URSABLOG: Continuing The Conversation

The unravelling of globalisation seems to continue to gather pace. Everywhere you look, there are signs of fragmentation as world trade fractures into different blocs. China has announced it will phase out US chips from Intel and AMD in government servers and computers. This follows on from the US banning the export of certain types of chips to China, on security grounds. China also wants to ban Windows and other foreign based software in favour of home-grown solutions.

To those with longer memories, and in particular those who have visited China and found that WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger don’t work, have long been accustomed to the effects of the Great Firewall put in place – and strengthened – to keep out unfavourable content from Chinese computers. It seems a long way from the hopes of those who preached that the internet would break down all barriers and create a global utopian technology driven democracy.

Not that social media is a good thing anyway. In what has been brilliantly described as ‘enshittification’ by Cory Doctorow, the decay of quality on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the like, is apparent: most of the content is swamped by inappropriate advertisements or sponsored feeds. Do I look like the kind of man that wants to play stupid games promoted as “great ways to eat time” or are “totally addictive”? Wasting time and addiction are not my life goals.

But there is an end in sight, thankfully. As Doctorow points out:

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It’s not just a way to say “things are getting worse”, though, of course, it’s fine with me if you want to use it that way…. But in case you want to be more precise, let’s examine how enshittification works. It’s a three-stage process: first, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, there is a fourth stage: they die.

So all the angst about social media changing the minds of our children may be a waste of energy. Facebook has long ceased to be the platform of choice for younger people, Instagram – which I am fond of – seems to be morphing into an ad laden copy of TikTok. TikTok – which I don’t use – is in the news because of ownership issues (the US doesn’t want it to be owned by Chinese interests, which means that the US wants to control the means of poisoning of their childrens’ minds). It doesn’t matter – they are all going to die. Facebook offers a Messenger only subscription, WhatsApp is the group chat forum of choice as Viber disintegrates into an unusable as laden messaging mess. There will be a point when some – or all of them – will disappear from use, because people will no longer have to be on them.

My feeling is that universal platforms will become a thing of the past, as people reassess where they get their information from. The good news is that importance of Facebook and others influencing elections will recede. The bad news is that most people are not interested in the news anyway, and don’t care. But this has always been the case.

One of the things pushing back against the global dominance of the social media giants is boredom and irrelevance. There was a time – in my memory – when newspapers were sold (and bought), and the media was restricted to television and radio. We now get our news – if we want it at all – from various websites that we pick and choose for different things. We can advertise who we are and what we are doing on Instagram and the like, but opinions – especially detestable ones – seem to me at least to be rarer on social media, as people realise that their power to influence and offend is restricted by people choosing just not to pay any attention to those trying to influence and offend. They can just ignore it. This is the beginning of the end of a certain trend, those of the influencers, living their best lives. So what? Let them live them. I’ll carry on doing my own thing.

I have noticed that people seem to have been somewhat burnt by their use of social media – I know I have – as time has gone on, and are not exposing themselves as much to the world. This in its way mirrors the fragmentation of globalisation. People, companies, societies, countries are less ready to make statements that can be easily misunderstood. They prefer to say nothing. Ghosting is not just a social media phenomenon, it is becoming a global strategy.

The problem is however that when something does happen of importance only the interested pay attention, but doing so means keeping an eye on multiple sources of news and information. The fact that all the United Nations Security Council unanimously condemned in the strongest possible terms the Houthi attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea, including the recent attack on True Confidence seems to have passed me by, and I do not consider myself as one who avoids the news.

For those of you who were also unaware, the Council called “for practical cooperation, including with the Government of Yemen, to prevent the Houthis from acquiring the arms and related materiel necessary to carry out further attacks and reiterated that all Member States must adhere to their obligations in regard to the targeted arms embargo.”

They demanded that all Houthi attacks against commercial and merchant vessels traversing the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden cease immediately, in accordance with international law and consistent with resolution 2722 (2024). They also reaffirmed that the exercise of navigational rights and freedoms by merchant and commercial vessels of all States transiting the Red Sea and Baab al-Mandab, in accordance with international law, must be respected.

“Towards that end, the Council members warned against the impact of the 4 March Houthi decision purporting to require ships obtain a permit from their ‘Maritime Affairs Authority’ before entering Yemeni waters on the freedom of commercial navigation and humanitarian operations, including into Yemen.”

This is welcome news, especially when you consider that the five permanent members of the Council are China, France, Russia, the UK and the US, countries not known to agree on most things in the world. Whether anyone takes any notice of this remains to be seen, as other reports suggest that Russian and Chinese ships and cargoes have been given the right to pass by the Houthis without molestation, although mistakes have been made. But the language is pretty clear none the less.

If the world does seem to be breaking up, it just goes to show how successful and deeply integrated globalisation became. If the life cycle of social media giants seems to be reaching and end, and with the advent of Artificial Intelligence hard upon us, it also goes to show how profound an influence on us it has had. I have colleagues and students who have not lived in a world without the internet. We talk different languages sometimes.

This leads to even bigger – if less noticeable – problems. If the world is disintegrating into smaller parts, then our abilities as societies to connect with each other and function together are also under threat. If we all get our news from different sources, how will consensus be reached?

I don’t know, but I know I am at least fortunate. I live in Greece, and I work in the shipping industry, the world’s first and most important global industry. In both Greece and in shipping, conversations take place on a daily basis, and information is shared, processed and acted on because of these conversations and not despite them. These conversations do sometimes involve messaging applications like WhatsApp, SKYPE, Messenger, ICE and so on, but the most fundamental decisions, and the most important actions are made based on physical conversations, by voice. We will have evidence of this in June during Posidonia, when thousands of shipping professionals from around the world will descend on us to have conversations, at the exhibition, at forums, at receptions, at parties.

I consider myself fortunate that despite the best efforts to change the conservative, secretive and backward nature of shipping – at least this is how the techies have labelled us – we continue to thrive and grow by physically connecting the world. The era of social media, and the power of those that enabled it, seems to be passing. In the meantime, I see no reason whatsoever not to continue the conversation, in whatever form that takes. It could well be the future.

Simon Ward