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The author wants society to be more compassionate and less exploitative. That's all. Why? To make life more enjoyable and less challenging for everybody. Ima

The author wants society to be more compassionate and less exploitative. That's all. Why? To make life more enjoyable and less challenging for everybody. Imagine a world in which the resources of e.g. Facebook were dedicated towards increasing happiness and usefulness through connecting people to sources of emotional satisfaction, rather than increasing shareholder wealth through targeted advertising. How? The author doesn't say. The challenge is to think of an economic system in which vendors can act selfishly but consumers benefit virtuously. One example is the car industry. Before Henry Ford brought mass transit and higher wages to society, individuals had less freedom, fewer choices, and more dependency on feudal overlords. The problem so far with the digital economy is that it hasn't yielded the same transition in society, at least, not so obviously. In many ways it's the opposite. More engagement leads to more frustration and unhappiness. The rise of surveillance capitalism is negative for personal development because it is based on an economic model of exploitation i.e. spying to make ads sell more stuff. To change this, advertising would have to change so that the KPI are not just clicks and conversions and blind revenue. The KPI should be consumer satisfaction and personal development, and societal development. That's not impossible. It just hasn't been done yet.

passivate 6y ago
Agreed. I wonder if this loss of compassion is caused by our inability to scale it. We tend to be more communal when the community is small. For e.g. People often reminisce about a time when 'everyone knew everyone' whether its in a professional context at work, or in an online forum, etc, It falls neatly in line with this often proposed notion that people from smaller towns / remote areas are more friendly, etc. If we accept the above, certainly there is a potential path forward. But in the current climate capitalism (and society) has primed us to always look for ways to scale, always look for ways to engage and interact with as large of an audience as possible. Maybe that has to change?

passivate 6y ago

Agreed. I wonder if this loss of compassion is caused by our inability to scale it. We tend to be more communal when the community is small. For e.g. People often reminisce about a time when 'everyone knew everyone' whether its in a professional context at work, or in an online forum, etc, It falls neatly in line with this often proposed notion that people from smaller towns / remote areas are more friendly, etc. If we accept the above, certainly there is a potential path forward. But in the current climate capitalism (and society) has primed us to always look for ways to scale, always look for ways to engage and interact with as large of an audience as possible. Maybe that has to change?