The Future of Social Media

 

In the Information Age, Ignorance is now a Choice

Every day Google and Facebook and other tech companies become more powerful and sophisticated by analyzing each of our online choices - what we click on, how long we pause to watch an ad or a YouTube video, and the stories we write and the songs we record - and they charge advertisers money to access this information. Then they grow more of their own companies with it, getting larger and more powerful eavesdropping on our clicks. But they don't pay you and me for our vital contribution. They don't even acknowledge that we are contributing -  as if artificial intelligence magically came from nowhere instead of from data completely derived from you and me.

Most of the systems we use on the internet are set up to exploit us - to harvest our creative ideas and our data without compensation. The prevailing attitude in Silicon Valley is essentially that: There's no reason for you to know what your data means, how it might be used; you can't contribute, we don't know who you are, we don't want to know you; you're worthless, you're not going to get paid; it's only valuable once we aggregate it; but you know nothing, you're in the dark, you're useless, you're hopeless, you're nothing. And then a robot created as a result of your data will ultimately replace you. The robot is something. The robot is a successor master species to humans. The robot is God. And you, individually, by yourself, have no meaningful value.

But consider that in the information age, we should all be looking upon ourselves as workers and consumers and entrepreneurs at the same time. What if we got paid for our contributions within this system?

By recognizing the roles we play in building our own future and that of the world, we might just give ourselves a chance to be meaningful participants in it instead of just useful pawns. Proactively building a robot future together could ultimately even become a spiritual awakening, while all the while being compensated for all of our time using technology.