Don't expect tech giants to build back better

http://mondediplo.com/2021/09/13digitisation
Date Written:  2021-09-01
Publisher:  Le Monde diplomatique
Year Published:  2021
Resource Type:  Article

Tech giants need to quantify human behaviour to make money from it. The pandemic, by forcing much of our lives online, has shown just how much money they can make.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

The fact that social networks designed by asocial people have come to shape the online relationships of half the planet is a reflection of a profound degradation of human relationships, and source of limitless frustration in our fragmented, hurried, fearful societies. 'The self-segregation of modern western societies means that, for many people, conversing with some fellow citizens seems pointless, undesirable or outlandish,' suggested The Economist on 10 July, referencing a series of surveys on the importance of the age-old but declining practice of talking to strangers. With whole sections of daily life moving online in the name of fighting Covid, this trend is accelerating rapidly.
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The folly of allowing core aspects of civilised societies to be determined by numerical measurement is clear from the damage that the tyranny of key performance indicators and targets has done to education, hospitals and large companies. 'The problem,' writes Jerry Z Muller in a book on this scourge, 'is not measurement, but excessive measurement and inappropriate measurement - not metrics, but metric fixation' (5). And therefore their prescriptive nature, which prevails at the expense of experience, personal judgment and historical awareness.