Belgian sociologist talked about psychotechnology and social media at the 14th International Communications Seminar
Photo: Camila Cunha
Datacracy, big data and a myriad of algorithms employing comprehensive database for the constant monitoring of the population. During his conference at the 14th International Communications Seminar (Seicom), from Nov 6 – 8, at PUCRS, Belgian sociologist Derrick de Kerckhove talked about the big brother, the loss of autonomy and privacy, and stressed that information about ourselves is available 100% of the time without us knowing. “Transparency creates permanent surveillance conditions and everyone should have legal and absolute access to our own information: this should be stated in the constitution”, warned he. In this sense, he gave special attention to the importance of transparency being a two-way thing, for the benefit of people and the government.
When he mentioned McLuhan, whom he was a disciple of and official translator, Kerckhove stressed that universal surveillance poses a dilemma between privacy and technology, and this resonates immediately in people’s lives. Most people produce and share digital information every day. In this regard, individuality gives room to community life. “The more they know about us, the less we exist”, said he as he paraphrased McLuhan. “We take control over the physical, and the mental is addressed by educators, but we know too little about the digital”, complemented he. During his visit to PUCRS, Kerckhove gave us an interview and discussed social media, datacracy, psychotechnology among other issues.
Interview
Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp, Twitter, blogs… all these channels are a kind of psychotechnology. Have they changed the way, the language and the speed of how we communicate?
Yes, they have. Each one of them has a different configuration, its purpose and its features. For example, tweeter is a very interest one because it is immediate, with a good selection of its direction, like who you send it to. Facebook is a very different kind of psychotechnology, because it is more elaborate, it is multimedia, it is based on community building. It creates the possibility for people to exchange emotions, images, text, suggestions, ideas and recommendations. All the social media are called web 2.0 and they all have the capacity of encouraging the emotion to circulate. I consider the internet as a social limbic system, our biological setup to manage our fears, desires, and our emotions in general. The moment people are connected, the most powerful connection link them will be the emotional one, not the rational one. Which is the reason Trump is doing very well on twitter, many people hate him, but a lot of people love him, he really is a “Twitter boy”.
What are the next steps of communication in the digital and globalized world which McLuhan may have not predicted?
There is not much he didn’t predicted (laugh). Immediately we can already predict the rise of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) as a mediator of our communication. First for our research, but also I can imagine A.I. that knows how to write a love letter to somebody you are about to quit. What does A.I. suggests that you say? Could A.I. formulate it knowing very well who darling is, who you are and your style?
So in the future we may not have to think anymore?
Unfortunately, this is what is happening. This is why you are very lucky to be in a University, because it is a place where you still are taught to think by yourself. But many people won’t need that anymore. See, machines have been taking too much of our cognitives; this is why it is called psychotechnology, that deals with you psychology, that actually modifies it, modify your epistemology, how you learn things, how you know things, how you are relate.
Has there been a change of behavior and values?
A big change of behavior and McLuhan explained that people were swallowed by the TV. Once you move from TV to Internet, something very different happens. Suddenly, you can talk back. Internet is two way, so your responsibility changes. Because you can respond, you became responsible. Internet swallows all the other media and becomes your cellphone in your pocket and of course, you spend a great deal of time on that. It is definitely a psychotechnology because internet is now containing your memory. Do you remember the phone number of your friends? Of course you don’t. Everything that is important but you don’t have time now, you throw in the phone for when you have some time later. Most of the time you don’t, but you will feel better because you have done it. Internet has changed our attitude towards information and any kind of content.
Photo: Camila Cunha
Everyone shows their everyday lives on social networks and keep an eye on what everyone else is doing. Are we living the Trumman Show?
Yes, up to a point we are. We are living the Truman Show and we are aware of it. All of us are taking selfies just to make sure we are there. Did you seen Black Mirror? The Free Fall (Nosedive), the one where the woman is watching how much she is being rated, that is the top for me. It pushes the finger right where it hurts. It totally changes the behavior and values and it is very, very dumb. It took several centuries to defining Mona Lisa, the most mysterious expressions, and now we have emoticons. It is fine to have all this power but we are paying a price for them. Our emotional finesse is at stake. When I was a kid, my identity was cultivated by what I read. This is not the case anymore because people don’t put anything inside anymore, they have access outside, why would they bother?
What is datacracy?
Datacracy is an exaggeration and a provocation. It is not really happening yet but it is showing tendencies to happen. There is plenty of evidence that shows that eventually algorithms will decide about how, where and when. All Asian eastern countries are interested in collective behavior more than they are in private behavior. They’d ratter control private behavior and manage the collective. Asians are more ready to accept a general rule even if it imposes scarify on the individual. Western people are much more individualistic.
Will we be more resistant?
Much more resistant, but it doesn’t mean we can resist. We will try longer, but eventually the algorithms we use for running our lives and society will be stronger than who we are. They are already stronger; they are like the devil because we don’t know they are there.
So are all the nations following that trend?
It all depends if we can overcome the present phase of terrorism, which is a huge incentive to reinforce surveillance, security and control enormously. This is exactly what we are looking at now. Governments are actually putting systems in places where they can surveillance everybody. It seems to indicate that we are going to be much, much more towards the Asian system situation, like in Singapore, South Korea and China, which has decided to do the Free Fall for all (Black Mirror) for one billion and three hundred people. Because they are much more successful than we are, more richness, modernity, technology, we will be jealous of that success and we will want to do it too. I think worldwide we will be more and more under surveillance and control, not just for security. Security is going to be the excuse for which you can put in the systems that actually control people. That means that eventually we are going to be less autonomous as our machines become more autonomous. Now we are making robots that look like humans and they have autonomy, they have power of decision, they can repair themselves, they can innovate, all in the name of serving you.
Isn’t it dangerous?
Terribly dangerous. I’m not happy with it. I don’t want to be alarmist. Yes, of course, many jobs will be taken over by the system, but the system will be making many other jobs. We don’t want to ignore the problem, but we don’t want to exaggerate by saying it is the end of economy. It is one of these big mutations of the economy and we have to adapt to this. Pinocchio, A.I., Matrix, Avatar, Being John Malkovich, Truman Show, Tron, all those movies are about how you get over the machine and who are we becoming.
Augmented reality, augmented memory, augmented mind. Will there be a day when there will be no boundaries between man and machine?
It is already happening. We augment everything, sensibility, design, intelligence, imagination, but you have to remember that everything you augment, you remove. It’s taking away from being inside and becomes an outside thing. That doesn’t mean it is bad. Our memory doesn’t contain every detail we can find on our cellphone. The point of this is that we don’t have the autonomy.
About Derrick de Kerckhove
Derrick de Kerckhove served as director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology, at the University of Toronto, for more than 20 years, where he earned the title of Professor Emeritus at the French Department. He teaches at the School of Sociology of the Universitá Federico II, in Naples (Italy), and is a guest researcher at the Library Congress in Washington, in the US. He serves as Science Director of the digital culture journal Media Duemila, based in Rome, and has written several books which have been translated into more than ten languages, including English, Italian, French, Spanish, European and Brazilian Portuguese, Slovene, Polish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
14th International Communications Seminar
14th International Communications Seminar (Seicom) was sponsored by the Graduate Program (PPGCom), of the School of Communications of PUCRS. Seicom was created in 1997 as a conference seminar and has gained prominence over the years as Theme Groups (TG) were created.
