23/08/2021
I spent 7 days without my phone when I was in Greece. I started noticing little figures and patterns in the rocks and the sand, the silence and sound of nature was soothing. The space in my mind, the room for contemplation was expanding.
I’ve been feeling so frustrated with our general condition in platform capitalism, how it’s been affecting every level of our lives. The seemingly impossibility to just switch off and be without a screen, without social media activity. Everything has become so intertwined. Access to news, work opportunities, connection and messaging with friends, skill development, literally everything seems to demand a permanent stay in social media.
To be able to be out of social media is an incredibly privileged position. It means you have a job which isn’t depending on it, that your class station, the generational wealth in your life is such that you can afford to disconnect, or you’ve made your name before social media became the fabric of social and work life, so you can just unplug as your name carries through without you being there.
My work as an artist and independent researcher brought me into being so interwoven in all this that it gets me concerned not just for me but for everyone. Beyond the biological pandemic we are still in we still have the depression and anxiety pandemic going on, and these platforms and their algorithms, their business models seem to be right at the root of it.
I wonder if we’ll ever be able to have laws come into effect that restrict the way algorithms are used. Politicians are largely boomers with no knowledge of social media and tech in general. Perhaps it will take as many years as it’s necessary for young millennials and gen z folx to reach seats in houses of government carrying the knowledge necessary to legislate on this. It many be another 15, 20 years, but do we really have this time, psychologically and climatically?
