“The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely.” – George Orwell, ‘1984
Technology has become the protagonist and antagonist in our day to day lives. From connecting people across the globe, to causing mental health issues to do with social media platforms; as well as documenting protests or political conflicts to the use and misuse of robots/bots and cyberwarfare. Today we see technology as a friend and foe, forever changing and advancing for the greater good and bad of mankind. Perhaps there should be no clear-cut line for technological advancements, as like most things in our world – there is a bad side and a good side. However, technology is neither good nor bad because it is both the answer and the problem.
If we think about some of the positive changes which have been brought about as a result of technological advances, we notice how incredible humans can be! Not only have we developed technology in order to imrove our quality of life by improving the healthcare system, we have also developed transportation methods, heightened the quality of agricultural techniques through the use of robots, allowed clearer statistics for data sets and all together made us more connected through social media platforms and thus, aware of issues worldwide. Ultimately, humanity is far more productive than what we were a decade ago, let alone thousands of years ago. Technology has greatly improved the quality of life on this planet, which in turn has allowed humans to live longer and continue to develop our world. However, that is not to say that we carry the burden of the many negative effects of technology, both individually and collectively. Issues stemming from things like, the inability to disconnect from our devices to more global issues such as, drone warfare or cyber security breaches for vital corporations (e.g., water, food, etc.). So, we stand at a crucial turning point in the development of technology – will the outcome of technological growth and development benefit us or harm us?
The negative connotations attached to technology now-a-days varies from fake news and misinformation to social media’s impact on mental health, cyber warfare and conspiracy theories. In other words, technology is manipulated to an individual’s (or in recent cases, a country’s and/or regimes) advantage to better their outcome. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, around 76% of people were concerned that fake news was being used as a weapon to polarize and radicalize opinions. The pandemic didn’t help matters either, as it reinforced this issue and caused a fake-news-boom, adding to the confusion and insecurity among the global population. The construction of “Deepfakes” also became a relevant issue to this factor of misinformation. Deepfakes are synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else’s, therefore, impersonating them. This is an example of quite a recent threat and a rather annoying hassle for all social media platforms to have to deal with. Numerous deepfake incidents have already happened, from not-so-serious to quite serious. A recent one was with the Dutch parliament’s foreign affairs committee, which was fooled into holding a video call with a deepfake impersonating a Russian opposition leader. This is only one of many issues which we deal with today relating to the current and fast-paced world of technology. How can we tell what is real from what is fake? How can we prevent conspiracy theories from taking over social media platforms? In truth, one of the real issues we are facing today is based around freedom of speech, instigated by the revolution of technology. We need to understand how to manoeuvre around the topic by not controlling it and maintaining a balance between the need, growth and perhaps even harmony between technology and mankind, instead of abusing it and misusing it.
Dolphinmind 