Beware: Drug dealers all around

Remember that powerful line from The Bridge on the River Kwai?  "What have I done!"

That's the sentiment that slowly some of the technology folks are beginning to express.Like some early Facebook employees, who now worry "about the monster they have created."

As one early Facebook employee told me, “I lay awake at night thinking about all the things we built in the early days and what we could have done to avoid the product being used this way.”

It is not merely with Facebook.  It is the same with Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, ... the list is endless.

Why?  The reason is a simple one, which I have discussed a lot in this blog.  But, we need to be reminded over and over again:

One of the problems is that these platforms act, in many ways, like drugs. Facebook, and every other social-media outlet, knows that all too well. Your phone vibrates a dozen times an hour with alerts about likes and comments and retweets and faves. The combined effect is one of just trying to suck you back in, so their numbers look better for their next quarterly earnings report. Sean Parker, one of Facebook’s earliest investors and the company’s first president, came right out and said what we all know: the whole intention of Facebook is to act like a drug, by “[giving] you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever.” That, Parker said, was by design. These companies are “exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.” Former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya has echoed this, too. “Do I feel guilty?” he asked rhetorically on CNN about the role Facebook is playing in society. “Absolutely I feel guilt.”

It is easy for the likes of Sean Parker to say that now, right?  After all, he has made his gazillions; Wikipedia notes that he is worth $2.4 billion!  Our addiction is their dollars.  If only users paused to question why they are getting these services for free.  No free lunch, as economists always remind us.

People who know me sometimes even make fun of my regimented life.  I stick to my eating regimen, my sleeping regimen, and ... Even when playing bridge, I commit myself to ending the playing by typing to other players that I will play one final game and after that game, well, I sign off.  It is all because I know well how delightful it is to have that extra chocolate. That extra cookie. More time in bed. One more ... We humans are wired for such addictions.  And technology is now explicitly and intentionally tapping into our addictive personalities.

So, what can be done?

[A]  rigorous technology of the mind is really what we need now as a civilization because the thing that’s killing people nowadays is too much Facebook and cheeseburgers. We solved the problems of the biological age by vaccines and antibiotics and discovering all these things, and stopping the things that were killing people, and we’re not going to find the technologies to fix these behavioral problems of addiction, technology overuse, overconsumption of everything by walking away from the technologies of the mind. We’re going to solve them by getting rigorous and having a complete science and technology so that people can reprogram themselves into the people they want to be.

We need to "reprogram" ourselves?  Ain't gonna happen!