Unit 1: Synchronous Session Questions for Dr. Shanen Boettcher

Question 1:
In the discussion you describe us as a data hungry species. How we seek new information we love to react to, and consume it in an insatiable way. You connect this thought to the monetized length of attention being good for business. We're content hungry, but we're also highly forgiving and open with the personal data cost of what it takes to participate. We don't read read terms of service. We don't understand data collection or the methods of private information gathering. Yet we still do it. What does the role of willing consent play in this behavior?

Question 2:
In your 2021 New York Times interview with Linda Kinstler, you discuss how digital culture often assumes aspects of faith and religious belief. Our use of social media is highly ritualized and habitualized. We revere technological evangelists, prophets and the beliefs they espouse. We are disciples of platform. Kinstler connects these ideas to the growing faith fostered by artificial intelligence and its ability to reach our inner lives. For it to adjust our perspectives on the world, and connect us to new systems of thought. Chat GPT's interface of singular, definitive answers diverges from Google's lists of search results, and we often taken these answers 'as gospel'. Do you think organized religion has a responsibility to talk back? If so, what would it say?

Question 3:
I'm fascinated by your discussion of digital subordination. How we treat voice assistants or chatbots as servile task-oriented labor, but in offering up our attention to the highest bidder, we are the product being sold. We place our faith in algorithms to get us from here to there, to help us find instead of search, and to bring the world to us often at the expense of bringing ourselves to the world. Given the explosive adoption and integration of artificial intelligence this year, how do you foresee the relationship of power and control between user and platform changing over the next year?

Comment:
I very much enjoyed the comments around Netflix's addressable market being so closely tied to the physical durability of humans. How their main competitor isn't Amazon, Disney or Peacock. It's sleep. This is very much my household's experience of the product, whereby the binge-watching of a series includes deliberate mechanics of attention-gaming to keep watching long into the night. Many times we've been enjoying a show until well past midnight, and when the current episode concludes, turn to each other and ask, even with eyes half-closed, "one more?"

---