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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.
"that treat people as more than data subjects for surveillance capitalism."
Considering the source of the original advertisement, *that* quote didn't make the list?
A. Technology is the dominant force that 'impacts' society, and society has to respond to it. The printing press created a new type of society. In philosophy this is called the "technological determinist" perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
B. Social forces are the dominant force in society, and the technologies we invent and embrace (or reject) are an expression of these. For example, even though video calling was the more advanced technology, people preferred SMS instead. This is called the Social Constructivist perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
These are extremes on an axis.
In Silicon Valley technological determinism is rampant. It's the simpler of the two stories, the more attractive one. If technology is the dominant influencer, then there's no need to understand the complexities and ethics of the situations you're 'disrupting'. Narratives around blockchain/VR/singularity/etc also happily align with the "new tech is inevitable" part, because it implies any attempt to regulate it is wasted effort.
Millennials are often labelled "tech-savvy", which they aren't: they don't know how it works any more than the gen-Xers who were called the same just because we could set a VCR clock.
They're tech immersed, and their ignorance of how the tech companies exploit them means they're drowning in it, and no more than any previous generation know how to swim. They're dragging their elders down in it because they have no ability to warn against social media, home assistants, or smart TVs.
With all the surveillance you're capable of, can you work on either getting this stuff right, or staying away from it entirely?
I saw it, and I don't think it says anything at all. Corporations should not be begged to behave, they should be forced to behave by law.
This is what a "free market" is - a market regulated so that all players have equal power. Economics 101, Adam Smith, etc.
Dear pretentious internet children.......
Let's try to remember how much smaller the world felt 30 years ago.
Let's consider the always listening surveillance devices we put in our homes.
Let's point out the hundreds of options we have for things that did not even exists a decade ago.
Let's look real close at the way we behave behind the anonymity tech provides.
Let's try to count the hours lost to on-screen entertainment.
Let's consider the way we've all unthinkingly fell in line with social media's personal data appetite.
Let's remember that the reason our personal information is constantly lost is because we gave it away to begin with.
Let's try and remember..... anything without consulting the supercomputer in our pocket.
Dear pretentious internet children.... enjoy your free long distance, your standard in-car navigation, and your ultra efficient smart cars. Keep on buying anything you can imagine with standard two day shipping- without leaving your bedroom. Join an inviting community covering any subject that strikes your fancy, and keep using the ad-supported step-by-step video instructions on how to do anything you can think of. Go ahead and apply for hundreds of jobs in your area, even while sitting in your underwear at 2AM, after a rousing deathmatch with all of your closest *friends*
You're welcome to all of it (as long as your parents keep paying the power bill)
Your pal,
Tech.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
This is just more leftist anti-white, anti-male rhetoric. They explicitly ask for jobs based on their skin color when they ask for solutions "led by people with lived experience of inequality" (because in modern leftism, it isn't the idea that matters, it is the skin color of the person hired to champion it).
Boring and racebait, 1/10.
Are you nuts or something?
Companies produce goods and services that people want. So they serve a human need, on some level. It was the ingenuity of individual entrepreneurs and companies of this world that brought us from the middle ages to today's modern living standards, right across the globe. There are fewer people living in poverty than ever before (at least as a percentage of the population), and never in human history have so many enjoyed relative wealth, hygene and safe foods. The key driver of course is the availability of instant energy almost anywhere on the planet.
Let's remind the pale male boy's club that past and current actions exclude capable yet marginalized individuals from STEM
That was left out of TFS, probably to (temporarily) hide how fundamentally racist and sexist this "collaboration" is.
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
You almost got that right. The previous century was about pretending to think, were you camouflage dangerous emotions like racism, sexism, greed, etc. as the result rational thought. The same is now applied to "doing".
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
It's really glaring when people write these things and totally fail to acknowledge the stunning success story that is the profit motive. The world is better today then ever in history and it's all due to the profit motive. I do however see a clear desire to control, an authoritarian impulse that wants to deny. They tried the economy your way and it was a gargantuan failure.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
What's a prison term for a corporation?
Burn their charter, take no prisoners, put their assets into public domain.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Ah yes, the old "vote with yer wallet!" mantra. Seems to be working with Comcast, AT&T, et. cet. Yeah? They've collectively been in the fucking dustbin for satisfaction surveys almost my whole life.
And yet, there they are, benefiting from concepts apparently unknown to you. Ever hear of "regulatory capture"? How about "buying the laws you want"?
No?
Then do some research and stop spewing happy thought bullshit.
Regulation is sorely needed, ACTUAL regulation. Not this ball fondling lip service we have now.
Your mind is like a parachute. It works best when it's been opened.
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.