freewriting → connecting people
The biggest promise of information technology was connection: people in the 21st century were supposed to be more in touch than ever before, sharing empathy and compassion with each other and their environment — like tiny spiders crawling on the World Wide Web. As we now know, that did not happen. Instead, the world has become hyperpolarised — economically, politically, ideologically. Chronically online is an expression rapidly losing its meaning; it is now simply expected that any socially active person be constantly present in some form of cyberspace. When someone goes offline for even a couple of days, we start to worry. We are hyperconnected to the cloud but tragically disconnected from each other — and even more so from ourselves.
In the early 2000s, Nokia, one of the largest cellphone manufacturers at the time, had a catchy marketing slogan: “Connecting People”, famously accompanied by an image of two hands reaching for each other. The idea of the mobile phone as a symbol of connection has since been engraved in the mass consciousness, and most innovations in that field have been presented to us through the lens of deep (fake) social connection. Look at any Apple or Facebook commercial, and you’ll see the same idea repackaged and resold to us again and again — family members in different countries calling each other via FaceTime, coworkers collaborating effortlessly in virtual workspaces, teenagers expressing themselves through AI filters and animated emojis. Big Tech has been telling us the same story for almost two decades — that they are in the business of connecting people. And we are still listening, even though we know it isn’t true.
The real agenda of these corporations has been exposed countless times, on the biggest scale. The problem is that when it comes to information, the biggest scale itself has been appropriated, bought, and paid for by these very companies a long time ago. With a sleight of hand, every revelation about Big Tech spying on users, trading private data, hijacking attention, and manipulating emotions through cognitive psychology becomes an international sensation on major media platforms, provokes a controlled outrage and ultimately gets normalised, taking its place in the postmodern media canon. Hardly anyone believes these companies prioritise the public good or care about fostering healthy social connections, but nobody really cares anymore either. It’s yesterday’s news — an outdated sensation that barely deserves attention past its short expiration date. In times of constant turmoil, at the peak of a mental health crisis, we act as the rational and social animals we are — dismissing alarmist narratives if the public consensus tells us that it’s fine to do so, even though we know who controls the public consensus, and how disconnected it is from both the public and reality itself.
[442 words, 96 min]