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YouTube’s slogan is, “Broadcast Yourself,” and that is what we do online. We produce and express ourselves as a brand to be procured and optimized for online achievement: Me Inc. We sell this brand to Big Tech (Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft) like a contestant on the television show Shark Tank. The show promotes the neoliberal myth of self-determination: only hard workers who push themselves become winners (superiors) and survive (fittest). The recurring storyline is that the Sharks are winners by their own free will (self-made): grit, hustle, determination, triumph over adversity, discipline, etc. Be Perfect and Try Harder. We are scripted to build an Empire of the Self: Be Your “self”, Be Transparent, Never Settle (i.e., never lose your “self”), and Compete (Win)!
Big Tech are the billionaire Sharks, and our online activity is incorporated. But in this digital Shark Tank, we own 0% equity in our digital selves. George Orwell understood that an efficient totalitarian regime drowns the consciousness of the citizens. In the book Nineteen Eighty-Four he notes this as “an act of self-hypnosis.” We are hypnotized by the hype of so-called “artificial intelligence” because the claims are that it is traveling in a direction that will succeed human intelligence, e.g., ChatGPT. As Erik Larson (2021) notes, “The path exists only in our imaginations.” The AI system lacks common sense (intuition) and as these systems are trained for general knowledge (rather than just Jeopardy!), they become more erroneous in their responses. Intelligence includes an inwardness and also goosebumps.
As has been noted, the relationship with the virtual world is symbiotic (psychologically). Now, it is becoming a physical symbiosis. Ferris Jabr quotes Elon Musk in The New York Times Magazine on his ultimate goal for Neuralink. Musk stated that an achievement of “a sort of symbiosis with artificial intelligence” is necessary so that humanity is not obliterated, subjugated or “left behind” by superintelligent machines. “If you can’t beat em, join em,” he once said on Twitter, calling it a “Neuralink mission statement.” Big Tech is after the capture of desire at the neuroplastic level. How do they do this?
Big Tech and the new semiocapitalism in general, play the Game called Happy To Help! Digital platforms, applications, and enthusiastic bots (“How can I help you?”) are always Happy To Help! Apps dutifully remember our tasks, memories, documentation, bank records, calendars, social lives, transactions etc., all while having an ulterior motive. If Big Tech is the user’s parent, it is saying to us, “Don’t think what you think, think what I think.” These monopolies exploit the user’s behavioral surplus data to sell it to third party entities for ad revenue. Yeah surveillance!
The smartphone, smart home, smart vacuum, and smart bed are all collecting data for what Byung Chul-Han (2022) calls the “information regime.” Han notes that this is how “Surveillance creeps into daily life by way of convenience.” Therefore, the real “value” of Big Tech is its ability to surveil the populace as it is in a symbiotic relationship with governments, intelligence agencies, and militaries.
The solution is subversion. Undermine the authority of internal and external cultural conditioning, i.e., artificial system (ego/ideology). Don’t be your “self”, be authentic (Martian). This implies having the naïvest possible frame of mind (talk about FOMO) for observing earthly phenomena, thus “leaving the intellect free for inquiry without the distraction of preconceptions.” (Berne, 1966) We must be clueless, an idiot, in order to “set aside preconceived notions and allow oneself to not know what the hell is going on.” (Lennox, C. Ed., 1997; p. 62). As Martian (Zen) we access intuitive knowledge for an appropriate response.
Visit MankatoTherapist.com for more information and to contact Andrew Archer.
References
Berne, E. (1966). Principles of Group Treatment. Oxford University Press: New York.
Han, B.C. (2022). Infocracy: Digitalization and the crisis of democracy. Polity Press: Massachusetts.
Jabr, F. (2022, May 15). “The Man Who Controls Computers With His Mind.” The New York Times Magazine. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/magazine/brain-computer-interface.html on 5/22/22.
Lennox, C. Ed. (1997). Redecision therapy: A brief, action-oriented approach. New Jersey: Aronson Inc.
Orwell, G. (2013). Nineteen eighty-four. Penguin Classics.