[Opinion] Secret Apps and Public Trust

Post Secret. Whisper. Secret. Yik Yak. The Right to be Forgotten.

In 2014, it seems that the conflict between having everything known to anyone and the idea that there must be boundaries and things that are private, has escalated to new heights.

Yes, Edward Snowden’s activities have raised a lot of attention, and there are events occurring right now in the sharing, common spaces of social media that have created almost paradoxical, real-world, legal decisions, but the conflicts only seem to be increasing.

In addition, the intelligentsia and “people that matter” are all up in arms about the rise of narcissism and the ubiquitousness of the “selfie” in popular culture.

The true conflict, the real material issue, is not privacy versus control.

Or even narcissism versus humility.

The real issue is trust versus respect.

The apps, the court decisions, the NSA and everything else are indicative of a lack of trust in various social, economic and cultural areas by multiple public constituencies.

First in the markets, then in the consumer and finally in the system of governments, that should have principalities and powers earning more of the public trust, rather than being perceived as being engaged in wickedness in high places.

And conflicts where trust is the core thing that is lost are almost never resolved thoroughly.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Opinion] The Idolatry of Selfie

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the selfie is on the rise.

So is being famous just for being famous.

And there are parents out there that are using their children to promote fashions, lifestyles and conscious ways of being.

All of this may just be fancy marketing, attention seeking behavior, or merely a sign of the times.

Much has been said and written about the rise of narcissism in the overall culture, and we won’t add to that here, except to say this:

The most pernicious conflicts that can occur are the ones that people have with themselves. And the rise of narcissism can be directly related to three things:

Idolatry of self
Idolatry of others
Idolatry of fame and celebrity culture

Once understanding occurs around those three areas, then we can maybe become a little wiser in how often we retweet that Ellen DeGeneres selfie.

Or the one attached to this post.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Ethical One-Way Streets

The European High Court handed down their opinion dubbed the “right to be forgotten.”

What’s missing in all of the subsequent debate occurring around issue of privacy versus censorship, is the very real issue about a lack of organizational (read “Googles’”) ethical dealing.

“Organizations are seeking honest, fair, reliable, benevolent partners who will commit themselves to the relationship and prove trustworthy. In other words, they seek ethical partners.”

Organizations seek ethical

partners
employees
vendors
customers
clients
and audiences

who will deal fairly—and transparently—in the public commons space of the pro-social spheres that we have created.

However, when asked to engage in the same trustworthy behavior, (read “providing individuals the benefit of the doubt, forgiveness and grace about their messy histories”) they balk.

And then organizations wonder why individuals—who only build real, lasting relationships based on genuine trust, collaboration, ethical dealing and just plain enjoyment of each others’ company—balk at having their every move monitored, recorded and then used against them later.

Doesn’t sound like the thinking that leads to the behavior that will sow the seeds of peace to us.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] All That Happens Must Be Known

Given revelations of internet data surveillance what concerns should be raised about the possibility of brain monitoring devices?

All this week on the HSCT Communication Blog, we are answering questions put forth by the folks running the at the upcoming Suny-Broome 6^th Annual Interdisciplinary Conference being held on April 4^thand 5^that Suny-Broome Community College.

This week’s question was posed by the plot of David Eggers’ most recent novel, The Circle, and was not definitively answered by the end of the book.

Well, we here at HSCT have three primary concerns about brain monitoring devices. And the NSA didn’t make the top three.

The first is around marketing and the idea of “opting-out” rather than a mandatory “opt-in.”

The most annoying moment on the internet or social media is waiting for the commercial at the front of a YouTube video to load, with the countdown going before the viewer can “skip this ad.”

As the customer (you and I) have gained more control over blocking being sold to, marketers and advertisers have had to come up with more clever (and blunt) ways to compel our valuable time and attention, with confusing and frustrating results for all parties involved.

Now imagine if marketers had access to the most intimate space on the planet: Your private brain space.There would be no “option to opt-out,” even though all the legalese would say that there would be.

Which gets us to point number 2…

The second concern that we have is that increasingly, the desire to not participate in social communication is seen as a sign of social ineptitude at best and dangerous at worst.

Case in point: Whenever a school shooting happens, the first thing that the media does is breathlessly report whether or not the perpetrator possessed a social media account.

If he (and it’s usually a ‘he’) does, then there is breathless data mining that goes on in a search for pathology, motive, and aberration.

In other words, the nature of the aberrant act itself is no longer enough to create outrage; the lack of social participation is the driver for primary outraged responses.Which leads to concern number 3…

The third concern is that we have long sought—as individuals, societies and cultures—to control people under the guise of freeing them from Plato’s Cave.

Brain monitoring devices won’t be used to give us freedom, collaboration and connection.Instead, they will be used to take away freedom, encourage and inflame false fracturing and individualization, and destroy connections between people.

In other words, criminalization of thought will happen using the same powerful social sanctioning to illegality continuum that has banned smoking from restaurants, trans fats from NY City restaurants, and has gotten the White House cook to quit.

The inevitability of technological progress demands that we think about the ramifications of power and control, not only from government and corporations, but also by and from each other.

So, HSCT’s conflict engagement consultant, Jesan Sorrells, will be presenting on the issue of online reputation maintenance in a world where virtue and ethics are not often addressed.

We would love to see you there!

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA

Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant

Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)

Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining

Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Advice] Why Go to College: For the Rest of Us

Since the economic collapse of 2008, there have been many articles and blogs written about the importance (or lack of importance) of attending higher education for young people.

This talk has taken place amid a backdrop of ever rising tuition costs, zero wage increases, artificially suppressed inflation, a boatload of student loan debt burdening the 18-22 year old cohort and the dim post-graduation employment prospects where an average job search takes 6-9 months.

Hope and change indeed.

All of these writers, bloggers and opinionaters on both sides of the debate have one thing in common: They all hail from middle to upper middle class households and backgrounds, where at least one parent (and in many cases both parents) have already attended college.

In particular, they hail from backgrounds where they grew up with the suburban (and in some cases ex-burban) comfort that at least if they graduated from an overpriced college with an undervalued education and an economically meaningless degree, that somehow, someway, it would all work out in the end.

Now, in principle, we here at HSCT have no problem with people carrying such assumptions and even acting on them in the real world.

We have no problem with people writing long, effusive, opinion pieces on the lack of efficacy of a college education and worrying about the debt attached to obtaining it, in the context of a world where student loan debt cannot be disgorged through a bankruptcy process.

We also have no problem with questioning why it is important for people to have college degrees and even the tenuous link between a college degree and economic success based in secure post-graduate employment.

Make no mistake, yes our background is in higher education, but we would be blind and foolish if we did not admit that there are real structural problems and cracks in the mighty edifice constructed since post-World War II.

We get off the train though, when we think about the “please take the college years and go off to ‘find yourself’” type advice, being given to minority high school students.

We have a problem when very well meaning, successful, wealthy people, who did not attain degrees, but attained a measure of success, stand in front of diverse audiences and make the audacious claim that can be summed up as “we didn’t go so you don’t have to either.”

We’re sorry, but too many folks in those diverse audiences come with backgrounds from racial minority groups in this country that have experienced systemic, institutionalized, historical racism. And some of those students’ backgrounds are from communities still experiencing the results of such racism, racialism and racial prejudice. Thus, some of the worst advice that they–as well as their younger brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews–can possibly hear is “don’t attend college, because it’s too expensive, too much student loan burden will be upon you at graduation, etc., etc.”

This is not a statement based in social justice, social re-engineering or any desire for any form of social gerrymandering.

This statement comes out of a recognition that more African-American males are in jail in this country than even have completed high school.

This statement comes out of a recognition that Hispanic, Asian and Eastern European populations have traditionally valued education as the only way to advance in America.

This statement comes out of the recognition that the only way to open the doors and unlock opportunities if you are not from an upper class or even a middle class structure, is through the hard work of education, monetary sacrifice, and doing the right thing for the most people possible.

Of course, when there have been three to four generations of racial, ethnic and class minorities that have attained college education in America, we will be the first to write all about how going to college is a fool’s bargain.

We promise.

-Peace Be With You All-

Big Data, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Federal Data Gathering Centers

“Ain’t gonna need to tell the truth. Tell no lie. Everything you think, do and say is in the pill you took today.”–Zager and Evans

There is a direct line between the rise of GMO’s, the enthusiasm with which “Big Data” is being adopted, the coming of Google glasses and other wearables, the prevalence of Federal Government “data centers” (7,000 at last count) and the ubiquitousness of cameras on stoplights, street corners, and in city parks.

This line overlaps with mobile device tracking, police and the NSA monitoring your cell phone calls and Internet searches, and the coming of “the Internet of Everything.”

This line is followed ever so casually, by the prevalence of laws and policies designed to provide a benefit (i.e. the Affordable Health Care Act, among others), but that tangentially allow larger and larger private and public bureaucracies to burrow deeper and deeper into personal behavior choices that we make on an individual and societal basis.

The intersections all meet at a point of behavior monitoring, or “nudging,” of private individuals into buying acceptable products, acting in acceptable ways and making sure that everybody else does the same.

In the arena of conflict resolution and peace building, we here at HSCT find the idea of behavior management or behavior monitoring by large, faceless, entities to be–well, “creepy” (as the kids are wont to say as they Tweet out every instance of their lives looking for connections)–and authoritarian.

Dare we say, all of this progress smacks of Orwellianism.

Now, before we are accused of wearing tinfoil hats and searching the skies for black helicopters, we have an “early adopter” curve for you to make our next point.

Now, early adopters are the people who will buy the I-phone when it’s brand new and will probably buy the first pair of Google glasses at $200 a piece.Your folks in the middle–the early and late majority– are most of us. They will buy a smart phone from Wal-mart two years from now and only because their friends all have one, so “why not?”

Your third group is at the end of the curve. The laggards are the people we all know who still have VCR’s and will never buy Google Glasses because they’re either paranoid about Big Brother, or they just don’t care.

The anti-GMO people…

The anti-CCTV camera people…

The ACLU…

The guy who drives around town distributing a mimeographed, weekly paper, out of the back of his car which is full of garbage and may or may not have an animal in the back.

These are your laggards.

Moreover, it is the behavior, choices and conflicts that this group of people present, that confounds, distorts and affects bureaucratic “thinking” and policymaking, and leads to more and more talk of “the Internet of Everything.”

Now, mugging people of their autonomy, independence and free will and limiting choices, stands in opposition to peace, in our opinion.

The right NOT to participate is the most sacred right in the Constitution.

This sacred right, to go off on one’s own, creates conflicts with other individuals and societies.

However, peace is NOT the absence of conflict.

The false promise of all of these technologies is that by everyone, everywhere, at all time, having their behavior, choices, ideas, attitudes, conversations and thoughts, confirmed, conformed, reformed, and reconstituted, for the benefit of the lowest bidder; that somehow, that act of “tamping down” the unruly nails, will ultimately lead to some sort of man made Utopia.

That is NOT peace.

That is TYRANNY.

Let us all become vigilant watchmen on the walls for peace.

-Peace Be With You All-