8. The ideology of the interface is always embedded in the interface itself, but it is not always visible.
- Try to meet the programmers of your software, and ask them to explain their decisions to you.
- Try from time to time to open your windows in command-line mode
I recently watched the Netflix documentary “The Social Dilemma” and since I still haven’t recovered from it, I thought I would be relevant to tenet 8 (plus I need to talk about it with people and there’s a lot to unpack). “The Social Dilemma” explores the forces behind social media by bringing together people from the tech industry and asking them about problems in the industry. The general response is that initially, programmers didn’t care about the ethics. It was all about finding the best algorithm that would increase growth and maintain engagement. When I think about social media, I definitely think about how easy it is to fall into a youtube hole or scroll on tiktok for hours. However, even though I need to develop better self control, “The Social Dilemma” revealed that the software engineers and psychologists of these massive tech companies specifically target gaps in the human psyche as a way of encouraging addiction. And on top of that, our data is packaged into gigantic super computers and sold to even bigger corporations (Capitalism ¯\_(ツ)_/¯). Instagram, for example, is a feed that will show you pictures of your friends and advertisements. We don’t have any control on what order the feed is or how frequent the ads are, but isn’t it super creepy when you google toothpaste and the next ad you get on Instagram is about Colgate? My personal hypothesis is instagram’s ideology is to sell as much stuff as possible, so it’s interface is designed to advertise things it predicts you want. It’s capitalist genius because it works so well but it’s concerning how some people still think instagram is harmless.