Was listening to the Big Ideas Podcast while making breakfast/lunch for my kids this morning. It was an episode on data privacy and it had a really important takeaway to it that I don't often hear enough of in these conversations; that protecting your data is both a personal responsibility and a systemic one. Usually, I only hear this framed around the individual steps that you can do to keep yourself safe online: use a password manager, use 2FA, manage your privacy settings, etc... Rarely do I hear it said that all of this is simply not enough to keep you safe and that if we want protection, it requires regulations from the government.

"We need reform that reflects community expectations of privacy, that understands that privacy choices you make are not necessarily the choices about your privacy that are made, that others make them for you. This is a collective responsibility that needs to be regulated at a societal level, not something that we can offload to individuals. Unless we do that, companies and governments will continue to exploit this moment of sophisticated technology..." (Lizzie O'Shea, Founder & Chair of Digital Rights Watch)

It's just so important that we keep in mind that these big tech companies continue to spend significant amounts of money to lobby the government to stay out of their way. We should also maintain a healthy skepticism towards content amplified on their platforms that criticizes the governments that do challenge them. Oversight has been successfully rebranded as 'red tape' by the Libertarians and we need to be asking what we're giving up when we let Big Tech (and Big Business) have unimpeded access to our lives.

Is the digital town hall a dying dream?

This morning I'm reading this article on some of the shifts taking place in social media, particularly the way the bigger, centralized platforms have been splintering into multiple decentralized, politically homogenous platforms. The general framing is that users are increasingly moving to platforms that align with their political beliefs rather than staying in spaces that attempt to adhere to a more neutral set of community standards.

“It was once novel features, like Facebook’s photo tagging or Twitter’s quote tweets, that drew users to social media sites. Now, it’s frequently ideological alignment that seduces users. People are decamping to platforms that they believe match their norms and values — and, in an increasingly polarized America, there is a chasm between the two sides.”

It's all very interesting, but it's also touching on something I've been thinking about a lot over the last few years: the relationship between diversity and working towards a common good. It's also a thought process that is still very unformed in my head. So as always, we'll see where this goes...

One of the markers of the post-modern turn was the deconstruction of a the (Western) idea that a singular experience/truth/viewpoint that was somehow more right or true than others. You might say we are now living in the post-post-modern turn. It's sort of like a tube of toothpaste that has been emptied; there are a lot of people invested in trying to put that toothpaste back, but it's kind of too late. It's all over the counter already.

This all ties back to my question around seeking a common good amidst an increasingly diverse society. The old, dominant narrative took us there via eliminating difference. It's sort of like that melting pot vision of America; one leaves behind where they came from in order to become something new—an American(†). But this is where the toothpaste comes in. That narrative has been cracked wide open and shown to be shallow, reductive, and (frankly) racist. There are lots of reasons to point to in order to understand the extreme polarization of everything right now, but I think this is a part of it. This relationship between diversity and finding a shared life together. It's playing out in more extreme ways online because the internet reduces us to our opinions/ideologies/alignments In a way, these homogenous online communities are a way for us to feel like the toothpaste is still in the tube.

As I said, I'm still working through this question but I think we need to explore other postures for how to form community if we have any hope of finding a way forward. Off the top of my head, I'm advocating for models built around cooperation and hospitality. I'm open to hearing about others though.

† Just want to be clear that this is not an American problem only. The American melting pot analogy is just a very clear picture of the problem.

Came across this research paper making the rounds on LinkedIn last week. It's a study looking at the impact of AI usage on our critical thinking and other cognitive functions. The authors note:

"While cognitive offloading can free up cognitive resources, there is concern that it may lead to a reduction in cognitive effort, fostering what some researchers refer to as ‘cognitive laziness’. This condition might diminish the inclination to engage in deep, reflective thinking. The use of AI tools for tasks like memory and decision-making could lead to a decline in individuals’ abilities to perform these tasks independently, potentially reducing cognitive resilience and flexibility over time."

Though I am sure that this is a nuanced topic and a need for some healthy debate around this remains, I am thankful that this is getting attention. Technology, like any tool can be beneficial in the ways it helps us achieve efficiency in tasks we do repeatedly. Yet, there is always a risk that if we become too reliant on that tool we might forget how to do the task without it. Skills can be diminished and lost entirely if not used.

My growing concern with AI has been a fear that it might erode our abilities to learn and think critically about things; and this study certainly lends itself to that theory. Yes, an AI tool might be able to summarize a book, an article, or meeting notes and save me the time of doing it myself; but efficiency should not be our only goal. Being able to critically evaluate something we read or hear and know how to pull out the useful or quality parts is crucial—especially as information online becomes less and less trustworthy.

One of my favourite newsletters shared this really interesting article this week. It's almost hard to define exactly what it's about, as it hits on many different fascinating ideas; but at its core it seems to be looking at our relationship to time and hurry. There's so many great things in this article that I would recommend taking some time to read it in full. But what I want to pause and reflect on here is when he talks about the way certain innovations in time saving or efficiency can move from being a good option to becoming a cultural obligation. He uses something like parking apps or self-checkout lanes as an example.

"We welcome the technology at first because it presents us with a choice. But then everybody else has to adopt the technology, and we suddenly realize we’re worse off than we were when we started... And when behaviours become universal, they affect everybody."

I think this is a great point and I was particularly interested in how he took this idea and applied it to the behaviour of people using their phones to record concerts. I'm not sure if you've been to a concert lately, but this trend has become so big that it has become a normalized part of the experience. The author makes the observation that even if you don't want to participate in this shared behaviour, everyone else doing it can ruin the concert experience for you. He even notes that the people most affected are the performers themselves, who now have to perform for an online audience rather than just the people in attendance. It's no longer an option, it's an obligation.

"When one person does something, it’s an option. It’s something that somebody does. When these things become more widespread, they morph from being alternative options to being social norms, conventions from which you have no escape."

This is something I find myself reflecting on often as it relates to the public realm. Public space lives in this strange middle ground of belonging to no one and everyone simultaneously. As such, it is always vulnerable to the shifting norms and expectations of society. A lack of intentional reflection on those behaviours can result in our public spaces being hijacked by them in a way that actively destroys the value that public space should bring.

Perhaps one of the greatest sins of this modern era is the way we have let technology into our lives without intention or consideration of what we are giving up.

Caught an old podcast interview on the weekend with Jennifer Keesmaat in which she made an interesting comment that connects to what I was reflecting on the other day.

She was talking about the social contract in Holland in which people were willing to forego larger personal spaces in exchange for higher quality and more accessible public spaces. People have less need for larger backyards when they have lots of parks and multi-use paths around them. She also contrasted this with the way in which larger private space is seen as a status symbol here in Canada; a larger home is indicative of moving up the social ladder. Yet she recalls family members in Holland living their whole lives in modest row houses, something here we would likely call a starter home.

The key piece here is that achieving this sort of standard of living requires a value or mindset shift from all of us. We need to see a thriving public realm as a worthy trade off; but it also requires investment. It's not enough to just carve off some land and then leave it. Vibrant public spaces need resourcing and creativity in order for them to bring the sort of joy that makes them worth it.