Big Data - From Plato to Datacracy

If it is true that culture, understood as knowledge and the ability to perceive it, is what remains in us after we have forgotten what we have formally learned, then today there is something from our past which has returned to pound on our doors. What is it? I am referring to one of the most noted Platonic myths:?the Allegory of the Cave .

This is a tale known to the many who have studied it. Plato recounts the story of people who have been chained to the walls of a cave in such a way that their gazes are directed toward another wall. Shadows created by others are projected onto this wall and these shadows seems to be real objects and, thus reality, to those who have always been in chains. But then one of the prisoners is able to free himself and escapes from the cave and, through a long and painful process, his eyes adjust to the light of the sun. He becomes conscious of reality; he realizes that the shadows on the wall are not, in fact, reality. He then returns to the cave to communicate this new awareness of consciousness to those still in chains. When he enters the cave again, his vision must readjust to the darkness. He struggles to convince his companions who remained inside that they were not in fact seeing reality, but they refuse to follow him back to the world outside the cave.

This is an allegory connected to the?Theory of the Divided Line,[1] by which Plato describes the cognitive process and presents all the steps of this process from perception to full cognition. This theory explores in consecutive order the various passages along the path from opinion to truth and traces the lines between the perceived and the real.

All of these are topics which should play a central role in the minds of the general public, because the screens of our computers and smartphones are starting to resemble more and more the wall of that cave. And, to make the situation even more complicated, there is another player involved: the “informer”, that is to say the Big Data companies.

To illustrate this better, let’s take a step back in time and revisit the story of one of the most interesting figures of the twentieth century, Edward Louis Bernays. Bernays was an Austrian born in 1891. He was a naturalized American citizen who boasted family ties with Sigmund Freud and was one of the most eminent nineteenth century theorists of crowd psychology (understood as the art of consensus and propaganda).[2] There are those who point to him as the first theoretician to use the subconscious for commercial purposes, as well as the fabrication of public opinion, both areas in which he was effectively a master.

On 13 April 1917, the American President Thomas Woodrow Wilson issued a decree establishing the Committee on Public Information (AKA the Creel Committee ) with the purpose of making the American population accept the decision to side with the Allied powers against Austria and Germany during the First World War. The very young Edward participated in the project. He was deeply influenced by the persuasive capabilities of the propaganda machine which was put into motion at the time.

Legend has it that at the end of that experience, his alleged uncle Freud sent him a copy of?Introduction to Psychoanalysis?and, in the wake of what he had just read and experienced, Bernays started to build his own theory on how to tap into the irrational forces of the human mind and manipulate the subconscious, and thus mass perception. He surely understood how targeted information could drive the behavior of the general public.

In an America fresh out of war, industrial overproduction risked leading to economic recession. It was a time of austerity and in those years the purchase and possession of goods were exclusively driven by necessity. One of the most visible Wall Street bankers, Paul Meyer Mazur of Lehman Brothers, had clear ideas on what was needed: “We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs”.[3]

Edward Bernays took the helm of this change, renamed his activity “Public Relations” and constructed, in the true meaning of the word, a new consumer model. In 1923 he published?Crystallizing Public Opinion , a volume which Joseph Goebbels, the minister of Nazi Propaganda, declared a work of great interest during an interview with the journalist Karl von Wiegand in 1933.

Bernays’s belief that creating public opinion and shaping consumption by identifying and stimulating deep irrational psychological emotions was new for that time period, as until that point, advertising objects, facts or ideas had been done only by presenting mere information.

The American?corporations?were soon at his feet. Bernays sponsored female magazines and inserted articles packaged ad hoc and connected to products for which he was a consultant. He groomed the image of film stars through clothing, jewelry, watches and automobiles so as to crystalize in the public imagination the “legendary” feel of some commercial brand name products. He boasted of having suggested that the automobile could constitute a psychological extension of male sexuality. He insinuated in the minds of the masses the message that buying is not the satisfaction of a need, but rather the privileged expression of one’s own identity and status.

The new spirit promoted production and fostered the economic boom. There was, on the other hand, those who accused him of transforming America into a society in which citizens had importance not in themselves, but only as a function of how much they consumed. A wave of criticism and awareness progressively developed and spread across the country. At the same time another force was taking shape: the fear of the danger constituted by underground rumblings of group mentality, potentially capable of manifesting in enraged, subversive crowds.

One of the most respected political authors of the 1900s, Walter Lippmann, hypothesized that the nature of American democracy had mutated and that the “government of the people” was no longer suited to guiding the choices and the processes of political decisions because of the profound irrationality and emotionality of public opinion.[4] As a consequence, he suggested creating a group of elite experts and technicians who would safeguard objective scientific criteria and would not simply spread “opinions”. These experts would act as a support to the politicians and a bulwark against the lack of reasoning and subconscious feelings of the masses. A bulwark, that is to say, against those lines which Edward Bernays had tapped into to create his “engineering of consensus”, clearly illustrated by these short excerpts: “If the general principles of swaying public opinion are understood, a technique can be developed which, with the correct appraisal of the specific problem and the specific audience, can and has been used effectively in such widely different situations as changing the attitudes of whites toward Negroes in America, changing the buying habits of American women from felt hats to velvet, silk, and straw hats, changing the impression which the American electorate has of its President, introducing new musical instruments, and a variety of others”.[5] And again: “To create and to change public opinion it is necessary to understand human motives, to know what special interests are represented by a given population, and to realize the function and limitations of the physical organs of approach to the public”.[6]

One can understand the inherent force of propaganda and manipulation by revisiting the steps of the impressive campaign that Bernays organized to convince women to smoke, a campaign known as “the Torches of Freedom”.

During 1928 George Washington Hill, President of the American Tobacco Company, realized that cigarette sales, although flourishing, were reaching only half of all possible clients, since smoking was barred to the female world. Breaking that taboo would represent an enormous increase in revenue. Bernays, on the basis of an in-depth analysis which explored what cigarettes could represent in the minds of women and thus on what message to hinge the propaganda machine – aided in this by psychoanalyst Abraham Arden Brill –, decided to present the choice to smoke as a gesture of self-determination and, thus, a female challenge to male power. So on 31 March 1929, at the end of the traditional Easter Day Parade in New York City, a very crowded event with great media coverage, he decided that a young woman by the name of Bertha Hunt would step out of the parade at an agreed signal and would publically light a cigarette. Another 10 or so women would follow this action, all screaming “Torches of freedom”. The media, which had been conveniently, “confidentially” warned by Bernays himself, were there in mass waiting for the flagrant act of rebellion by the feminists who were glorying in their own rights. Thirty years later, Bernays, after becoming aware of the damage provoked by smoking, publically apologized to the female world.

Edward Bernays is considered one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. He became the most powerful Public Relator of America and in addition to working with the principal companies, he collaborated at the top levels of the political world with great expertise and incredible ability. Yet he operated with rather blunt weapons compared to those of our times. On propaganda he said:?“Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind… ”

He acted and elaborated his own tactics by using a spirit of observation, personal intuition and a rare feel for mass psychology. All elements which today have a rather marginal weight, and which have been supplanted by the wide-ranging collection of information, so much so that the role of the analyst in flesh and bone has been taken over by what we call the “informer”, or rather the Big Data corporations.

Up until a little while ago, the analysis and usage of data collected by the Big Data studios were principally geared toward the identification and profiling of clients as potential sales prospects, that is to say a preponderance of information linked to publicity and advertising. Today we have to consider instead that the enormous mountain of data collected pertaining to our persons and shared on the web traces the contours and the essence of our personalities, so much so that various studies have catalogued the phenomenon. There was even one conducted recently by the University of Cambridge[7] which attests that at the 10th “like” the software knows us better than a colleague, at the 150th “like”, more than our parents or siblings and beyond the 300th “like”, almost more than we profess to know ourselves. Which means surrendering our most intimate natures to third parties. It is as if, after years of analysis, our psychologist delivers up traces of our deepest vulnerabilities and most secret aspirations to external salespeople or hucksters.[8]

To simplify, we can say that in addition to the wall of Plato’s cave, which is nothing but our computer screen, there is another intruder, a spy: the “informer”, who lives hidden and sleeping in our keyboards. It reads and records our innermost feelings and all our reactions when we type or visit sites or interact on the Net. It spies and communicates all this information to the director. So great is the power and impact of this data harvesting that a new term has been coined which says it all: “datacracy”.

It has been proven that the plethora of information extrapolated from our actions by specific algorithms is merged in an immense archive which, conveniently processed, can make our consciousness vulnerable, or even better, permeable. All because those who hold that information have a real power to interfere and influence the direction of our choices.

Despite not having similar instruments available to him, Edward Bernays had already understood that an impact like that could occur only if it became widespread, a form of public contamination so to speak. And emotional contamination is well-rooted in the echo-chamber of the web, especially on social platforms.

In this context, the particular aspect of fake news represents another problem. There certainly exists the problems associated with spreading false information. However, by its very nature, it is possible to reveal it as so or strip it of power by means of providing reliable counter-information and therefore providing a useful counterbalance on the free web. The time required for this process might be long, and even dangerously long in some situations, but with the availability of multiple sources of free information, doubts would emerge sooner or later and as a consequence a piece of incorrect information would eventually be uncovered as such.

In reality, the greater danger would actually seem to be more subtle and insidious. Just think of the algorithm which regulates the?News Feed?on Facebook, that is to say the flow of information which appears when logging on. This includes the posts of some friends, “likes”, and in general, a listing of all personal activities. Such an algorithm is independent and produces a “skimming” of that data which, on the basis of one’s own interactive profile, is identified as the most relevant to the user’s profile; the process daily filters an average of 1500 possible “stories” per person and all of it is constantly updated.[9]

It must be considered, moreover, that in addition to this complex system of interaction, there is also the recourse to artificial intelligence:?machine learningenables the system to identify and record user preferences to build an even better, more tailored?News Feed.

The data undergoes “gatekeeping”, that is to say a filter (or “gate”) or an independent check of the criteria which determine the first visualization of some pieces of news and the omission of others.

So, on the screen of our cave — or rather on our computer screen –, via the information released by the informer – or rather through our keyboards — and through the processing of our data by Big Data companies which identify and elaborate our expectations, tastes, hopes and vulnerabilities, the algorithm transmits information which affects us personally and which has a perceptible weight.

But the history of mankind does not change: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodies?” Juvenale would ask.

If in the control room there were the spirit and intelligence of Bernays controlling the algorithm, what might happen? Specific, predetermined news — let’s even say reliable — would be highlighted ad hoc, directed ad hoc and packaged with the right slant to generate a prejudice of opinion.

The inevitable conclusion is that the distribution of the news via digital platforms makes our system and democratic apparatus fragile. If these are effectively manipulated, they are susceptible to modifying the dynamics of public opinion.

In spite of the incredible marvel of the free and multi-source internet, a freedom which has no equal in the history of humanity, today that same system represents a privileged access to information, thus it can mean possible control over the masses and a powerful tool for propaganda. Indeed, the Net, in some ways, seems to have lost its initial shine and it seems that it is starting to evoke the idea that it is an enormous means to tame the public.

The antidote? Perhaps the same as always: freedom.

Freedom does not mean anarchy, but rather represents the fundamental founding principal of pluralism (diversity) in all fields, including that of information. Freedom which, as the antithesis of the idea of a monopoly, ensures the equilibrium of the proper counterbalances typical of a healthy society.

Freedom necessarily implies transparency, because this can flourish only where there is an ability to check and control and the public is aware of the mechanisms used. In our case, knowledge of the mechanisms which generate the suggestions that the net algorithm selects. Just like the margins of error in that random calculation must be intelligible.

Freedom also requires providing information to the public until it is possible to adequately manage the privacy of personal data and understand its power and the correct way to manage it.

It is both the honor and duty of the legislator to formulate norms which regulate data protection, guarantee plurality, democracy and opportune transparence, so that we all might live better in our society. But, in truth, it is definitely complicated to establish both ethical and legal boundaries for the use of private data because of its intangible nature. That is without mentioning that it is also not so simple to identify the institutional jurisdiction for this process. At this stage, therefore, it is good that everyone has felt struck by the need to stay alert and watch.

The alibi of fake news, the alibi of the just right to copyright protection, the alibi of the defense against the infiltration of the manipulation of electoral campaigns and so on, in fact, provide an opening for invisible hands to reach out to control information and, in fact, no longer safeguard plurality.

A report released in 2018 by Freedom House, an independent organization for the spreading of freedom and democracy in the world,[10] contains recommendations for greater monitoring of the real freedom of the net[11] and we must share the unconditional warning of its President, Michael J. Abramowitz: “Democracy is facing its most serious crisis in decades. Democracy’s basic tenets — including guarantees of free and fair elections, the rights of minorities, freedom of the press, and the rule of law — are under siege around the world”.[12]

… and before he has gotten sufficiently accustomed to the surrounding darkness, he is compelled in courts or elsewhere to contest about the shadows of the just or the representations of which they are the shadows, and to dispute about the way these things are understood by men who have never seen justice itself? (Plato,?Republic, Book VII, 517 d-e)

Giovanni Perani

[1] Plato,?Republic, Book VI, 509d-511e. For a concise explanation of the Theory of the Line, please see https://btfp.sp.unipi.it/dida/resp/ar01s34.xhtml

[2] For a brief profile of Edward Louis Bernays, refer to I. Colonna and L. Ribezzo,?Le Tecniche di Manipolazione dell’Opinione Pubblica e la Propaganda, inhttps://www.unisalento.it/documents/20152/224009/Bernays-Propaganda.pdf/101d9cb2-18cd-de60-45f3-ca3d9db28c03?version=1.0&download=true

[3] P. Meyer Mazur, in “Harward Business Review”, 1927. On the same theme, see also G. Lubin, There’s a Staggering Conspiracy behind the Rise of Consumer Culture, in https://www.businessinsider.com/birth-of-consumer-culture-2013-2?IR=T

[4] See W. Lippmann,?Public Opinion, 1922. Reissue Suzeteo Enterprises (ed.), 2018.

[5] Edward L. Bernays, Abstract to?Manipulating Public Opinion: The Why and the How, in “American Journal of Sociology”, vol. XXXIII, n. 6, May 1928, pp. 958–971. Consultable at https://media.leeds.ac.uk/papers/pmt/exhibits/1054/Bernays.pdf

[6]?Ibidem.

[7] See https://www.universita.it/cambridge-facebook-like-privacy/

[8] See (da cambiare con il link all’articolo in inglese) https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/big-data-libertà-informazione-giovanni-perani/

[9] On the transformation through the years of Facebook’s algorithm, called EdgeRank, see, for example, https://www.dolabschool.com/2017/12/algoritmo-facebook-novita/

[10] https://freedomhouse.org/about-us

[11] See Freedom House,?Freedom in the World 2018: Democracy in Crisis, available at https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/01042018_FINAL_PressRelease_FIW2018.pdf

[12] At https://freedomhouse.org/article/democracy-crisis-freedom-house-releases-freedom-world-2018