Technology As A Method Of Dehumanization And Exploitation 

Technology is arguably the most important factor when considering the advancement of the human race and its massive and dominant success as a species. Efficiency, entertainment, manufacturing, and medicine are all major subjects that are an influence of this critical aspect of life. One of the most powerful and major effects from technological development, however, is the ability to increasingly connect everyone on the world on a social basis. Advancing technologies allow humanity to communicate and meet new people that live on opposite sides of the planet in seconds.

Considering this large variety of available methods in order to socialize with technology and that sociability is one of the most defining parts of a human, modern civilization should be more human now than ever. However, this ideal scenario may be far from the truth, such as seen from Frederick Douglass’s autobiography, who is able to show problems with this concept from all the way back to the early 1800s. Even Netflix series Black Mirror’s “Nosedive” episode portrays how social media has led to roboticization of themselves and the exploitation of other people. Despite being such an integral part of society, technology has caused the dehumanization of humanity to the point of where people will take advantage of each other to benefit themselves.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass shows how even the most basic forms of communicative technologies, reading and writing, has the power to dehumanize the person. While talking about the effects of learning how to read during his time in slavery, Douglass states, “I often found myself regretting my own existence, and wishing myself dead,” (Douglass). This shows that even a basic advancement can cause a person to dehumanize themselves. From learning how to use this form of knowledge and afterward the conditions and treatments of the people of his race, he felt socially lower than he did before. Although he felt sympathy for the other slaves, he no longer feels as comfortable in the social hierarchy than he did when he was ignorant. The longing for ignorance that comes with not being human is also shown by Douglass earlier in his writing, in which he states, “I have often wished myself a beast,” (Douglass). Again, this shows how the learning of a new technology has led to no longer seeing oneself as a person. He wishes he did not have human-like qualities, because all that did for him was make him realize how horrible slaves’ conditions were, making himself feel even more awful about himself. Douglass has cast himself as a beast because the new knowledge was able to more clearly inform him about how those who were in control of his life thought that his people were the bottom of the social barrel. These interpersonal expressions from Douglass fundamentally convey the concept of technology causing dehumanization on a personal level, as an invention as ancient as reading and writing were able to create this amount of deterioration for someone.

Applying this concept to a society of the twenty-first century, it becomes especially dangerous. Today, this kind of depreciation can be done more than ever as the Internet has allowed anyone to write anything about any other person that can negatively affect them. This type of writing can occur and spread so quickly as well, which is more likely to lead to a greater amount of people seeing themselves in this more inhuman perspective. As technologies of spreading information develop, such as social media and news outlets, there becomes a larger chance for a self-proclaimed dehumanization to occur across whole civilizations. This kind of removal creates a negative feedback loop, as people will begin to make others appear as beasts in order to make themselves more confident in themselves and thus appear more civilized. This cycle begins to spiral out of control, and as seen in Netflix series Black Mirror’s episode titled “Nosedive,” this can eventually lead to a civilization that is almost entirely dehumanized while still trying to appear humane. “Nosedive” is able to show just to what extent computers have the ability to dehumanize us as the use of social media devices is increasing ever more rapidly. As the main character, Lacie is on her way to Naomie’s wedding, the bride tells her, “I don’t want you here. I don’t know what is up with you, but I cannot have a 2. 6 at my wedding,” (Black Mirror). Through this action of abandoning a childhood friend, Naomie proves that keeping deep relationships is much less important than appearing more civilized to the rest of society through their devices. This is taking what was discussed with Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass one step further, as people have felt so demoralized with themselves, they have resorted to relying on who they associate within the app in a desperate attempt to gain positive reviews to them instead of negative ones. The score from the ranking app simply serves as a measurement of how humanistic an individual is perceived by those around them, with 2. 5 out of 5 stars being the breaking point in between.

This is why, when discussing Ches, Lacie’s coworker states, “Of course, if it drops below two-five, then it’s bye-bye,” (Black Mirror). To them, a higher score on their calculated ranking represents being a more humanized person, and so it becomes the goal of everyone in that society to put on a show that attempts to force humanity upon themselves and the people they like and to brutalize the people they are against so long as it doesn’t negatively affect themselves as well. With this model, those who have already been barbarized will have no problem exploiting and dehumanizing others through online social networking in order to create a façade in which they can build a look of humanization while still feeling unsure about how they feel about themselves. This creation of this façade through technology is extremely important as well, as the people in the society see it as the only way left for them to try to recharacterize themselves as an actual person. While looking at new apartments to move into, Lacie is criticized by her brother Ryan for wanting to move into them, as he refers to the homes as, “fake-smile jail cells,” (Black Mirror). Lacie ignores this criticism and continues to spend the rest of the film trying to find ways to boost her score to the necessary 4. 5 to get into the apartments. This demonstrates that a world that has dehumanized itself through technology acknowledges that what they are doing is fake, but it does not matter because creating the façade is the only way that they are able to create a sense of being a piece of a proper society. Taking this into account, technology is acting as the source of destruction for humanization but has also led mankind to believe that the only way out of their negative feedback loop is to continue to increasingly use the methods that got them into that position in the first place. Thus, society has thrown itself even deeper into a technological cycle in which there is a constant system of taking away each others humanity in order to build up fake walls of civility that mean nothing when looking underneath.

Technology, while being vital for the ability of the humankind to survive and thrive, has clearly caused a damaging effect on how we perceive each other and how we interact with each other. This effect can be seen with social technologies that stretch all the way back to the basic reading and writing, as demonstrated by Frederick Douglass’s experiences of learning how to do so during his time in slavery. The increase in computerized public networks has also shown to be a cause of why individuals continue to dehumanize themselves and others, as “Nosedive” shows that it occurs ironically in an attempt to appear more humanized. Civilization has improved upon sociability with technology, which is a defining part of humanity, but this has also led us to a population where sociability has become a cover-up for the dehumanization that came with it.