'Why social media is not the problem’ with Timandra Harkness

6PM on Thursday 15 February 2024
Livestreamed from Quarry Whitehouse Auditorium
This event is offered in collaboration with Living Freedom.
With digital culture and myriad forms of social media, we can now share more information and opinions more widely than ever before. Unlike the era of mass media, today every individual has a personalised news channel - edited by their own choices, social network and algorithms - that shapes what they want to see next. But many worry that while our facility to communicate has improved, productive exchanges of ideas have diminished, as has the potential to develop a shared worldview or even shared reality. What’s more, new identity-driven forms of polarisation, online harms and fake news have fuelled fears that the very technologies that transformed communications are responsible for our descent into echo chambers, toxic filter bubbles or attention traps.
But to what extent is new technology really the problem? After all, just over a decade ago, social media was celebrated for its power to share ideas and drive political change in the Arab Spring. In this talk followed by open discussion, Timandra Harkness explores both the new digital technologies and the new identity-driven forms of culture and politics, and asks: how did we get here, why does it matter and where do we go from here?
The panel will be chaired by Roger Mosey, the master of Selwyn College. We will be inviting questions from audiences both online and in-person.
Timandra Harkness is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. She is the author of Technology is Not the Problem (forthcoming, Harper Collins). Timandra is a regular on BBC Radio, writing and presenting BBC Radio 4’s FutureProofing and other series including How To Disagree, Steelmanning and Political School.

[@endintiers]

I have a policy of never buying anything for which I have received targeted advertising. This improves the quality of my 'stuff'.

[@squashfan9526]

I'm about to watch this video. Just noticed there are no comments yet, two days after posting. Why is that I wonder?

[@chippysteve4524]

Before Adblock was a thing,I would intentionally search the web for products I wasn't interested in so as not to be distracted by interesting ads when online.Incontinence pants,concrete sheds,agricultural machinery.Oh no,I've said too much.Back to the panic room.

[@chippysteve4524]

There is a quite fruitful TED talk where the speaker talks about the 6 neurochemicals considered essential for mental wellbeing/health.
3 of which can be 'released' even if living in total isolation and 3 which are only released/produced within a social context.
I feel that even a cursory awareness of that research would greatly inform this talk i.e. our neurochemical need for what we would nebulously term respect,love,status.
Another omission here seems to me to be,as an increasingly isolated, domesticated and emasculated species;our opportunities to build and share a corpus of useful knowledge from our endeavours and our ability to genuinely achieve meaningful goals for ourselves and others are greatly reduced,thus depriving us of our chances to obtain 3 of these essential neurochemicals.
It is now widely known that social media sites employ 'dopamine engineers' - the same people who are employed by bookmakers and casinos,precisely because they know how to push our buttons,as it were,cynically preying on this innate human dependency.
To me it seems that if our species is to survive this century,one of our main objectives should be to raise awareness of our INHERENT weaknesses in order to get our social fixes in healthier,meaningful ways and just as importantly to learn how to survive propaganda and polarisation.
We are demonstrably becoming increasingly tribal like football hooligans,irrational and willfully ignorant of anything outside the dogma of our individual tribes and preferred sources of disinformation.
IMHO,the global rise of far right populism which is,of course, intellectually and morally repugnant will also be inevitable if we don't both individually and collectively pull our heads out of the place where the sun doesn't shine and reclaim our brains and reinvent society through use of public spaces.
I found it quite informative that Timandra completely ignored the backstory of Cambridge Analytica and their former and current client list.I would advise watching the documentary film "The great hack" for context and to illustrate that there is very little about the abuse of social media which is an inoccuous as this discussion suggests.

[@faigelable]

28:52 Breaking the Fourth Wall in a Lecture O.O I've never felt so naked

[@tamtrinh174]

why "why"?

[@zavierlee695]

Well guess I better drop a commennt

[@deimonslagg1187]

Social media doesn't screw up people, people screw up people.

[@sknova88]

social media makes it easy though

[@thewuggening9993]

what does it mean for a system made for people to be screwed up by the presence of people, though?

[@eqapo]

If she debated jonathan haidt, she'd get crushed.