{"id":136812,"date":"2021-01-31T06:20:24","date_gmt":"2021-01-31T14:20:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=136812"},"modified":"2021-01-31T06:20:24","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T14:20:24","slug":"the-real-social-dilemma-its-our-clueless-elites","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=136812","title":{"rendered":"The Real \u2018Social Dilemma\u2019? It\u2019s Our Clueless Elites."},"content":{"rendered":"

Martin Gurri writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

What are we to make of the feature length documentary, The Social Dilemma? I would start with the fact that it\u2019s immune to contradiction. You have to go to Netflix, a digital streaming service, to get lectured for 94 minutes about the horrors of digital life. In fact, the documentary is a \u201cNetflix original,\u201d which means it must have received some portion of the $17 billion the streaming giant spends on proprietary content. So it\u2019s the web exploiting the anti-web. But you can also think of The Social Dilemma as a slick, manipulative film production slamming the big digital platforms for their slick, manipulative algorithms.<\/p>\n

The digital environment, it seems, is Plato\u2019s cave\u2014dancing shadows on a wall that confuse and distract you. Or it\u2019s a twist on the Hotel California, where you check in whenever you switch on your smartphone but you can never leave. Or it\u2019s an evolutionary death trap, into which you are seduced by the lure of algorithmic brain candy. So we are told during the film by a succession of neo-Luddites and repentant techies who have themselves risen above any such failings. They know better, and they will grab you by the shoulders and tell you why.<\/p>\n

Formally, The Social Dilemma consists of a series of interviews with experts inserted in brief cuts, which alternates with a supposedly comedic docu-drama about an average family\u2019s travails with the smartphone, also presented in snippets. The level of subtlety probably falls below that of Soviet propaganda, but the point is clear enough. Properly understood, the documentary is an extended rant about the 21st century, using the digital world as proxy.<\/p>\n

Viewing the web as a political doomsday device is now mandatory among our elites. Barack Obama, who won the presidency in 2008 in part because of a brilliant online campaign, recently told The Atlantic that he considers \u201cthe internet\u201d to be the \u201csingle biggest threat to our democracy.\u201d Francis Fukuyama, that barometer of elite opinion, holds that \u201csocial media\u201d has been \u201cweaponized against democracy.\u201d The Social Dilemma pitches to this unhappy audience, riding every argument over the cliff to the most extreme conclusions. <\/p>\n

In it, we are told that the internet is \u201creally bad\u201d or maybe \u201creally, really bad,\u201d like \u201ca drug\u201d but also like a \u201crabbit hole,\u201d a \u201ctotally new species of power\u201d that uses \u201cdisinformation for profit as a business model,\u201d controlled by \u201cdigital Frankensteins that are terraforming the world in their image.\u201d The effects are said to be manipulation, addiction, polarization, and exile to a kingdom of lies. \u201cThis is overpowering human nature,\u201d intones Tristan Harris, a former \u201cdesign ethicist\u201d at Google who is introduced as \u201cthe closest thing to a conscience\u201d in Silicon Valley, \u201cand this is checkmate on humanity.\u201d As we shuffle through this hellish landscape, the Obama theme is sounded\u2014there\u2019s talk of \u201ca global assault on democracy,\u201d for example\u2014but, by comparison, it feels like a minor complaint.<\/p>\n

The film treats the concept of \u201cpersuasion\u201d as a self-evident moral abomination on a par with child abuse or cannibalism. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Martin Gurri writes: What are we to make of the feature length documentary, The Social Dilemma? I would start with the fact that it\u2019s immune to contradiction. You have to go to Netflix, a digital streaming service, to get lectured … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-136812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t