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< | How Human Beings Have Become Victims to Their Own Legacies |
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> | How Human Beings Can Avoid Becoming Victims to Their Own Legacies |
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< | -- By YiShanYin - 22 Oct 2021 |
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> | -- By YiShanYin - 8 Jan 2022 |
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A walk down history lane |
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< | The human race is outstandingly good at producing evolutionary changes to their own future and possibly any other living things that cross paths with them. These changes are so great that human history has gone through various different stages within just a matter of 100,000 years – we went from primitive foraging to domesticated agrarians to industrialized societies. The intuitive perspective is that the human race generally benefits from each revolution in the sense that our lives are improved, more resources are exploited, and the people are liberated from the basic, mundane efforts of securing food and nutrition. |
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> | The human race is outstandingly good at producing evolutionary changes to their own future and possibly any other living things that cross paths with them. These changes are so great that human history has gone through various different stages within just a matter of 100,000 years – we went from primitive foraging to domesticated agrarians to industrialized societies. |
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< | However, revolutions do not always mean we have more control over our own productions. In fact, historian Yuval Noah Harari even contended that the agricultural revolution which took place around 12,000 years ago was “history’s biggest fraud” because the transformation from hunting and gathering to farming did not make lives easier for all humans; rather, it brought about more time-consuming labor and poorer diets for the average farmers. See Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens 79 (2015). What the human race thought would be an improvement was actually a luxury trap – once we had created the lifestyle of domesticated agriculture, there was no going back to digging up roots. We had no choice but to keep devoting most of our time and energy to farming, only to yield more crops that would end up in the pockets of the pampered elites. Id. We became the victims of our own invention. |
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> | How to define a revolution and its impact on society is perceived very differently. For example, historian Yuval Noah Harari proposed that the agricultural revolution which took place around 12,000 years ago was “history’s biggest fraud” because the transformation from hunting and gathering to farming did not make lives easier for all humans; rather, it brought about more time-consuming labor and poorer diets for the average farmers. See Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens at 79. However, anthropologist David Graeber and archaeologist David Wengrow rebutted this concept with scientific evidence showing that human settlement began to form before the domestication of wheat, and that cereal production only came about as a byproduct of human’s efforts to harvest straw as fuel. Therefore, it would be against the evidence to state that wheat domesticated humans. See David Graeber and David Wengrow, Dawn of Everything at 557-566. |
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< | How the Internet has changed the game for the human race |
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> | How the Internet has changed the human race |
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Is the human race playing a game?
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> | Fast forward to the present, where we conduct our work from home, scroll through snippets of a stranger’s life, and buy and sell assets with a touch on a screen, all thanks to the invention of the Internet to which all our electronic devices are connected. The Internet has changed so much of how we go about our daily lives that there is no going back to lives without it. |
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< | Fast forward to the present, where we conduct our work from home, scroll through snippets of a stranger’s life, and buy and sell assets with a touch on a screen, all thanks to the invention of the Internet to which all our electronic devices are connected. In my observation, the revolution the Internet brought about which took place at the end of the last century has propensities similar to Harari’s theory. |
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> | I used to think that the birth of Internet was a luxury trap for human beings, one that is similar to what Harari portrayed the agricultural revolution in his theory. I thought that for two reasons. First, I observed that much of the convenience that the Internet brings about is accompanied by unwanted surveillance. General search, for instance, grants users immediate access to information that would otherwise take much more effort to gather in pre-Internet times; but it also collects information from the users for the purpose of placing targeted ads. Second, I viewed reliance on electronic devices as a form of self-enslavement because it empowers the devices to take control over their users. An obvious example is that some people rely entirely on their phones to keep track of their schedules, so much so that if an event is not documented on Google Calendar or not posted on Instagram, it would be as if such an event never occurred. |
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< | Prior to the birth of the Internet, information was distributed mainly through books, radio, and television. When modern Internet started to gain popularity in the 1990s, the idea that everything was easily accessible without the impediment of time or costs led to us thinking it would liberate us from the information asymmetry that used to be caused by concentrated socio-political powers. However, as surveillance capitalism began to flourish in the 21st century, mass data are now in the hands of big techs who provide “personalized” services and experiences that most of us embrace without realizing what it would cost us. Instead of actively seeking the information we need from this interconnected system, we are fed with tailored content and targeted ads which are the products of our tracked behaviors. While some may view the trade of privacy (especially of non-sensitive information) for “convenience” in daily life as a perfectly sensible decision, it is obvious that a higher value is sacrificed. As long as the information we gather from the Internet is a reflection of our own surveilled behavior, our minds would always be tinted and the freedom of thought compromised. What was supposed to liberate human minds, under the influence of surveillance capitalism, actually made us succumb to another form of dictatorship. |
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> | However, my theory had a major flaw. When I thought about the Internet, I was only concerned with the pattern of usage of certain software by certain people. Just as Professor Moglen pointed out—the Internet is everything more than that. It is extremely wrong to assume that a certain type of behavior is the norm when it only reflects that of a fraction of users. The opposite of my theory can be proved true from at least two of the following aspects. |
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< | A striking example is the now thriving Internet platforms such as Facebook and Amazon. Its beauty is that literally anyone with any electronic device can be the consumer and supplier of any content, goods, or services with minimum costs. But in the meantime, every piece of information on both sides is being collected, analyzed and commercialized by corporations whose surveillance is most of the time unnoticed, consciously disregarded, or even willingly accepted. These data could even be passed on to other entities after users press the “I agree” button without knowing what is to be consented. The inherent desires of humans – either to be noticed, to be celebrated or to profit – make us vulnerable to the tradeoffs. While we thought we could control the narrative of our own presence on the Internet and achieve our goals, we would actually end up playing by the established rules in order to stay on the platforms. |
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> | First, information on the Internet can be and should be distributed in a decentralized manner. Communications should be carried out in a way that does not rely on the operation of any facilities controlled by any Big Tech. If an average Facebook user (like me) would take it upon herself to learn how to build her personal website and her own email server, she would no longer need to compromise privacy for using messaging services provided by Big Tech. |
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< | Reliance on electronic devices is another epitome of self-enslavement. We human beings like to consider ourselves as intellectual creatures – the kind that know how to use tools, create symbols and comprehend abstract ideas. Computers and mobile phones were supposed to serve as a tool to make our lives easier. But delegating too much work of the human minds to these gadgets leads to overreliance, and overreliance empowers them to take control over us. We could be forgetting important appointments if they are not documented in the calendar systems on our laptops. Absent the capture by our smartphones, it is as if social events never occurred. Once this tool becomes something we cannot live without, we become the captives of our own creation. |
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> | Second, if equipped with adequate knowledge and software, anyone can command the machine to do whatever she wishes it to do—if anything, the Internet should act as a catalyst rather than a barrier. Whenever I have trouble commanding my laptop through the usual user interface, I would, without hesitation, look up ways to instruct the terminal to do as I say. If I could take some more time to learn about it systematically, I can make technology work for me and not the other way around. There is really no such thing as humans being controlled by computers; some people simply choose to use their gadgets in the more “hassle-free” way as they deem it. |
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< | Will it be possible to steer our future away from the obvious? |
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> | Conclusion |
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< | So this is the presence of the human race – overpowered by the result of our innovative progress. Would we be able to steer our future away from it? Perhaps when enough people among us are willing to defy the eagerness to blend in and play the game, then we might start to find an alternative to stop being the victims of our own legacies. |
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> | In rewriting my second draft of this paper, I realized now that my previous understanding of the meaning of Internet and the revolutionary effects it brought about was far from accurate. I could have thought deeper, done more research, and at least attempted to understand the basic technicalities. Yet I did not. I could only see what options were readily available to me without going through all the troubles, which was exactly the point I am trying to make here. |
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I'm not sure the history of pre-history is necessary. If it is, I think it would be appropriate to interrogate Harari with David Gaeber's Dawn of Everything, which is an astounding and important response, and which also addresses the political issues you raise. |
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> | After confronting the weak points of my original theory, I began to understand that human beings are not trapped by the Net. People make choices that contribute to the relationship they have with technology and the Internet. If they choose to be self-dependent, they could benefit so much more than they ever would pre-Internet. If they choose the easy and convenient option, they are paying for it at a greater price. |
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< | As to which, I think the present draft could be improved if it were continued, from the stub of a conclusion it presently possess. That's why radical condensation above, to concentrate on your real point, will be necessary if you are to reach it.
What happens if you really use free software, so that people can have computers that do everything for them that they need? Personal clouds that use cheap hardware, free software, low power computers that are adequate to the needs of families, small businesses and other associations, and which can combine together using the underlying architectures of the Net, the Ckoud and the Web, so that no one needs Facebbook, TikTok? , etc. anymore? What if we are able to exchange with one another safely, without having to give away personal information or contribute to anyone's knowledge of our activities? You are presenting a picture over a thousand centuries, which entirely depends on the way some software happens to work this decade. That seems a trifle arbitrary.
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You are entitled to restrict access to your paper if you want to. But we all derive immense benefit from reading one another's work, and I hope you won't feel the need unless the subject matter is personal and its disclosure would be harmful or undesirable. |