Convenience always costs
It’s time
for you to meet Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and virtual
reality pioneer. Several of Lanier’s ideas sit at the very centre of this project’s
philosophy; these will be explored in-depth later.
Since the
publication of his first two books You
Are Not A Gadget and Who Owns The
Future? Lanier is often asked to explain and expand on his criticism of
social media sites.1 Given Facebook’s most recent presence in the
press, it made sense for Lanier to speak out about the company. Speaking to
CNBC in the US, he encouraged support for those leaving Facebook and reassured
us that there is life after the social network:
“We’re not citizens of Facebook, we have no vote on Facebook, it’s not a democracy and this process is not a way we can design the future, we can’t rely on this single company to invent our digital future in such a big way. When people delete, it’s not so much that they’re effective protesters, it’s that they’re inventing what life can be like without Facebook. They’ll discover other ways of finding news, they’ll discover other ways of meeting friends and those pioneers are showing us what the space could be outside of Facebook, they’re an absolutely necessary part of having a democratic future. I don’t think everybody plausibly can quit Facebook, I don’t know if everybody should right now, but those who do are serving a role for all of us, it’s extremely important to support them.” 2
Lanier is
not wrong, however the key to dominating any consumer space, as Facebook has,
is convenience. For the sake of familiarity, let’s consider Ari Herstand’s
succinct explanation of how consumer convenience redefined music formats:
“People will sacrifice quality for
convenience. And pay for it. It’s why cassette tapes were widely adapted when
vinyl records sounded better. People could play them on the go in their
Walkmans and car stereos.” 3
Lanier is
right, we do not need social media to communicate meaningfully with our
friends. However, the fact that these services are highly convenient for us are
a huge factor in what makes us use them. Consider the example of Facebook,
allowing us to keep in touch with a diverse network of friends and
acquaintances effortlessly, as well as keeping an interactive scrapbook of
several life events.
With the
recent revelations concerning Facebook in the press, we’re starting to
understand the true cost of Facebook’s convenience, it is driven by extracting
data from users, rather than their money.
In
contrast, consider the examples of buying takeaway for dinner rather than
cooking or summoning a surging Uber instead of tackling the 24-hour tube after
a night out. The cost-versus-convenience of these examples is simple, you part
with more money for the convenience and that decision is entirely yours to make
as a consumer.
However,
the scope and nature of Facebook’s use of our data is an example of how money
is not always the precious resource companies are looking to extract from its
users. In the past, we’ve been content with our data being used by advertisers
to influence our purchasing decisions, however now that we know this data can
be used to influence our opinions, and potentially our vote, we’ve started at
new ethical debate about the sanctity of information and the power of social
media in our networked age.
1 Lanier has clearly faced this question so frequently it has justified its own book, Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now is set for publication in June 2018.
2 Jaron Lanier appearing on CNBC news, published on YouTube 28-03-2018 [accessed 01-04-2018]
3 How to Make It in the New Music Business, Ari Herstand, 2017
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