A Case of Digital Nihilism

In my sophomore year of college, I studied in a 14th-century castle in a tiny village in the Netherlands. There, I took a European Literature course which ended up being a dystopian fiction course (that happened to be written by European authors). The class was taught by a professor who was obsessed with conspiracy theories, bummed cigarettes from students in the courtyard, and showed up to class just as hungover as we did sometimes. It was… interesting to say the least.

We spent our time discussing concepts ranging from Plato’s cave to Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon. It was engrossing, yet frightening. We half-heartedly joked that novels we read such as We by Yevgeny Zamyatin and Karin Boye’s Kallocain predicted our current society. Only awakening to these concepts for the first time, I had no idea what I was in for.

In Franklin Foer’s “How Silicon Valley is Erasing your Individuality”, published in The Washington Post, Foer analyzes the dangerous, and the somewhat dystopian side that tech monopolies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon have when it comes to our lives – both digital and personal.

All three of these companies started with an original, specific goal. Google – to provide the most optimized search experience, Facebook – to connect people all over the world, and Amazon – to host the world’s marketplace. But they have discovered a new goal to “encompass all existence” as Foer puts it.

Google founder Sergey Brin has even gestured at “a little version of Google that you can plug into your brain”. That is terrifying. And what’s more terrifying is society’s willingness to accept it.

The dangers in these modernized monopolies are vast. For these grandiose promises to work out, new technologies must be used with good intentions at the very least. They must work to serve humanity in a way that actually benefits and aids in the multitude of issues we face today. But even good intentions can have catastrophic results. These giants must realize that in a way, they are playing God, and what a responsibility that is for mere mortals.

Another risk lies in an issue us down on earth face while reaching for the clouds – our own free will. As convenience and speed are not only prioritized but normalized, we find ourselves in a particular dilemma: What are we sacrificing for this ease?

Foer warns,

“As individuals, we have similarly accepted the omnipresence of the big tech companies as a fait accompli. We’ve enjoyed their free products and next-day delivery with only a nagging sense that we may be surrendering something important. Such blitheness can no longer be sustained.”

In chapter 2 of Cal Newport’s Deep Work, he further discusses this problem, in his section, titled, “The Cult of the Internet”. He cites Neil Postman and Evgeny Morozov, describing the world we live in today as an internet-centrist technopoly. Newport explains that there is this newfound “culture of connectivity” that consumes modern-day business and life. There is no option but to be online, to participate in social media and instant messaging because it is becoming our only option. Anything that requires the practice of “deep work” is considered archaic in this new world. Anything new and shiny is automatically considered “good”.

There are so many dystopian universes in literature that connect to right now. In Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, individuality is seen as an illness, necessitating what can only be described as a lobotomy to cure. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, humans are genetically engineered at birth to carry out a “role” in society, powerless to their predestination.

In Karin Boye’s Kallocain, we find a scientist named Leo Kall, who seeks recognition in a society of forced conformity. He is loyal to the “Worldstate”, a place where individualism and privacy are illegal, and surveillance runs rampant. Kall creates a “truth serum” called Kallocain for the government, that exposes every thought a person has, later finding that his pill would be used to persecute those who even thought a word of dissent.

In that Euro Lit class long ago, we discussed how the drug was like a panopticon, an architectural concept derived by utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham. It’s a prison model in which the guards have a complete view of all prisoners.

If a drug serves as a panopticon in Boye’s novel, one might muse that major tech companies have done the same regarding the internet. As technology advances, privacy, and individualism dwindle. But therein a question lies –who is really watching?