Slashdot Mirror
Tech Critics Create Powerful Video Responding To IBM's 'Dear Tech' Ad (slate.com)
"Technology hasn't fallen short of its promise. Tech companies have," argues Evan Selinger, a philosophy professor at Rochester Institute of Technology, reporting on a new "collaborative video response to IBM's Dear Tech Ad" (which was aired during last week's telecast of the Oscar's). Earlier Selinger wrote:
[IBM's] infantilizing ad depicts technology as if it were an autonomous person, a benevolent Santa Claus figure that can give great products to all the good little girls and boys if they ask politely.... It all sounds nice. But the message obscures the fact that technology hasn't fallen short of its promise. It's recalcitrant tech companies that need to change. That includes IBM....
IBM isn't alone in this sunny disingenuousness. Its competitors also give lip service to listening to our hopes and dreams while shutting down criticism that's voiced to make things better... A commercial like this one can't avoid being an empty marketing pitch when it represents a contested concept as a clear and unambiguous wish that technology can magically grant just as easily as Santa can satisfy a request for a new smartphone.
So a team of tech critics including Joy Buolamwini of the MIT Media Lab "created an alternative to IBM's ad. It's a provocative, line-by-line, video counterstatement" -- not "Dear Tech," but "Dear Tech Company."
Here are some of its more provocative quotes:
"We have a pretty complicated relationship."
"Your track record is mixed."
"Really mixed."
"And you have the potential to do immense harm."
"Are you only benefiting a few?"
"While many more suffer?"
The new counter-ad urges its viewers to demand more accountability from tech companies. (Sasha Costanza-Chock, an associate professor of civic media at MIT, even argues for companies "that treat people as more than data subjects for surveillance capitalism.") In a follow-up article, Selinger writes:
The most dangerous message promoted by the Dear Tech commercial is that socially responsible technology will be on its way simply because people are asking for it. This way of characterizing change suggests tech companies aren't incentivized to promote outcomes that are more self-serving than giving the public what it deserves.
The new video says, "Let's make time to understand the impact of technology on people's lives." It's a powerful message. Too bad this ad doesn't have an Oscars-sized budget behind it.
IBM isn't alone in this sunny disingenuousness. Its competitors also give lip service to listening to our hopes and dreams while shutting down criticism that's voiced to make things better... A commercial like this one can't avoid being an empty marketing pitch when it represents a contested concept as a clear and unambiguous wish that technology can magically grant just as easily as Santa can satisfy a request for a new smartphone.
So a team of tech critics including Joy Buolamwini of the MIT Media Lab "created an alternative to IBM's ad. It's a provocative, line-by-line, video counterstatement" -- not "Dear Tech," but "Dear Tech Company."
Here are some of its more provocative quotes:
"We have a pretty complicated relationship."
"Your track record is mixed."
"Really mixed."
"And you have the potential to do immense harm."
"Are you only benefiting a few?"
"While many more suffer?"
The new counter-ad urges its viewers to demand more accountability from tech companies. (Sasha Costanza-Chock, an associate professor of civic media at MIT, even argues for companies "that treat people as more than data subjects for surveillance capitalism.") In a follow-up article, Selinger writes:
The most dangerous message promoted by the Dear Tech commercial is that socially responsible technology will be on its way simply because people are asking for it. This way of characterizing change suggests tech companies aren't incentivized to promote outcomes that are more self-serving than giving the public what it deserves.
The new video says, "Let's make time to understand the impact of technology on people's lives." It's a powerful message. Too bad this ad doesn't have an Oscars-sized budget behind it.
With all the surveillance you're capable of, can you work on either getting this stuff right, or staying away from it entirely?
What IBM is trying to do is bullshitting people into thinking that tech is inherently good, and tech companies are good, too, and people just have to buy stuff from them and do good work for them and everything will be good in the end.
What the responding video suggests instead is that tech companies are a problem, that they're not always good, that it's not enough to trust them, that we need to ensure that tech companies really become good so that tech will turn out good for all of us.
What even the people behind the responding video don't see, perhaps don't even want to see, is that it's not some individual badness, some individual evil, that sometimes creeps into some of the tech companies, making them act against people's and mankind's interest some of the time. The makers of the responding video neither see nor acknowledge that it's not just a few bad people and a few bad companies, but profit as the core principle of the world's operating system, that necessarily drives companies and decision makers in companies to do what they do. The video makers completely fail to understand that humankind's progress or people's wellbeing are not the business objective of any tech company or of any company whatsoever.
Within the parameters of the world's operating system, for a company, the only business objective there is and ever was is profit, and that, by tendency, works against the interests of humankind and this planet. The intention behind IBM's video is to make them as a company look good, while they're actually complicit in destroying the planet and producing and conserving disparity in wellbeing both geographically and between classes. The responding video, on the other hand, tries to address tech companies instead of the way the world is geared, the way we as humankind allow economy to be run and organized, and by what control variables we allow it to be driven.
I have no idea what you are really trying to say. Something profitable by definition simply means that which benefits. The objective of any commercial business is to engage in commerce that is profitable. The profitable part is the only reason anyone would ever have for spending their time and talent on it.
This isn't about money, it's about return. If you're going to spend your time doing something, you want a good return on your efforts. If you need money to live on, and aren't independently wealty, then being commercially profitable is a requirement.
And what's the alternative? To do unprofitable work? That's no improvement. Love it or hate it, but the test of the profitability of a good or service is also an excellent proxy for its worthiness. Do you not think Slashdot a worthy place for you to spend your off hours? It's a good thing it's profitable for the owners of Slashdot, then.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Any video that champions inclusivity for all while almost completely excluding half the human population (they had one man who they needed to spew the anti white man line) is a prime example of SJW crap not worth your time or consideration.
This video was not moving. It was not powerful. If you think it was, you're part of the choir they were preaching to and not a part of the target audience it should've been aimed at: the people that don't care either way but need to be informed.
They used angry, language that just pisses people off that may not share their ivory tower views. When I heard "pale male" I was immediately put off and annoyed. I stopped listening to their message, and started looking for critiques. They need to make solid points without using inflammatory language like that.
The sound production quality was also way off. If you want to compete with a polished ad to satirize it, polish the sound at the same level of your target.
And you don't try to reach "the middle" by putting a gay man that is so gay that he's wearing heavy makeup, jingling with his earrings, with a fancy headcovering. His entire, "F U societal norms," outfit screamed, "I need my ass kicked."
Talk about tone deaf. They should've run this by average people and seen what they thought before trotting this out to the public.