[Memorandum] Are we the same as 'goldfish' trapped in smartphones?

In the early days of the web in the 1990s, the internet world was based on a kind of idealism, as evidenced by the lofty Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.

However, the information space on the internet has now become a place where the principles of the attention economy (*1), in which giant IT companies compete for the attention of users, are at work, and users are nothing more than beings who voluntarily submit to the revenue programs of IT companies.

*1:
The attention economy is a situation or concept where the degree of people's interest and attention has economic value and functions as an exchange medium, much like money.
In Japanese, it is sometimes called 'kanshin keizai' (interest economy) or 'chui keizai' (attention economy).
In 1969, psychologist and economist Herbert Simon, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics, predicted that as the economy shifted from a consumption economy to an information economy, our limited 'attention' would transform into a valuable resource and be treated like 'currency'.
Later, in 1997, American sociologist Michael Goldhaber proposed the term 'attention economy,' and the term became widespread.

'The Digital Economy Trap' by Matthew Hindman, translated by Hiroshi Yamagata

And we are constantly at the mercy of emails, of course, as well as interests on Facebook and Twitter, live streams on YouTube and TikTok, videos on Netflix and Amazon Prime, and images processed by AI, all day long.

When placed in such an internet environment, each person's interests become inward-looking rather than outward-looking, which inevitably leads to judging other events as objects of suspicion.

As a means to avoid this, I use the phrase 'kana to omou' (*2), which is used to express one's intentions, on the internet.

*2:
Used in spoken language.
It can be used to express one's own feelings of doubt as if talking to oneself, to express the meaning of asking a question to the other party, or in the form of '~nai kana (a)' to express a wish that 'it would be nice if that happened'.

[References]

[Reference Books]
'Modality' (New Japanese Grammar Selection) by Kazuhito Miyazaki, Harumi Noda, Taro Adachi, and Shino Takanashi

However, such a response alone is insufficient, and because the fact that your own interests are dominant on the internet is not a simple reflection of reality, including the inevitable results derived by the algorithms of various social media companies, it is necessary to clearly face that fact and take countermeasures.

So, how can we escape this subordination and achieve a detox?

To do this, first, we must be able to always separate 'the facts in front of us' from 'our own imagination'.

And it is important to know the very path by which the current digital economy has been established, which is also the most readable part of this book.

'The Age of Smartphone Detox: A Digital Civilization Theory to Save 'Goldfish'' by Bruno Patino, translated by Masahiro Hayashi

Now, this book develops its arguments by taking into account the revenue systems of IT companies and social issues, while also incorporating a medical perspective.

In a presentation given by a Google employee to European media companies, it was estimated that the attention span of today's young people, known as the millennial generation, is about 9 seconds, the same as a goldfish.

That is only one second longer than a goldfish.

Communication technology promised us an infinite world. It was touted that the only limit to cyberspace was the limits of ergonomics. However, we have become goldfish trapped in the bowl of a smartphone screen, enslaved to push notifications and instant messages. (Page 16 of this book)

This episode is the origin of the book's mysterious subtitle, but this is incorrect (^^)

[Reference Article]

Whether it is analog data or digital data, without even knowing what kind of data it is, our behavioral consciousness is tracked daily by the data that interests us.

In short, is it not possible that a digital (fictional) world exists that could lead to us no longer being able to choose what we truly want or what is truly valuable?

If we shift our perspective here, perhaps humans are slaves to their environment.

Digital data on social media is taken in through vision, but there is a possibility that we are not 'moving' based on the data we take in, but are being 'moved' by it.

In psychology, the phenomenon where vision creates an illusion that you are moving even though you are stationary is called 'vection' (visually induced self-motion perception).

'What is Vection!? Kyoritsu Smart Selection' by Takeharu Seno (Author), Hiroaki Suzuki (Coordinator)

Until Galileo advocated the heliocentric theory, it was believed that the Earth was the center of the world and that celestial bodies like the sun moved around it, but with the emergence of the scientific view of the heliocentric theory, it was revealed that the Earth was neither the center nor the subject of the world, but merely an object.

As seen in this vection, it can be said that humans are also objects and beings moved by their environment.

For example, suppose you perform the act of eating something.

You might think that the act of eating something is your own choice.

However, you may be driven to the act of eating something not by your own will, but by some influence from the outside world.

In other words, in a broad sense, one could consider that even actions on social media mean humans have no free will and are slaves to the (digital) environment.

As a reason for thinking so, one might consider the question: are you actively using information (your interests) by searching for something? Or is that search behavior itself becoming data that prompts your next action?

Thinking about it that way.

Are you using it?

Are you being used by it?

That becomes the issue, and as a direction for an answer to that, this impressive quote by Henry Kissinger is cited in this book.

'A technology has been born that threatens to dominate humans, but we do not have a philosophy to govern such technology' (page 149 of this book).

To address this, it is considered necessary to socially cultivate the ideals and long-term perspective to correct the course of digital civilization (minimum regulation by the state, education to improve digital literacy, strengthening of public media, etc.).

In other words, much like the problem of free will considered from the aforementioned vection, philosophy, psychology, and science are also disciplines that provide perspectives for viewing things from unusual angles, apart from law and morality.

It is about making effective use of those disciplines to carefully consider what is necessary to correct the course of the digital society, and to discover a philosophy that is commensurate with the height of the times.

I believe that is what is expected of each and every one of us right now.