Article ID: CBB840681632

Computer Scientists as Modern Hypnotists: Placing a Trance on Societal Norms (June 2019)

unapi

It is without question that the use of digital technology (DT) has pervaded everyday life. From video chatting with a family member in another country, to checking the weather on a handheld computer, technology has provided society with many benefits. Social media, like Facebook (FB), Twitter, and LinkedIn, have seemingly brought the world closer, but at what cost? In this article, we show that the mass use of technology, more specifically social media, have led to the conscious will of users to be hijacked by platforms in order to increase their user-base and capital. We do this by first evaluating the impact of technology on one's conscious will, the feeling that one's actions are caused by oneself. After finding that technology makes users feel as though their actions are more consciously willed, and people naturally want to feel consciously willed, the next logical step is to analyze how modern tech companies use this to their advantage. Looking at features from popular social media, we describe how these features artificially increase the feeling of users' actions being consciously willed, regardless of if the users are actually consciously willing their actions. Finally, we discuss ways in which individuals can reclaim control over their conscious will, and how to reduce this commodification of will at a company level. The ability of a company to control the decision-making metrics of their users should strike one as troubling; whereas the power of a company to hypnotize its users into thinking that they are using the platform because they want to, and not because the company wants them to, is quite concerning. [Peer reviewed]

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB840681632/

Similar Citations

Article Ons Al-Shamaileh; (June 2018)
I Have Issues with Facebook: But I Will Keep Using It (/isis/citation/CBB503279988/)

Article Anson Au; Matthew Chew; (2017)
How Do You Feel? Managing Emotional Reaction, Conveyance, and Detachment on Facebook and Instagram (/isis/citation/CBB471103837/)

Article Jeremy Pitt; Agnieszka Rychwalska; Magdalena Roszczynska-Kurasinska; Andrzej Nowak; (March 2019)
Democratizing Platforms for Social Coordination (/isis/citation/CBB485378597/)

Article Jaigris Hodson; (March 2019)
Don't Trust #CDNMedia: Twitter Posts From Eight Canadian Communities During #elxn42 (/isis/citation/CBB640345135/)

Article Lav R. Varshney; (March 2019)
Must Surprise Trump Information? (/isis/citation/CBB124483893/)

Article Satish M. Srinivasan; Raghvinder S. Sangwan; Colin J. Neill; Tianhai Zu; (March 2019)
Twitter Data for Predicting Election Results: Insights from Emotion Classification (/isis/citation/CBB875422276/)

Article Brook Manville; Josiah Ober; (March 2019)
In Search of Democracy 4.0: Is Democracy as We Know It Destined to Die? (/isis/citation/CBB867447434/)

Thesis Tenen, Dennis Yi; (2011)
We Have Always Been Digital: The Poetics of Human-Computer Interaction (/isis/citation/CBB001567333/)

Book Jessa Lingel; (2021)
The Gentrification of the Internet: How to Reclaim Our Digital Freedom (/isis/citation/CBB153399179/)

Article Christine Perakslis; (2019)
To Trust or Not to Trust?: The Complexities of Sociotechnical Architectures (/isis/citation/CBB209369645/)

Article Rahul Singh; Ankur Ravindra Bodhe; Pranav Kanuparthi; Aditya Ananthakrishnan; Jeremy Pitt; (December 2019)
From Classification to Definition: The Changing Nature of Human Adjudication (/isis/citation/CBB509839755/)

Book Louise Amoore; (2020)
Cloud ethics : Algorithms and the attributes of ourselves and others (/isis/citation/CBB491357774/)

Article Ashley Shew; (March 2020)
Ableism, Technoableism, and Future AI (/isis/citation/CBB740369225/)

Article Laura Leondina Campanozzi; Eugenio Guglielmelli; Eleonora Cella; Giampaolo Ghilardi; Mirta Michilli; Alfonso Molina; Massimo Ciccozzi; Vittoadolfo Tambone; (December 2019)
Building Trust in Social Robotics: A Pilot Survey (/isis/citation/CBB220307519/)

Book Ethem Alpaydın; (2021)
Machine Learning (/isis/citation/CBB513990166/)

Book Mark Coeckelbergh; (2020)
AI Ethics (/isis/citation/CBB990965100/)

Book Nell Haynes; (2016)
Social media in northern Chile : Posting the extraordinarily ordinary (/isis/citation/CBB334620660/)

Book Juliano Spyer; (2017)
Social media in emergent Brazil: How the Internet affects social change (/isis/citation/CBB592266562/)

Article Leandro de Brasi; (March 2019)
Democratic Governance of Information Technologies: The Need for Citizen Competence (/isis/citation/CBB632904072/)

Authors & Contributors
Jeremy Pitt
Coeckelbergh, Mark
Nell Haynes
Lav R. Varshney
Massimo Ciccozzi
Ankur Ravindra Bodhe
Concepts
Technology and society
Computers and computing
Social media
social networking (online)
Automation
Internet
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
Places
Tahrir Square
Middle and Near East
Hong Kong
United States
Europe
Egypt
Institutions
Facebook (firm)
Twitter (firm)
Instagram (firm)
Google (firm)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment