Digital communication networks sans social media

The computer is reality. Today, a person exists insofar as they are an icon on your screen, a Contact in your address book.

The problem with the icon: the icon is controlled by the platform. The platform delivers the icon to your screen when it benefits them to show the icon – an algorithm finds the optimal icon to show. What was the last icon you saw? War porn? How about some more war porn? A thirst trap, Tide Pods, Friskies, a meme. What is the path of icons that will keep you engaged while looking at the screen for the longest time, watching the most advertisements?

Social media apps obfuscate the separation between communication networks and digital billboards. The person and the advertisement are both icons, both are a Post on a Feed.

However the reason many of us, or at least I, am interested in having a social media account is the ability to connect with people – friends, and family. Further – getting updates on events, things that are happening around me, in my neighborhood, city, state.

But the data that I give and the effect that social media has on our brains and the way that we relate to people is too high a price to pay. When a large part of the value of the app is informing me of what’s going on around me, while destroying the fabric of interaction, following this thread will eventually lead to a point where nothing is going on around us. We sit around waiting to be shown what’s going on – but nothing is going on because we’re all just consuming, waiting. We’re all shoveling coal into an engine and there is no conductor.

The best example of this is the “end times” of Facebook – when people stopped posting on Facebook and in order to fill up your feed, Facebook had to send people content that didn’t resonate with them, that didn’t mean anyhting to them. It began to feel like a wasteland. The people are always the conductors. As conductors we have to act as such – we have to take control and decide what to give our attention, time, and focus to. What do we want to flourish in society? We decide these things.

The solution is to create our own communication networks – to not be reliant on media companies to communicate with one another. To go outside and talk to people, or to use networks that don’t aim to siphon your attention only to sell it back to you.

The obvious first thought is that you will have less reach, and this is true, but this is okay. There was a time when this was normal, that it wasn’t thought that anyone could scream out to thousands of people and be heard. What is the value of this? We need to talk to one another, not some faceless mass. Our networks are weak because we direct our attention towards the faceless, nameless mass – instead of the individual people in our network, our support structures.

After all, who is best at managing, dealing, and extracting every penny out of large swaths of unidentifiable sets? Of course the tech company – unwavering in its mechanical march, with its engine that runs on human fear and anxiety.

What is an alternative communication network?

What does this mean? “Alternative communication network” refers to a communication network that makes as little use of machine learning in order to show you information. Email – SMTP – is a good example. SMTP is just a protocol that different mail clients use to deliver mail. Of course most mail services like Gmail, Outlook, etc. use machine learning to figure out if things are spam or not (and very often they get it wrong). Gmail also will auto flag “important” emails – sent from “real” people that they think you’ll want to see based on the attention that you’ve given to similar emails from that senders or group of senders. But for the most part, you get an email in your inbox, and it shows up the same way any other email does. This is in opposition to Facebook, Instagram etc. Who show you content based on machine learning algorithms. The inputs into this algorithm is what other people who they’ve deemed similar to you like, or what you’ve liked in the past. This takes away your fundamental ability to control what you receive, and control what you think about. Now, you’re thinking about what other people are thinking about. They have control over your mind and your thoughts.

How do you set up an alternative communication network?

This can look like a lot of things. This could be:

• a website
  • learn HTML, find a hosting solution, figure out Apache/Nginx
• A mailing list
  • Get a list of your friends’ emails and send them emails
• radio
  • Research pirate radio, send out information over the airwaves
• In person
  • Set up a desk and talk to people in your neighborhood

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We can kill the engine, we can win our attention span and our support structure back. With these two things, we can have a higher standard of living.