The implications of our online lives as been in my mind since I first sat in awe of my first online community, Electric Minds. Over the years I have seen great good, but even greater swaths of harm. I’ve never thought it was all about the technology. Nor have I experienced technology as some neutral platform upon which we act. Technology is NOT value neutral. And everything that is wrong cannot be blamed on technology. Today a piece by the brilliant danah boyd nailed it. (And read the whole thing. It is superb. It leaves us with the question, why aren’t we centering children in every aspect of our ecosystem. Tech is not the solution.)
The problem is not: “Technology causes harm.” The problem is: “We live in an unhealthy society where our most vulnerable populations are suffering because we don’t invest in resilience or build social safety nets.”
danah boyd
One more snippet…
By all means, go after big tech. Regulate advertising. Create data privacy laws. Hold tech accountable for its failure to be interoperable. But for the love of the next generation, don’t pretend that it’s going to help vulnerable youth. And when the problem is sociotechnical in nature, don’t expect corporations to be able to solve it.
danah boyd
I fully agree with her suggestion to center the children, when it comes to preventing harm. But ‘And when the problem is sociotechnical in nature, don’t expect corporations to be able to solve it.’ I find a more problematic non-sequitur. The problem is socio-technical, and corporations aren’t able to _solve_ it, but they do still very much have a responsibility as they are part of both of the ‘technical’ and the ‘social’ in social-technical, and not without agency. At least they should actively prevent themselves contributing to harm. And that definitely is not natural behaviour for the tech companies in question.
Ton, I’m nodding in strong agreement!