Popular in Social Sciences

Books

City Time: On Being Sentenced to Rikers Island

Independent Scholar David A. Campbell

Culture and Society

The City as a Growth Machine: Toward a Political Economy of Place

New York University Harvey Moltoch

Economics

Gender and Economics

University of California Santa Barbara Shelly Lundberg

American Politics

Keeping the Republic

Boston College Marc Landy

Banks and Policy Organisations

Greening the financial sector

European Investment Bank Matteo Ferrazzi

British Politics

Entrepreneurial thinking: the politics and practice of policy impact

University of Sheffield Matthew Flinders

Culture and Society

Carceral Entrapments: Views from the Prison/Street Interface in India

Indian Institute of Technology Delhi Mahuya Bandyopadhya

Hyperconnectivity and Its Discontents

View more insights in Social Sciences - Sociology

View more figures from University of California Los Angeles

View the page of Rogers Brubaker

Read the Study

Rogers Brubaker discusses the ambivalence of digital hyperconnectivity, which opens up many new and exciting possibilities, yet at the same time threatens human freedom.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 12, 2024

Generating Workspace

Export as PDF

This video video explores the concept of "digital hyperconnectivity," which describes the state of being where everyone and everything is constantly connected through digital platforms. This video video phenomenon began to emerge prominently in the mid-2010s with the wide adoption of smartphones and social media. Hyperconnectivity is characterized by near-universal mobile and broadband access, advanced cloud computing, extensive data extraction, and rapid advancements in artificial intelligence.

The author describes hyperconnectivity as a "total social fact," impacting every aspect of life, including our self-perception and social interactions. It has transformed human culture into a continuous stream of digital content, reshaped economic transactions, and concentrated power in the hands of large tech companies. While earlier media revolutions also caused significant changes, the speed and scale of transformations enabled by hyperconnectivity are unprecedented.

This video video critically examines the promises of digital connectivity, including abundance, decommodification, and democratization, arguing that these are often exaggerated. It suggests that while digital culture provides extensive access to cultural products and participation, it often leads to superficial engagement and increasingly commodifies experiences.

Moreover, the text highlights the dual nature of hyperconnectivity, which has created new opportunities for individual empowerment but has predominantly strengthened organizations capable of data extraction and surveillance. The author concludes with a pessimistic view, illustrating how hyperconnectivity has fragmented public discourse, intensified political polarization, and given rise to new forms of control and manipulation, ultimately favoring centralized power rather than dispersing it.

Language:

Export as PDF

X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

00:00.035 --> 00:02.085
What I mean by digital hyperconnectivity

00:02.425 --> 00:05.805
to exaggerate only slightly, is that everyone

00:06.225 --> 00:08.885
and everything is connected to everyone

00:08.945 --> 00:12.125
and everything else everywhere and all the time.

00:13.055 --> 00:16.435
Hyperconnectivity in this sense is a relatively recent

00:17.235 --> 00:20.555
phenomenon, is consolidated only around the middle

00:20.575 --> 00:22.595
of the last decade when smartphone

00:22.655 --> 00:25.795
and social media use became nearly universal.

00:26.215 --> 00:29.635
Now, of course, digital connectivity as opposed

00:29.635 --> 00:33.035
to hyperconnectivity, has a much, much longer history.

00:33.215 --> 00:36.795
But hyperconnectivity for me is something much more specific

00:37.055 --> 00:38.155
and much more recent.

00:38.815 --> 00:40.075
It evolves,

00:40.075 --> 00:43.035
near universal mobile broadband connectivity,

00:43.635 --> 00:46.595
a sophisticated cloud computing infrastructure

00:47.295 --> 00:50.715
and immense apparatus of data extraction

00:50.975 --> 00:54.195
and the incredibly rapid leaps in artificial intelligence

00:54.385 --> 00:57.675
that were enabled by using all that extracted data

00:58.055 --> 01:00.475
to train machine learning algorithms.

01:01.225 --> 01:04.995
What does the hyper in hyperconnectivity mean?

01:05.385 --> 01:08.675
Well, one way to get at this is to think about the who,

01:09.145 --> 01:12.795
what, where and when of digital connectivity.

01:13.215 --> 01:14.555
So in terms of the who

01:14.935 --> 01:19.235
and what, the scale of connectivity is simply staggering.

01:19.675 --> 01:22.155
Facebook may be passe and uncool,

01:22.615 --> 01:26.355
but it connects 3 billion people while WhatsApp

01:26.695 --> 01:29.755
and Instagram connect o over 2 billion each.

01:30.095 --> 01:32.755
And it's almost two obvious to say,

01:32.755 --> 01:35.275
but it's worth remembering that a billion,

01:35.715 --> 01:38.515
a thousand million is a very large number

01:39.095 --> 01:43.115
and frictionless instantaneous connectivity on this truly

01:43.625 --> 01:47.795
planetary scale is something new in human history,

01:48.135 --> 01:50.915
and it's not just people who are hyperconnected

01:51.015 --> 01:52.155
on a planetary scale.

01:52.835 --> 01:56.275
More and more digital connectivity involves connections

01:56.345 --> 02:00.715
between things, not just the smart devices in our homes,

02:01.375 --> 02:05.155
but the hundreds of billions of network sensors

02:05.455 --> 02:08.475
and tagged objects that communicate with each other.

02:08.935 --> 02:12.435
So that's the who and the what of hyperconnectivity.

02:12.695 --> 02:17.195
But the hyper and hyperconnectivity is also about the where

02:17.415 --> 02:19.235
and when of connectivity.

02:19.815 --> 02:22.835
The anywhere, anytime logic

02:22.975 --> 02:26.075
of hyperconnectivity has broken down the boundaries

02:26.075 --> 02:30.435
between previously distinct spheres of life, between home

02:30.935 --> 02:33.355
and the outside world, between private

02:33.655 --> 02:36.315
and public, between work and play.

02:36.775 --> 02:39.715
But connectivity is not just anywhere

02:40.055 --> 02:43.035
and anytime in the vision of Silicon Valley,

02:43.175 --> 02:44.555
it should be everywhere

02:44.815 --> 02:48.755
and always, in other words, connectivity will become

02:49.305 --> 02:50.715
ambient, which means

02:50.715 --> 02:54.595
that it will be diffused throughout the environment rather

02:54.595 --> 02:58.555
than dependent on devices like smartphones as it is today.

02:58.915 --> 03:01.125
I, I was led to write the book by my sense

03:01.125 --> 03:04.325
that digital hyperconnectivity changes everything.

03:05.125 --> 03:09.385
Hyperconnectivity is what I call a total social fact.

03:09.615 --> 03:12.905
Borrowing the phrase from anthropologist Marcel Moss,

03:13.125 --> 03:14.945
it leaves no sphere of life.

03:15.455 --> 03:20.265
Untouched hyperconnectivity reaches deep inside the self,

03:20.825 --> 03:23.945
reorganizing our attention, disrupting our rhythms,

03:24.665 --> 03:26.945
reshaping our ways of thinking, seeing

03:27.325 --> 03:30.945
and feeling it recasts social interactions,

03:31.035 --> 03:34.625
stretching them over space and time, gamifying them

03:35.125 --> 03:38.985
and channeling them into platform friendly surveillance,

03:39.255 --> 03:41.545
enhancing forms and formats.

03:42.405 --> 03:45.745
It converts the whole of human culture into

03:46.285 --> 03:49.825
an unending stream of digital content served to us

03:49.885 --> 03:51.185
by personalized algorithms.

03:51.565 --> 03:55.065
It has revolutionized economic life by enabling

03:55.665 --> 03:58.025
frictionless transactions, creating new markets,

03:58.605 --> 04:02.105
and concentrating immense economic, cultural,

04:02.205 --> 04:03.425
and political power.

04:03.965 --> 04:06.305
The power to reorganize social

04:06.485 --> 04:10.385
and economic life in the hands of the giant tech platforms.

04:11.085 --> 04:13.505
And it has fragmented the public sphere,

04:13.865 --> 04:16.025
intensifying political polarization

04:16.365 --> 04:18.345
and strengthening populist challenges

04:18.565 --> 04:19.985
to mediating institutions.

04:20.525 --> 04:23.505
Of course, earlier revolutions in media

04:23.805 --> 04:27.145
and communications technologies also occasioned far

04:27.425 --> 04:28.465
reaching transformations.

04:28.565 --> 04:30.625
You could think, for example, of the rise

04:30.625 --> 04:33.705
of the printing press or of the cultural

04:33.705 --> 04:36.105
and political consequences of the rise of television.

04:37.095 --> 04:40.235
Yet the planetary scale, the pervasiveness

04:40.535 --> 04:42.515
and above all the speed

04:42.655 --> 04:46.115
and suddenness of the transformations occasions

04:46.135 --> 04:49.275
by digital hyperconnectivity are truly unprecedented.

04:50.075 --> 04:53.015
The digital revolution has built on

04:53.155 --> 04:57.055
and subsumed previous revolutions in media

04:57.355 --> 04:59.135
and communication technology.

04:59.355 --> 05:03.495
It has absorbed and re-articulated existing media forms.

05:04.035 --> 05:08.855
It has combined print, photography, recorded sound, film,

05:09.735 --> 05:12.415
telephone, radio, television, gaming

05:12.635 --> 05:16.335
and computing into a single omnimed system.

05:17.065 --> 05:20.165
And this has enabled digital hyperconnectivity

05:20.385 --> 05:24.405
to become a universal infrastructure of contemporary life

05:24.405 --> 05:27.245
and infrastructure, not only of communication,

05:27.465 --> 05:32.315
but of sociability knowledge, culture, entertainment,

05:33.385 --> 05:37.555
news, politics, commerce, governance and more.

05:38.385 --> 05:41.005
Hyperconnectivity has thus become what I call

05:41.675 --> 05:42.685
meta infrastructure.

05:42.875 --> 05:46.325
It's an infrastructure on which almost all other

05:46.865 --> 05:48.965
sociotechnical infrastructures depend,

05:49.465 --> 05:53.005
and this is what gives Hyperconnectivity its pervasive reach

05:53.625 --> 05:54.965
and its transformative power.

05:55.385 --> 05:56.445
And it was the challenge

05:56.865 --> 06:00.205
Of trying to understand this transformative power

06:00.545 --> 06:02.965
as a whole that made me want to write the book.

06:03.025 --> 06:06.445
Humans are by definition tool using animals,

06:06.545 --> 06:09.805
and our technologies have been transforming our ways

06:09.805 --> 06:11.405
of living and our ways of thinking

06:11.545 --> 06:14.365
and feeling for the whole of the human species.

06:15.285 --> 06:18.225
But hyperconnectivity has been transforming the nature

06:18.245 --> 06:21.865
of the self extraordinarily quickly and profoundly.

06:22.365 --> 06:27.105
It has introduced radically new ways of knowing the self.

06:27.445 --> 06:32.385
Now, self knowledge is probably a universal cultural ideal,

06:32.765 --> 06:35.705
but what does it mean to know oneself

06:35.805 --> 06:38.425
and how do we arrive at self-knowledge?

06:38.965 --> 06:40.055
Different cultural

06:40.115 --> 06:42.135
and religious traditions have given different

06:42.135 --> 06:43.695
answers to these questions.

06:44.085 --> 06:46.175
Digital hyperconnectivity allows

06:46.235 --> 06:48.095
for a radically new kind of answer.

06:48.675 --> 06:51.375
It holds out the prospect of knowing the self

06:51.445 --> 06:54.655
through numbers rather than through words,

06:54.725 --> 06:57.295
through objective data, rather than

06:57.295 --> 07:00.455
through subjective introspection, through tracking

07:00.555 --> 07:03.895
of behavior rather than through plumbing, the depths

07:04.115 --> 07:07.985
of the soul, many people have become enthusiastic

07:07.985 --> 07:12.025
participants in the so-called Quantified Self Movement.

07:12.675 --> 07:14.905
These enthusiasts are eager

07:15.045 --> 07:17.585
to adopt the latest self-tracking technologies.

07:18.005 --> 07:20.185
But in a broader sense, all of us

07:20.605 --> 07:22.385
who use social media have become

07:22.985 --> 07:25.105
quantified selves whether we like it or not.

07:25.645 --> 07:27.305
And these, this is

07:27.305 --> 07:31.745
because all activities on social media platforms have be,

07:31.975 --> 07:34.345
have become relentlessly quantified

07:35.005 --> 07:37.625
and fed back to the user in a series of numbers.

07:37.965 --> 07:41.745
And these numbers have powerful effects on how we understand

07:42.205 --> 07:43.385
and evaluate ourselves.

07:43.735 --> 07:45.465
There's a lot of evidence, for example,

07:46.285 --> 07:47.305
and psychologists,

07:47.745 --> 07:49.825
Jonathan Haidt has been doing interesting work on this

07:49.825 --> 07:54.145
subject, that the relentless quantification on Facebook

07:54.205 --> 07:57.705
and especially Instagram may be harming the mental health

07:58.965 --> 08:01.265
of young people, especially adolescent girls

08:01.485 --> 08:03.465
who are constantly comparing themselves

08:03.765 --> 08:05.425
to others on social media

08:05.525 --> 08:09.185
and feeling bad about themselves when others seem

08:09.185 --> 08:12.385
to be having more fun or looking more attractive

08:13.125 --> 08:14.625
or getting more likes.

08:15.525 --> 08:17.745
Now, of course, social comparison wasn't

08:17.945 --> 08:19.265
invented by social media.

08:19.415 --> 08:21.705
It's a universal part of social life,

08:21.805 --> 08:25.345
but social media makes social comparison salient

08:25.445 --> 08:26.505
and inescapable,

08:27.005 --> 08:31.745
and it tends to function as a result, as a gigantic machine

08:31.885 --> 08:33.985
for manufacturing envy.

08:34.165 --> 08:38.305
And there's evidence that social media may be contributing

08:38.645 --> 08:40.345
to depression

08:40.845 --> 08:44.905
and anxiety who are susceptible to this kind of feedback.

08:45.445 --> 08:47.945
I'm not a big social media user myself,

08:48.445 --> 08:51.425
but when my book came out, I started posting regularly

08:52.005 --> 08:54.865
on Twitter for a couple of months on matters related

08:54.865 --> 08:56.365
to digital technology,

08:56.945 --> 09:00.045
and I felt myself becoming a quantified

09:00.155 --> 09:01.445
self against my will.

09:02.155 --> 09:05.885
It's hard to resist being hyper aware of digital metrics

09:06.185 --> 09:08.325
and being drawn into a comparative

09:08.545 --> 09:10.765
and competitive struggle for attention.

09:11.185 --> 09:14.765
So every time I checked the metrics, which I have

09:14.765 --> 09:16.925
to admit was embarrassingly, often

09:17.685 --> 09:20.485
I was participating in these new ways of knowing

09:21.025 --> 09:22.645
and evaluating the self.

09:22.845 --> 09:26.405
I was becoming the very kind of quantified self

09:26.595 --> 09:28.565
that I had written about in my book.

09:28.835 --> 09:33.285
Digital Enthusiasts pulled out a threefold promise about

09:33.285 --> 09:36.645
digital culture, what I call the promise of abundance,

09:37.385 --> 09:39.205
the promise of decommodification

09:39.905 --> 09:41.765
and the promise of democratization.

09:42.845 --> 09:45.075
Their excitement about the sheer abundance

09:45.615 --> 09:47.555
of digital culture is totally understandable.

09:47.705 --> 09:51.155
It's thrilling to have an infinitely rich

09:51.415 --> 09:55.235
and varied universe of cultural products at one's fingertips

09:55.865 --> 09:57.115
anytime and anywhere.

09:58.365 --> 10:00.525
Enthusiasts also celebrate the fact

10:00.525 --> 10:03.845
that much digital culture is freely available without a

10:03.845 --> 10:05.245
price tag attached to it.

10:05.905 --> 10:07.325
So the utopian idea

10:07.675 --> 10:11.645
that digital culture should be freely shared rather than

10:11.645 --> 10:14.685
bought and sold remains powerfully attractive.

10:15.345 --> 10:19.005
And enthusiasts are excited about the democratization

10:19.145 --> 10:20.245
of digital culture,

10:20.415 --> 10:22.885
about the new ways in which ordinary people,

10:23.305 --> 10:24.765
not just cultural elites

10:25.105 --> 10:28.045
or professionals, can participate in the production

10:28.545 --> 10:30.005
and circulation of culture.

10:31.275 --> 10:35.855
But we have to look critically at these celebratory accounts

10:35.995 --> 10:39.975
of abundance, decommodification and democratization.

10:40.745 --> 10:43.835
Digital cultural abundance is certainly exhilarating,

10:44.255 --> 10:45.675
but it's also flattening

10:45.895 --> 10:50.155
and homogenizing culture is converted into content,

10:51.145 --> 10:53.885
and that blurs together as it flows

10:53.955 --> 10:55.885
through the same conduits

10:55.885 --> 10:59.045
and across the same interfaces in an endless stream.

11:00.055 --> 11:02.105
Yeah, we encounter more culture than ever,

11:02.205 --> 11:05.585
but we engage it more superficially drawn

11:05.645 --> 11:07.545
by the perpetual lure of the new.

11:07.645 --> 11:10.585
We come to know less and less about.

11:10.655 --> 11:14.305
More and more we find ourselves chronically distracted

11:14.605 --> 11:17.425
and we lose our capacity for sustained engagement.

11:17.925 --> 11:21.105
As for Decommodification, I think that's hugely outweighed

11:21.165 --> 11:23.065
by Remodification.

11:23.605 --> 11:26.385
Yes, Wikipedia is a shining example

11:26.605 --> 11:30.385
of collaborative non-market oriented cultural production,

11:30.685 --> 11:35.465
but it's a lonely island in an immense sea of monetization.

11:36.635 --> 11:40.775
As the volume of cultural content increases, attention

11:41.325 --> 11:43.855
becomes an ever scarcer resource

11:43.995 --> 11:47.415
and a resource that's pervasively, measured

11:47.835 --> 11:49.135
and monetized.

11:49.885 --> 11:53.485
Even amateur cultural production is increasingly oriented

11:53.705 --> 11:56.525
to trying to capture some of that measurable

11:57.035 --> 11:58.085
monetizable attention.

11:59.065 --> 12:02.365
So digital culture has ultimately not been

12:02.505 --> 12:03.765
de de commodified.

12:03.875 --> 12:04.965
Instead, culture

12:05.185 --> 12:08.445
and commerce are locked in an advertiser and embrace.

12:09.265 --> 12:10.565
Now the question of cultural

12:10.845 --> 12:13.165
democratization is more complicated.

12:13.715 --> 12:18.525
It's true that ex inexpensive user-friendly digital tools

12:18.705 --> 12:21.085
for manipulating text images

12:21.265 --> 12:23.805
and sounds, you could think of Photoshop

12:23.825 --> 12:27.725
or Garage band, have a dramatically broadened access

12:27.865 --> 12:29.845
to the means of cultural production.

12:30.625 --> 12:33.805
But the question is not only how many people

12:34.465 --> 12:37.245
engage in cultural production, it's how they engage.

12:38.085 --> 12:42.475
We're told that AI tools will help everyone express their

12:42.475 --> 12:44.835
creativity in music and art, for example.

12:45.255 --> 12:49.715
So AI image generators like Open AI's Dolly,

12:49.945 --> 12:51.875
have gotten an enormous amount of attention,

12:52.575 --> 12:56.675
and the AI music company Amper promises to let everyone

12:57.615 --> 12:59.955
create their own original music in seconds.

13:01.295 --> 13:02.315
But what does it mean

13:02.655 --> 13:05.755
to create when you're creating your own original

13:05.755 --> 13:06.795
music in seconds?

13:07.255 --> 13:11.235
Is creativity going to be reduced to simply editing

13:11.335 --> 13:13.635
and tweaking AI generated music

13:13.815 --> 13:17.355
or coming up with a clever prompt for an image generator?

13:17.945 --> 13:21.405
My own view is that a genuine democratization

13:21.585 --> 13:24.645
of cultural creativity would promote the development

13:24.645 --> 13:28.325
of skills and capacities rather than minimize the

13:28.395 --> 13:29.885
need for such skills.

13:30.635 --> 13:32.245
Well, what about, you might ask,

13:32.245 --> 13:35.005
what about the democratization of cultural consumption?

13:35.715 --> 13:39.205
Some would argue that hyperconnectivity has made cultural

13:39.205 --> 13:43.125
consumption more democratic since digital technology cuts

13:43.125 --> 13:44.645
out cultural gatekeepers

13:45.025 --> 13:48.045
and simply gives people what they like and what they want.

13:48.625 --> 13:51.925
But in my view, this kind of cultural populism

13:52.505 --> 13:56.045
in which popularity is the sole criterion of value

13:56.825 --> 13:58.445
is not truly democratic.

13:59.085 --> 14:02.405
A democratic politics of culture, as I understand it,

14:02.695 --> 14:06.965
would not just fine tune algorithms to feed people precisely

14:06.965 --> 14:10.005
what they already like it would seek rather

14:10.425 --> 14:14.845
to promote learning, growth, discovery, and development.

14:14.955 --> 14:17.845
From the 1980s through the middle of the last decade,

14:18.195 --> 14:20.605
digital connectivity seemed to be full

14:20.625 --> 14:22.005
of democratic promise.

14:22.665 --> 14:24.925
It seemed to favor horizontal

14:24.945 --> 14:28.805
and multi-directional public communication rather than

14:29.445 --> 14:31.925
vertical and unidirectional mass communication.

14:32.865 --> 14:36.355
This new ecology of public communication, it was thought,

14:36.565 --> 14:39.755
would promote more participatory forms of citizenship.

14:40.355 --> 14:43.935
It would bring previously excluded groups into the polity,

14:44.475 --> 14:46.775
and it would contribute to the undermining

14:46.875 --> 14:48.335
of authoritarian regimes.

14:49.035 --> 14:51.765
Now, this story got many things right?

14:52.315 --> 14:55.645
Citizenship has indeed become more participatory

14:56.025 --> 14:59.645
as ordinary citizens have joined public conversations in new

14:59.645 --> 15:01.765
ways and in unprecedented numbers.

15:02.535 --> 15:06.275
Social media and messaging apps have indeed fostered new

15:06.275 --> 15:08.915
kinds of horizontal social movements

15:09.415 --> 15:12.555
and have made it easier for previously marginalized groups

15:12.975 --> 15:14.075
to be seen and heard.

15:15.245 --> 15:18.785
But the optimistic narrative got other things badly wrong.

15:19.505 --> 15:22.755
Instead of making politics more transparent,

15:23.215 --> 15:25.795
hyperconnectivity has fragmented the public's sphere

15:25.935 --> 15:27.875
and made politics more opaque.

15:28.615 --> 15:32.515
It has eroded the sense of a shared public world.

15:33.945 --> 15:37.965
Opaque and proprietary algorithms determine who sees what,

15:38.345 --> 15:42.695
and private platforms regulate who can say what.

15:43.465 --> 15:44.835
Both developments contribute

15:44.935 --> 15:47.115
to privatizing the public's sphere.

15:47.735 --> 15:52.195
So private platforms wield enormous, opaque,

15:52.415 --> 15:55.835
and largely unaccountable power over public discourse

15:56.535 --> 15:59.875
and encrypted messenger services have allowed political

16:00.155 --> 16:02.795
campaigns, especially in the developing world,

16:02.855 --> 16:05.275
to spread rumors and mobilize fear

16:06.005 --> 16:07.795
while avoiding public accountability.

16:08.835 --> 16:11.625
Since the middle of the last decade, the digital dream

16:12.165 --> 16:15.665
of renewing democratic citizenship has been challenged

16:15.665 --> 16:19.065
and partly overshadowed by the digital nightmare

16:19.525 --> 16:22.705
of undermining democratic citizenship by short circuiting,

16:22.905 --> 16:27.225
reasoned deliberation, nurturing conspiracy theories,

16:27.385 --> 16:31.725
intensifying polarization, incentivizing the mobilization

16:31.725 --> 16:34.445
of outrage and incubating extremism.

16:35.665 --> 16:38.285
Hyperconnectivity makes some kinds

16:38.285 --> 16:40.805
of political participation very easy,

16:40.985 --> 16:44.365
but it makes other kinds of participation very hard.

16:44.985 --> 16:48.765
So digital platforms make it easy to sign a petition

16:48.905 --> 16:51.845
or join a pile on or express outrage,

16:52.425 --> 16:55.645
and they make it easy to organize and coordinate protests.

16:56.525 --> 16:58.745
But these platforms make it very difficult,

16:58.755 --> 17:02.265
maybe even impossible to discuss issues in a complex

17:02.445 --> 17:05.825
and nuanced way or to craft compromises

17:06.125 --> 17:08.385
or to build durable organizations.

17:09.395 --> 17:12.725
Democracy requires public deliberation,

17:12.865 --> 17:16.325
and hyperconnectivity has been terrible for deliberation.

17:16.795 --> 17:20.365
Democracy also requires trust in institutions,

17:20.665 --> 17:24.965
and hyperconnectivity has accelerated the erosion of trust.

17:26.135 --> 17:27.875
As for authoritarian regimes,

17:28.565 --> 17:32.575
they were indeed initially unprepared for the nimbleness

17:32.635 --> 17:36.495
and creativity of digitally mediated opposition movements.

17:36.915 --> 17:37.935
But that was long ago.

17:37.935 --> 17:40.375
They have long since learned to monitor

17:40.995 --> 17:42.895
and counter such movements,

17:43.115 --> 17:45.935
and the most sophisticated such regimes led

17:45.935 --> 17:48.335
by China have entrenched their power

17:48.445 --> 17:51.005
through massively enhanced capacities

17:51.225 --> 17:52.325
for digital surveillance.

17:52.625 --> 17:56.365
So the political picture is unbalanced, a pretty bleak one.

17:56.725 --> 18:01.005
I conclude the book by considering three dystopian visions.

18:01.385 --> 18:03.245
Two of them come from classics

18:03.385 --> 18:06.405
of 20th century fiction Orwell's, 1984,

18:06.945 --> 18:09.045
and Huxley's Brave New World.

18:09.675 --> 18:12.245
Both of these are visions of dictatorship,

18:12.585 --> 18:13.965
but as media theorist

18:14.105 --> 18:16.205
and cultural critic, Neil Postman

18:16.845 --> 18:19.325
emphasized their visions are very different,

18:20.005 --> 18:22.705
or Orwell's was a brutal dictatorship of fear.

18:23.655 --> 18:27.615
Huxley's, a gentle dictatorship depended on pleasure

18:27.775 --> 18:29.455
conditioning and distraction.

18:30.115 --> 18:33.935
Now, postman was writing in 1985 in a cultural

18:33.935 --> 18:36.375
and political landscape dominated by television,

18:36.755 --> 18:38.015
and his point was

18:38.015 --> 18:41.695
that Huxley's vision was much more relevant than Orwell's.

18:42.315 --> 18:45.645
In today's context of ubiquitous digital surveillance,

18:45.795 --> 18:48.045
there's been a renewed interest in Orwell,

18:48.585 --> 18:51.925
but Orwell's grim vision formed by his response

18:51.985 --> 18:56.605
to 20th century totalitarian regimes probably has limited

18:57.125 --> 19:00.365
relevance today since today's systems of surveillance,

19:00.475 --> 19:02.565
even though they're much more sophisticated

19:02.905 --> 19:06.445
and pervasive than any that Orwell could have imagined,

19:06.745 --> 19:08.765
are configured in very different ways

19:08.945 --> 19:10.885
and employed for very different purposes.

19:12.145 --> 19:15.745
Huxley's Brave New World, by contrast, doesn't have much

19:15.745 --> 19:17.385
to say about surveillance,

19:17.725 --> 19:20.785
but its emphasis on a ceaseless flow

19:21.245 --> 19:25.105
of immediate gratifications, engrossing experiences

19:25.525 --> 19:28.025
and compelling distractions is a more,

19:28.135 --> 19:29.625
more relevant than ever.

19:30.485 --> 19:35.305
Now, both 1984 and Brave New World focus on the state.

19:35.805 --> 19:39.305
The third dystopian vision that I discussed is not driven

19:39.365 --> 19:43.465
by the state, but instead it focuses on an economic logic.

19:44.025 --> 19:46.145
I take this vision not from fiction,

19:46.605 --> 19:48.465
but from Shoshana's Zuboff recent

19:48.535 --> 19:50.145
book, surveillance Capitalism.

19:50.965 --> 19:54.225
The core mechanism for zuboff is the extraction

19:54.245 --> 19:57.665
and analysis of digital behavioral data from every aspect

19:57.665 --> 20:00.305
of our lives online and off.

20:01.255 --> 20:02.705
With the help of machine learning,

20:03.015 --> 20:06.025
this data generates an endless stream of marketable

20:06.245 --> 20:10.105
and actionable micro predictions about our future behavior.

20:10.685 --> 20:13.745
And these fine-grain predictions enable surveillance,

20:13.745 --> 20:17.745
capitalism, both to know our behavior and to shape it.

20:18.485 --> 20:21.265
Now, if you abstract from the particulars

20:21.285 --> 20:25.985
of these three dystopian visions, then you can read Orwell,

20:26.445 --> 20:29.705
Huxley, and Zubov as suggesting how Hyperconnectivity

20:30.305 --> 20:34.905
enhances what I call technologies of control, technologies

20:35.125 --> 20:38.705
of distraction, and technologies manipulation.

20:39.605 --> 20:41.545
It enhances technologies of control

20:42.005 --> 20:44.545
by providing an infrastructure for unilateral

20:44.765 --> 20:46.905
and authoritarian modes of governance,

20:47.635 --> 20:49.125
both public and private.

20:50.065 --> 20:52.165
It enhances technologies of distraction

20:52.425 --> 20:56.205
by providing an infrastructure for capturing, diverting,

20:56.585 --> 20:58.485
and retaining our attention.

20:59.595 --> 21:02.175
And it enhances technologies of manipulation

21:02.555 --> 21:05.655
by providing an infrastructure for sophisticated forms

21:06.155 --> 21:09.775
of behavioral nudging, a 21st century version

21:10.235 --> 21:13.615
of the scanner idea of behavioral modification,

21:14.275 --> 21:15.815
but embracing the entire planet.

21:16.965 --> 21:21.535
This dystopian picture of intensified control, intensified

21:22.615 --> 21:26.095
distraction, and intensified manipulation is obviously

21:26.405 --> 21:27.455
very one-sided.

21:27.875 --> 21:29.815
So I try to balance it in the book

21:29.955 --> 21:34.575
by also analyzing more individually empowering aspects

21:34.595 --> 21:35.655
of hyperconnectivity.

21:36.255 --> 21:37.375
I discuss, for example,

21:37.515 --> 21:41.695
how hyperconnectivity creates new ways of exploring the self

21:41.795 --> 21:44.255
and even emancipating the self, for better

21:44.355 --> 21:48.095
or worse, from forms of social control rooted in family

21:48.315 --> 21:49.375
and local community.

21:50.235 --> 21:53.615
Hyperconnectivity obviously provides new possibilities

21:53.675 --> 21:56.055
for sustaining friendships, families,

21:56.695 --> 21:58.355
and love relationships at a distance.

21:58.815 --> 22:02.075
And Hyperconnectivity has opened up new avenues of popular

22:02.715 --> 22:05.235
participation and initiative in culture,

22:05.955 --> 22:07.355
economics, and politics.

22:07.775 --> 22:12.075
Yet, even though Hyperconnectivity has empowered individuals

22:12.175 --> 22:13.755
in these and other respects,

22:13.815 --> 22:17.555
it has more profoundly empowered organizations,

22:18.005 --> 22:21.395
especially the organizations that are in a position

22:21.495 --> 22:24.715
to extract and analyze data on an enormous scale

22:25.505 --> 22:27.285
in its early phases.

22:27.605 --> 22:31.045
A few decades ago, digital connectivity probably contributed

22:31.345 --> 22:34.925
to the decentralization and dispersion of power,

22:35.465 --> 22:38.165
but the transition to hyperconnectivity

22:38.475 --> 22:42.365
that was consolidated about a decade ago has brought about

22:42.425 --> 22:47.005
an immense recentralization and concentration of power.

22:47.345 --> 22:50.605
So in the end, my account is a fairly pessimistic one.

00:00 - What I mean by digital hyperconnectivity to exaggerate only slightly, is that everyone and everything is connected to everyone and everything else everywhere and all the time. Hyperconnectivity in this sense is a relatively recent phenomenon, is consolidated only around the middle

00:20 - of the last decade when smartphone and social media use became nearly universal. Now, of course, digital connectivity as opposed to hyperconnectivity, has a much, much longer history. But hyperconnectivity for me is something much more specific and much more recent. It evolves, near universal mobile broadband connectivity, a sophisticated cloud computing infrastructure and immense apparatus of data extraction

00:50 - and the incredibly rapid leaps in artificial intelligence that were enabled by using all that extracted data to train machine learning algorithms. What does the hyper in hyperconnectivity mean? Well, one way to get at this is to think about the who, what, where and when of digital connectivity. So in terms of the who and what, the scale of connectivity is simply staggering. Facebook may be passe and uncool, but it connects 3 billion people while WhatsApp

01:26 - and Instagram connect o over 2 billion each. And it's almost two obvious to say, but it's worth remembering that a billion, a thousand million is a very large number and frictionless instantaneous connectivity on this truly planetary scale is something new in human history, and it's not just people who are hyperconnected on a planetary scale. More and more digital connectivity involves connections between things, not just the smart devices in our homes,

02:01 - but the hundreds of billions of network sensors and tagged objects that communicate with each other. So that's the who and the what of hyperconnectivity. But the hyper and hyperconnectivity is also about the where and when of connectivity. The anywhere, anytime logic of hyperconnectivity has broken down the boundaries between previously distinct spheres of life, between home and the outside world, between private and public, between work and play.

02:36 - But connectivity is not just anywhere and anytime in the vision of Silicon Valley, it should be everywhere and always, in other words, connectivity will become ambient, which means that it will be diffused throughout the environment rather than dependent on devices like smartphones as it is today. I, I was led to write the book by my sense that digital hyperconnectivity changes everything. Hyperconnectivity is what I call a total social fact.

03:09 - Borrowing the phrase from anthropologist Marcel Moss, it leaves no sphere of life. Untouched hyperconnectivity reaches deep inside the self, reorganizing our attention, disrupting our rhythms, reshaping our ways of thinking, seeing and feeling it recasts social interactions, stretching them over space and time, gamifying them and channeling them into platform friendly surveillance, enhancing forms and formats. It converts the whole of human culture into

03:46 - an unending stream of digital content served to us by personalized algorithms. It has revolutionized economic life by enabling frictionless transactions, creating new markets, and concentrating immense economic, cultural, and political power. The power to reorganize social and economic life in the hands of the giant tech platforms. And it has fragmented the public sphere, intensifying political polarization

04:16 - and strengthening populist challenges to mediating institutions. Of course, earlier revolutions in media and communications technologies also occasioned far reaching transformations. You could think, for example, of the rise of the printing press or of the cultural and political consequences of the rise of television. Yet the planetary scale, the pervasiveness and above all the speed

04:42 - and suddenness of the transformations occasions by digital hyperconnectivity are truly unprecedented. The digital revolution has built on and subsumed previous revolutions in media and communication technology. It has absorbed and re-articulated existing media forms. It has combined print, photography, recorded sound, film, telephone, radio, television, gaming and computing into a single omnimed system. And this has enabled digital hyperconnectivity

05:20 - to become a universal infrastructure of contemporary life and infrastructure, not only of communication, but of sociability knowledge, culture, entertainment, news, politics, commerce, governance and more. Hyperconnectivity has thus become what I call meta infrastructure. It's an infrastructure on which almost all other sociotechnical infrastructures depend, and this is what gives Hyperconnectivity its pervasive reach and its transformative power.

05:55 - And it was the challenge Of trying to understand this transformative power as a whole that made me want to write the book. Humans are by definition tool using animals, and our technologies have been transforming our ways of living and our ways of thinking and feeling for the whole of the human species. But hyperconnectivity has been transforming the nature of the self extraordinarily quickly and profoundly. It has introduced radically new ways of knowing the self.

06:27 - Now, self knowledge is probably a universal cultural ideal, but what does it mean to know oneself and how do we arrive at self-knowledge? Different cultural and religious traditions have given different answers to these questions. Digital hyperconnectivity allows for a radically new kind of answer. It holds out the prospect of knowing the self through numbers rather than through words,

06:54 - through objective data, rather than through subjective introspection, through tracking of behavior rather than through plumbing, the depths of the soul, many people have become enthusiastic participants in the so-called Quantified Self Movement. These enthusiasts are eager to adopt the latest self-tracking technologies. But in a broader sense, all of us who use social media have become quantified selves whether we like it or not.

07:25 - And these, this is because all activities on social media platforms have be, have become relentlessly quantified and fed back to the user in a series of numbers. And these numbers have powerful effects on how we understand and evaluate ourselves. There's a lot of evidence, for example, and psychologists, Jonathan Haidt has been doing interesting work on this subject, that the relentless quantification on Facebook

07:54 - and especially Instagram may be harming the mental health of young people, especially adolescent girls who are constantly comparing themselves to others on social media and feeling bad about themselves when others seem to be having more fun or looking more attractive or getting more likes. Now, of course, social comparison wasn't invented by social media. It's a universal part of social life,

08:21 - but social media makes social comparison salient and inescapable, and it tends to function as a result, as a gigantic machine for manufacturing envy. And there's evidence that social media may be contributing to depression and anxiety who are susceptible to this kind of feedback. I'm not a big social media user myself, but when my book came out, I started posting regularly on Twitter for a couple of months on matters related

08:54 - to digital technology, and I felt myself becoming a quantified self against my will. It's hard to resist being hyper aware of digital metrics and being drawn into a comparative and competitive struggle for attention. So every time I checked the metrics, which I have to admit was embarrassingly, often I was participating in these new ways of knowing and evaluating the self.

09:22 - I was becoming the very kind of quantified self that I had written about in my book. Digital Enthusiasts pulled out a threefold promise about digital culture, what I call the promise of abundance, the promise of decommodification and the promise of democratization. Their excitement about the sheer abundance of digital culture is totally understandable. It's thrilling to have an infinitely rich and varied universe of cultural products at one's fingertips

09:55 - anytime and anywhere. Enthusiasts also celebrate the fact that much digital culture is freely available without a price tag attached to it. So the utopian idea that digital culture should be freely shared rather than bought and sold remains powerfully attractive. And enthusiasts are excited about the democratization of digital culture, about the new ways in which ordinary people,

10:23 - not just cultural elites or professionals, can participate in the production and circulation of culture. But we have to look critically at these celebratory accounts of abundance, decommodification and democratization. Digital cultural abundance is certainly exhilarating, but it's also flattening and homogenizing culture is converted into content, and that blurs together as it flows through the same conduits

10:55 - and across the same interfaces in an endless stream. Yeah, we encounter more culture than ever, but we engage it more superficially drawn by the perpetual lure of the new. We come to know less and less about. More and more we find ourselves chronically distracted and we lose our capacity for sustained engagement. As for Decommodification, I think that's hugely outweighed by Remodification. Yes, Wikipedia is a shining example

11:26 - of collaborative non-market oriented cultural production, but it's a lonely island in an immense sea of monetization. As the volume of cultural content increases, attention becomes an ever scarcer resource and a resource that's pervasively, measured and monetized. Even amateur cultural production is increasingly oriented to trying to capture some of that measurable monetizable attention. So digital culture has ultimately not been

12:02 - de de commodified. Instead, culture and commerce are locked in an advertiser and embrace. Now the question of cultural democratization is more complicated. It's true that ex inexpensive user-friendly digital tools for manipulating text images and sounds, you could think of Photoshop or Garage band, have a dramatically broadened access to the means of cultural production.

12:30 - But the question is not only how many people engage in cultural production, it's how they engage. We're told that AI tools will help everyone express their creativity in music and art, for example. So AI image generators like Open AI's Dolly, have gotten an enormous amount of attention, and the AI music company Amper promises to let everyone create their own original music in seconds. But what does it mean to create when you're creating your own original

13:05 - music in seconds? Is creativity going to be reduced to simply editing and tweaking AI generated music or coming up with a clever prompt for an image generator? My own view is that a genuine democratization of cultural creativity would promote the development of skills and capacities rather than minimize the need for such skills. Well, what about, you might ask, what about the democratization of cultural consumption?

13:35 - Some would argue that hyperconnectivity has made cultural consumption more democratic since digital technology cuts out cultural gatekeepers and simply gives people what they like and what they want. But in my view, this kind of cultural populism in which popularity is the sole criterion of value is not truly democratic. A democratic politics of culture, as I understand it, would not just fine tune algorithms to feed people precisely what they already like it would seek rather

14:10 - to promote learning, growth, discovery, and development. From the 1980s through the middle of the last decade, digital connectivity seemed to be full of democratic promise. It seemed to favor horizontal and multi-directional public communication rather than vertical and unidirectional mass communication. This new ecology of public communication, it was thought, would promote more participatory forms of citizenship. It would bring previously excluded groups into the polity,

14:44 - and it would contribute to the undermining of authoritarian regimes. Now, this story got many things right? Citizenship has indeed become more participatory as ordinary citizens have joined public conversations in new ways and in unprecedented numbers. Social media and messaging apps have indeed fostered new kinds of horizontal social movements and have made it easier for previously marginalized groups to be seen and heard.

15:15 - But the optimistic narrative got other things badly wrong. Instead of making politics more transparent, hyperconnectivity has fragmented the public's sphere and made politics more opaque. It has eroded the sense of a shared public world. Opaque and proprietary algorithms determine who sees what, and private platforms regulate who can say what. Both developments contribute to privatizing the public's sphere. So private platforms wield enormous, opaque,

15:52 - and largely unaccountable power over public discourse and encrypted messenger services have allowed political campaigns, especially in the developing world, to spread rumors and mobilize fear while avoiding public accountability. Since the middle of the last decade, the digital dream of renewing democratic citizenship has been challenged and partly overshadowed by the digital nightmare of undermining democratic citizenship by short circuiting, reasoned deliberation, nurturing conspiracy theories,

16:27 - intensifying polarization, incentivizing the mobilization of outrage and incubating extremism. Hyperconnectivity makes some kinds of political participation very easy, but it makes other kinds of participation very hard. So digital platforms make it easy to sign a petition or join a pile on or express outrage, and they make it easy to organize and coordinate protests. But these platforms make it very difficult, maybe even impossible to discuss issues in a complex

17:02 - and nuanced way or to craft compromises or to build durable organizations. Democracy requires public deliberation, and hyperconnectivity has been terrible for deliberation. Democracy also requires trust in institutions, and hyperconnectivity has accelerated the erosion of trust. As for authoritarian regimes, they were indeed initially unprepared for the nimbleness and creativity of digitally mediated opposition movements. But that was long ago.

17:37 - They have long since learned to monitor and counter such movements, and the most sophisticated such regimes led by China have entrenched their power through massively enhanced capacities for digital surveillance. So the political picture is unbalanced, a pretty bleak one. I conclude the book by considering three dystopian visions. Two of them come from classics of 20th century fiction Orwell's, 1984,

18:06 - and Huxley's Brave New World. Both of these are visions of dictatorship, but as media theorist and cultural critic, Neil Postman emphasized their visions are very different, or Orwell's was a brutal dictatorship of fear. Huxley's, a gentle dictatorship depended on pleasure conditioning and distraction. Now, postman was writing in 1985 in a cultural and political landscape dominated by television,

18:36 - and his point was that Huxley's vision was much more relevant than Orwell's. In today's context of ubiquitous digital surveillance, there's been a renewed interest in Orwell, but Orwell's grim vision formed by his response to 20th century totalitarian regimes probably has limited relevance today since today's systems of surveillance, even though they're much more sophisticated and pervasive than any that Orwell could have imagined, are configured in very different ways

19:08 - and employed for very different purposes. Huxley's Brave New World, by contrast, doesn't have much to say about surveillance, but its emphasis on a ceaseless flow of immediate gratifications, engrossing experiences and compelling distractions is a more, more relevant than ever. Now, both 1984 and Brave New World focus on the state. The third dystopian vision that I discussed is not driven by the state, but instead it focuses on an economic logic.

19:44 - I take this vision not from fiction, but from Shoshana's Zuboff recent book, surveillance Capitalism. The core mechanism for zuboff is the extraction and analysis of digital behavioral data from every aspect of our lives online and off. With the help of machine learning, this data generates an endless stream of marketable and actionable micro predictions about our future behavior. And these fine-grain predictions enable surveillance,

20:13 - capitalism, both to know our behavior and to shape it. Now, if you abstract from the particulars of these three dystopian visions, then you can read Orwell, Huxley, and Zubov as suggesting how Hyperconnectivity enhances what I call technologies of control, technologies of distraction, and technologies manipulation. It enhances technologies of control by providing an infrastructure for unilateral and authoritarian modes of governance, both public and private.

20:50 - It enhances technologies of distraction by providing an infrastructure for capturing, diverting, and retaining our attention. And it enhances technologies of manipulation by providing an infrastructure for sophisticated forms of behavioral nudging, a 21st century version of the scanner idea of behavioral modification, but embracing the entire planet. This dystopian picture of intensified control, intensified distraction, and intensified manipulation is obviously

21:26 - very one-sided. So I try to balance it in the book by also analyzing more individually empowering aspects of hyperconnectivity. I discuss, for example, how hyperconnectivity creates new ways of exploring the self and even emancipating the self, for better or worse, from forms of social control rooted in family and local community. Hyperconnectivity obviously provides new possibilities

21:53 - for sustaining friendships, families, and love relationships at a distance. And Hyperconnectivity has opened up new avenues of popular participation and initiative in culture, economics, and politics. Yet, even though Hyperconnectivity has empowered individuals in these and other respects, it has more profoundly empowered organizations, especially the organizations that are in a position to extract and analyze data on an enormous scale

22:25 - in its early phases. A few decades ago, digital connectivity probably contributed to the decentralization and dispersion of power, but the transition to hyperconnectivity that was consolidated about a decade ago has brought about an immense recentralization and concentration of power. So in the end, my account is a fairly pessimistic one.

Faculti AI can make mistakes