Our constantly changing world
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By Olujimi Olakunri
There’s definitely grief for how things used to be. But as a millennial, I would say; count yourself lucky.
The world I grew up in has been subject to relentless change. I’m not anchored to a specific version of “the world.”
I’m old enough to have written letters and posted them to my brother at Igbenedion High School. Old enough to have seen my father drive to Nitel, Nigeria Telecommunications, to make international calls, but very quickly came mobile phones, then cyber cafés then webcams and instant messaging on dial up internet connections, then social media, Hi5 and MySpace before Facebook exploded, then BlackBerrys, iPhones and the rise of apps for everything: social media apps, dating apps, messaging apps and now AI.
My job has integrated AI into everything: from writing emails to understanding customer behaviour. The rise of tech has made us as humans more accessible to each other but simultaneously further apart and has contributed massively to a society that increasingly places more value on aesthetics than morals or depth.
The rise of the “attention economy” means companies compete for your attention. This has created a situation where people’s opinions, political inclinations and social values are given to them by a social media feed which is a sophisticated algorithm developed and constantly tweaked by social media companies to keep people’s eyes on these apps so they can continue to sell you Adverts and your data to companies who can use this information to provide you with a good service or.. manipulate you. They are not motivated by telling them the truth, that is bad for business.
Read about the Cambridge Analytica scandal on Facebook here:
https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/07/the-agreat-hack-facebook-cambridge-analytica/
Consequently humans live in silos on the internet where social media just reinforces the content you like to look at without regard for objectivity, or truth. You have to search for that yourself.
Meta (Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp) and ByteDance (TikTok) have a combined 2 trillion dollar Market capitalization. As humans, religion and mythology will tell you we were given free will, but how can one human compete with a 2 trillion dollar market cap?
The rapid rise of technology over the last 25 years has significantly altered society with each breakthrough and it’s not slowing down, so the world will continue to change, which is equally terrifying and exciting.
I remember going to visit my neighbourhood friends in Port Harcourt,and knocking on their gates to see if they were home and they wanted to play. Not knowing for sure if they were home or not, ready to face two possible outcomes: disappointment if they weren’t in or they were grounded for misbehaving, or being elated that they were around and we could meet.
That uncertainty was a character-building exercise that no longer exists.
Now kids just text each other to see if they are at home or not.
The worsening economy of the world, has made it so that they average person needs two incomes to support a family. Not so before.
Now parents are burnt out by work and maintaining households and no longer have the time and mental space to be invested in asking the questions that would normally be asked at the dinner table, i.e “tell me about your day” and expecting thorough answers, instead kids are pacified with tablets because it’s just more convenient. Modern toddlers know their way around an iPad before they can string 5 words together. There’s a saying that goes, it takes a village to raise a child but these days, that village is the whole world the good, the bad and the ugly.
There are definitely benefits for having this technology, opportunities to do business and network, access to information if you care to seek it out etc but are we better off really?
https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/mark-zuckerberg-ai-digital-future-0bb04de7
The link above details how tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg recently stated that AI will eventually replace most relationships. It reads like something out of a sci-fi movie, but this is where the world is headed.
Are we better off today? I’m unsure at best.
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