Digital Tsunami: Big Tech, Big A.I., Big Brother
(Canada, 84 min.)
Dir. Fred Peabody
What might Marshall McLuhan say if he were alive and on the Twitterfeed? One can only imagine what the scholar and media guru would do in the age of social media. To Tweet or not to Tweet, that is the question. On one hand, social media might have a level of sanity if intelligent voices like McLuhan broke through the endless stream of vitriol, cat videos, and serial narcissism. On the other, seeing McLuhan latch onto a trending topic to score a point might spell the end of days.
Digital Tsunami: Big Tech, Big A.I., Big Brother examines the prescient nature of McLuhan’s writing. The University of Toronto professor, perhaps best known for his adage “the medium is the message,” predicted that the form of delivery is as important as the words themselves. That’s social media in a nutshell. But when the Hawk Tuah girl perhaps resembles one of the biggest success stories of the digital age, McLuhan’s foresight indicates how little humans have failed to harness the tools at their disposal for public good.
Director Fred Peabody (All Governments Lie, The Corporate Coup d’État) brings his signature journalistic rigour to timely examination of the ills of social media. The straightforward doc positions audiences in a digital dystopia with hopes to inspire an awakening. The film doesn’t insist audiences unplug and go analogue. Rather, it captures everyday stories to illustrate just how pervasively social media and technology have robbed humans of their agency. This film offers a call to collectively hit the override button.
Digital Tsunami finds a surrogate for the audience in American journalist Phillip Martin. The reporter from Boston public radio admits that McLuhan’s writing is fairly new to him, but their impact strikes hard for words penned in the 1960s. Martin keeps McLuhan’s arguments alive as he interviews ordinary people to learn about the digital divide. One family shares how they can’t perform basic functions of daily life, like paying bills, because they don’t have access to the internet. The mother adds that her son can’t attend classes anymore now that courses are online—unless he makes a trip to the local library. Even then, he often sits outside to use the free WiFi because social services like library open hours are being rolled back.
These conversations somewhat reorient McLuhan’s work, which lost some perspective with shifting context over time. (McLuhan’s cameo from Annie Hall underscores this point humorously in the film.) For example, some experts refer to McLuhan’s concept of the “global village.” They stress that it doesn’t evoke the sense of togetherness implied by the “worldwide” nature of the web. Instead of a global group hub, they say, it means that heightened media use makes everyone subject to global gossip. Just look to the Twitter mob for a contemporary equivalent to the Salem witch trials.
The talking heads, encompassing a mix of philosophers, educators, and concerned parents alike, discuss how the shift online has changed things IRL. Young people can’t converse properly as their constant engagement with algorithms and bots condition them to expect conflict-free exchanges of affirmations. One professor illuminates the issue by stressing how her students openly admit that they’d rather seek advice from a chat bot because it’s too uncomfortable to speak with her in person.
Peabody and the experts have a good sense of humour about this, as McLuhan doubtlessly would too. Digital Tsunami references many films that have harnessed McLuhan’s philosophy as technology evolved from the “idiot box” of television to the brain drain of A.I. Movies like Spike Jonze’s Her illustrate how what once was speculative now serves as reality. People have stronger relationships with their phones and operating systems that they do with their siblings and partners. Scarlett Johansson’s Samantha, meanwhile, serves as the surrogate that the students of the above mentioned prof might favour: she’s programmed to say what people want, an algorithmic design to inform and affirm, but not engage.
The film’s exploration of A.I. proves both timely and productive. The immediate implications of tools like Chat GPT raise concerns of media literacy and the ability to discern real from fake. With Peabody’s All Governments Lie sounding the alarm about the era of fake news in 2016, chillingly grasping what was about to unfold in a film that predated Trump’s election, it’s really quite alarming to see just how quickly the field has accelerated.
Peabody’s doc offers a chilling illustration of the pervasive nature that screens hold. Even in one early scene, a talking head makes a point about Times Square being a bustling environment with a dizzying array of screens advertising new products to passersby. But just look closely at the people who walk by in the background: nobody’s looking at all the gaudy billboards in Times Square because they’re all focused on their personal screens.
Digital Tsunami gives audiences reason to be concerned. New interviews and excerpts from recent hearings see leaders in the field of AI startled by the rapid pace at which the algorithms evolve. Inquiries into Facebook and Instagram underscore the toll that these algorithms take on users, especially young ones, as the flood of images inspires unhealthy addictive behaviour. If TV shows from the 1980s and ’90s gave kids harmful ideas about body image, the tsunami of desirable bods in the social feed completely reframes ideas of self-worth for young people today. Meanwhile, the stream of hateful rhetoric and sensational images amid perilous doomscrolling inspires significant increases in depression and anxiety.
Propulsive editing keeps Digital Tsunami brisk and engaging as it covers lots of terrain from the panopticon and political interference. It’s not all A.I. fearmongering, though. The film sees some social media titans in the hot seat, which reminds audiences that artificial intelligence is a product of human intelligence. People can correct a problem they created. The film reminds audiences of one power that humans hold above the bots: empathy. It’s a good prompt that emotional intelligence trumps artificial intelligence.
