The conflict of globalization of media consumption: from echo chambers to info capsules

Koshmarov Mikhail ORCID: 0000-0001-6166-5186 PhD in Technical Science Director for the Development of Innovative Technologies, Russian Social Business Promotion Centre 101000, Russia, Moscow, Luchnikov, 2 mk69@ya.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction.Terminology.

In 2018, two scientific articles were published: The Evolution of Propaganda. Some aspects of political practice (DOI: 10.7256/2454-0684.2018.8.26962), Opportunities and risks of using Artificial Intelligence in Propaganda (DOI: 10.7256/2454-0684.2018.12.28325), where the concept of information encapsulation (infocapsulation) was introduced and the following definitions of this term are given.

"For the vast majority of users, it is possible to create an individual info capsule - continuously providing them with contextual information, taking into account the automatic analysis of their big data."

"Infocapsulation is not censorship, and not "hiding" any information, but providing a point of view on an event that corresponds to the interests and habits of this user."

Taking into account the title and goals of those articles, an explanation of this intuitive term is quite sufficient (for those who deal with this specific issue). Devoting the entire article to this topic and putting the term info capsule in the title, it is necessary at the very beginning to give a clear definition of what is meant by this. For several years, information technology has advanced significantly, new strategic directions have appeared, but the concept of information encapsulation remains basic for the largest IT companies.

Information encapsulation (infocapsulation) – this is the process of producing a personal picture of the world for each media consumer using AI technologies, depending on large user (personal) data, resulting in the formation /correction of identity, a system of worldviews and values. Where a media consumer is any Internet user. Info capsule is an automatically correcting algorithm that produces a selection of news, interpretations and advertisements in real time, based on large user (personal) data of each media consumer.

AI technology or artificial Intelligence (Artificial Intelligence) is not a Laplace demon predicting the future, but a self–learning program created to perform a specific narrow task (for example, to win chess). It should not be confused with the concept of strong AI (AGI), which exists today in theory and in science fiction films.  Technologically, it is an artificial neural network that processes/accumulates options and selects the best according to specified criteria. The most powerful AI that search engines: Google, American, Russian and Chinese Baidu Yandex.

The term big data is widely used in the media and scientific literature, and it refers to arrays of information stored in data centers coming from both complex systems (for example, data on the operation of the energy consumption of a megalopolis or the turnover of a retail network) and from users.

This article analyzes media consumption and, consequently, the question narrows down to large user (personal) data – it is also an intuitive term meaning a set of information about individuals and their behavior.

Simply put, BPD is the sum of all information from social networks, movement in space, social circle, visited sites, search engine queries, download log, downloaded texts, viewed videos, payment system data: fines, entertainment, shopping, medical care, etc. Plus metadata: "Data about everything you do on your devices, and about what your devices do on their own." ^{[6, p. 109.]} This is data about data that cannot be forged and that gives a mathematically accurate description of the user if analyzed over long time periods.  Metadata is not the content of personal communications, but data about who, when, from which device and IP address, to whom, to which IP address, to which device communicated. Metadata is accurate and unambiguous, therefore, it is easy to process.

         Metadata processing within the country – gives an accurate measurement of the degree of social consent in society.   For example, the data that the vast majority of users have changed the pattern of network behavior by starting to enter news platforms an hour and a half earlier than before, or if atypical transactions in payment systems have massively increased, or the pattern of mobile tracking of users has massively significantly changed, may mean that society is experiencing at least stress.

You should also decide on another term – digital footprint, which is often found in articles on this topic. The developer of computer models used by Cambridge Analytica for Trump's victory and earlier for the implementation of Brexit, Mikhail Kosinski, uses this term as follows: "It's enough to look at the digital footprint: social media posts, likes, browsing history on the Internet, search query history. Based on these data, you can make an incredibly accurate psychological portrait. [...] The main idea of my publications is that it's easy, it's only important to change the focus: psychometry no longer needs questionnaires and tests, it's enough to have a digital footprint of a person." ^[2]

Kosinski's psychometric models are a synthesis of statistics and psychology. Techies narrow down the definition of a CA: data left as a result of visiting web pages and stored as cookies. Writer Viktor O. Pelevin, gives the following definition of a cookie: "IT specialists, especially military or connected to work with network surveillance, have such an expression – "metazapah". In the modern network, any transaction, any information exchange leaves a tiny, but almost indestructible electronic "smell" – grains of code show who and how was interested in this or that information." ^{[5, p.85]}

Thus, the term large user (personal) data (BPD) includes all of the above about data collection, is seen as the most general, intuitive and will be used later in the article.

         As you can see, the meanings of the terms may differ somewhat in nuances. There can be no dogmas here, changes occur "at the speed of thought." The Internet is the most amazing phenomenon of our time, more similar in its development to a living organism (this is already a cliche) than a technical device. The meta-organization that Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine, called Technium in 2010: "Technium contains 170 quadrillion computer chips connected into one mega-scale computing platform. The total number of transistors in this global network is now about the same as the number of neurons in your brain. And the number of links between files on this network (think of all the links between all the web pages in the world) is approximately equal to the number of synaptic connections in your brain. Thus, this growing planetary electronic membrane is already comparable in complexity to the human brain. Three billion artificial eyes (phone and webcams) are connected to it, it processes keyword searches at a speed of 14 kilohertz, and it is such a big contraption that it now consumes 5 percent of the world's electricity." ^{[11, p.29]} Taking into account Moore's law, it is not difficult to imagine how this Big Tech meta-organization has become more complex and expanded today, especially with the addition of the Starlink satellite constellationIlona Mask. Starlink is a satellite grouping that provides Internet access, created according to the owner of the company, Elon Musk, in order to reach the whole world. At the moment, more than 2 thousand low-orbit satellites have been deployed, with plans to expand to 30 thousand ^[9]

 Big Tech, or The Tech Giants, Big Five, or S&P 5, that is, Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Facebook*. *It is included in the list of public associations and religious organizations in respect of which the court has adopted a decision that has entered into legal force to liquidate or ban activities on the grounds provided for by Federal Law No. 114-FZ of 25.07.2002 "On Countering extremist Activity".

Finishing with the terminology, it should be noted that all of the above is given solely to avoid terminological confusion. The purpose of this article is, taking into account new data, to continue the study of the phenomenon of information encapsulation technology and the phenomenon of propaganda singularity, which is a consequence of the use of these technologies. More details about the singularity will be discussed below, after all the introductions.

 The main part. Reflection in the terminology of the classics.

Exploring the transformation of media consumption, it is impossible not to mention three important works in this field: "Being Digital" by Nicholas Negroponte 1995, "Echo chambers" by Cass Sunstein 2001 and "The Filter bubble" by Eli Pariser 2011. 

In 2001, Professor K. Sunstein's essay "Echo chambers: Bush v. Gore, impeachment, and beyond" was published. In this short work about the election campaign "Bush vs Gore", he does not define the term "echo chamber", rather "posts" the term, but outlines the signs of this phenomenon, estimating at the end that this is rather a negative property of forums in social networks. Note that at that time there was only one conditionally massive blogging platform - LiveJournal – a prototype of today's monster social networks, quite innocent technologically, one might say an information republic, unlike today's IT dictatorships of Google and Facebook. 

In fact, Sunstein's 17-page essay is not about the Internet: "My goal here is to illustrate the problem of fragmentation and the phenomenon of group polarization without observing their manifestation on the Internet ^{[17, p.4]} The central point here is that the result of a group discussion is usually a "more extreme version the initial predisposition of the group members." ^{[17, p.5]} Thus, Sunstein believes, "... creating a DailyDaily Me, specially adapted to their own interests and prejudices," each person creates a "personalized communication universe." ^{[17, p. 2-3]} (In 2008-2014, K. Sunstein was a political strategist at the election headquarters of Barack Obama and then an employee of his presidential administration.)

It should be pointed out that the term "Daily Me" first appeared six years earlier - in 1995 in the book "Being Digital" by N. Negroponte, in the chapter "Personal filters": "You would pay more for a newspaper, being sure that you were provided with an important set of information for you. You would consume every bit of [such a newspaper]. Let's call it a RE." ^{[14, p.153]} "Imagine a computer display of news with a relay that, like a volume control, allows you to increase or decrease personalization. You can have many such controls, including a slider that moves both literally and politically from left to right to modify a selection of articles about public affairs." ^{[14, p.154]} A brilliant definition of the term "Personal filters", especially for 1995.

Google implemented these ideas only in 2009, personalizing the search for each user, taking into account the BPD.^[10]

Before the advent of Google, Facebook and Apple technologies, these phenomena lay rather in the scientific plane, due to the fact that the Internet remained a working tool for most users, and not a global utilizer of free time for most adults, teenagers and children. In addition, the Internet was not then a "mass product", in the sense that the users of the network were mostly well-educated people with critical thinking. Everything changed when smartphones replaced push-button phones and anyone, seizing a free minute, could spend their time visiting the network. Mostly social networks. Originally conceived with a certain subtext of a dating service, social networks began to attract huge masses of the plebs. It's time to monetize the ideas of Negroponte and Sunstein.

  The technologies of social networks and especially Facebook are described in detail in the vivid book by the American Internet researcher E. Pariser "The Filter Bubble", published in 2011. Brexit and Trump's victory are implemented on some theses of this book, although in this regard, the scandalous Cambridge Analytica, which embodied the ideas of M. Kosinski, was more often mentioned, and the name of E. Pariser was almost not mentioned. This is unfair - a personally targeted election campaign is a concept from Pariser's book, where he brought together all the then developments on the topic of elections in the chapter "Invisible Campaign" ^{[4, p.166.]} 

There are many interesting ideas and observations in Pariser's book. As part of the study of infocapsulation, it is necessary to highlight the fragmentation of society and the codification (legitimization) of gradual imperceptible changes by program codes.

Lawrence Lessing also writes about this in his book "Code: version 2.0." De facto, a program code is a code, a law that is created secretly and executed automatically.^[12]

At the same time, Pariser is definitely against such an "asymmetry of understanding" of user rights.  Moreover, a reservation in the privacy policy of many IT companies "allows you to change the rules retroactively" ^{[4, p.259]}, he cites Facebook as an example. 

If we generalize, develop and scale these ideas, we will get the following results.

1. Filter walls (bubbles) erected by Big Tech, such as Google and Facebook, fragment society to a "single" state, having a significant impact on consumption and population. Two singles need two kitchens, even a family of two people needs one. In addition, singles, replacing communication, consume more and, as a result, reproduce less often. It should be noted that one of the main ideas/tasks for the implementation of the concept of sustainable development is to replace material consumption with non–material ^[18]. 

2. Fragmentation gives a system where each user receives a personal collection of facts, an info capsule, which casts doubt on the democratic nature of such a system. "Democracy requires that citizens be able to see the world not only from their own point of view, but also from someone else's point of view. And we are increasingly locked in our own worlds. Democracy is an opportunity to proceed from general facts. We are offered parallel universes." ^{[4, p.15]} Today, this situation has become much more complicated: even in one family there may be different, sometimes very different pictures of the world created by infocapsulation technology for each family member.  For example, on environmental issues, not to mention politics. If a generational conflict is added, that is, the worldviews of fathers and children or grandchildren and grandfathers collide - the views may be diametrically opposed. The destruction of the traditional ties of generations is the result (albeit a side effect) of the globalist information strategy.

3. Such lone users in info capsules are easily influenced and therefore in some cases manageable. "You won't necessarily notice that a dossier is being compiled on you. You will not see how it will be used to control your behavior. And the companies to which we share this data are not legally bound to keep them to themselves. [...] Understanding someone's identity equips you with tools to influence that person." ^{[4, p.137]} 

Based on the above points (and to paraphrase Kelly), we can formulate an important question that Big Tech architects leave out of brackets: what does the infocapsulation technology strive for in the case of implementation close to 100%?

As of April 2020, 4.5 billion people have Internet access, and 4.2 billion of them are mobile Internet users. ^[8] This is a little more than half of the world's population. It does not seem supernatural to assume that in a maximum of 10 years, this figure will approach 80% of the Earth's population. In developed countries, this is already the case. And it will also not be supernatural to assume that people who have spent a long period of 10 years or more in info capsules (and IT corporations do not provide a choice today) themselves become an extension^[3], part of the organism that Kelly called technium.

Which will be the singularity of propaganda. A completely fragmented, predictable, personal algorithm-driven community of biorobots*, stitched with an individual access code. The basis of sanity is the framework of neural connections created by the family in childhood, supplemented by back door technology. *"There is an old saying that Britons never shall be slaves but they did become the robots of new gimmick." [13. p.32] (The quote is given in the original to illustrate the theses of the article: by entering this phrase in a search engine, you cannot get a link to the source - a book by Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan. The book can be found today by spending time online, in non-indexed electronic archives.) 

Banking, trade (rental) and the criminal code will be common in such a society. Common in the sense that it will be the same information for the whole community: prices, percentages, conditions, new goods, services and penalties for violators of the rules.  All other cultural codes - politics, history, religious beliefs, literature, music, (that is, aesthetics and ethics) - will be personal for each user, based on the BPD, slightly different from the basic ideas of any other member of this information matrix, which means they are secondary. Different sets of facts will make any dispute meaningless, the disputants simply will not understand each other's arguments. But ordinary communication will also lose its value. It is quite obvious that in such a divided society of artificially created introverts, if it is implemented, the birth rates will be several times lower compared to today. Which does not contradict the Sustainable Development Goals declared by the UN and educational methods for family planning programs.

 Practical possibilities.

The implementation of the community described above may seem like an unrealizable utopia or dystopia, who sees it how. However, it is worth taking a closer look at the concept of Metaversre or metaverse, promoted since last year by leading IT corporations. The term, invented by science fiction writer Neil Stevenson ^[16] in 1992, is now implemented as a virtual space where anyone with an Oculus VR virtual reality headset (Oculus is a subsidiary of Meta Corporation), registered on the Facebook social network, is over 13 years old.  Today it is more of a toy for gadget lovers and Internet addicts, a promo version whose server capacities are barely calculated for the number of Oculus headsets sold. Similar headsets exist from other manufacturers, such as Sony and Samsung. As of today, no more than 10 million such headset helmets have been sold worldwide.

Last year, Facebook was renamed Meta, declaring the beginning of the construction of the Internet 2.0 – the virtual universe of Metaversre. "The metaverse is not an exclusive product that one company can create alone. Just like the Internet, the metaverse exists regardless of whether Facebook is there or not."^[15] Meta is not creating a new Internet alone, the largest IT corporations also expect to get their share in the upcoming colonization of virtual spaces.

What is actually being created, what is the difference between the metaverse and video games with 3D headsets? For clarity, we can use a comparison of the famous IT developer Raf Koster, who distinguishes between online worlds, multiverse and metaverse. (online world, multivers, metavers). Online worlds are virtual 3D spaces focused on one main theme. Basically, these are games or applications-spaces for virtual walks or the simultaneous presence of several users. The multiverse is a set of different online worlds connected to a network that do not have a common theme or set of rules. The metaverse is a multiverse that also interacts with the real world, including such things as AR augmented reality technology, Google Maps—level applications, electronic banking, virtual fitting rooms of real stores, virtual cinemas, discos, etc.^[15] A 3D world where, according to the creators' idea, users will spend a significant part of their time. Thereby simplifying the solution of the problem of intangible consumption.

It should be understood that technical capabilities are still very limited today. Creating a virtual space for several billion users will require an increase in computing power by orders of magnitude, but in principle it is already possible. Taking into account the dynamics of technology development, such a virtual universe will be able to reach the initial industrial capacity, no earlier than in five years, with a successful combination of circumstances and in the case of a project to build several processor manufacturing plants in the United States. And when implementing the ideas reflected in "The US Innovation and Competition Act" (USICA). (The law is aimed at curbing China's high-tech industries and supporting the return of high-tech industries from Asia to the United States in order to gain absolute leadership in the IT industry.) This project will require enormous costs, which IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde estimated at $1 trillion. ^[7] 

Conclusion

The principles formulated by Aristotle have not been canceled. Society is communication, the state is political communication. But communication requires at least some common view of the world, and information encapsulation technologies cut off this opportunity. Philosophy and history are things without which it is impossible to carry out lawmaking and public administration. And today the right question is whether programmers, creators of infocapsulation program codes, who form codes governing user behavior, have a systematic understanding of these universal cultural codes. This is the main contradiction, the fundamental conflict, of the matrix of the new world order that is being formed today.

The electronic Leviathan of propaganda/economics created by mankind already has superpower today, and this system is designed in such a way that it strives to get the entire market as it "understands" it – that is, the entire population of the planet. In 1650, Thomas Hobbes formulated the basic principle of "Common-wealth" (common good, res publica, commonwealth, state): "This is more than agreement or unanimity. This is a real unity embodied in one person through an agreement concluded by each person with each other in such a way as if each person said to the other: I authorize this person or this assembly of persons and transfer to him my right to govern myself, provided that you in the same way transfer to him your right and authorize all of his actions". ^{[1, p.172]} And this, according to Hobbes' philosophy, distinguishes humanity from communities that make up "Some living beings, such as bees and ants, [...]". ^{[1, p.171]}

The emergence of the Internet has become a catalyst for globalization, which in turn has significantly changed the structure of society, both in the countries of the golden billion – there appeared an army of the precariat on benefits, and in the "catching up" countries – there appeared a large middle class. These structural changes led to a gradual, initially imperceptible transformation of the value system and further – the social contract (especially in the Western Common-wealth). And more and more often, the "Accept conditions" key becomes such an authorization of changes to the social contract, when we give "our right to control ourselves" to the program, algorithm. @