Stafford Beer famously said: "If cybernetics is the science of control, management is the profession of control." V. I. Lenin supposedly said that „Trust is good but control is even better“. Today, the digital environment is all about control. One of the first discoveries of Cybernetics was, that the feature of Communication and Control can be found - and applied - in humans (or better, in all animals) and in machines alike. Today, no single feature exemplifies that better than the blue "Double-Tick-read receipt" that can be found in the messenger app „Whatsapp“. It is the kind of feedback mechanism that all the early Cybernetics were eager to promote. It tells the sender that the receiver has definitely gotten the message and from now on, he or she cannot convincingly claim that they „didn’t get anything“, be it an invoice or an invitation to a party that they would rather prefer not to attend. As soon as the two check symbols turn blue, there are no more excuses. (Click here to learn how to turn that off) Every day we are sliding ever further down that slope into a totally digitized habitat, and it begins to dawn on people that there is something profoundly inhumane to that 24/7 on-line life. It all started out with so much fun, and everything could be done with so much efficiency, it was mind-blowing. But now we are starting to see the other side of that progress, and it feels like a straight jacket, some invisible force urges us to always upgrade, pay the next fee, fill in the missing box, respond to the last survey, and every day that passes, it feels more and more claustrophobic. When you can control people, perhaps there is no need to trust them anymore. And moreover, when you command a machine to do something, you should expect to get a control message, if your command has been carried out. I think, precisely here should we see the difference. The machine sends us two blue ticks, yes, but what does that tell us about the human being and the message? Has he really read it? Or was it somebody else? And if he did read it, did he understand it? Technically speaking, someone who cannot read or write, could have just double-clicked on that Whatsapp-notification you just sent. Don’t be tricked into believing that you are effectively communicating with a specific human being on the receiving end. That could be the case, yes, but there are many other options as well. Perhaps trust is still something that should be considered a viable asset. To paraphrase Lenin, we could say today that control is good in machines, but trust is even better when dealing with human beings.
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AuthorThomas Behrens Visual Communication is not only taking part in the digital transformation - actively and passively - he will also reflect on it. Hence the blog. Archives
January 2021
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