MIR: In this issue we take a closer look at the dark sides of digital marketing, a topic you have been researching almost ever since the Internet emerged. In your most recent book “Team Human” you argue that digital technologies, social media, and AI-powered applications are actually anti-human. How can tools that are generally praised for empowering people and making our lives more convenient be anti-human?
Douglas: Under the pretense of solving problems and making people´s lives easier, most of our technological innovations just get people out of sight or out of the way. We no longer have control of programming the technologies, instead the technologies are programming us. We are strategized and optimized by the leading tech-companies towards purposes we don´t even know.
MIR: Why do you believe that the technologies are programming us?
Douglas: Technology users are subjected to a constant assault of automated manipulation. America’s leading universities teach and develop “persuasive technology”, which is then implemented on platforms from e-commerce sites and social networks to smartphones and fitness wristbands. The goal is to generate “behavioral change” and “habit formation,” most often without the user’s knowledge or consent. According to design theory people don’t change their behaviors because of shifts in their attitudes and opinions. It works the other way around: People change their attitudes to match their behaviors. In this model, we are more like machines than thinking, autonomous beings. Or at least we can be made to work that way.
MIR: So, the problem is that we no longer make active choices but go along with whatever the technology programs us to do?
Douglas: Right, just as architects of physical environments use particular colors, soundtracks, or lighting cycles to stimulate desired behavior, the designers of web platforms and phone apps use carefully tested animations and sounds to provoke optimal emotional responses from users. Every component of a digital environment is tested for its ability to generate a particular reaction, be it more views, more purchases, or just more addiction. New mail is a happy sound; no mail is a sad one. The physical gesture of swiping to update a social media feed anchors and reinforces the compulsive urge to check in — just in case.
MIR: Most people don´t seem worried too much, though. They enjoy and use the services without feeling manipulated. What´s the problem, if users are happy?
Douglas: The problem is that helping people is no longer the main agenda of the tech companies. Technologies are seen as mere investments that require growth and growing share prices. Users and their behavior are optimized to reach these goals. The addiction algorithms of slot machines are built into newsfeeds, in order to make engagement more addictive and make us act against our won better judgement. Technology is optimizing us instead of us using the technologies to our advantage.
MIR: Most people don´t seem worried too much, though. They enjoy and use the services without feeling manipulated. What´s the problem, if users are happy?
Douglas: The problem is that helping people is no longer the main agenda of the tech companies. Technologies are seen as mere investments that require growth and growing share prices. Users and their behavior are optimized to reach these goals. The addiction algorithms of slot machines are built into newsfeeds, in order to make engagement more addictive and make us act against our won better judgement. Technology is optimizing us instead of us using the technologies to our advantage. What is happening is that figure and ground get reversed as with Rubin´s vase. What should be the figure has become the ground.