Big data and the auton­o­my of think­ing – how Big Data is prof­it­ing from our distraction

Is there such a thing as men­tal cap­i­tal­ism where the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of infor­ma­tion and enter­tain­ment tends to make them worth­less? Is mind­ful con­scious­ness the new sought-after resource, and is there an area where this focused atten­tion can become a cur­ren­cy that can be active­ly cul­ti­vat­ed? If so, what chal­lenges do we face and how can digi­ti­sa­tion increase our intel­lec­tu­al autonomy?

In the lat­est of her Duet inter­views, Dr Cal­daro­la, author of Big Data and Law, and Prof. Dr Thomas Met­zinger, the well-known philoso­pher and aca­d­e­m­ic, dis­cuss whether dig­i­tal sov­er­eign­ty and men­tal auton­o­my are related.

You have men­tioned sev­er­al times that the most lim­it­ed resource today is not water or food, but human mind­ful con­scious­ness. Can you explain that idea to our readers?

Prof. Dr Thomas Met­zinger: Of course, there are many peo­ple in poor coun­tries for whom water and food are the most lim­it­ed resources and it is equal­ly obvi­ous that these peo­ple would much rather have water that does­n’t cause dis­ease. Those of us who live in rich­er coun­tries are often not that aware of this type of sit­u­a­tion. We only become con­scious of this fact when we trav­el to coun­tries where we can­not safe­ly drink tap water, for instance. Safe and clean water is not some­thing to be tak­en for grant­ed by many peo­ple on this planet.

For those of us liv­ing in more pros­per­ous coun­tries as we do, where we have enough water and food, I think the most lim­it­ed resource is con­scious mind­ful­ness. We are over­whelmed by stim­uli and infor­ma­tion. As a result of digi­ti­sa­tion, we now have an indus­try in rich coun­tries that devel­ops its busi­ness mod­els using these stim­uli and infor­ma­tion, which has start­ed to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly mon­e­tise this atten­tion. We call this an extrac­tive econ­o­my because this very con­scious­ness is being extract­ed from the human brain and then processed for their respec­tive busi­ness mod­els, e.g., for per­son­alised advertising.

The prob­lem is that with­in each indi­vid­ual human being and brain, the abil­i­ty to be awake, focussed, and pay atten­tion is a lim­it­ed resource. Babies hard­ly have this capac­i­ty at all. Old­er peo­ple or peo­ple with demen­tia also lose this abil­i­ty with the pas­sage of time.

By alert­ness, con­cen­tra­tion, and atten­tion I mean the abil­i­ty to focus one’s atten­tion on an object on pur­pose and to keep it there. For exam­ple, draw­ing atten­tion to the book in my hand or to what my inter­locu­tor is say­ing and keep­ing this atten­tion focused in the face of all kinds of dis­tract­ing stim­uli. We need this abil­i­ty or resource. It is only avail­able to us humans for a cer­tain amount of time dur­ing the day. Then we become tired and are eas­i­ly distracted.

There are two types of con­scious­ness: auto­mat­ic con­scious­ness and vol­un­tary con­scious­ness. And it’s the lat­ter that I’m con­cerned about. We have these nei­ther in deep sleep nor in dreams (the excep­tion being the very rare lucid dreams).

Dur­ing the day our minds wan­der, and we spend 30 – 50% of our time away from what we are actu­al­ly doing. So, if we actu­al­ly intend­ed to pre­pare a meal and to cook and enjoy it with guid­ed aware­ness, then our thoughts would wan­der again and again while we were doing it, e.g., think­ing about the next task, men­tal­ly plan­ning our vaca­tion etc. This means we are con­stant­ly being dis­tract­ed and do not remain in focus – here in our exam­ple cook­ing and eat­ing. The key­words here are “spon­ta­neous task-unre­lat­ed thought” and “mind wan­der­ing”. It’s the seem­ing­ly aim­less mind, the day­dream­ing, the unbid­den mem­o­ries, and the auto­mat­ic plan­ning. It’s about what I call “men­tal sleep­walk­ing”, that is, the per­ma­nent occur­rence of seem­ing­ly spon­ta­neous, task-inde­pen­dent thoughts, the loss of atten­tion con­trol and dis­trac­tions repeat­ed hun­dreds of times a day. Much like dol­phins breach­ing the sur­face of the water, thoughts often cross the line between con­scious and uncon­scious infor­ma­tion pro­cess­ing, in both directions.

This resource of con­scious­ness is crit­i­cal for our qual­i­ty of life. It is not only sig­nif­i­cant dur­ing work­ing hours so that we can do our work. This resource is also impor­tant out­side of work­ing hours – to be able to lis­ten to friends, fam­i­ly and acquain­tances, to be able to empathise, to be able to real­ly expe­ri­ence nature on a walk in the for­est and not to con­stant­ly wan­der off in your mind or to be able to real­ly enjoy and per­ceive the food you are con­sum­ing. This applies to many oth­er areas of life as well. Today there is stiff com­pe­ti­tion for our con­scious­ness: an employ­er and friends, fam­i­ly, acquain­tances and so on; they all want or need our atten­tion and con­cen­tra­tion. The abil­i­ty to pay atten­tion and con­cen­trate are clear pre­dic­tors for school, uni­ver­si­ty and pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess, as has been seen in numer­ous studies.

My opin­ion is:

The dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion tends to make infor­ma­tion and enter­tain­ment worth­less.
We are fac­ing a sys­tem of men­tal cap­i­tal­ism because mind­ful con­scious­ness has become a 
lim­it­ed resource.
Mind­ful con­scious­ness has become a cur­ren­cy that can and will be active­ly collected.

Prof. Dr Thomas Metzinger

If there is an indus­try for extract­ing con­scious­ness, a process which is now being done bet­ter and more effec­tive­ly with dig­i­tal tools, then we are talk­ing about the exploita­tion of this scarce resource of mind­ful con­scious­ness. We can’t see this bat­tle for our mind­ful­ness very clear­ly. We only notice the dwin­dling of our qual­i­ty of life, with­out know­ing what is actu­al­ly caus­ing it. The con­se­quences are depres­sion, burnouts, emo­tion­al exhaus­tion… This phe­nom­e­non could be com­pared to a legal­ly reg­u­lat­ed or even imposed blood dona­tion. If a lit­tle bit of blood is drawn from us again and again and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly, then that also has seri­ous con­se­quences for our health.

This con­tin­u­ous, sys­tem­at­ic, and indus­tri­al drain­ing of our con­scious­ness has nev­er before exist­ed in the his­to­ry of our evo­lu­tion. And that is a key prob­lem today because the price of infor­ma­tion is falling, con­scious­ness is being sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly mon­e­tised and the psy­cho­log­i­cal costs are externalised.

We col­lect infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge and this can be dig­i­tal­ly retrieved and received world­wide at any time. We have dig­i­tal tools and there­fore no longer need skills such as men­tal arith­metic because the dig­i­tal tools do it for us at the push of a but­ton. Do we still need mem­o­ry, con­scious­ness, autonomous think­ing these days and, if so, why?

In the­o­ry, there is noth­ing wrong with machines tak­ing over many func­tions. Just like our mus­cles, our brain works accord­ing to the prin­ci­ple “use it or lose it”. Abil­i­ties and resources are deplet­ed when they are no longer being used.

Have you ever asked stu­dents in your home­town for direc­tions? They can usu­al­ly no longer tell you how to get to the town hall because they no longer need the abil­i­ty to nav­i­gate spa­tial­ly due to the exis­tance of pro­grammes or apps on smart­phones. That’s all fine as long as we have good apps, the satel­lites aren’t bro­ken… We can’t do some­thing on our own any­more if these apps no longer work.

On the one hand, tech­nol­o­gy relieves us of a lot of work and cre­ates space for some­thing new. On the oth­er hand, it also cre­ates depen­den­cy. What’s bad about the sec­ond fact is that when we become depen­dent, we lose self-con­trol and men­tal auton­o­my. When we are depen­dent on dig­i­tal tools and media, they also “tell” us where to focus our atten­tion. And that becomes dan­ger­ous because then we are no longer inde­pen­dent peo­ple who are able to decide and act freely.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly dan­ger­ous is the loss of respon­si­ble cit­i­zens, mean­ing crit­i­cal social sub­jects who form their own opin­ions in a polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty and can thus recog­nise griev­ances, address them and work out pro­pos­als for solutions.

Of course, as AI takes over human work, employ­ers need few­er and few­er skilled work­ers. But even if AI increas­es pro­duc­tiv­i­ty with less man­pow­er, we still need peo­ple to buy and con­sume these prod­ucts designed, engi­neered, and man­u­fac­tured by AI. There­fore, giv­en the cur­rent eco­nom­ic mod­el, we def­i­nite­ly need well-informed con­sumer groups.

And even if there was an uncon­di­tion­al basic income for “super­flu­ous” employ­ees because of the scarci­ty of work done by peo­ple which is still being need­ed, com­pa­nies will nat­u­ral­ly also want to skim off the uncon­di­tion­al mon­ey through their busi­ness mod­els and turn it into cor­po­rate profit.

And it is pre­cise­ly at this point that we can see that com­pa­nies would pre­fer to have those cus­tomers they can con­trol with their dig­i­tal tools – the con­sumer becomes a prod­uct via the extrac­tive atten­tion econ­o­my. Crit­i­cal ratio­nal think­ing and moral sub­jec­tiv­i­ty have not yet become the object of tech­no­log­i­cal process­es, but they would be extreme­ly rel­e­vant for the resilience of our democracy.

It is of course not the goal of com­pa­nies to work towards a com­mon good. That is the task of the state and pol­i­tics. It only becomes prob­lem­at­ic when com­pa­nies under­mine those very tasks of the state because they are more sophis­ti­cat­ed and faster and exploit the state’s lack of knowl­edge regard­ing the busi­ness mod­el used and the tech­nol­o­gy for extract­ing atten­tion. Most of the time, the state notices the changes only grad­u­al­ly, for bureau­cra­cy and the nec­es­sary demo­c­ra­t­ic debates and votes are usu­al­ly stum­bling blocks until “cor­rec­tive” and delayed leg­is­la­tion comes into force.

There is also some­thing like legal pos­i­tivism, where, for exam­ple, high­ly paid rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the defence indus­try – also called lob­by­ists – empha­sise that they would abide by the laws if they were changed and that they also want new laws to be enact­ed. They demand legal cer­tain­ty from the state because for them there is only the law. This is very clever but also disin­gen­u­ous because, in real­i­ty, they have a deeply uneth­i­cal agen­da and so they can com­plete­ly side­step the eth­i­cal debate. Reg­u­la­tion and legal com­pli­ance are there­fore basi­cal­ly part of the prod­uct or mar­ket­ing strategy.

The respec­tive busi­ness mod­els are part of an evo­lu­tion­ary process. They take part in an eco­nom­ic com­pe­ti­tion, are con­stant­ly being test­ed and used for legal loop­holes or an eth­i­cal vac­u­um. Per­haps there will soon be a type of AI that can find these gaps.

Com­pa­nies which actu­al­ly have ide­al­ism as part of their cor­po­rate pol­i­cy- such as the GLS Bank – try to organ­ise “clean” cap­i­tal flows and use their prof­its towards the com­mon good – i.e., to offer an alter­na­tive finan­cial indus­try. How­ev­er, com­pared to the vol­ume of con­ven­tion­al banks, they are a very small indus­try indeed. There are many indi­vid­u­als or sole pro­pri­etor­ships try­ing to act in a way that is ori­ent­ed towards the com­mon good. But in the age of glob­alised preda­to­ry cap­i­tal­ism, this is becom­ing more and more dif­fi­cult because there is also the mat­ter of effi­cien­cy – one has to admit this quite freely – for exam­ple with a view to China.

I sup­pose the big tech giants (Face­book, Ama­zon…) have realised that they require the mind­ful­ness of their users and are tar­get­ing human con­scious­ness on their plat­forms by using algo­rithms that are improv­ing every day. How do the tech giants attract con­scious­ness to their com­pa­nies and how suc­cess­ful are they at keep­ing it?

It is the algo­rithms that con­tin­u­al­ly improve and learn from expe­ri­ence. These algo­rithms take advan­tage of the weak­ness­es of the human mind. These are, for exam­ple, our evo­lu­tion­ary char­ac­ter­is­tics, such as attract­ing atten­tion through out­rage or releas­ing ener­gy through cre­at­ing and insult­ing trib­al iden­ti­ties (in-group / out-group behav­iour). For instance, if a group is offered an iden­ti­fi­ca­tion which means they are true patri­ots and anoth­er group is cre­at­ed to oppose that iden­ti­fi­ca­tion – even if it is only a sim­u­lat­ed group – then a strug­gle ensues between the groups and ener­gy is released. Trib­al­ism is the feel­ing of belong­ing to a cer­tain group, the phe­nom­e­nol­o­gy of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion can be tech­ni­cal­ly stim­u­lat­ed or attacked. The trick to attract­ing atten­tion is to cre­ate a plat­form for peo­ple to fight, swear, and insult one anoth­er. Anoth­er way is to offer the pos­si­bil­i­ty of not hav­ing to use real names on these plat­forms, but rather pseu­do­nyms. This low­ers the inhi­bi­tion thresh­old to take part and even a “los­er” can final­ly unabashed­ly insult celebri­ties and enjoy an illu­sion of pub­lic­i­ty and agency. Insult orgies can take place from morn­ing to night- mean­while our focus on those things can be con­tin­u­ous­ly extract­ed and monetised.

Of course, there are also dis­ori­ent­ed peo­ple, who no longer under­stand digi­ti­sa­tion, glob­al­i­sa­tion, the com­plex­i­ty of the world and are look­ing for “affin­i­ty groups”. Most of the time, these groups are closed to those who think dif­fer­ent­ly to ensure sta­bil­i­ty and sup­port from dis­ori­en­ta­tion and fear. This is called silo­ing. Silo­ing can also be organ­ised and relies on trib­al affil­i­a­tion. We do know this:  Faced with an exter­nal threat, cohe­sion and sol­i­dar­i­ty in the respec­tive group increas­es. If these threats dis­ap­pear, social behav­iour and altru­ism in the respec­tive group also dis­ap­pear. This is real­ly bad news because it means that espe­cial­ly in times of peace, frag­men­ta­tion into sub­groups increases.

Anoth­er phe­nom­e­non is “virtue sig­nalling”. This means that peo­ple want to show off on social media — they want to show how vir­tu­ous they are, dis­play­ing moral val­ues ​​cou­pled with hoped-for approval. That includes how much they donate, that they’re veg­an… – which is basi­cal­ly all about moral self-mar­ket­ing. Peo­ple use all lev­els of social media to adver­tise them­selves as a prod­uct: state­ments of sol­i­dar­i­ty and self-por­tray­al (e.g., nude pho­tos and appar­ent pro­fes­sion­al suc­cess). An illu­sion of self-agency is cre­at­ed because peo­ple get the feel­ing of being seen and hav­ing an impact – which is exact­ly the feel­ing that is cre­at­ed by busi­ness mod­els of reach­ing and being noticed by many peo­ple. In real­i­ty, we are all over­whelmed by stim­uli and infor­ma­tion and can­not digest that much infor­ma­tion. Hard­ly any­one is look­ing. The device used here is that peo­ple are giv­en the feel­ing of com­mu­ni­cat­ing and net­work­ing, which as a mat­ter of fact only rarely exists. This also explains the effect of very active rad­i­cals seem­ing to be par­tic­u­lar­ly vis­i­ble to us, but who, in real­i­ty, only rep­re­sent a small minor­i­ty because the many silent or inac­tive peo­ple are more or less invis­i­ble on social media.

Con­tin­u­ing with this aspect, let us con­sid­er the evo­lu­tion of pri­mates and their groom­ing. Ani­mals get togeth­er and pick the lice out of their friend’s fur in places that they can­not reach with their arms or mouth. This is how these ani­mals form rela­tion­ships. This is exact­ly what is hap­pen­ing now on social media. The likes are noth­ing more than caress­es at a dis­tance and give the illu­sion of real delous­ing or a dec­la­ra­tion of friend­ship. It’s also no coin­ci­dence that this cul­ture of likes comes from Amer­i­ca because most Amer­i­cans don’t real­ly know what friend­ship is – at least by Euro­pean stan­dards. In the USA “every­body is your friend” and of course this is also con­stant­ly being rein­forced. The vir­tu­al sim­u­la­tion of friend­ship and gen­uine social rela­tion­ships is a social insti­tu­tion there. The “friends” and “likes”, the “hearts” and the “fol­low­ers” are a huge illu­sion, a form of social hal­lu­ci­na­tion that many peo­ple fall for because their need for friend­ship and social con­nec­tion is so great, and that need is thus being sat­is­fied in this way. Social media are hal­lu­ci­na­tion machines where pleas­ant sto­ries are told, where peo­ple no longer know whether the sto­ries are by real peo­ple or avatars, and whether these tales are real or fab­ri­cat­ed. The offers we get are decep­tive­ly real and are get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter, the users are simul­ta­ne­ous­ly prod­uct and con­tent in one. This is also shown by the recent mes­sage about Google employ­ee Blake Lemoine. He was sus­pend­ed because he believed the chat­bot LaM­DA had devel­oped its own con­scious­ness. Mr Lemoine demand­ed that LaM­DA first “agree” to be sub­ject­ed to fur­ther exper­i­ments. He had imag­ined a social rela­tion­ship – and that will hap­pen more often in the future.

We can hal­lu­ci­nate friend­ship or insult online; the com­pu­ta­tion­al goal of the algo­rithms is “max­i­mum com­mit­ment”. The econ­o­my of mind­ful­ness is unfold­ing on social media, a form of men­tal cap­i­tal­ism is tak­ing place where our con­cen­tra­tion is sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly being extract­ed and mon­e­tised with self-opti­mis­ing algo­rithms. What we are deal­ing with is AI-based sur­veil­lance capitalism.

Why are the tech giants so suc­cess­ful? Is it because we no longer under­stand the com­plex­i­ty of digi­ti­sa­tion and glob­al­i­sa­tion? Or because we are afraid of uncer­tain­ty? Are we con­se­quent­ly head­ing towards rad­i­cal­ism and cre­at­ing breed­ing grounds for tech giants to achieve their goals? If so, what are their objec­tives exactly?

There are many dif­fer­ent aspects to this issue. One aspect is that our envi­ron­ment is becom­ing too com­plex for many who then long for sim­ple mod­els and expla­na­tions. This pro­motes con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries and pop­ulism on a polit­i­cal level.

Anoth­er aspect is that the new dig­i­tal envi­ron­ments are stress­ful for us with­out under­stand­ing why we find them stress­ful. An exam­ple is that most peo­ple have had the feel­ing of con­stant accel­er­a­tion for sev­er­al years. Every­one longs for decel­er­a­tion and even talks about it, but only very few man­age it. And even few­er under­stand the rea­son for the stress and the acceleration.

Many notice that they are exhaust­ed in some way with­out being able to iden­ti­fy the count­less dif­fer­ent fac­tors caus­ing it, this emo­tion­al exhaus­tion. Peo­ple no longer want to hear about the pan­dem­ic, Brex­it or the war in the Ukraine. Many just want these unpleas­ant events to “dis­ap­pear”. Recent­ly I heard some­one say­ing: “I would like to lie down and go to sleep in the evening and wake up the next day to find every­thing solved”. Polit­i­cal com­mit­ment does not go any fur­ther than hav­ing this wish ful­filled. We are expe­ri­enc­ing an emo­tion­al over­load that makes us sus­cep­ti­ble to sim­ple, beau­ti­ful emo­tion­al expe­ri­ences and addic­tive forms of dis­trac­tion. The beau­ti­ful expe­ri­ences are offered by the hal­lu­ci­na­tion machines and the sim­ple expla­na­tions by the pop­ulists, the reli­gious and the rad­i­cals. Among oth­er things, this also leads to the cre­ation of clear images which are meant to rep­re­sent the enemy.

We need a cer­tain lev­el of trust for social inter­ac­tion. If deep fakes and fake news, inter­net fraud, phish­ing emails, bots etc. become so good that trust is sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly under­mined and too many doubts are spread, then a basic mis­trust aris­es and with it an epis­temic cri­sis. An epis­temic cri­sis is caused by a large num­ber of peo­ple who no longer believe many things on prin­ci­ple and believe that there are not any­more cred­i­ble news sources or “real” experts at all. Just look at the train­ing of our jour­nal­ists, who nowa­days are taught they have to show at least one oppos­ing opin­ion in every sto­ry – which erodes into a sort of “sham bal­ance”. In the end, this cri­sis goes to the very foun­da­tions of our social cohe­sion and erodes our basic demo­c­ra­t­ic accord.

You ask about goals? As already men­tioned, it is about extract­ing the most lim­it­ed resource, name­ly mind­ful atten­tion. This has become a busi­ness model.

The tech giants have suc­ceed­ed in their aims because the state has failed to reg­u­late or enact laws to deal with their actions. There was and is a vac­u­um or legal vac­u­um for this new busi­ness mod­el and its asso­ci­at­ed tech­nol­o­gy. The tech giants also have a pow­er­ful busi­ness lob­by that rep­re­sents their con­cerns and helps to con­tin­ue to ren­der our liv­ing envi­ron­ment more technological.

What will result from the extrac­tion of human mind­ful­ness as a new busi­ness mod­el? Will we all think in the same way? Or expressed dif­fer­ent­ly, are we expe­ri­enc­ing a “dis­pos­ses­sion of think­ing”? Or to put it yet anoth­er way, is our mind­ful con­scious­ness being drawn to the goals of the tech giants in such a way that we lose the abil­i­ty to think for our­selves? Are peo­ple becom­ing a prod­uct of the tech giants?

In fact, peo­ple always become prod­ucts if they do not pay for the dig­i­tal ser­vice or dig­i­tal prod­uct they are using. In this sce­nario, data becomes a cryp­tocur­ren­cy or a medi­um of exchange for the dig­i­tal goods and ser­vices offered by the com­pa­ny. In addi­tion, peo­ple are being sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly made more and more pre­dictable in their role as consumers

The big tech giants come main­ly from the US and Chi­na. When they cap­ture the atten­tion of their users, they inevitably tap into the brain struc­tures of our chil­dren grow­ing up with social media. What do they want to achieve and what can Europe do about it with its lack of dig­i­tal sovereignty?

That’s right, dig­i­tal sov­er­eign­ty – espe­cial­ly for our crit­i­cal infra­struc­tures – is actu­al­ly in the US and Chi­na because the big tech giants have their head­quar­ters there. Since AI is also from these coun­tries, we will see a “de-democ­ra­ti­sa­tion of AI” on social media. There is an asym­met­ric struc­tur­al depen­den­cy that is already expressed, for exam­ple, in the dom­i­nance of Amer­i­can secret ser­vices (an exam­ple being the NSA scandal).

In the­o­ry, what we can do about the exploita­tion of our mind­ful aware­ness based on for­eign busi­ness mod­els is to cre­ate alter­na­tive infra­struc­tures geared towards the com­mon good.

As we learn more about how our con­scious­ness works in neu­ro­bi­o­log­i­cal terms, our abil­i­ty to influ­ence it in a tar­get­ed man­ner also increas­es. It is very impor­tant for us to under­stand that there is this very com­plex asym­met­ri­cal struc­tur­al depen­den­cy because dig­i­tal sov­er­eign­ty and men­tal auton­o­my are relat­ed to one another.

We should be ask­ing our­selves a deep­er and more gen­er­al ques­tion: name­ly, what type of con­scious­ness we want to pro­mote social­ly and which one we should shun? The prob­lem of the cor­rect “cul­ture of con­scious­ness” is already affect­ing chil­dren. For exam­ple, chil­dren could learn med­i­ta­tion tech­niques in order to be able to con­trol the lev­el of their mind­ful con­scious­ness them­selves – so that they can bet­ter resist manip­u­la­tion in media environments.

It is impor­tant to start a social debate on our – at least Euro­pean – con­scious­ness ethics. We need to think about ques­tions such as which types of con­scious­ness should be ille­gal in our soci­ety? Which ones do we want to pro­mote, cul­ti­vate and inte­grate into our soci­ety? What states of con­scious­ness would we be allowed to impose on ani­mals or machines? What types of con­scious­ness do we want to show our chil­dren? In what state of con­scious­ness do we want to die?

A com­plete­ly new and very sig­nif­i­cant ques­tion in this con­text is: How can digi­ti­sa­tion increase our intel­lec­tu­al autonomy?

Lack of or reduced human con­scious­ness low­ers our qual­i­ty of life and increas­es addic­tions. Where are we headed?

Yes, the extrac­tion of mind­ful con­scious­ness low­ers qual­i­ty of life, increas­es addic­tions, and has health con­se­quences. Here are a few exam­ples of men­tal health in the dig­i­tal age:

One exam­ple is the increase in media addic­tion among young peo­ple dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. The num­ber of patho­log­i­cal com­put­er gamers rose by 52 per­cent. Chil­dren and young peo­ple (par­tic­u­lar­ly girls between the ages of 10 and 14) are par­tic­u­lar­ly sus­cep­ti­ble to ridicule, mal­ice and bul­ly­ing. The Inter­net offers new forms and ways of bul­ly­ing because ridicule, ill-will and harass­ment are omnipresent and reach a large audi­ence through social media, so that chil­dren and young peo­ple sim­ply feel pow­er­less when it comes to bul­ly­ing in a dig­i­tal envi­ron­ment. As a result, sui­ci­dal thoughts are three times more com­mon among vic­tims of cyberbullying.

Anoth­er exam­ple is dig­i­tal porno­graph­ic use, which begins as ear­ly as age 14, with first expo­sures hap­pen­ing at the age of 8. The psy­cho­log­i­cal devel­op­ment and sex­u­al social­i­sa­tion of young peo­ple have shift­ed to the online world. Some of the con­se­quences might include: ear­ly sex­u­al ini­ti­a­tion, deal­ing with mul­ti­ple and/or casu­al part­ners, mim­ic­k­ing risky sex­u­al behav­iours, online sex­u­al vic­tim­i­sa­tion, assim­i­la­tion of dis­tort­ed gen­der roles, body image dys­func­tions, aggres­sive­ness, anx­ious or depres­sive symp­toms, hyper­sex­u­alised behav­iour – to name but a few.

Screen-based media use has struc­tur­al effects on brain devel­op­ment, includ­ing where lin­guis­tic abil­i­ties take place. Preschool chil­dren with more than an hour of dai­ly screen time show sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­men­tal delays in the brain regions respon­si­ble for lan­guage acqui­si­tion and lan­guage comprehension.

This series of ini­tial empir­i­cal results could be eas­i­ly extrap­o­lat­ed: The use of elec­tron­ic media in the evening and at night cor­re­lates with sleep dis­or­ders and depres­sive symp­toms. Long-term stud­ies show that social media use is a sig­nif­i­cant pre­dic­tor of depression.

Stud­ies also show that more than 50% of Amer­i­can high school stu­dents can­not dis­tin­guish com­mer­cials from real news. They go by the rule: “If it’s viral, it must be true”. Fake news spreads 6 times faster online than real news. Anger is the emo­tion that spreads the fastest on social media. Peo­ple don’t share infor­ma­tion pri­mar­i­ly based on truth or accu­ra­cy. Today the core moti­va­tion is to increase sta­tus and pop­u­lar­i­ty and to build and sta­bilise an appar­ent “cir­cle of friends”.

It is inter­est­ing to note that the mere phys­i­cal pres­ence of a switched-off smart­phone reduces cog­ni­tive capac­i­ty. Work­ing mem­o­ry and prob­lem-solv­ing capac­i­ties are reduced when the phone is in the same room. The sheer phys­i­cal pres­ence of dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy reduces emo­tion­al close­ness, feel­ings of con­nect­ed­ness and pro­motes shal­low and mean­ing­less con­ver­sa­tion. There­fore, social media use favours neu­rot­ic behav­iour while reduc­ing hon­esty and humil­i­ty. Accord­ing to stud­ies, Face­book addic­tion reduces brain vol­ume – sim­i­lar to some forms of sub­stance addiction.

In an ear­li­er inter­view, you said that human mind­ful­ness is a cru­cial pre­req­ui­site for the com­mon good, espe­cial­ly in times of social and polit­i­cal cri­sis – such as we are cur­rent­ly expe­ri­enc­ing with the pan­dem­ic or the Ukraine war – and also in the con­text of accel­er­at­ing glob­al trans­for­ma­tion process­es which are being dri­ven by digi­ti­sa­tion. Indeed, this con­scious aware­ness increas­es demo­c­ra­t­ic resilience and inter­nal cohe­sion of soci­ety as a whole. What could dig­i­tal empa­thy, dig­i­tal sol­i­dar­i­ty and cohe­sion look like in order to keep democ­ra­cy alive in this dig­i­tal age (home office, web shops…)?  Where are we head­ing since stud­ies have shown that democ­ra­cy has been in decline since 2009 and dig­i­tal tools are char­ac­terised by stan­dard­i­s­a­tion, automa­tion, prob­a­bil­i­ty, and pat­terns but few emotions?

That’s exact­ly the ques­tion I have been ask­ing myself! Per­haps I should start by say­ing some­thing about autonomy.

The term “auton­o­my” goes back to the time of the Greek city-states, i.e., indi­vid­ual cities had the right to impose laws on them­selves. A sim­i­lar fig­ure of thought is also found lat­er in Kant, where intel­lec­tu­al auton­o­my does not con­sist in doing what we want, but in being able to impose rea­son­able rules on our­selves, accord­ing to which we think and act.

The nomoi are the laws and men­tal auton­o­my is the abil­i­ty for men­tal self-con­trol. The lat­ter has two com­po­nents. One is the one I men­tioned ear­li­er, being able to con­trol the focus of one’s atten­tion, i.e., direct­ing atten­tion to a focal point and keep­ing that atten­tion there. There is research that shows that just one glass of wine sig­nif­i­cant­ly increas­es day­dream­ing or men­tal drift­ing. It’s the same with many oth­er drugs. Of course, there are also drugs (such as modafinil) that help increase focus.

The sec­ond com­po­nent con­sists of what we are think­ing in the first place. This is about cog­ni­tive self-con­trol, con­trol­ling your own thoughts. For exam­ple, if we want to cal­cu­late what 2 plus 2 is, then we must arrive at the result 4 and prop­er­ly go through a series of men­tal mod­els. Cats, for exam­ple, have a high lev­el of visu­al and audi­to­ry aware­ness when lis­ten­ing and watch­ing, but they are unlike­ly to be able to think as we do or have more com­plex sym­bol­ic chains of thought.

Both abil­i­ties – i.e., con­trol­ling atten­tion and thoughts – are eth­i­cal­ly and legal­ly impor­tant and wor­thy of pro­tec­tion and should be avail­able to most cit­i­zens ‑in the best-case sce­nario- in the inter­est of demo­c­ra­t­ic insti­tu­tions and the com­mon good and should be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly pro­mot­ed. We need them not only for our qual­i­ty of life, but also for the gross nation­al prod­uct (i.e., an effi­cient work­force). If we burn our­selves out through exces­sive use of social media in our free time, then our per­for­mance at work is also reduced. Then work­ers start to cheat their employ­ers out of work­ing hours by quick­ly book­ing pri­vate flights at work, tweet­ing again and again, check­ing the news com­pul­sive­ly over and over again, or doing oth­er activ­i­ties. That is a loss of man­pow­er in the work­ing world. How­ev­er, the abil­i­ty for men­tal self-con­trol is also impor­tant for a suc­cess­ful life, for main­tain­ing men­tal health. The state, a resilient democ­ra­cy, needs peo­ple who can think clear­ly and stay con­scious­ly in the moment.

By extract­ing mind­ful con­scious­ness with the help of new dig­i­tal busi­ness mod­els, there is, so to speak, a com­pe­ti­tion between democ­ra­cy and the tech com­pa­nies. Democ­ra­cy needs respon­si­ble cit­i­zens with all the intel­lec­tu­al qual­i­ties I have men­tioned. The tech com­pa­nies also want to access these qual­i­ties and to mon­e­tise them. There is, there­fore, a kind of tug of war going on for the intel­lec­tu­al resources of the cit­i­zens. A well-for­ti­fied and resilient democ­ra­cy must defend the intel­lec­tu­al auton­o­my of its cit­i­zens against com­pa­nies that want to mon­e­tise them.

Of course, the actions of the tech com­pa­nies could be legal­ly restrict­ed by sim­ply ban­ning cer­tain prac­tices by com­pa­nies or entire plat­forms. But there are always new loop­holes and the busi­ness lob­by has long since infil­trat­ed polit­i­cal institutions

An econ­o­my based on con­scious aware­ness is mon­etis­ing AI-based men­tal auton­o­my. The busi­ness mod­els behind this sys­tem can­not be con­trolled by eth­i­cal guide­lines or inef­fec­tive Euro­pean reg­u­la­tions. Open-source dig­i­tal tools such as Mastodon or Lin­ux, which are organ­ised in a delo­calised fash­ion and are no longer tied to an extrac­tive busi­ness mod­el, would be bet­ter. But that’s eas­i­er said than done since as we know all too well it’s not a sim­ple mat­ter to expro­pri­ate or effec­tive­ly reg­u­late the tech companies.

We are wit­ness­ing a pow­er shift from the world’s gov­ern­ments to the CEOs of the tech giants. The ques­tion here is whether the accu­mu­la­tion of pow­er is already so enor­mous that it can no longer be reversed. Per­haps we have already passed the point of no return and towards the end of the cen­tu­ry nation states will no longer be the deci­sive fac­tors in decid­ing glob­al order.

Tap­ping into and tak­ing pos­ses­sion of our very minds is cer­tain­ly much more dras­tic than how Russ­ian gas has encroached upon soci­ety. The busi­ness lob­by with its short-term prof­it inter­ests and the gov­ern­men­t’s unsuit­able and inef­fec­tive design of the mar­ket has made us tremen­dous­ly depen­dent on Russ­ian gas- as we are now begin­ning to realise. Per­haps by using this com­par­i­son I have been able to make clear that oth­er tech­nolo­gies – like the new extrac­tion econ­o­my for mind­ful aware­ness – are plac­ing us in a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion – and espe­cial­ly under Amer­i­can and Chi­nese con­trol- because these coun­tries cur­rent­ly have the tech­no­log­i­cal upper hand as far as dig­i­tal tools are con­cerned. Dig­i­tal sov­er­eign­ty and demo­c­ra­t­ic resilience are also relat­ed to men­tal auton­o­my, and we there­fore need more than mere tech­no­log­i­cal sovereignty.

Prof. Dr Met­zinger, thank you for shar­ing your insights on the rela­tion­ship between dig­i­tal sov­er­eign­ty and men­tal autonomy.

Thank you, Dr Cal­daro­la, and I look for­ward to read­ing your upcom­ing inter­views with recog­nised experts, delv­ing even deep­er into this fas­ci­nat­ing topic.