As If You Were Listening

Save the baby. Delete the bath water.

Words © Paul Ransom / Algorithm image courtesy of said algorithm

Firstly, thank you. Digital technology has delivered for me. In spades. It has gifted me creative tools, provided platforms like this, and granted me once unimaginable access to a world of inspiration and entertainment. Kudos to you.

However, I was never an acolyte, never one of those who believed that smartphones or the internet would usher in a golden age of human advancement and citizen empowerment. I never hero-worshipped Jobs or Gates, and it did not take long to see through Zuck’s promise of greater connection. Venture capitalists did not suck up years of losses for utopian ends. IT was never a charity, never truly a public service.

The same can now be said of Altman, et al. American mega-investors and the Chinese government are not funnelling multi-billions into AI because they are in the business of universal uplift. The hucksters of such fantasy give the game away with their tone-deaf proselytising. Oh, and the robber baron scale of their enrichment. When the self-anointed saviour arrives via private jet, the vibe is less than sacred, and the odour more profane than the bank-rolling gods would care to confess.

Yet, this is not why I am writing. (Go ahead, do commerce, pursue self-interest. Not inherently evil.) My motivation is frustration – a now undeniable sense of being fobbed off, of being sold a deliberately degraded product. Moreover, of being played for a fool. Spoken down to. Worse, of being blamed. Not tech savvy enough. Not sufficiently updated. Wrong browser, wrong subscription, wrong permissions setting.

If only I was more merit-worthy – a better connected, properly hashtagged netizen – I wouldn’t keep face-planting these digital walls. I wouldn’t keep failing to be verified. I wouldn’t constantly need to prove I’m not a robot. Nor perhaps would I require your plethora of ‘security’ procedures, many of which serve merely to stall and irritate, and to underscore an ever more pervasive culture of default paranoia.

Getting the picture, are we? Your precious tech complex is crumbling, lurching from time-saving and capacity-building towards becoming a time-wasting, boringly bureaucratic space of opaque gridlock. That the internet is also a corrosive swamp of untrustworthy info-overload, brain-crushing stupidity and relentless anger-porn does not bode well for the shiny new paradigm you keep telling us is only a click – an upgrade – away.

Which reminds me. What’s with the nickel & diming, folks? I know you have a business to run, (wages to pay and so on), but the sneaky, underhanded ambush capitalism that’s become your go-to model is tacky at best, if not mean-spirited and grubby. Pay-walling basic features whilst pretending they are somehow ‘premium’ makes you look like a cadre of fee-gouging leeches. For mere pennies you put the lie to your grandiose sounding digital revolution.

By all means charge a fee, recoup your costs; just don’t hide the fact, don’t spring it on people. Your current modus operandi – get them hooked, jack up the subs – is tired and diaphanous, and it speaks to the utter contempt you have for the end user. Honestly, it makes you look more like a criminal cartel than a trusted provider of genuine value. It reeks of blackmail. Rather than offering us a product, you dangle the threat of its withdrawal, like a pusher taunting an addict.

In my recent dealings with you – your so-called ‘help’ desks – I was reminded of a schoolboy bully. A snot-faced, trap-setting, brat. When, I now wonder, will someone bigger and stronger smack that fucking smirk off your face?

But hey, you say, it’s just business. Ah yes, the franchised excuse of modern commerce; a cracked, sociopathic logic rooted in the death-spiral of a race-to-the-bottom contest with your fellow predators. In the shark pool, out-shark the sharks. If someone’s going to engage in unsustainable resource use, (all the while exploiting cognitive biases to seed dopamine dependence, polarisation and the brain-rot of endless trivia), it might as well be me.

Seriously, people, do you not see how ridiculous this is? If I molested my daughter and told the judge I did it to get in first, and that this was somehow a preferable outcome for her, you would think, with some justification, that I was a fucking lunatic. Throw away the key, you’d cry.    

Now, before you tag me as a Boomer luddite or undergrad leftist – and start suggesting content to confirm what you take to be my bias – allow me to acknowledge an uncomfortable elephant. The human proclivity for selfishness, pettiness, tribalism, myopia, other-blaming, arrogance, vanity, nostalgic delusion, herdthink, etcetera is not your fault. The algorithm did not invent our foolishness. Our violence. We have a long track record of raping, murdering, and enslaving, and we love repeating our mistakes. Over and over and…

Point being, we suck, and are not blameless.

This will rankle with some. Doubtless, their predictable comebacks will remind you of your own sophistry. They will point to our species’ noble achievements, our adaptive genius and capacity for kindness. However, aliens watching on may well conclude: okay so, the Khmer Rouge and the Holocaust and the witch burning thing, that’s acceptable because you painted a pretty ceiling in a church and wrote a nice symphony and gave a few cents to a beggar. What the actual fuck?

Penny dropped yet? Noted the parallel? Your business school rationale is a cloak like mine. Just because we both believe our hype does not make it true. Just because it turns a profit, does not imply lasting value. And even if the customer is almost always wrong, your mean, penny-pinching predation and nakedly cynical business models are just that. Sell me all the scented room spray you have in your warehouse; the air will still be foul with your gilded stench.

None of us are pure, beyond reproach. None possess perfect knowledge or act in accordance with unimpeachable virtue. But there are asymmetries. The playing field is not level; and we all know in whose favour it is tilted.

You might say this is because you are smarter, worked harder, persevered longer. Again, bullshit. There are billions of hard working people on this planet, doing the long hours and the not giving up, taking their own brand of risk every day – and though true that some are more skilled, more diligent, some are also luckier. Some start with advantages. Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority will never be able to set up shop in a lower tax jurisdiction (haven), nor pressure their government to tweak the game in their favour, no matter how meritoriously we toil. So please, spare me the entitled victor routine.

Also, maybe try a little honesty. For example, rather than seeking my ‘consent’ – which we both know is more legal technicality than genuine choice – how about actually providing me with viable options? Okay, not open season, but real choice, as opposed to Agree/Continue, Disagree/Service cancelled/Product rendered useless. Disguising coercion as consent is analogous to rape. Same goes for your deliberate, fine print obfuscations and the wall of inconvenience and delay you place in the path of those who seek help or clarity. This is a brush-off disguised as service. Dismissal in the form of listening.

I might say likewise of the now-dreaded update. Although I understand and broadly support the ‘always in beta’ idea – namely, that systems genuinely require tweaking and should never remain static in a fluid environment – the digital realm is now suffused with the top-down imposition of supply where little demand exists. The AI roll-out is the headline example.

Setting aside apocalypse dramas and declinist, anti-machine fanaticism, the increasing ubiquity of AI does not scan as choice, as something I could elect to use. True, if I tunnel into the backblocks I can, in theory, unearth the artfully hidden on/off button. But here again, barriers deliberately, sneakily erected. More spoilt child trickery.                   

Technically, you are not lying – but there are many ways to deceive, to manipulate, to extort. Your AI behemoth is your baby-faced monster. It’s the mega-cap corporate cock being shoved repeatedly down our throats; and it feels like being co-opted into a sneering broligarch porno selfie.

You better hope we don’t start biting, bro.

At this point, what I would really like to say is: gather your man-child toys, your bows and arrows and chainsaws, and climb into your little rocket ship and fuck off to Mars. You can do all your favourite ‘real man’ things up there. Smear yourself in red planet mud and play swordfights with your tumescent appendages, and tell yourself on repeat that you’ve earned your place in the interplanetary pantheon. What gods you will surely be in your hi-tech Martian bubble. I so look forward to your ascension.

However, that might seem a tad churlish, and I wouldn’t want to appear ungrateful; not after everything you’ve done for me. After all, I do not wish to throw the baby out. Indeed, I acknowledge once more the multiple benefits that have flowed from the genius of digital technology. I would not be posting this open letter without the tools you gave me. 

My intention is not so much to vent – although it has been fun – but to offer fair warning. I am not alone. Far from it. There is a groundswell down here, a bubbling tide of more extreme and angry sentiments than those expressed above. There are those who would not give you an inch, who are lining up to cheer your downfall. I know you know what demand destruction looks like, and you can surely do the basic math.

How many of you are there? How many of us? Who, ultimately, accepts the risk and bears the cost of this most profound asymmetry?

I know you all live for the bottom line. You may wish to ponder where it truly lies.