SCRIPT

GFX: “The most important issue facing rhetoric today is understanding the relationships between humans and mediating technologies.” - Justin Hodgeson, Post-Digital Rhetoric and the New Aesthetic 

We are often numb to the full impact of technologies and how tech alters us.

Communications scholar Marshall McLuhan foreshadowed the power of the machine, and how it had the ability to take over our perception and ways of Being in the world.

McLuhan introduced us to this “numbing effect” even before color television was a norm.

Marshall McLuhan SOT: “The electromagnetism seems to be in it’s technological manifestations an extension of our nerves and becomes mainly an information system. It is above all a feedback or looped system.”

Fast forward 45 years to today.

We can’t put our phones down. We dine with our devices. We bring them to bed. We even bathe with them.

Tristan Harris SOT: “This thing is a slot machine.”

Tristan Harris is a former Google product manager. He explains the science behind the machine, and Silicon Valley’s electric hold on humanity.

Tristan Harris SOT: “Inadvertently, whether they want to or not, they are shaping the thoughts and feelings and actions of people. They are programming people.  There’s always this narrative that technology is neutral. And it’s up to us to choose how we use it. This is just not true. They want you to use it in particular ways for long periods of time because that’s how they make their money.”

Big tech encourages silos with algorithms. So how do we un-silo ourselves? 

How do we step outside the echo chambers, thinking critically and thinking for ourselves?

MIT professor and psychologist Sherry Turkle suggests "Reclaiming Conversation" by becoming more aware of how technology uses us, and how we can use it more effectively.

Sherry Turkle SOT: “Now, we all need to focus on the many, many ways technology can lead us back to our real lives, our own bodies, our own communities, our own politics, our own planet. They need us. Let's talk about how we can use digital technology, the technology of our dreams, to make this life the life we can love.” 

In other words, let’s embrace the new aesthetic, but remain the driver at the wheel.