The Last of The Analogs

Throughout my lifetime, internet platforms have disrupted every area of the human experience.

I am the last of the analogs. That feels strange to write, but it’s true. I was born in 1981. I had to memorize the phone numbers of friends and family, research with actual encyclopedias, order food with humans, and have awkward conversations with people at airports and in elevators. A lot has changed in my lifetime. The most important change I noticed is the transfer of trust. We used to be more trusting of each other and cautious of technology. Now, we are more cautious of each other and more trusting of technology. This misplaced trust is exacerbating the core existential crises plaguing individuals, and societies at large, and compromising our future as a species.

When I talk to people about the scope of this problem, I am met with a multitude of reactions. Wouldn’t I rather be alive now with all the technology we have available? Aren’t I grateful for all the conveniences of the modern world? Don’t I use a smartphone, social media, and all the apps that make my life more convenient? The answer to all these questions is a resounding yes. I love using technology. I’m also fully appreciative and aware of technology’s ability to help us fight certain threats. The advances in science, medicine, transportation, engineering, and safety, not to mention countless other areas are nothing short of miraculous. I love being able to FaceTime my daughter when I’m traveling. I love being able to Google things when I’m curious. I love being able to summon a car or order food at the click of a button. I love how technological innovation is providing opportunities to live happier, healthier lives than ever before. But here’s the problem, most of us aren’t. The mental health crisis is out of control. Loneliness is a global epidemic. Depression and suicide rates, especially amongst teens, are at all-time highs. All of these technological advances are very convenient, but there’s a cost to that convenience. That cost has been deliberately hidden from us, time and time again, through a lack of transparency and blatant manipulation by big tech and their lobbying sycophants in DC.

I am not writing this from a soap box. I am not running for office. I am not advising you to stop using technology or offering a WiFi-free wilderness course. Firstly, I am a concerned parent and citizen. I’m also a documentary filmmaker who began asking questions about how technology was impacting our lives and I ended up going down a rabbit hole I never fathomed. These realizations were not intentional nor reverse-engineered. They were organic and I was surprised by them as much as you may be. I started off making a documentary about our addiction to technology, something that was accelerated by the pandemic and an issue I was struggling with personally, along with millions if not billions of others around the globe. We initially called it Detox, inspired by the need to detox from our phones and internet platforms for the benefit of our mental health. Then as the pieces of the puzzle came together, it became something entirely different, as we realized that addiction was just the entry point into something much more sinister and threatening. This is an age-old problem of the abuse of power. A power dynamic that is so lopsided, so full of concentrated wealth and influence, that as individuals, our only chance to turn the tables is to fight together, regardless of our differences. As a result, the film initially titled Detox became The Cost of Convenience, a phrase that kept emerging throughout our two years of interviews and production.

Every day, billions of people across the globe use internet platforms under the false pretense that they are “free”. Throughout my lifetime, internet platforms have disrupted every area of the human experience. They are rewiring our brains, redefining our relationships, restructuring our communities, and revolutionizing our systems. Technology brings the promise of progress and improved quality of life. As a result, we adopt technology before fully understanding the consequences. But the speed at which these changes are occurring is exponential. Imagine a car speeding down the highway. The faster it goes, the less time the driver has to react in order to avoid an accident. Right now, we are driving straight for a cliff at full speed. Just, as the multi-car pile-up created by Meta starts to get cleaned up, we have in our sights the hazards of TikTok and Chatbot GPT. Until we adopt a general philosophy regarding our relationship with technology and position it at the forefront of our cultural conversation, above all else, and as a bi-partisan issue, the same problems will arise again, and again.

Yes, what is happening now is different and dangerous. But don’t take it from me, take it from the experts I’ve interviewed who have devoted- and in many cases risked- their careers to studying the problematic effects of certain internet platforms on our well-being. They include academics, attorneys, venture capitalists, former entertainment industry alum, authors, philosophers, doctors, and more. They persuaded me, an initial skeptic, to look at the world around me through a fresh and pragmatic lens, breaking the spell cast on most of us by a multi-billion dollar marketing machine.

In my interview with Carissa Veliz, Associate Professor of Artificial Intelligence Ethics at the University of Oxford and author of Privacy is Power, she concisely sums up the scope of the problem: “Most of the internet is currently funded by a business model that depends on the systematic and mass violation of rights and that’s not normal and we shouldn’t get used to it.” If such violations were occurring right in front of our eyes in the real world and not within the hidden code of internet platforms, imagine the outrage. Did you ever wonder why the founders of so many big tech companies don’t let their children use the very products they created? We’ve been duped.

Throughout my research, I have identified 5 key factors that make this period of technological use uniquely dangerous:

1. Ubiquity- Widely available WiFi, inexpensive smartphones, and internet platforms with billions of users have led to people spending huge proportions of their lives in digital worlds, which increases opportunities for exploitation.
2. Personalization- Without our knowledge, internet platforms collect thousands of data points that are processed through complex algorithms that leverage our innermost dreams and fears, as individuals, for profit.
3. Disproportionate Growth- The exponential acceleration of computing power and subsequent product releases in recent decades happens faster than our ability to gauge their impact.
4. Business Models of Big Tech- Founders, often with initial intentions of world betterment, get trapped by success as their companies grow into behemoth corporations beholden to shareholders rather than ideals.
5. Lack of Regulation- The slow pace of the justice system combined with archaic and non-existent laws for the digital world has fueled the most widespread violation of human rights in recent history.

Yes, this is different. We must accept that internet platforms have improved life in some ways and damaged it in others. Both can be true at the same time and indeed they are. What those things are, why they matter, and what parts of the analog world we should preserve and protect should be at the forefront of the American conversation while the last of the analogs are still alive. It’s the most important conversation of our era and one that will impact the entire future of humanity in every possible way.

To learn more visit the film’s official website here.