attention, consideration and critical view just as much as our interest in its unlimited potential [in the name of progress]. Preferably, before we reach the point-of-no-return in which algorithms and user interfaces unconsciously guide our relationships and views on reality by playing into our expectations, persuasions, emotions, and addictions, leaving us only hooked to an interaction controlled and directed by [the ones behind] technology. Losing whole worlds of possibilities and beauty born out of the unexpected encounters and collisions. That just feels like a rather bad and unimaginative 21st Century remix of Plato’s Cave [or the Matrix].
I genuinely believe we can translate the language of technology into a fascinating multi-dimensional environment and multi-interactive reality to explore. But, like all good relationships, it requires hard work or at least a bit of effort. We continuously need to establish healthy ways of communicating to keep an ever-evolving love alive and avoid [distraction by] toxic short-term flings.
*Added during COVID-19 crisis, 10 October 2020