Technology, aka eyeballs and backsides
Everyone needs access to technology. It’s how you’re reading this, after all. However, the social media algorithms are designed to prey on people who are less savvy online – rather than searching out their own content, they get spoon-fed bile and nonsense. So there’s work to be done there, helping people along so they feel confident and positive about their digital lives and the world around them.
The term for that type of work is ‘digital inclusion’, and you can see folk doing it in projects like Digital Mushrooms, a local street stall that offer people help with their tech problems for free with no questions asked. When that’s combined with critical thinking and it’s joined up with other community projects, it can be really powerful.
It’s a sad fact that the far right are pretty good at using the internet to spread their message. It’s easy to promote rage and lies via a two minute video, something that’s easily digested and even more easily shared with others. They’re helped in this by the big tech platforms, none of whom are owned by nice people.
But all the tech barons want is for folk to sit on their backsides. They’ve got nothing to gain by helping people to make social change! Making us feel that the hate mongers are winning everything, when mostly all they’re succeeding at is distracting people. In other words, the right think that they are winning. But there is so much they are not winning, that they would like to. That is, peoples social conscience and their ability to build self determined communities, off-line, and on.
So there are two battlefields here – the battle for attention and the battle for backsides, aka getting people active and engaged. Some questions arise from that, regarding technology:
• Do we in the working class left need to reach people’s eyeballs first through the internet?
• Or do we get out there and motivate them in the real world?
• How do those two fields relate?
Maybe folk need better answers for understanding the world, or a better offer for what to do with their time? Then the choice of what communication media to use, and when, will become clearer.
These are all open questions and ones we’d like to explore in AYNTK’s work.