Scott Butler

Technology and the Future of Our Society

As long as humans have been inventing new methods of communication, weve worried
about how they would affect our humanity. In ancient Athens, a primarily oral culture, the
philosopher Socrates viewed writing as the greatest threat to our history. He believed it would
introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it. The invention of the printing press
in the 1440s sparked fears that religious teachings would be undermined by the false prophets of
fake bibles. In the 18th century the invention of the telephone led to fears that we would eliminate
all face-to-face interactions and the very fabric of society would be torn apart. When radio and
television broadcasts came along in the 20th century people feared we would become a nation of
zombies unable to tear ourselves away from these new technologies. For every advancement in
technology there has always and will always be fear-mongering luddites, but history has proven
time and time again that these new technologies allow our species to advance far beyond what
was previously thought possible. Today we again find ourselves on the precipice of knowledge
never before thought possible, again we hear the familiar fear of the unknown, and again those
fears are based on emotions not facts.
Dave Eggers The Circle is a book with a message about as subtle as a neon billboard in
Times Square and two-dimensional characters that are only capable of the most extreme possible
interpretations of their own views. Eggers asserts that an online Megacorporation la Google
will eventually use the data theyve collected to enact a totalitarian regime This is it. This is the
moment where history pivots. Imagine if you could have been there before Hitler became
chancellor. Before Stalin annexed Eastern Europe. Were on the verge of having another very
hungry, very evil empire on our hands. This is fine when its contained in its own fictional

universe, but people with very little understanding of data collection seem to think this is a likely
outcome of todays society. The only possible way to come to that conclusion is by relying on a
slippery slope fallacy, if we allow companies to collect some data, theyll collect all the data, if
they collect all the data theyll use it for nefarious purposes. The problem with this reasoning is
that it avoids engaging with the issue at hand and instead shifts attention to extreme
hypotheticals. Because no proof is presented to show that such extreme hypotheticals will in fact
occur, this fallacy has the form of an appeal to emotion fallacy by leveraging fear. In effect the
argument at hand is unfairly tainted by unsubstantiated conjecture. But lets take a step back and
look at how companies collect data. Early on the protagonist is distraught when data collected on
here is reduced into a digital footprint logged on an ever-growing network of storage. Having a
matrix of preferences presented as your essence, as the whole you? But thats not how datatargeted advertising works. The data collected on you is bundled with the data of people in
similar demographics and sold as 3rd party data to advertisers. Advertisers dont about Scott
Macdonalds interests, they care about the interests of white males 45-64 with Household Income
over $100k in Westchester County.
Does the idea that companies are gathering data still bother you? Think about the
incredible wealth of knowledge at your fingertips, everything we as species have worked to
understand about the world around us is a click away. Before the internet existed how much
would this be worth to you? How much is it worth to you now? Many people dont understand
the business model of the internet, they assume everything is free because theyre somehow
entitled to it. A webpage creates content, that content generates traffic, that traffic views ads on
the webpage, and the advertisers pays the webpage. You pay for the content you view by seeing

ads that are targeted based on the data collected from people in your demographic. If that bothers
you there is a simple solution, get off the internet.
Another major problem with the book is that it views social media through a myopic lens,
only seeing the narcissistic self-indulgent side. Early on the protagonists foil compares social
media with junk food You know how you finish a bag of chips and you hate yourself? You
know youve done nothing good for yourself. Thats the same feeling, and you know it is, after
some digital binge. You feel wasted and hollow and diminished. But eating junk food and
spending all day consuming meaningless information are both choices. I could just as easily
choose to track my diet using an online calorie-tracker to make sure I eat a balanced ratio of
macronutrients, while getting a free Ivy League education from Wharton, MIT, Stanford, Yale, or
any of the other hundreds of institutions that provide free Massive Open Online Courses. New
technology gives people the power to choose, if they choose to waste their time thats a result of
their own personal shortcoming, not the technology that makes it possible.
People will always fear new technologies but data collection is not only benign, its
beneficial to our society. Data mining helps banks detect fraudulent credit card transactions,
manufacturers can detect faulty equipment and determine optimal control parameters,
government agencies can analyze records of financial transaction to build patterns that can detect
money laundering or criminal activities. The first microprocessor was patented over 40 years
ago, think about how far weve come, think about how far well go. When our descendants learn
about this period in time, theyll view the ability to store and sort through petabytes of data as a
watershed moment in our societys advancement. (What you should fear is the economic
upheaval well experience when the majority of current jobs are made obsolete by automation,
but thats another essay for another day.)