Conclusions

Excessive dependence on technology leads to dehumanization and the loss of an authentic society.

1. Technological Hierarchy 

So how does relate to our world?

We also have a ruling class based on technology, specifically the big tech monopolies.  

For computers we have Microsoft and Apple.

For online goods we have Amazon and... Ebay? Not even.

Worst of all, Google (or Alphabet as it is now known) has it's finger in everything.  Especially 87% of all search engine page views [15].

That means that Google has the potential to control our human knowledge.  87% of questions are answered by Google.

What can they really do with that? Look at the graph on the right.

There is 4 graphs for different time periods of COVID deaths.  At the beginning is when COVID just started with almost deaths.  And near the end is 9 months later with 200k deaths.

These graphs show that at the beginning, the anxiety (based on key terms and linguistic analysis) of tweets responding to articles correlated positively to the anxiety of the articles.

However, as time goes on, the correlation even became negative – meaning the more anxious an article, the less anxious the responses.

This shows that it's possible to desensitize people from deaths just by repeating it enough.

The movie shows this desensitization with Bing, when his message about the problems of the societal problems becomes a fun channel to tune into, rather than a serious issue.

To put this into perspective of a real and scary statistic.  Consider facial recognition, social credit score and contact tracing – all of which allow the government to track people.

In the US, 26% of people have serious doubts about facial recognition, while in China that number is only 9%.

Furthermore,  81% of people China support contact tracing while in the US, the best of the 3, facial recognition only has 44%.

China heavily controls the media, and that's the influence they can get.  

To finally reconnect this to dehumanization, social credit score which has 79% support in China [30], is a technology that promotes choosing friends based on status. Specifically, your social credit score can be lowered if you have low  social credit score friend [11].

The highest class is entirely based on those who control the tech monopolies. 

2. Reactionary Culture

    In the movie we see #324 watching a game show where heavy weight people are being messed with and its played off as a joke however we see later on that #324 gets upset at a janitor when they appear in the reflection of his screen. He also treats them as lesser by throwing his garbage onto the ground for the janitor to pickup. On top of the game show example there is also a video game that we see #324 and #325 play later on, where it is a zombie apocalypse shooter where all of the zombies are wearing the janitors uniforms. If to make things worse too we see #324 excessively shooting one of the zombies and the game rewarding his actions with points. Further reinforcing the idea that the media in the world is supporting the strict social hierarchy by dehumanizing literally and figuratively the janitors.

     Now to bring things into our world I will be focusing on the media and information we consume through social media. This is because social media has 4.59 billion users in 2022 and there is projected to keep growing to 5.85 billion by 2027, The average time spent on a social media has also grown from 40 minutes per day in 2015 to 151 minutes per day in 2022 [3]. 

With so many people using social media the companies running it have to build the platform around filtering out the information shown to the user However this is compounded by the company's desire to retain as many users as possible. This leads to Facebook showing users politically divisive content in order to get engagement with the posts from the users as Facebook themselves knows as shown through the Facebook Files leak [1]. The divisive content users interacts has a point value that effects the content they see next. Feeding the cycle and showing the same ideas to the user over and over. With research published in Trends in Cognitive sciences finding that people dehumanize groups of people when action is the rallying point instead of a rhetoric [4]. 

But how do these echo chambers effect users outside of social media? Well the January 6th where a group of rioters broke into the US capital building shouting "Stop the Steal" despite Facebook removing the original group of the same name weeks before. The group Women for America First was the leader in recreating the Stop the Steal Facebook group having the new one gain 365,000 members within the first 24 hours [5]. Showing just how effective Facebook is at circulating engaging posts. With the groups involved getting permits for events in DC on January 5th and 6th [5]. To end this off there is one last statistic I want to show, between 2021 and 2022 we saw a drastic increase in the number of hate groups in the US this brought the total to the highest it has ever been, as shown by this graph [2].

3. Loss of Privacy

      In the movie, no matter where the characters go they will always find themselves surrounded by some kind of screen. These screens automatically capture each individuals preferences, habits, and activities. As soon as Bing wakes up in the morning and faces his wall, he is automatically signed into his profile and shown his avatar, along with his accumulated merit total. 

Advertising

   When Bing is in the bathroom, we're shown the first occasion of being subjected to these fine tailored advertisements. Bing is either forced to watch the advertisement, or must spend some of his hard earned merits to skip the ad. If Bing decides to do neither, and cover his eyes, the screens begin to play an increasingly louder and higher pitched noise until he finally looks at the screen. Once he heads down to the exercise room full of bikes, he sits down, has the screen sign him in automatically, and his avatar gets to take part in several different activities to distract the user while they pedal to earn their merits.

Avatars

   Every individual in the movie has their own avatar that is fully customizable with different cosmetics that can purchased with merits earned by pedaling. These avatars represent each individual, and appear in place of them. This depicts each person as just a part of some bigger system rather than each person having their own individual identity.

Relating this to the real world 

   It's no questions that most public places we go to have some sort of CCTV surveillance, usually for the sake of protection of some sort. Nowadays it is pretty difficult to find places where we aren't being constantly monitored, just like its seen in the movie. This picture here shows the worlds most surveilled citizens, unsurprisingly China being number one on this list. For each citizen in China, there is more than one camera for that citizen in major cities making it practically impossible to go unnoticed [9]. Not only are we being monitored physically, but our phones even monitor our activities when we least expect it. These come in the form of advertisements based on what you have been searching or actively browsing, or even just talking about with someone. For example, you could be talking to your friend about how college is taking up all your money paying student loans and all of a sudden you see an ad on your phone to become a Door Dasher. This isn't just a coincidence, your phone is actually actively listening to your conversations. Voice data is used by your phone and plan provider and can take many different forms, such as customized adverts and voice assistant programs like Siri and Google Assistant. For marketing objectives, they also pay attention to you. Your voice data is used in the same manner that Google and other search engines do to keep track of your search and browsing history and ensure that the internet advertisements you view are pertinent to your individual interests [10]. 

4. Induvial Expression

Counterpoint

Rebuttal 

It is evident that certain technologies can effect individual’s sociability, affecting the ability for the members of the society to connect effectively. In the context of the movie, individuals watch the “Hot Shot” talent show, and interact using virtual avatars, as described earlier. In this society, individuals are incentivized to interact and somewhat socialize using the “channels” and gift features of the system software. As we see throughout the episode, these individuals have trouble connecting and expressing their thoughts, as most primarily engage with the software content rather than in person conversation. One could say that these individuals have a low amount of sociability, or the ability to engage and interact effectively in social situations. This is illustrated by their reliance on technology for basic interactions and the absence of genuine, face-to-face conversations.