Digital dystopia

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Smart city dystopia, a graffiti on a wall in Lapa, Rio de Janeiro Smart city (dystopia) (6819117093).jpg
Smart city dystopia, a graffiti on a wall in Lapa, Rio de Janeiro

Digital dystopia, cyber dystopia or algorithmic dystopia refers to an alternate future or present in which digitized technologies or algorithms have caused major societal disruption. [1] [2] [3] It refers to dystopian narratives of technologies influencing social, economic, and political structures, and its diverse set of components includes virtual reality, artificial intelligence, ubiquitous connectivity, ubiquitous surveillance, and social networks. [4] In popular culture, technological dystopias often are about or depict mass loss of privacy due to technological innovation and social control. They feature heightened socio-political issues like social fragmentation, intensified consumerism, dehumanization, and mass human migrations.

Contents

Origins

In 1998, "digital dystopia" was used to describe negative effects of multichannel television on society. [5] "Cyber-dystopia" was coined in 1998 in connection with cyber-punk literature. [6]

One of the earliest mentions is on 2004 when an academic and blogger was expelled for commenting on how the Sims Online Computer game based in the city of Alphaville had become a digital dystopia controlled by "president" Donald Meacham and corrupt faction of robot nobles had become a digital dystopia with crime, cyber-sex prostitution and general civic chaos. Digital experimentation of the elements of cyberspace became extremely invasive and took on the appearance of anarchy in Alphaville. [7]

In August 2007, David Nye presented the idea of cyber-dystopia, which envisions a world made worse by technological advancements. [8] Cyber-dystopian principles focus on the individual losing control, becoming dependent and being unable to stop change.

Nancy Baym shows a cyber-dystopia negatively effect of a cyber-dystopia in social interactions as it says new media will take people away from their intimate relationships, as they substitute mediated relationships or even media use itself for face to face engagement". [9] : 36 

The dystopian voices of Andrew Keen, Jaron Lanier, and Nicholas Carr tell society as a whole could sacrifice our humanity to the cult of cyber-utopianism. In particular, Lanier describes it as "an apocalypse of self-abdication" and that "consciousness is attempting to will itself out of existence"; [10] warning that by emphasising the majority or crowd, we are de-emphasising individuality. Similarly, Keen and Carr write that there is a dangerous mob mentality that dominates the internet; since, rather than creating more democracy, the internet is empowering the rule of the mob. Instead of achieving social equality or utopianism, the internet has created a "selfie-centered" [11] culture of voyeurism and narcissism.

John Naughton, writing for The Guardian , described Aldous Huxley, The author of Brave New World , as the prophet of digital dystopia. [12]

See also

Further reading

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aldous Huxley</span> English writer and philosopher (1894–1963)

Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including novels and non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cyberpunk</span> Science fiction subgenre in a futuristic dystopian setting

Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of lowlife and high tech", featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay. Much of cyberpunk is rooted in the New Wave science fiction movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when writers like Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, Roger Zelazny, John Brunner, J. G. Ballard, Philip José Farmer and Harlan Ellison examined the impact of drug culture, technology, and the sexual revolution while avoiding the utopian tendencies of earlier science fiction.

<i>Brave New World</i> 1932 dystopian science fiction novel by Aldous Huxley

Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story's protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final novel, Island (1962), the utopian counterpart. This novel is often compared as an inversion counterpart to George Orwell's 1984 (1949).

Utopian and dystopian fiction are subgenres of speculative fiction that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality intended to appeal to readers. Dystopian fiction offers the opposite: the portrayal of a setting that completely disagrees with the author's ethos. Some novels combine both genres, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take depending on its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction and other types of speculative fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jaron Lanier</span> American computer scientist, musician, and author

Jaron Zepel Lanier is an American computer scientist, visual artist, computer philosophy writer, technologist, futurist, and composer of contemporary classical music. Considered a founder of the field of virtual reality, Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research, Inc., the first company to sell VR goggles and wired gloves. In the late 1990s, Lanier worked on applications for Internet2, and in the 2000s, he was a visiting scholar at Silicon Graphics and various universities. In 2006 he began to work at Microsoft, and from 2009 has worked at Microsoft Research as an Interdisciplinary Scientist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Technological utopianism</span> Any ideology based on the premise that advances in technology could bring a utopia

Technological utopianism is any ideology based on the premise that advances in science and technology could and should bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal.

Dumbing down is the deliberate oversimplification of intellectual content in education, literature, cinema, news, video games, and culture. Originating in 1933, the term "dumbing down" was movie-business slang, used by screenplay writers, meaning: "[to] revise so as to appeal to those of little education or intelligence". Dumbing-down varies according to subject matter, and usually involves the diminishment of critical thought by undermining standard language and learning standards, thus trivializing academic standards, culture, and meaningful information, as in the case of popular culture.

Social commentary is the act of using rhetorical means to provide commentary on social, cultural, political, or economic issues in a society. This is often done with the idea of implementing or promoting change by informing the general populace about a given problem and appealing to people's sense of justice. Social commentary can be practiced through all forms of communication, from printed form, to conversations to computerized communication.

Since the advent of the cyberpunk genre, a number of cyberpunk derivatives have become recognized in their own right as distinct subgenres in speculative fiction, especially in science fiction. Rather than necessarily sharing the digitally and mechanically focused setting of cyberpunk, these derivatives can display other futuristic, or even retrofuturistic, qualities that are drawn from or analogous to cyberpunk: a world built on one particular technology that is extrapolated to a highly sophisticated level, a gritty transreal urban style, or a particular approach to social themes.

Technophilia refers generally to a strong attraction for technology, especially new technologies such as personal computers, the Internet, mobile phones, and home cinema. The term is used in sociology to examine individuals' interactions with society and is contrasted with technophobia.

<i>Kallocain</i> 1940 novel by Karin Boye

Kallocain is a 1940 dystopian novel by Swedish novelist Karin Boye that envisions a future of drab terror. Seen through the eyes of the idealistic scientist Leo Kall, Kallocain is a depiction of a totalitarian world state. An important aspect of the novel is the relationships and connections between the various characters, such as the marriage of the main character and his wife, Linda Kall, and the feelings of jealousy and suspicion that may arise in a society with heavy surveillance and legal uncertainty.

Many of the tropes of science fiction can be viewed as similar to the goals of transhumanism. Science fiction literature contains many positive depictions of technologically enhanced human life, occasionally set in utopian societies. However, science fiction's depictions of technologically enhanced humans or other posthuman beings frequently come with a cautionary twist. The more pessimistic scenarios include many dystopian tales of human bioengineering gone wrong.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dystopia</span> Community or society that is undesirable or frightening

A dystopia, also called a cacotopia or anti-utopia, is a community or society that is extremely bad or frightening. It is often treated as an antonym of utopia, a term that was coined by Sir Thomas More and figures as the title of his best known work, published in 1516, which created a blueprint for an ideal society with minimal crime, violence, and poverty. The relationship between utopia and dystopia is in actuality, not one simple opposition, as many utopian elements and components are found in dystopias as well, and vice versa.

Cyber-utopianism, web-utopianism, digital utopianism, or utopian internet is a subcategory of technological utopianism and the belief that online communication helps bring about a more decentralized, democratic, and libertarian society. The desired values may also be privacy and anonymity, freedom of expression, access to culture and information or also socialist ideals leading to digital socialism.

<i>Who Owns the Future?</i> Book by Jaron Lanier

Who Owns the Future? a non-fiction book written by Jaron Lanier published by Simon & Schuster in 2013. The book was well received and won multiple awards in 2014: Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Goldsmith Book Prize, and Top honors at the San Francisco Book Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Solarpunk</span> Literary and artistic movement

Solarpunk is a literary and artistic movement that envisions and works toward actualizing a sustainable future interconnected with nature and community. The "solar" represents solar energy as a renewable energy source and an optimistic vision of the future that rejects climate doomerism, while the "punk" refers to the countercultural, post-capitalist, and decolonial enthusiasm for creating such a future.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital sublime</span> Philosophical concept

The digital sublime is the mythologization of the impact of computers and cyberspace on human experiences of time, space and power. It is also known as cyber sublime or algorithmic sublime. It is a philosophical conception of emotions that captivate the collective conscience with the emergence of these new technologies and the promises and predictions that emerge from them. These emotions are the awe, the astonishment, the rationality-subsuming glory, and the generally intense spiritual experience.

References

  1. ↑ "Digital Dystopia". American Scientist. 6 February 2017. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  2. ↑ Hudson, Laura (19 April 2018). "If you want to know how we ended up in a cyber dystopia, read Ready Player One". The Verge. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
  3. ↑ Kockelman, Paul (March 2020). "The Epistemic and Performative Dynamics of Machine Learning Praxis". Signs and Society. 8 (2): 319–355. doi: 10.1086/708249 . ISSN   2326-4489.
  4. ↑ Pilkington, Ed (14 October 2019). "Digital dystopia: how algorithms punish the poor". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  5. ↑ Williams, Granville (1 July 1998). "New media: Digital dystopia". Index on Censorship. 27 (4): 186–192. doi:10.1080/03064229808536405. ISSN   0306-4220. S2CID   220984100 . Retrieved 1 November 2021.
  6. ↑ Pencak, William (1999). "Lyres against the Law: Orpheus as Cyberpunk Outlaw". Legal Studies Forum. 23: 293. Retrieved 1 November 2021.
  7. ↑ "Is a 'real' Truman show a good idea?". the Guardian. 22 October 2004. Retrieved 20 November 2020.
  8. ↑ Nye, David E. (August 2007). Technology Matters: Questions to Live With. The MIT Press. ISBN   9780262640671 . Retrieved 27 April 2014.
  9. ↑ Baym, Nancy K. (April 2010). Personal Connections in the Digital Age. Polity. ISBN   9780745643311 . Retrieved 27 April 2014.
  10. ↑ Lanier, Jaron (February 2011). You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto. Vintage. p. 15. ISBN   978-0307389978.
  11. ↑ Keen, Andrew (January 2015). The Internet Is Not the Answer. Atlantic Monthly Press. ISBN   978-0802123138.
  12. ↑ Naughton 2013.
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