Raging Against the Algorithm: Google and Persuasive Technology

http://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/02/raging-against-the-algorithm-google-and-persuasive-technology/
Date Written:  2019-07-02
Publisher:  CounterPunch
Year Published:  2019
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23749

Fears of Google's algorithms detrimental effect on society may be well-founded but the proposed solutions are problematic.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

People have what the company calls "micro-moments", those, as behavioural economist Dan Ariely describes as "on-the-go mobile moments" where decisions are reached by a user while engaged, simultaneously, in a range of tasks: hotels to book, travel choices to make, work schedules to fulfil. While Ariely is writing more broadly from the perspective of the ubiquitous digital marketer, the language is pure Googleleese, smacking of part persuasion and part imposition. "Want to develop a strategy to shape your consumer decisions?" asks Google. "Start by understanding the key micro-moments in their journey." Understand them; feed their mind; hold their hand....

What is undeniable is that the means to find information – instantaneous, glut-filled, desperately quick – has created users who inhabit a space that guides their thinking, pre-empting, cajoling and adjusting. One form of literacy, we might kindly say, is being supplanted by another: the Google imbecile is upon us.

Given the nature of such effects, it is little wonder that politicians find Google threatening to their mouldy and rusted on craft. The politician’s preserve is sound – or unsound – communication; success at the next election is dependent upon the idea that the electors understand, and approve, what has been relayed to them (whether that material is factual, or not, a lie or otherwise, is beside the point: the politician yearns to convince in order to win).