ALSO READ: An Approach to Deal with Technology Dominance (Part 1)

Technology-led Vision Blindness

More than technology dominance that can be sooner or later disrupted (with global consensus and mutual efforts), we will have to be concerned about its side effects. Somehow our current Internet generation thinks that by the accumulation of the abundance of information from the Internet/social platforms they are gaining knowledge and intelligence (which they would be able to upload into some cloud servers in the future, as these companies often claim). But this idea is flawed at its core; the human mind is not designed to work that way! After reading, listening, and watching, we need some time without outside distraction to think and make sense of all that we have observed.

The ability to foresee future events, threats, opportunities and different patterns related to these have a role in the policy/ direction of a nation. Our current generation has stopped practicing this and, like any other art this is also not a privilege, one may lose it. But the question is – can we afford to lose this skill? The absence of this skill can develop a ‘vision blindness’ syndrome and, when a community/society or nation turns vision blind, it always pays a cost for that.

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The notion of ‘Vision Blindness’ has its roots in the historic experiences of the Jewish community. In his book “The Founding Fathers of Zionism,” historian Benzion Netanyahu has mentioned that “the Jews, which in the distant past produced many personalities who excelled in prognosticating the future, became during the Exile a people that seemed to have virtually blind in this faculty.”He said that “we did not discern the greatest disasters even a short while before they occurred.” This was a period in which one may say that “vision disappeared from the people of Israel.”

Time to steal the firewood from under the pot has come!

The patterns of Technology Dominance are so complex that upon investigating the matter, one may reach a point where things seem to go into an uncertain and never-ending loop. But in the classics of war strategies, it is said that when faced with an enemy or force too powerful to engage directly, you must first weaken him by undermining his foundation and attacking his source of power (‘The Thirty-Six Strategies’, collection of ancient Chinese war tactics).

The source of Technology Dominance lies in an over-engagement and growing dependency of the people on these platforms. The more we get engaged, the more powerful these apps become. And this dependency is not natural as well, it’s a proven fact that these platforms are designed to arouse the addiction hormone in the users, just like any other addictive element, and the more we get engaged, the more powerful they become. So, the first step to tackle Technology Dominance must be reducing over-engagement on these platforms. We can call it the first step – Less Engagement.

Less Engagement means reducing our dependency on these Big Tech platforms and moving toward our local options – not just being vocal for local but embracing the local apps too. In the last few months, several homegrown alternatives to these popular apps have emerged such as Bharat E Market (a platform developed by Confederation of All India Traders, after a tussle with Amazon), Zoho Mail and its web hosting suite, Koo app, Sandes (government’s messaging app equivalent to WhatsApp) and payments apps like BHIM, PayTM, etc. We will see many more options in the coming days and we can expect some apps to be jointly developed with like-minded nations, too. When a user will have some options to select from, the psychological effect of these apps will automatically get minimized. Once we win that psychological war, dominance will be over.

After Less Engagement being successfully implemented, we can start disengaging from these tech platforms too!

Disengagement

This may sound offensive to some but who said that computers, the Internet and smartphones were the only technology on the planet and only by using these apps one could remain productive and technical! Who established this norm?

The original purpose of these products was to make our routine operations fast and easier. When these tech companies entered India, they came with a typical salesmen gesture and offered some very routine products like the office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), mail, search and some entertainment services – chat, networking, music, videos, games, and shopping. None of these must be given our 24/7 attention and productive energy. So the idea of Disengagement is – if we are using these products other than for their original purpose or their key functions – it means that we are over-engaged on these apps and we are over-engaged because these companies have addictive elements inbuilt in their products. This over engagement is crushing our inherent capabilities, our self-consciousness and without self-consciousness we cannot build great things. To end this addiction, this over-engagement and dependency, we will have to practice some Disengagement from these apps.

ALSO READ: Information Warfare : Curbs on Big Tech Necessary

The question then arises – how this Disengagement exercise can be promoted on a large scale?

We need to understand that computer technology, the Internet, smartphones, Big Data and AI are all some of the most successful business models of our time and they are leveraging their success to the fullest. A large portion of humanity (approx 4.66 billion people) is either over-engaged on tech platforms/ products or is over-influenced by their marketing. To disengage people from these business models, we will have to think about developing New Business Models. The New Business Models is an approach to coin some new ideas, thinking something new, more productive and more interesting and thrilling than all current dominating tech products. Continuing in this space and coining different jargon to leverage the market dominance can be a part of their calculations as they put a lot of effort to reach this stage. But a country like India must think about moving beyond this stagnation!

For a huge consumer segment, these augmented realities (AR), virtual reality (AR) and drone tech-based products, the users are offered thrill, pleasure and sense of adventure. They can be disrupted only with something more adventurous and more thrilling, something in the real world. If we aim to be shaper and more decisive, we will have to think about coining our improvisations and shaping some New Business Models, capable of competing with all the existing ones.

Interestingly, recognizing the stagnation and limitation of their products, these Big Tech founders have gradually started shifting toward new ventures. Agriculture, ocean, sky, air and space kind of domains are their new interest areas! Then why have we restricted ourselves to their products/ improvisations? We must think about going beyond smartphones and the Internet. We are a country surrounded by ocean, gifted with gigantic mountains and some of the world’s rarest natural resources and vibrant diversity. The need is to only explore and think in this direction. New Business Models originated from India can disrupt Big Tech hegemony!

Other Ethical Ways

Other than the Less Engagement and Disengagement process, what else can we do? We can adopt some other ethical ways, such as taxation, regulations, compliances and every single move that is needed for the health of the market and help these companies stay to do business, not to govern!

Recently, the Government of India issued some new guidelines and digital media ethics codes (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code 2021) that provide a progressive and liberal framework to deal with the challenges of social and digital media platforms. The Code includes a well-defined mechanism for grievance redressal, some guidelines for social media intermediaries, provisions regarding removal of unlawful information, as well as ethics codes for online news, over-the-top (OTT) platforms and digital media. This can be called a good beginning.

Public opinion and public pressure often seen as the key instruments of power. These cannot be allowed to be handled irresponsibly. Shaping the narratives, promoting porn and illegal trade, branding protest models, influencing election results and facilitating non-state actors to achieve their goals – these were not the ideas with which the Internet and digital technologies made their way into our life. With a broken security system and massive privacy flaws, these technology platforms dare challenge the constitution of the world’s largest democracy. We can hope that these ethical ways will help in curbing their aspirations.

Conclusion

The three moves – Less Engagement, Disengagement and Other Ethical Ways – together can provide a framework to deal with technology dominance and there is always a possibility to explore more innovative ways.

We have 28 states and eight union territories (UT), where each State/UT (and every district of the state) has its unique potential, a vast part of which is not leveraged. From space to sky to ocean to mountains, India has a lot to explore and a lot to create. The need is to stimulate the power of imagination of our young minds and to take that to a new level. Bharat can give at least 36 New Business Models to the world, based on its unique ability and instincts. The time for investing in that direction has come!

The post An Approach to Deal with Technology Dominance (Part 2) appeared first on IMR.

ALSO READ: An Approach to Deal with Technology Dominance (Part 2)

‘Technology dominance,’ these two words we hear quite often these days. From the last few years, Big Tech, Big Four, GAFA (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple), Tech Giants, Big Five kind of terms have become a part of our strategic discussions. Today, any deliberation on the future, economy and national security cannot be called complete without mentioning the patterns of growing tech dominance.

Computer technology is indeed one of the most dominant technologies from the last three to four decades. It started with the personal computers (PC) then came the era of the Internet, then smart phones, then smart devices and now we are talking about moving toward a new technological revolution driven by Artificial Intelligence (AI). But, at the same time, matters of concern are the shift in the purpose of digital technology from problem-solver to problem-creator to problem-accelerator to toolkit distributor, and its growing capability to not just impact overall social behavior and psychology but of creating anarchy, violence, and riots on the streets, within a matter of few minutes. The patterns of some recent events in different parts of the world suggest that now these platforms are becoming eager to challenge the idea of democracy, the idea of government and the idea of the nation itself.

Different Dimensions of Technology Dominance

A majority of the discussions about the technology dominance in India revolved around the Market and Data but there are some other lesser discussed dimensions as well, such as dominance in the real world, the acquisition/exploitation of natural resources – land, energy and water – that is going on a massive scale. There are close to 4.66 billion Internet users (roughly 60% of the world’s population), an average Internet user spends more than 6 hours a day online and produces approx 2.5 quintillion bytes of data (1 quintillion is equal to 1 exabyte, which is one preceded by 18 zeros). Every day, these platforms process billions of searches, millions of images, videos, billions of emails, video streaming, Twitter feeds, Facebook/ Linkedin/ Instagrams posts, text messages/chats, Gifs/Emojis, navigation data and the bulk of data that is generated from the smart things/devices, too. The data warehouses and factories where all this data is stored and processed every second requires gigantic infrastructure, massive systems for data storage, several processors and millions of miles of fiber-optic lines, everything which they cover under the smart term ‘cloud’ and these clouds on earth consume electrical power and generate heat that no other industrial enterprises have ever generated in human history, and then they consume billions of gallons of water to cool off as well. This is the real-world dominance of these Big Tech companies about which we do not find any climate expert raising concerns. In fact, in some cases, they are the top sponsors of these teenager flag bearers of climate change.

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Apart from that, something more serious is going on under the sea as well. The 750,000 miles of submarine cables (total 406) enough to go around the earth 30 times, that connect the Internet worldwide – are the backbone of the Internet infrastructure. Today, the US tech giants such as Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft, own or lease more than half of the global undersea cables. Google owns some 63,065 miles, Facebook owns 57,079 miles, Amazon owns approx 18,987 miles and Microsoft owns some 41,04 miles of undersea cables. And, with each passing year, their acquisition of undersea Internet infrastructure is growing.

Now the testing of shipping container-sized undersea data centres has started as well. In 2014, Microsoft launched a research project called ‘Natick’ to test this infrastructure and, as of 2020, they had completed the project and claimed that those servers under the water were more reliable than those on the land. The results of their project signalled that we will see a new dimension of undersea autonomy shortly. And the logic for such an experiment was a one-liner – “50% of us live near the coast. Why doesn’t our Data?”

Technology dominance is often facilitated by legislations too. In 2018, the US Senate enacted an act called CLOUD (clarifying lawful overseas use of data). The CLOUD Act allows US federal law enforcement agencies to compel U.S.-based technology companies or content providers to provide access to electronic data stored on their servers regardless of whether they are in the U.S. or on foreign soil. And it also says that if the foreign law enforcement agency (like that of India, where these products have complete dominance in the market) needs access to the electronic content stored in these data servers then they need to undergo an ‘executive agreement’ with the US government. The Act has the support of the whole Big Tech consortium (Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Facebook). Such moves give an extra edge to this ever-growing physical and virtual dominance. These are some of the interesting and least discussed dimensions of technology dominance, which have the potential to establish this idea as an everlasting reality of our time.

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Other than these, in terms of Market and Data (the most talked about dimensions), the situation is already bleak. If we talk about the Market, the journey of these U.S. tech giants in India started in 2004, with an entirely different set of promises than what they tout today. They came with the offers like office, search, music, emails, shopping and chats, some very routine tasks of the people. Except for Microsoft, which came earlier, somewhere in the 1990s, all other U.S. tech giants entered India, post-2004 and then, from 2004 to 2014, one can say that they got a whole decade of privileged access in India. The legacy of that unrestricted phase culminated into the current market dominance that we see today. As of May 2020, with 99.29 per cent, Google had a clear monopoly on the mobile search engine market in India. Google-owned YouTube now has over 448 million monthly active users in India and the Google-owned Android held a share of 95.23 percent of the mobile operating system market in India. Facebook has over 400 million users and 85 per cent market share in India, which is more than its home country USA. Amazon has over 100 million users and with 17.5 million active users, Twitter has the third largest user base in India, next after the USA and Japan. The data speaks that things are now beyond the simple profit/loss calculations.

Silicon Valley – Vision, Recommendations and Propaganda

In parallel to these mounting dimensions, the leading employers and investors of Silicon Valley and their friends and family members, all have some big plans for the future of humanity too. Often they can be seen talking about things like some ‘X’ pandemic or disaster already on our way and how we need to radically transform our lives to accommodate and adapt to that future. But interestingly, these technology prophets who are making such a prognosis, have their silent investments in the Biotech and Big Pharma companies too. In most cases, their life partners are leading such initiatives.

At regular intervals one will find some interview by Elon Musk, talking about things like AI is an ‘existential threat to humanity, raising concern on Google’s Deep Mind lab and claiming how scary and ‘weird’ the future is. And Musk is one of those who are not merely talking but preparing the solutions too, for example, the Neuralink kind of projects, that are about implantable brain–machine interfaces that Musk called a ‘Fitbit in your skull.’

There is a whole lobby of propagandists that exists in Silicon Valley. A massive propagation of ideas like the mindset of abundance, shifting humanity from ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ stage to ‘haves’ and ‘super haves,’ Universal Basic Income, Homo Deus, Cyborg, etc., is going on with different creative improvisations. In a nutshell, from Market and Data, things are now going toward body, mind and future.

Google Marxism

The idea that Silicon Valley represents the American ‘spirit of enterprise’ is not convincing anymore. The white hair technocrats and visionaries of the USA (who led the US economy in the Reagan era), call the Silicon Valley brigade ‘Neo Marxist.’ They refer to their approach as ‘Google Marxism’ and they have valid arguments for that, too. In his book “Life after Google”, George Gilder, one of the most quoted authors of US President Ronald Reagan, writes “The neo-Marxism of today’s Silicon Valley titans repeats the error of the old Marxists in its belief that today’s technology—not steam and electricity, but silicon microchips, artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud computing, algorithmic biology and robotics—is the definitive human achievement. The algorithmic eschaton renders obsolete not only human labor but the human mind as well.” When the powerful technology tycoons, with immense control of human life in their hands, try to push the obsolete ideas on their users, the concerns are only inevitable.

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