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Transcript

Does Social Media Diminish Our Autonomy? · Ethical Machines

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's suppose that all your friends very strongly encourage you to go to a particular restaurant.
0:07
[SPEAKER_00]: It keeps saying, go, you got to go to the restaurant, you got to go to the restaurant.
0:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you finally go.
0:11
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you get there, you find to your surprise that there's a menu with only one option on it.
0:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's suppose that while you're in the restaurant, you discover that it's designed in such a way that you find it difficult to leave.
0:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And then let's suppose that if you do leave, there's various things the restaurant does to pull you back in.
0:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe they text you coupon codes or they send you pictures of your friends having a good time there.
0:37
[SPEAKER_00]: This rather bizarre restaurant, admittedly, is arguably not just in the business of selling you food, but of doing it in a way that undermines your autonomy.
0:46
[SPEAKER_00]: They pull you into the restaurant, they limit your choices while you're in there, they make it difficult to leave, and they make it difficult to stay away once you're gone.
0:55
[SPEAKER_00]: But arguably, our digital lives are very much like that, or at least that's what my guest argues.
1:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Her name is Electra Beaty, she's a professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University, and she thinks that we are dependent on social media platforms in a variety of ways that drastically decreases our autonomy.
1:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, as for how this happens, it's sort of complicated.
1:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to highlight a few points here that should echo the restaurant case that I just gave you.
1:21
[SPEAKER_00]: First, you highlight that we get into these platforms by consenting to rules of engagement that we don't fully understand.
1:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, there is terms of service, you know, but come on, no one reads those things.
1:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And even if you did, you're probably not going to understand most of what it says.
1:34
[SPEAKER_00]: And secondly, the social media platforms are designed in such a way that we don't want to leave.
1:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And if we do leave, we want to come back.
1:41
[SPEAKER_00]: So in that sense, or in some sense, or other,
1:44
[SPEAKER_00]: the way in which the platforms are designed, makes it the case that they are addictive.
1:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, you're gonna hear me throughout this conversation pushing back on this claim.
1:54
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that we're actually addicted.
1:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I think we need to take some personal responsibility here.
1:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think that social media companies undermine our rational capacity to choose what's on the menu.
2:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there is more than one option.
2:07
[SPEAKER_00]: And so on, you'll hear a bunch of objections that I raise.
2:10
[SPEAKER_00]: But in general, I think that'll let her and I agree about a lot at the end of the day, and it may be that I'm more inclined to emphasize the power of personal responsibility, while she's more inclined to emphasize the power of digital platforms and the data scientists that engineers and the CEOs behind them have.
2:26
[SPEAKER_00]: while there's no fundamental disagreement here.
2:29
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, I think we both agree that it's worth addressing the question, how do we encourage legally or culturally social media platforms to increase versus decrease our autonomy?
2:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, antitrust is one piece of the puzzle, how it's designed as another, and more generally there's just a variety of concrete strategies and tactics that need to be explored.
2:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so that's what this episode is about to what extent you social media platform companies undermine our autonomy.
2:58
[SPEAKER_00]: What can we do to make it the case that they don't undermine or decrease but actually enhance or encourage our autonomy?
3:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you haven't figured it out yet, I'm your host, Reed Blackburn, the host of the ethical machines.
3:08
[SPEAKER_00]: But I say host to many times, I think I did.
3:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Anyway, ignore that fact.
3:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Now go like the podcast, subscribe to it.
3:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Share with your friends blah, blah, blah, blah.
3:15
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, let's go talk to Electric.
3:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So, lecture, you've got this claim that I'm really interested in and I've been wanting to talk to something about this because there's lots of people make a claim that's something along the lines of our autonomy is threatened online and I'm not totally sure what that amounts to.
3:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Can you say a little bit about A, what you mean by autonomy and then B give us some ways in what you think it's undermined?
3:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, sure.
3:51
[SPEAKER_01]: So, I think people talk about autonomy as a monolith, as something that's self-explanatory, that's embedded in a liberal form of thinking or liberal philosophy.
4:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And we all assume that we agree that autonomy is either there or it's not.
4:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, under this perspective, people start thinking about technology as a switch that turns autonomy on or off.
4:14
[SPEAKER_01]: and I want to push path against that view.
4:16
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do believe that our autonomy can be eroded by technology, but I also think that some of our autonomy can be enhanced by technology.
4:25
[SPEAKER_01]: So on the one hand new technologies say digital platforms, Google Maps, Google Search, things like Amazon Marketplace, potential functionalities related to AI, generative AI,
4:39
[SPEAKER_01]: can enhance our autonomy, can make us give us more possibilities, can extend their actions or minds into new possibilities, right?
4:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do not deny that the caveat or the concern I have with technology,
4:55
[SPEAKER_01]: is that it's not just about functionalities, but it's also about the economy, where the political economy of technology, that is creating a society that is increasingly in the hands of if you private actors, right?
5:09
[SPEAKER_01]: So technology is increasing the dependency we have on
5:19
[SPEAKER_01]: And that to me is concerning from an autonomy perspective.
5:22
[SPEAKER_01]: It's concerning because it is harder for us to have a broad sense of what our lives are about.
5:32
[SPEAKER_01]: It is concerning because private actors have particular
5:37
[SPEAKER_01]: goals in mind when they design these interfaces, they are interested in keeping us hooked, they are interested in making money through ads, they are interested in selling us more products, and technology is designed with those rationales and goals in mind.
5:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And that leads to an undermining or an erosion of autonomy.
6:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so there's a lot there.
6:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So I heard at least I think three things that the way in which it bears on autonomy want is a function of how many options we have and I guess one claim is we can enhance our autonomy very virtual getting more options and various kinds of marketplaces give us more options and I thereby increase our autonomy.
6:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I get that and then you there were sort of two other words that you used.
6:22
[SPEAKER_00]: One was that we become dependent on
6:24
[SPEAKER_00]: The technology of the platforms and I want to hear about that was the nature of the dependency such that it's a kind of dependency that erodes autonomy.
6:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Not for all, I depend upon my family for a variety of things.
6:34
[SPEAKER_00]: I pretend upon my neighborhood, I depend upon the government for lots of things.
6:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't think those things obviously undermine or erode my autonomy.
6:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So what's the nature of the dependence such that it erodes our autonomy?
6:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And then this other thing that you started to get into was we get hooked.
6:47
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's bringing in issues around.
6:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I take it.
6:50
[SPEAKER_00]: addictive or quasi-addictive behaviors are incentivized or made more probable by virtue of how the technology is developed.
6:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's start with the dependency thing.
6:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's an error time.
6:58
[SPEAKER_00]: What's the nature of the dependency such that it erodes or autonomy?
7:01
[SPEAKER_00]: By which I take it, I mean, among other things, something like it erodes either the set of choices that we have or our ability to autonomously, freely choose among those options.
7:11
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think you can think about that in a variety of different ways.
7:14
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the first thing to bear in mind is that when it comes to technology, we are often opting into technological systems that are built by other people.
7:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm a lawyer and what I think about is, for example, the contractual mechanisms that allow us to enter into agreements and partnerships with those technology developers, right?
7:37
[SPEAKER_01]: And the way that these agreements or these relations are structured are very much skewed in favor of the technology developers.
7:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So who draws the terms of service of some of these technological systems that we use on a daily basis?
7:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Facebook, Google with their lawyers, right?
7:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Data term and what kinds of rights they want to give us.
8:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And they ask us to consent to data collection and data processing on their part.
8:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Sorry, let me interrupt there.
8:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if you have a sort of concrete example of something that they might do away.
8:12
[SPEAKER_00]: They might design the technology such that it would limit our options.
8:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The first thought I'd have is we enter into all sorts of situations in which we find the world the way that it is and we have to act with those constraints.
8:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to drive a car in the streets.
8:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to conform to the literally the rules of the road.
8:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But I don't experience that as a deterioration or diminution of my autonomy.
8:33
[SPEAKER_00]: They make the rules of the game for the online platform that you're using.
8:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, why is that not just like driving work?
8:38
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what you gotta do when order the play.
8:39
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't want to play, don't play.
8:41
[SPEAKER_01]: An example is surveillance and surveillance based business models and this connects a little bit to the addiction point that you mentioned, which is that a lot of services are monetized through data and through eyeballs.
8:57
[SPEAKER_01]: and there's this kind of mechanism, or I guess the example that I want to bring out is platforms, the clearest example is something like Twitter, Facebook or Instagram or whatever people use TikTok, which is you opt in and you think this is going to increase your autonomy.
9:16
[SPEAKER_01]: This is going to improve the possibilities for expression, for access to knowledge, for connection
9:26
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we believe that this is going to be an autonomous enhancing choice to sign up to this platform and agree to whatever the platform is imposing on us on terms of service and conditions and yeah what happens is that once for on the platform and the company is not only gathering information about us or preferences what we click on who are friends are.
9:51
[SPEAKER_01]: when, what time of the day we tend to spend time on the platform, for example.
9:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So there are gathering information about us with our assumed knowledge in the sense that we have ticked the box and said, I can send, but they can then do things with that information, that remains activities with that information, that remain very a page plus.
10:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's one part of the problem, there are other sides of the problem, which are, there are uses of that data, there are uses of our time retention that are objectionable from a moral perspective, they can use information about
10:28
[SPEAKER_01]: What kinds of mental vulnerabilities or what kinds of political preferences we have to then start targeting certain political propaganda at us to keep us hooked on the platform so that they can make more money or they can have other bad actors that use their platform that can have access to the data about our behavior.
10:51
[SPEAKER_01]: and can then themselves target things at us, right?
10:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Or advertisers can decide.
10:59
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, that say someone's an alcohol addict, there's information about that, and an advertiser has an interest in using that information, right?
11:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's a very direct undermining of our autonomy.
11:11
[SPEAKER_01]: The vehicle addict does not want to drink more, and yet he's supposed
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm hearing two threads.
11:18
[SPEAKER_00]: One thread is something like our autonomy is diminished by virtue of the fact that we have to enter these spaces where the rules are made in a way that we might not like, but we get pushed into consenting to playing that game.
11:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And the reason it's pushed into consenting is that we don't really know the terms of service, nobody reads this stuff.
11:37
[SPEAKER_00]: It's written in a way to dissuade us for reading it because it's very long and technical or it's illegal.
11:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, okay, I can see that there's a kind of not meaningful informed consent.
11:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, technically you check the box, but there's not meaningful informed consent.
11:49
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's one way in which our autonomy is plausibly undermined or diminished.
11:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the second thread, I think, is just more direct.
11:55
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something like they're going to use the data they collect about you to engage in manipulative tactics.
12:01
[SPEAKER_00]: strategies for getting you to buy this or vote for that candidate or something on those lines.
12:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I hear those two threats.
12:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that fair?
12:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's totally fair.
12:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
12:10
[SPEAKER_01]: I do believe in a written about this that consent is partly illusory online.
12:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if I'm pronouncing this correctly.
12:17
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, so it's a utopia that we're autonomously consenting to all of these agreements in terms of uncondition.
12:24
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's one thing and I think it's true.
12:27
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there's a
12:30
[SPEAKER_01]: There is the fact that these companies can do things that are opaque, that we cannot even meaningfully agree to, right?
12:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So even if we understood everything that we're agreeing to, there are things that are happening down the line that we do not have control over, and that's a form of erosion of our autonomy.
12:48
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's one thing.
12:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to get into the manipulation and addictions off, but
12:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I agree that our economy is eroded to the extent that we don't really know what we're getting ourselves into and that's the way putting it we don't know what we're getting ourselves into and so if we don't know what we're getting ourselves into and maybe we can't know what we're getting ourselves into without a kind of herculane effort into reading all the terms of service and blah blah blah Of all the platforms that we engage with was just too much you can't expect the average citizen to be able to do that kind of work
13:16
[SPEAKER_00]: we are then engaging in ways that, or being treated in ways that we don't consent to, to the next, it's an erosion of autonomy.
13:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess I see that point.
13:25
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing is that,
13:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Number one, it doesn't strike me as a particularly egregious violation.
13:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that sucks, but I'm not sure that I'm going to lose a lot of sleep over it.
13:35
[SPEAKER_00]: So one question I have for you is, should I be more worked up about it?
13:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And then relatedly, maybe one reason why I'm not so worked up about it.
13:42
[SPEAKER_00]: And this sort of gets back to the example that I get about driving on the street, but I could do it with engaging with any kind of large organization, especially.
13:48
[SPEAKER_00]: There's all sorts of things that are going on in, I don't know, agriculture that affects the food that I eat.
13:53
[SPEAKER_00]: There's all sorts of things going on with, I don't know, consumer product protections and aviation and car.
13:58
[SPEAKER_00]: There's all sorts of stuff that's going on in the decision that they're making that I'm not privy to that I'm starting not going to take the time to learn about.
14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe in some sense, again, it's a decrease of my autonomy because I don't know where I'm getting myself into when I get into that car.
14:10
[SPEAKER_00]: or onto that plane.
14:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, it was like, all right, yeah, in a perfect world where I had infinite knowledge of all the things that are going on and infinite time to look into it.
14:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, pure, unadulterated autonomy, I'd be fully informed of all the relevant things.
14:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's just not plausible.
14:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe that's one reason I'm not particularly worked up about it.
14:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know, do you think that there's something particularly egregious with regards to, let's say, online platforms?
14:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I think you've raised a really important point, which is we live in a very complex world where nobody has full understanding of everything that's going on, right?
14:48
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's a very kind of hierarchy in the world, like we need situated knowledge as to interact so that we can make society work.
14:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And that kind of contacts, it might be legitimate and justified to defer or to delegate some decisions about our technologies and technological ecosystems to certain experts that are computer scientists and tech companies.
15:13
[SPEAKER_01]: and they are best placed to take care of our interests in this day.
15:18
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's the argument that you're perhaps putting forward.
15:21
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there are various ways to either contests or enter into dialogue with that position.
15:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I think one
15:31
[SPEAKER_01]: big aspect, which I have not yet mentioned, but I think is actually quite key is you were saying you were talking about rules of the road earlier.
15:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think there is a sense in which these tech companies are increasingly providing the rules of the road for contemporary society, right?
15:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So they are setting up
15:52
[SPEAKER_01]: what the public sphere looks like, they are facilitating our interactions with educators, with banks, with hospitals, with doctors, right, with pharmacies, like every key aspect of our
16:12
[SPEAKER_01]: created, governed, and sold by private actors.
16:18
[SPEAKER_01]: And so in this context, I think it's really important to question whether we want to fully delegate those capacities to private actors.
16:28
[SPEAKER_01]: It doesn't mean that we don't want private actors to take care of some aspects of technological development, but the question is whether they should fully benefit from this intermediation that they provide and like the huge revenues that are attached to that, and also whether they should solely control these systems that have become vertical systems for a contemporary society.
16:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So,
16:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's one way in which I see it and that's where I think it is a little bit egregious.
16:56
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not something where I wake up in the morning and I panic because Google has access to all my contacts, but it is something that at a macro level and in the long run concerns me because certain private actors, certain CEOs have increasing control over our lives
17:19
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not necessarily needing to, I'm good outcomes for people.
17:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay, that's a different kind of argument.
17:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess they're the cleavace of something like, because the technology is so embedded in how we do everything from getting our kids to school to healthcare, to financial services, to whatever.
17:37
[SPEAKER_00]: No sort of the way that we live our lives on a daily basis is mediated by various kinds of platforms, which means that they have these platforms have increasing power.
17:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And to the extent that they have power over something like that shape of the world is the extent to which we lack it, and so our autonomy is decreased.
17:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So I eat that's a way of thinking about autonomy as something like, it's not just on a spectrum, it's zero or some game, it's a limited resource.
18:07
[SPEAKER_00]: That gets distributed across individuals and entities, and the more that you will give it to some entities, the more that you have to take away from others.
18:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And in this case you think,
18:15
[SPEAKER_00]: I take it, the large technology platforms are crewing more and more power, where they get in the power from, they're draining it from the individual citizens, something like that.
18:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that a fair picture?
18:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that your picture?
18:27
[SPEAKER_01]: So I don't know if that's exactly my picture, but I think it's an interesting picture because one way to think about power is that it's relational.
18:35
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's something that you hold over someone else.
18:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And the more power you have, the less power, the other house.
18:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there is a sense in which one could.
18:46
[SPEAKER_01]: understand this erosion of autonomy as a progressive increase in the power that the intermediaries have over our lives and therefore a progressive disempowering of our reliability to control where we go or do and that's something that a lot of attention scholars are
19:08
[SPEAKER_01]: thinking about.
19:08
[SPEAKER_01]: So for example, Justin Harris is written a bunch on this question and there's this idea of the ability to just think about our lives, the ability to take some time off from the internet and just say cool and why what am I doing in this world.
19:22
[SPEAKER_01]: What do I care about?
19:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And because this is becoming increasingly hard for many of us because we're constantly followed by our thoughts.
19:38
[SPEAKER_00]: But the other point, I think, bears on how we think about autonomy, and so maybe I want to set up two ways about how you might think about autonomy or something like those lines and see what you think.
19:46
[SPEAKER_00]: So I guess the way that I tend to think about autonomy is relative, I suspect you might characterize it as overly narrow, and you might be right in that characterization.
19:56
[SPEAKER_00]: I tend to think about it something like,
19:58
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
19:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Do I have sufficient options to choose for them is like the menu of options a reasonable set or has been whittled down to nothing because someone has said you could have a or you could have b or you could have eggs you could have not eggs and that's it.
20:12
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a way I think of diminishing my freedom and then I think about
20:16
[SPEAKER_00]: my freedom consisting in something like a rational capacity to think clearly and make a decision about whether I want eggs or I want, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't come for, because I use the word menu.
20:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether I want to go in for eggs or a hamburger or whatever, and I take it, you could undermine my autonomy that way.
20:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I somehow, I don't know, if I were less rational, if I were overcome with emotion or passion for eggs all of a sudden, I can't think
20:42
[SPEAKER_00]: all the benefits of hand workers.
20:43
[SPEAKER_00]: This is an absurd example, which you see my point.
20:45
[SPEAKER_00]: It's my point is that when I think about autonomy, I think about it as a property of me and my capacities to act, given the way that the world is.
20:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that what you're painting a picture of reasonably is part of our autonomy is something like not being passive with respect to the world that we're given or to keep up with the menu metaphor, not being
21:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And to the extent that say large corporations have complete control over what the menu is that's a way of decreasing your autonomy.
21:20
[SPEAKER_00]: That seems plausible.
21:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I think that's a very good characterization and I would agree that there are these different degrees or shades or types of autonomy, which is precisely what I was trying to say at the start, we think of autonomy as either there or not there, but it's not exactly the way it works, right?
21:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the number of options is one that would be interested in talking more about and I think there are a lot of ways in which new forms of regulation and reforms, particularly in Europe.
21:49
[SPEAKER_01]: or emphasizing this idea of choice, more choice, more options online for consumers, but they're not necessarily giving us better options and spot better options or a better ability to affect those options.
22:01
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think the question of how many options is really interesting.
22:05
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the question of rational capacity to make a choice is one that lost for a seventh-designed for a long time.
22:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure.
22:11
[SPEAKER_01]: And I admit you that what I
22:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Doing my work is I try to highlight a third aspect of autonomy, which is the structural conditions for the exercise of autonomy.
22:25
[SPEAKER_01]: And so unless
22:27
[SPEAKER_01]: We are able to have options that are adequate to us.
22:31
[SPEAKER_01]: We cannot actually meaningfully exercise choice.
22:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And we cannot be sure that the options we have are good options.
22:38
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there needs to be a baseline over which we have some control.
22:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to ask you a question just at point.
22:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe we're getting a bit too into the weeds for the audits.
22:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
22:50
[SPEAKER_00]: is the issue that the companies are not giving us the right kinds of options on the menu or either it's insufficient quantity or insufficient quality of options or both?
23:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that the issue or is it that it's them giving it to us?
23:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So it doesn't matter the quantity or the quantity, having the right kind of quantity and the kind of quality is not sufficient to support
23:20
[SPEAKER_00]: quantity and or quality of the menu that we have to be authors of that as well and it can't be just them.
23:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so that's why I see you could have a perfectly functional digital economy fully controlled by private actors that are doing things that are great for us, which I think is the picture that many need to paint for the early say.
23:44
[SPEAKER_01]: 1990s, early 2000s in China, right?
23:47
[SPEAKER_01]: You had tech companies, so you didn't open it?
23:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, right, free an open internet, really innovative things for us.
23:53
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody else could do things that were as good.
23:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it was great for these actors to have
23:59
[SPEAKER_01]: that much control, a very technology, right?
24:02
[SPEAKER_01]: And as the argument that Google has been putting forward against anti-trust lawsuits, for example, in Europe and in the US, where they always said, where the best competitor, we just built a better search engine, we continue to be better than Bing, and so we should just keep controlling search, right?
24:21
[SPEAKER_01]: I guess I'm, yeah, so I think that's,
24:25
[SPEAKER_01]: At some level, you want to have private develop technological capabilities because there are certain incentives in the market that make them or make markets well equipped to facilitate innovation.
24:43
[SPEAKER_01]: But at some other level, I am worried that we are giving, we are deferring too much to the market.
24:49
[SPEAKER_01]: We are giving too much power to market actors and we're not thinking enough about
24:54
[SPEAKER_01]: to what extent this is allowing some actors to take power over, right?
24:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm trying to tell the public thing, like the public sphere, the realm of democracy.
25:06
[SPEAKER_00]: So I get this point that, okay, look, part of exercising our autonomy is to play some role to be authors of what gets on the menu in the first place, to make sure that the menu has sufficient quantity and quality for us to choose in the right kind of way, like rationally is opposed to driven by something else, whatever addiction let's say, but put that to the side for a minute.
25:25
[SPEAKER_00]: But I wouldn't think that the thing that you would say then is that's what or that's a thing that grounds the justification for anti-trust laws, because then it's just, is it Google or is it Microsoft authoring the menu?
25:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But I think that what you need is something like there needs to be some kind of citizen participation in how the platforms are created.
25:46
[SPEAKER_00]: because that's the only route, that's the only way you're going to get the authorship thing, which I take it you think is if not necessary, at least a contributor to autonomy.
25:55
[SPEAKER_00]: So as I trust, I wouldn't do it, still.
25:56
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some other mechanism that needs to be in place, I think.
26:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I think the way that many anti-trust enforcement series are thinking about this problem is, they see anti-trust enforcement as a sort of an enabler of your public participation.
26:12
[SPEAKER_01]: So...
26:13
[SPEAKER_01]: In a landscape where you have huge monopolies controlling the economy and also influencing politics, there's very little space for bottom-up participation, for kind of smaller units of production, for smaller platforms, for nonprofits like Nassadon or whatever else you might want to mention here.
26:40
[SPEAKER_01]: large corporations and incumbents and trying to size them down or make them slightly less advantage in their transactions without their actors, make their acquisitions of smaller startups, less likely or less easy so that startups can actually grow.
26:57
[SPEAKER_01]: By acting on all of these fronts, you're actually creating an economy that's more decentralized, more plural, more diverse
27:07
[SPEAKER_01]: less powerful actors to emerge and create alternative.
27:11
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's not OK. Each citizen now gets to play a role in how the platforms get designed or something like that.
27:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But what the rules are, because which is good, because that seems like an insanely high bar that's never going to happen.
27:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Then the idea is, OK, what's the sort of decent approximation of that?
27:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's to give those citizens who do want to play some kind of role in authoring the options, the sort of space in which they can do it.
27:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's what any of the trust law does.
27:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so there's not that trust, and then there's obviously constitutional laws, just the democratic rules of the game.
27:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's get back to the addiction stuff, being hooked stuff.
27:45
[SPEAKER_00]: So I want to open my skepticism and let's see if you can push my skepticism to the side or undermine it rather, you know, get off the platform.
27:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't buy the thing, but the phone down.
27:56
[SPEAKER_00]: We're talking to your friends.
27:57
[SPEAKER_00]: There's got to be some degree of personal responsibility, personal accountability.
28:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I tell myself, okay, when we're sitting down at the dinner table, the family's like, no phones allowed at the dinner table.
28:06
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just a rule.
28:07
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
28:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I'm not sure that I understand the addiction stuff.
28:10
[SPEAKER_00]: A lot of the time people say, oh, they have data about you and they know that you're going to want to buy this thing or they think that you're going to want to buy it.
28:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And sometimes awesome.
28:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I needed to tell where the sand falls off the towel for the beach.
28:20
[SPEAKER_00]: They said they showed me an ad for that.
28:21
[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome.
28:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I have a towel that I really love.
28:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know my autonomy is undermind.
28:25
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think I'm addicted or anything along those lines.
28:27
[SPEAKER_00]: That way, anyway, so yeah, tell me what the addiction consists in is it literal addiction?
28:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Should I think about on the model of addiction to drugs or alcohol?
28:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, anyway, I'll stop my small rant.
28:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I think there are so many ways of thinking about this.
28:42
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, there's a bunch of popular literature now, Jonathan Haye, others who are writing about, say, the crisis in teenage mental health, the fact that teenagers can't pay attention, there's a whole kind of flurry of legislation, particularly in red states right now in the US, but also in the UK and in other parts of the world,
29:06
[SPEAKER_01]: that is trying to tackle this problem of children spending too much time online, children accessing content that is harmful for them and things like that.
29:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's very connected to the question of addiction and attention because, of course, when it comes to children, there's an argument
29:26
[SPEAKER_01]: that can be made about children not having that much control over their mental processes and rational processes, and so it's harder for them to escape this technological ecosystem.
29:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that kind of plays into this question of autonomy, because children are exposed to it, even though they cannot exercise as autonomous rational capacity, perhaps.
29:53
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think the problem is true also for it.
29:55
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think we can export a lot of these concerns to adults and see the problem in very similar ways.
30:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I could see that children develop that habits, parents permit them in many cases to develop that habits.
30:09
[SPEAKER_00]: They're going to a school system that enables or allows such bad habits to develop, like allowing smart phones and school in the first place, though, you mentioned Jonathan Hate.
30:16
[SPEAKER_00]: That's another thing that he mentions is,
30:18
[SPEAKER_00]: don't just ban smart phones from schools at a certain age.
30:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I have, sometimes about habit or taking my phone on my pocket and look at it.
30:25
[SPEAKER_00]: But again, this isn't rice, the level of addiction, or being hooked.
30:29
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that there's a ton of ways in which we manifest bad habits.
30:33
[SPEAKER_00]: Every time I walk by the candy bowl, I take another piece of candy.
30:35
[SPEAKER_00]: I can't help it.
30:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I love candy.
30:37
[SPEAKER_00]: But in fact, I can't help it because there's time going to be like, no, you know what?
30:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Stop doing that.
30:40
[SPEAKER_00]: People engage in bad habits.
30:42
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not other people's responsibility or your large companies to make sure that I have the good habits.
30:47
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want them making judgments about what my good habits and my bad habits are.
30:50
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure that I want government making judgments about what my good and bad habits are.
30:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Again, why do we get to full-blown addiction as opposed to, yeah, you got a bad habit.
30:59
[SPEAKER_00]: You got to take some responsibility and change your habit.
31:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, so I mean, on your question on what is addiction?
31:03
[SPEAKER_01]: The World Health Organization, which is pretty significant.
31:08
[SPEAKER_01]: If that's some credit.
31:09
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, sure.
31:10
[SPEAKER_01]: Has defined video games as a source of addiction that is comparable to drugs like cocaine?
31:18
[SPEAKER_01]: That's pretty significant.
31:19
[SPEAKER_00]: That seems, I guess it seemed insane.
31:21
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm talking to someone who grew up playing Nintendo, loved it.
31:25
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I did with me and my friends.
31:27
[SPEAKER_00]: We played a tremendous amount of Nintendo.
31:29
[SPEAKER_00]: And I only look back at it with joy.
31:32
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't recall if we're going through with a draw all of any sort.
31:34
[SPEAKER_00]: That seems to me, that strikes me at least.
31:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I can be convinced otherwise.
31:39
[SPEAKER_00]: It strikes me that initially is overwrought to compare it to something like a cocaine addiction.
31:42
[SPEAKER_01]: I think the evidence shows that, particularly with COVID, I think this has been studied.
31:47
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think there's a big correlation now between teenagers being very lonely and teenagers using technology for too much, right?
31:57
[SPEAKER_01]: And it depends, I think, on women and men use technology very differently.
32:01
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, for video games, there might be a prevalence of males, but females might use social
32:09
[SPEAKER_01]: bodily emergence.
32:10
[SPEAKER_01]: And a one more time say liking other people's posts.
32:14
[SPEAKER_01]: So there's just different ways in which this kind of isolation leads to overuse of technology.
32:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And there is a parallel real life phenomenon that is that children and teenagers and adults talk to each other less on the street, right, and talk to each other less at school because they're all looking at their phones on the
32:39
[SPEAKER_01]: trend toward a increasingly being hooked or increasing dependency on your technologies, which we could call addiction.
32:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Although addiction is a strong word, I agree.
32:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Goes together with a society where people are increasingly isolated and find it hard to
32:55
[SPEAKER_01]: make meaningful connections with each other and hang out in non-structured settings.
33:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, to be clear, I totally agree that.
33:01
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a fan of social media, generally.
33:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It's probably been a net bad.
33:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure how to do the calculus.
33:06
[SPEAKER_00]: There's been good things people like to mention.
33:09
[SPEAKER_00]: If you remember of a oppressed or
33:11
[SPEAKER_00]: or marginalized group, let's say you're gay, transgender, et cetera, it's a way of people fighting.
33:15
[SPEAKER_00]: God obviously, the social media has done good in the world.
33:17
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not denying that.
33:19
[SPEAKER_00]: But yeah, generally no, I think it's a shitty place.
33:21
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm terrified for my kids are engaged in it.
33:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're gonna hold off as long as humanly possible.
33:26
[SPEAKER_00]: So yes, Nintendo is joyous, social media, not so much.
33:30
[SPEAKER_00]: But still, I'm not sure,
33:33
[SPEAKER_00]: why it counts why the responsibility doesn't lie with us.
33:36
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not a libertarian by any stretch of the imagination.
33:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm certainly very far from a libertarian.
33:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I think they're insane.
33:42
[SPEAKER_00]: But it does seem to me like
33:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, social media is bad.
33:46
[SPEAKER_00]: We should recognize that it's bad or bad in a lot of respects.
33:49
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got to take to Jonathan Hates' point, got to take better care of our children with regards to this.
33:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But with regards to adults, I think, takes some responsibility for your life.
33:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Just recognize that, yeah, it's not doing you a ton of good.
33:59
[SPEAKER_00]: It's doing you a ton of harm or at least in the doses that you're taking it.
34:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And so, if you feel isolated and social media is not doing the trick for you, which is no surprise, then figure out, hey, what does it take to be a good friend to the friends that I have?
34:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Should I go out and talk to more people?
34:14
[SPEAKER_00]: This is part of life is figuring out how to live it well and it just seems to me like an easy way to slough off responsibility for the quality of your own life.
34:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Say, I was social media companies and they were dictating, you haven't taken the studio wheel and that's your fault, not social media's fault.
34:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
34:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
34:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So let me try and add a few.
34:34
[SPEAKER_01]: So in some sense, I'm all for taking responsibility over our lines.
34:38
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not on untied liberal and I think there are a few different aspects here.
34:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So again, I think there's this kind of.
34:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Do we really have control of Randecosystem where platforms are pursuing their own economic interests and designing structures and platforms in ways that are, I guess, are interests and perhaps undermine our ability to walk away?
35:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, and that's related to what we're talking about earlier relating to being the power of intermediaries overall.
35:07
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
35:09
[SPEAKER_01]: I think there are other aspects, I'll say two more things.
35:12
[SPEAKER_01]: So one is, I think there is an important point about the kind of individual versus the collective in digital society, which relates very closely to what we're talking about.
35:24
[SPEAKER_01]: And this idea of, I consent, and therefore I take on the responsibilities of being on the platform, of being subject to surveillance, of being subject to addictive,
35:37
[SPEAKER_01]: extraction.
35:39
[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a sense in which I'm an individual, faced with or in relation with a corporation, which is a large, powerful entity, and I as an individual have very limited ability to engage with other individuals in relation to
35:59
[SPEAKER_01]: So the thing that I was saying before about the enter into contracts and we opt in and say, I agree, I could send to these terms and conditions is an individual act of consent, which puts me in an individual relation, which is a vertical relation between me, individual, and the company faces.
36:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Right?
36:21
[SPEAKER_01]: But on the platform Facebook, if Facebook decided to create an ecosystem and an interface where I cannot interact with anybody else, or I cannot really know what other people do.
36:33
[SPEAKER_01]: Or I cannot engage in, say, self-determination with others and try to change the rules of the game on Facebook.
36:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Facebook can do that, right?
36:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So Facebook can design an interface that makes it really hard for me to be an individual among a collective.
36:54
[SPEAKER_01]: And can isolate me further and further.
36:56
[SPEAKER_01]: And so there is a sense in which I think we're witnessing this dynamic of segmentation, of individualization of experiences, of personalization.
37:08
[SPEAKER_01]: And there is an erosion of our capacity to engage with others in meaningful offline activities.
37:17
[SPEAKER_01]: and also an inability to engage together online because the online experience is controlled by actors who don't necessarily have an interest in us.
37:26
[SPEAKER_01]: engaging with each other and meaningful ways that are not profitable to them.
37:32
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's one of the two points that I wanted to make, which is this kind of move from the collective to the end of the troll or this over-emphasis of the end of the troll and thinking about our autonomy and how hooked we might be and how we might get out or how we might be masters of our own choices.
37:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And then I think a second aspect that is important to mention is one way that people make the argument that you just made read, which is we have control of our choices, we can opt out of these addictive platforms, we can put our phones down and say ban from the dinner table.
38:08
[SPEAKER_01]: Many arguments around that have been paired with there are tools that can help you manage your online experience better.
38:16
[SPEAKER_01]: There are tools that make your screen less attractive by moving colors or other things like that.
38:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And the scary part about those tools which are supposed to empower us and give us more autonomy is that in fact they're either developed by the
38:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Or they're monetized by productivity, app companies or other actors, data analytics companies that are basically capturing collecting information about how we use the internet and how we serve and what our vulnerabilities are.
38:52
[SPEAKER_01]: And then selling that data and that information about how we behave online to surveillance actors that then or companies like Facebook.
39:02
[SPEAKER_01]: than then keep us hooked on the internet.
39:04
[SPEAKER_01]: So the tools that we use to protect us from addict propensities or from being hooked to specifics, websites or to specific technologies are then used to keep us more hooked.
39:17
[SPEAKER_01]: So that kind of illustrates the ecosystem where we don't really have control over the types of choices we're making in this case.
39:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so a couple of things for I want to make sure that I have had it right I kind of want to think about something like internal and external almost at the level of the matrix internal to the system so once you're on the once you're on the platform whatever it is let's say it's a social media face book or whatever once you're on it I understand the ways in which you are telling I'd be decreased because.
39:44
[SPEAKER_00]: your relations or your relationships, your interactions with other people on that platform, including your friends, are mediated by the rules that they make and they can choose to slice and dice relationships and whatever they want.
39:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Showing you this friend's feed but not that other person's feed or whatever it is.
39:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's going to be ways in which.
40:00
[SPEAKER_00]: it's not just like hanging out in the town square where there's lots of people you're hanging out on a online town square where there's these sort of invisible rules of the road and that's a way of decreasing autonomy.
40:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So I get that.
40:11
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes a lot of sense to me.
40:12
[SPEAKER_00]: And then the second piece is, do you have to enter the town?
40:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The argument that I was pushing early was you have to enter the town square to begin with online or otherwise.
40:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And I take it your point is that there are things that they do while you're on the platform, while you are in the town square to make it the case that once you leave you're going to want to come back.
40:28
[SPEAKER_00]: where you're going to feel like you have to come back or something one of those lines.
40:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's the second way.
40:32
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's both once you're in there, you're stuck your autonomous decreased.
40:36
[SPEAKER_00]: And when you get out, they've planted things in you when you were in to want to come back.
40:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that right?
40:43
[SPEAKER_01]: I think that's right.
40:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:45
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
40:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a psychologist.
40:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not a psychologist.
40:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But there are some specific psychological mechanisms with no notifications and peaks of the mean.
40:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
40:56
[SPEAKER_01]: With that stuff.
40:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Have it right.
40:58
[SPEAKER_00]: The notification is a good point.
40:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
40:59
[SPEAKER_00]: There's surely ways that they can try to pull you back in.
41:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know that we disagree honestly.
41:04
[SPEAKER_00]: I think this is a more matter of emphasis than anything else.
41:06
[SPEAKER_00]: I agree that they can do various things to get you to want to come back online.
41:09
[SPEAKER_00]: They send you an email.
41:11
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a discount.
41:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Your friend just posts such and such.
41:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, there are things that they can do to pull you back into the nature.
41:16
[SPEAKER_00]: So to speak, I also think you can turn your notifications off and you could have rules as it were about when you use your phone when you don't whatever.
41:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that the argument I will push back on is, and I don't, I think you're just speaking quickly, I don't think you think this, but tell me if I'm wrong.
41:30
[SPEAKER_00]: You said, and so we don't have control over our choices, but to your earlier point, it's a matter of degrees.
41:36
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not on off.
41:37
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't have, it's not what the case that you have controller you don't.
41:39
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got some degree of control.
41:41
[SPEAKER_00]: And I take at your point is that the degree of control that you have is decreased both when you're in the online town square and when you're outside.
41:48
[SPEAKER_00]: the online town square because they've got ways of pulling you back in.
41:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not said that they've got full control and that you have none.
41:54
[SPEAKER_00]: The thing that I was pushing earlier, it's not to say that you have complete control and they have none.
41:58
[SPEAKER_00]: It's somewhere in the middle.
42:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And then they can take it.
42:00
[SPEAKER_00]: The question, the more pragmatic and some sensitive question is, okay, given that it's a scale or a sea saw, how do we increasingly tip things in favor of autonomy of the individual as opposed to autonomy and power of the corporation?
42:13
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
42:13
[SPEAKER_01]: So I totally agree with your characterization.
42:15
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not an either or it's the balance is slightly or significantly tilting towards less autonomy because of all these mechanisms that we discussed.
42:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the question of how.
42:29
[SPEAKER_01]: we reacquire more control of our lives is a profound one that many people are thinking about and it's hard and the way that I answer this question generally is there's no one kind of solvable solution.
42:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do think that antitrust enforcement is an important tool or an important mechanism
42:56
[SPEAKER_01]: forms of power.
42:58
[SPEAKER_01]: You can start diversifying dynamics in the market.
43:02
[SPEAKER_01]: You can start centivizing new forms of innovation or bottom-up alternatives.
43:07
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, I'm all for anti-trust.
43:10
[SPEAKER_01]: But obviously, I don't think anti-trust is D and all.
43:13
[SPEAKER_01]: And then other things to
43:16
[SPEAKER_01]: particularly tackle this problem of addiction, I think, have to do with, first of all, perhaps, imposing some design restrictions on.
43:28
[SPEAKER_01]: the way that particularly consumer-facing platforms are structured and designed.
43:34
[SPEAKER_01]: And those restrictions, Francis Howgan has been talking about many of those slowing, the time scales, making the scale of communication, narrower, slowing down pace, for example, things like that.
43:50
[SPEAKER_01]: All of those mechanisms, so having a chronological timeline, when we're being able to send messages
43:57
[SPEAKER_01]: or barriers and limits on tech platforms bottom line.
44:03
[SPEAKER_01]: So they evoke tech platforms profits.
44:05
[SPEAKER_01]: And in that sense, they will never be things that tech platforms will want to introduce unless there are laws that impose those things on them.
44:14
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that's one.
44:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think the final thought or proposal that I have has to do with trying to create
44:23
[SPEAKER_01]: intermediary solutions, perhaps, some sort of buffer between us and tech platforms.
44:30
[SPEAKER_01]: But those buffers cannot also be private actors that want to rubber attention and data.
44:36
[SPEAKER_01]: So they have to be public interest entities that are helping us navigate around line lives in an ecosystem or in a context where the digital is taking over.
44:48
[SPEAKER_00]: That's helpful.
44:49
[SPEAKER_00]: I had conversations that are like this that are structurally similar where the person will say something like it's a really complicated problem.
44:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's say the problem of disinformation online or the problem of this part of disinformation generally.
45:02
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really complex problem.
45:04
[SPEAKER_00]: The solutions have to be long scale and systematic.
45:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's the law is one mechanism that we have, but it's not the only one.
45:12
[SPEAKER_00]: We also need a change of
45:13
[SPEAKER_00]: cultural norms and expectations.
45:16
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's funny, this is where, and I conclude myself among them, academics have real difficulty in saying how we're supposed to do it, because it rests upon such a variety of empirical questions about
45:29
[SPEAKER_00]: What are the variables involved and how do the variables interact and what are the causal levers and what are the mechanisms and what are and the how question is the crucial one, but it's so hard and it feels like it requires a kind of insanely large network of individuals up acting in a quasi-organized fashion, which I'm just not, I'm not wildly optimistic about.
45:51
[SPEAKER_01]: One thing to add, I think, for whoever is listening, who might be interested in some background readings or initial understanding of internet regulation.
46:03
[SPEAKER_01]: For example, Lauren's lesson, who also ran for president, incidentally at some point in the past I think in 2016, wrote a really interesting book called Code 2.0.
46:16
[SPEAKER_01]: where he talks about code as architecture.
46:20
[SPEAKER_01]: And he basically says that technology is the architecture of the digital world.
46:27
[SPEAKER_01]: And as we move to a society that is increasingly technologically driven, we need to think about how we are designing the architecture of our spaces.
46:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Because things that we think are out there and cannot be changed,
46:41
[SPEAKER_01]: can always be changed, right?
46:44
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I think that goes a little bit to what I was saying about structural power and the structural dimension or the structural conditions for the exercise of autonomy.
46:53
[SPEAKER_01]: As soon as we start understanding that those structural conditions,
46:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Our code, our economics, our law, and can be changed.
47:04
[SPEAKER_01]: We start understanding that you can actually increase or undermine what time I mean, upraggy of ways.
47:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Cool.
47:11
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, thank you so much for all that really fascinating stuff.
47:13
[SPEAKER_00]: And has given us, me at least, a tremendous amount to think about in relation to autonomy.
47:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we're supposed to do about it.
47:20
[SPEAKER_00]: So thanks again for coming on top and about it.
47:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
47:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks so much everyone for listening and now let me think that people have made this podcast possible.
47:30
[SPEAKER_00]: So first of all, we have the Lotto Alexander he's been with me since day one.
47:34
[SPEAKER_00]: He showed me even how to start recording a podcast in the first place he does editing stuff.
47:38
[SPEAKER_00]: He's been fantastic and he does really everything I ask him to and more.
47:43
[SPEAKER_00]: I've never read anyone else who says so much.
47:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I don't know how to do that, but I'll figure it out.
47:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, more could you ask for an producer.
47:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Next up, Jennifer Strong, my podcast guru, I don't know what else to call her.
47:53
[SPEAKER_00]: She just advised me on how to design a podcast, how to grow it, and she's responsible for if you like this kind of season two relaunch.
48:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And everything around it, so thank you to you, Jennifer.
48:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Next up, Meg Marco, responsible for all the excellent artwork.
48:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Before I did the artwork, I didn't really know what I was doing.
48:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We put it together, it worked well enough.
48:12
[SPEAKER_00]: but I think Meg really did a phenomenal job bringing everything together.
48:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Garrett Lane, sound engineer that I frankly don't deserve, he's just too good for this podcast.
48:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't tell him I said that though.
48:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Next up, Benjamin Coltgen, he's a professor of philosophy who has helped me source guests identify who's interesting, who has things to say.
48:32
[SPEAKER_00]: et cetera, et cetera.
48:33
[SPEAKER_00]: So without him, I would have anyone to talk to.
48:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And then finally, Ashley Wasselenko, who helps with all manner of administrative things, making sure that the podcast guests find their way to the podcast and schedule the recording, get their bios and headshots, and really just keeping the show on the rails and me organized.
48:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks to all of you, really appreciate all your hard work.