Social Media Distancing

Can we take advantage of the pandemic to create a more healthy relationship with our digital algorithms?

This series consists of 7 articles. Each provides a complementary perspective (no need to read all, or in order). The first gives an overview:

Social Media Distancing: An Opportunity to Debug our Relationship with our Algorithms 

Can we take advantage of the pandemic to ‘sanitize’ our often toxic relationship with our digital algorithms? We discuss four complementary alternatives

Social Media Distancing Context: Algorithms Found our Weaknesses

Disinformation, addiction, anxiety: this article discusses the current context. How did the attention economy discover and exploit our human weaknesses? Why is this dangerous during a global health crisis?

Social Media Distancing 1: Industry Self-Regulation

What is the tech industry doing to ‘sanitize’ our often toxic relationship with our digital algorithms during the pandemic? Where is it failing?

Social Media Distancing 2: Public-Sector Regulation

The pandemic runs society through a steep learning curve about the devil in the detail of technology regulation. Proposals for new surveillance tech drags nerdy questions kicking and screaming from the dark basements of coders to the light of the day of the general public.

Social Media Distancing 3: Technological Innovation

How can new technology help us to create a healthier relationship with our digital algorithms during the pandemic? What comes after Google and Facebook?

Social Media Distancing 4: Human Innovation

Humankind will have to evolve, given evolutionary pressure from our digital algorithms. The pandemic shows that things are not going well. Misinformation, anxiety, addiction, depression. If we are not conscious enough to manage our own thoughts and emotions, how are we going to be in charge of intelligent machines?

Social Media Distancing Exit Strategy: Toward a Healthy Relationship with Our Algorithms

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An accompanying series of video presentations can be found here (part of the online course “Digital Technology & Social Change”, at the University of California).

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Vea también esta entrevista relacionada en español: “Los algoritmos encontraron nuestras debilidades y las están aprovechando” (LaTercera, Chile, March 15, 2020) y la presentacion de video en PuertoIdeas, Chile

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