Big Data, Robo Nanny and the Row for The Zapper - a podcast by Ant Biggs

The Social Contract is broken. The state can no longer uphold its side of the bargain. For deep state to maintain power, for the good of all, it must act. And the choice it faces comes down to being between coercion or the control of opinion. The latter power, to control mass behaviour and opinion comes with the ability to harvest and digest big data, with control of social media.
And there is a battle for that control. We experience it in the developing narrative that portrays social media as being responsible for our social problems; for extremism, social dislocation etc and the growing calls for a fix that will hold the access gateways responsible for their content, a thinly veiled attempt to retain power through censorship. And more dangerously extending to social engineering. The problem is that censorship and social engineering may not produce the results that we expect or even desire. And whilst social media may function efficiently as a mirror, we might be unwise to think that it will do well as a nanny! There is a solution and it's easy! We just need to grow up, and take responsibility for our own opinions, our own emotional roller coaster, and to cast aside rhetoric and manipulation. That way we can hold the kind of adult conversations we need to, and suitably scale to the global problems we face today. The work starts at home, and it starts now...

Further episodes of COW - the podcast

Further podcasts by Ant Biggs

Website of Ant Biggs