Unmasking the real behind the virtual

It’s tempting to look at human behaviour online as if it’s something entirely new. Technology advances with such speed that it’s almost like we’re living in the future that science fiction writers dreamt up, albeit without flying cars or time machines. But behind the fast-growing technology are real people, with all their motivations, hopes, and biases — the people who create the technology, and the people who use it. In this world, the way we speak, present ourselves, and navigate our everyday lives are increasingly impacted by the tech we use. What changes in this virtual world? And what stays the same?

The linguist Gretchen McCulloch, in his work, Because Internet, attempts to outline why we speak the way we do online. From popular use of acronyms, emojis, and punctuation — and, yes, memes — McCulloch draws a picture of how linguistic patterns emerge and develop in cyberspace. The subtleties of the acronym “lol”, and the use of a certain kind of emoji — all of these have meanings that may not be apparent to someone outside of the language framework, in the same way that a visitor to a foreign country may not understand the intricacies of the locals’ metaphors. 

The story of how language evolved on the internet is also, in part, a history of the internet itself, an insight into social organising, and an exploration of how language plays a part in shaping our world. McCulloch considers the way internet communication has made drastic differences in how we speak, socialise, and write. Internet language has evolved so much since the invention of the internet — it has even evolved in the few years since the book’s publication, in 2019. To McCulloch, language is “humanity’s most spectacular open source project,” and it will only continue to grow. 

In her book Self-Made, Tara Isabella Burton’s starting point is not the internet itself, but a phenomenon we often associate with it — the idea of building a personal brand. Burton takes us on a chronological journey through history’s greatest self-makers, from Renaissance painters of self-portraits to Kim Kardashian. We read about the earliest self-help books, the impact of television’s invention, and the cult of celebrity, through the ages. We meet artists, dictators, and people famous simply for being famous.

“Self-making” holds double meaning in Burton’s book: that of the enterprising, “self-made man,” but also of a carefully created self as a public identity, a behaviour that existed long before our modern influencers. Self-Made tells a complex story of how Western civilisation’s understanding of self-invention became inextricably linked with ideas of morality, public perception, and commodification. These ideas are prevalent in our hyper-capitalistic, hyper-online society, and Burton offers us a clear-eyed view of the path that might have led us here. 

Who is behind our hyper-online world, the people who dream up new uses for technology and the ones whose work helps make it happen?

Madhumita Murgia’s Code Dependent is a well-researched, human-focused deep dive into the algorithms that lie beneath our online behaviour. Murgia tells us that she initially approached her work with optimism — hoping to highlight the many ways that artificial intelligence has positively impacted people. Those are certainly present in her book. But what also emerges is the disproportionate effect that technology enacts upon the world, when in the hands of a few large companies: widespread data colonialism, private and government surveillance, encoded biases, limited regulation, and a general opaqueness of processes. 

In 10 chapters titled after the aspects of human life that are most impacted by AI—titles like “your boss,” “your body,” and “your rights”— Murgia consciously moves beyond the Silicon Valley bubble to interview people from across the world. These include doctors, gig workers, lawyers, and victims of AI-based discrimination, as well as people involved in creating and improving upon these algorithms. The technologies she explores impact everything from Google Maps to healthcare apps to generative AI like ChatGPT — things that are or will become, a part of our everyday life. At the beginning of the book, she addresses her reader. “I tugged on these individual threads, and they formed a coherent design,” she writes. “And you are in the centre of it.” 

The author is a writer and illustrator. She likes stories with ambiguous endings and unreliable narrators.

Piqued is a monthly column in which the staff of Champaca Bookstore bring us unheard voices and stories from their shelves.