A lot has been going on with the informational aspect of technology as many are concerned about privacy and security. But this shouldn't be a reason for us to forget the attentional aspect of the internet. Attention - a primary faculty we employ that helps us in our perception of truth and falsehood. Often we don't value attention as something important or worthy but on the other side the technology that attracts our attention considers our attention as lucrative and important. The question of attention in the digital society is really significant but first of all, we have to think about some basic ideas that are fuelling this discourse on the technological system. Well yeah, let's connect some dots!
In the malayalam movie, Android Kunjappan 4.25, we see a scene where the character played by 'Suraj Venjarammoodu' asks the robot about 'Prasannan' (a character) and the robot looks up the name 'Prasannan' on the internet and comes with the most innocent statement that shocked me. The robot says, "Prasannan doesn't exist." This from the view of the technological paradise is no cruelty but from the human side, this is cruel and it is also denying existence for a human being.
Of course, a person who lives out of the digital society is a 'non-existent entity' for the robot. But what about us? How do we see people who are not on "popular Social media platforms"?
I will share here a personal experience from my twitter life. Unlike other social media, twitter is a place that gives you a much 'private-social existence' (an irony!). So one day a person (we follow each other) asked me about me. This person was really curious regarding the kind of nonsensical tweets that I posted. As a result, this person looked up for me on Facebook and as I don't keep an active FB profile, the person couldn't find me. So the person failed to collect any data on me and with no other options left, this person moved to the chat box. This incident rather makes things interesting for me because if there had been a social profile to answer for me, then that person's curiosity wouldn't had ended up in a chat box. What really happened can be summarised in three processes. Recognition - Curiosity - Attention. This order of concepts is real important here because if there was indeed a potential social profile that I've kept, then the curiosity in the person would've turned into attention. But as a "non-existent", "non-performing asset" in the digital society, I was not worthy of attention. Again attention is something reserved for the 'social' people. So the question regarding how "non-existent" a person is, with regard to his social media presence is very important in today's world. In that regard, the Android Robot or the mystery person of Twitter (a representative of humanity) shares the same opinion on the existence of people.
So what's with the attention problem in the internet. If we are to analyse ourselves regarding our attention, or in other words, if we attend to our attention, we can find that so many things are robbing us of many important 'real' moments in life. It can be our 'humblebrag' friend or the telegram news channels that we subscribed. Understanding the gravity of the situation is real important here. Recently I read the James Williams book, Stand out of our Light and this book really explains the issues of attention with the deeper designs of technology. After reading the book, one thing that I've understood is that self-regulations in itself do not pay off. Internet's function by design is to attract our attention. There is no justification for bringing in a moral concept of 'addiction' here because the system wanted you addicted in the first place. Actually the words like "addiction", "binge-watching", "detox" are actually used by the system to shift the blame on the 'Weak-Willed Individual'. This is a smokescreen.
So what I'm basically trying to say here is regarding 'self-reflection' rather than 'self-regulation'. Reflecting upon a day's internet activity from the start to the finish is key here. After reflection, answering questions like, Which websites did you visit? Was it planned or was it under persuasion (pop ups/suggestions)? will tell us what's really at stake!
Do we plan before using the internet? Well, nobody plans before using internet. This is the big truth here. The internet actually takes you to places, pages, profiles. It makes us see things that it thinks that we want to see. And we trust the 'guidance' of the internet. The result is that we are taken through a hell lot of information which actually results in attention scarcity.
So what's the solution? There is actually no solution. This is the system's doing and all an individual can do is to express outrage which is exactly what the internet/social media has become - a place for expressing one's outrage! Just take the example of the 'pregnant elephant snare incident' in Kerala. People from North to South expressed outrage on social media but there followed no structural justice from the system. We moved on with our hashtag campaigns as new issues came at us. This is the everyday scenario. Why do we do it? Because our attention is scarce. The internet bombards us with more information which actually lets us slip from one issue to another on social media. This goes on like the "deferment or the postponement of the signifier" in 'Derrida's Post-Structuralism'. Here our outrage in social media is the signifier. It takes different meanings and shape (An ultimate post-structuralist reality). I remember telling my friend that the greatest thing one can share is frustration or outrage. There is no doubt that there is deeper psychological realms to this aspect too.
All these time we believed social media was with the people. But it is not and there are people who believe social media is neutral but in this world anything and everything takes sides. So if the social media is not with us, it is definitely with the oppressor. In the coming years, this will be more evident. To force the dynamics of the internet to work in our favour is what really matters in this state of affairs.
As James Williams says in his book, the first thing should be to have an apt language for addressing these issues. Without the proper language, it is difficult to hold the system accountable.
Thus, the system is designed exactly like the Android robot(from the movie) - to deny existence to the people who criticizes its design. This had been the project from the start. In this situation, the 'existent social entity' should take back authority from the design that they trusted. Allowing internet to assume the position of the authority only takes away our autonomy, attention and moreover reason, that we derive from attention. And only by understanding that this is not an individual project but a 'real' social project will help us in making any difference at all!
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