Has ‘Tech’ become darker and muddier in 2018?

"Over these 12 months our relationship with tech has both been darker and more muddy because it becomes increasingly clear that all the bright and shiny positive potentials of tech are at the risk of being darkened by forced misuse of data, manipulation, supervision, no respect of the citizen, no respect of individual rights," says Margrethe Vestager the EU's Competition Commissioner interviewed by Baroness Lane-Fox - a board member of Twitter and guest editor of the Today radio programme on BBC Radio 4

She added that “whilst dismantling companies had served Brussels well in the past, the speed at which changes occurred in the tech sector made it a less appropriate response”.

“Instead,” Vestager said, “the commission might look at how larger firms got access to data and resources in a bid to limit their power.”

But is the best solution? Isn’t this how we’ve found ourselves in such a pretty pass? Giant corporations whose power is barely matched by the bureaucrats, who we vainly hope might control them?

Greater regulation and centralised government are ruled out in our latest ‘ONversation’, where OurNet CEO Michael Brodie suggests: “Fiddling around with data protection is just whistling into the wind.”

In our conversation, he asks the basic question: “Do we want to organise ourselves in a way that encourages people to push the boundaries and succeed extremely well by manipulating and using each other? Or do we want to start to reconsider the fundamental rules that we have?”

For us at OurNet it’s back to the basics of ‘social intelligence’. We need to change the way our system currently works to reward us when we misuse each other. We need a systemic transformation that deals with our ‘split personality’ of competitiveness and communality discussed in the podcast. We need to address how and why our sense of competitiveness undermines our wish to care for, and support, each other.

“What we know gives us satisfaction is connection with, and support of, other people”, says Michael Brodie who would rather see a ‘cult of care and support’ than the Internet’s pervasive cult of egocentricity, individualism and polarised opinion.

That said, he does believe that people are truly trying to do their best, however mis-guided their behaviour seems to be. A sentiment shared by Martha Lane-Fox who agrees that “everyone is trying to do their best and make things work”.

“There is an increasing awareness of the fact that we really need to do something and to do that together,” she added.

‘Together’ is surely the key to any successful shift in a socially intelligent society that wishes to be enlightened and arise from the mud. And together, let’s co-create a happy and prosperous 2019 with a brighter, less murky Internet...

Original BBC article: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46675680