But They Were All of Them Deceived
DT Stories... The Three Illusions of Social Media
We are approaching year two of Know Curtains! From the start, we have wrestled with describing what exactly this is. It’s a publication and newsletter, but we also make videos. We track news, but we also provide insight. We’ve produced an online course and dabbled in live-streaming and webinars. Since it’s a little bit of everything, we’re going to call it a “tech knowledge hub.”
The name, Know Curtains, is a nod to the Wizard of Oz with a primary focus on the curtains that mask the machines built for us lowly end-users. If we can at least recognize the illusions, we can confidently navigate the online world from a position of power instead of fear… even if we don’t fully understand the wizard’s motivation or how the machine works.
I used to manage multiple social media accounts for non-profits, businesses, and faith communities. The more I immersed myself in that world, the more I recognized not just how the platforms functioned, but how they tricked us into spending more time on their apps. That was a huge impetus for starting this tech knowledge hub, and we are committed to revealing those curtains. It reminds me of how Sauron distributed awe-inducing rings of power, that everyone blindly accepted, but as we discovered, “they were all of them deceived.”
Jill wrote about not being too hard on yourself when it comes to screen time. If you missed it, I recommend you backtrack and read it. I want to expand on that idea just a little by giving you some insight on our first online course, Driver’s Training for Social Media. Social media defined as ALL types of user interaction supported by a website, video host, game, chat service, email provider, app, forum or blog platform.
We often cover the three goals of the course:
Know Your Vehicle: Discover how screens and social media are wired against us.
Find Your Compass: Learn a digital communication standard that lasts a lifetime.
Choose Your Path: Establish guiding principles with a media plan for you and your family.
But we don’t often talk about how the course is structured to tackle the first goal. The first three modules of the course focus on the three curtains, or illusions, of social media.
The Curtain of Reality: How in just one generation society has shifted to disembodied communication, a shadow of real world relationships.
The Curtain of Free: How tech companies make money with our data.
The Curtain of Control: The tricks platforms use to keep us glued to screens.
The fourth module is practical recommendations for each of those curtains. That’s why we always emphasize the online world is wired against us. It’s similar to how food manufacturers put sugar in almost EVERYTHING. It keeps us coming back for more. These illusions are also the basis for the inversely considered guiding principles of Know Curtains.
For the Curtain of Reality, Humanity: The digital world must always point back to the real world.
For the Curtain of Free, Privacy: Our data is our own.
For the Curtain of Control, Autonomy: Are we in the back seat or driver’s seat?
And the final principle, Integrity: Which contrasts the curtain, or illusion, of intelligence we’ll address in the upcoming Driver’s Training for AI.
In the coming months, we’ll expound these principles with recommendations on how they can inform technology adoption.
We’ve got a lot of great free resources, so spread the word and consider supporting us with a paid subscription. A $5 monthly or $49 annual subscription opens up commentary, live broadcasts, exclusive posts, and chat. A $149 “Behind the Curtains” subscription gets you unrestricted access to everything we produce, including online courses. Thanks for following along with us! Cheers!