Woke up today morning and saw this piece on High Frequency Trading. I have already read Michael Lewis’Flash Boys and The Big Short which has kindled a strong dislike towards this HFT, not before dreaming about millions by doing it. When I hit this
We tend to understand the concept of actively using technology to achieve certain ends (exercising agency), but we find it harder to conceptualise the potential loss of agency that technology can bring. It’s a phenomenon perhaps best demonstrated with email: I can use email to exercise my agency in this world, to send messages that make things happen. At the same time, it’s not like I truly have the option to not use email. In fact, if I did not have an email account, I would be severely disabled. There is a contradiction at play: The email empowers me, whilst simultaneously threatening me with disempowerment if I refuse to use it.
my mind automatically went to one point of long time consternation – Facebook. With the recent reports of both Google and Facebook pushing for face recognition technologies and even people at MIT Technology Review are wondering what it means and how people take it, I am more spooked on the issue than I usually am.
The Dilemma
I am trying to setup something which requires inputs from a number of people intellectually, monetarily and personally. And one place where all these people could be reached out easily, coordinated, and followed upon is Facebook. There is no denying it. I have seen a lot of groups coordiante a lot of stuff over there before I deleted my account. It has become so ubiquitous in everyday lives of millions of people that people like me will be looked down as the ‘anti-vaxers’ of the digital connectivity. I am also finding it increasingly hard to explain why I don’t have account, more so when it comes to why I deleted it.
For most people the perceived threat of someone owning our identity in some distant place as one among the millions far outweighs the benefit of being ‘connected’ to friends and family.
The email empowers me, whilst simultaneously threatening me with disempowerment if I refuse to use it.
This sounds so much like
The Facebook empowers me, whilst simultaneously threatening me with disempowerment if I refuse to use it.
The compromise of having to let facebook’s scripts stalk me, monitor me, and feed me what it thinks is good for me in order for me to setup and run things I want to has resulted in a dilemma like no other.
Probable Ways Out
- The old way: Restrain from going to FB and do things the old way. Which is call the first person you know, get to know about the next person and from him the next one. So on so forth. While it is entirely doable, it does involve retelling the same story multiple number of times.
- **Be the hypocrite: **Let somebody else do the co-ordination on platforms like Facebook like celebrities do. I don’t think I am that wealthy or famous to hire a SoMe firm. It also involves being a hypocrite for using Facebook and calling it a bad thing.
- **One among the millions: **Throw out all reservations and jump into FB. Let whatever hits the millions hit me.
All the three is equally straining for a variety of reasons. And is killing me.