Have you ever wondered if your mind is being controlled? The answer most people we've asked said...is yes! In subtle ways and not so subtle ways, our minds have been known to stray away from our own rule books and fall into the hands of strangers and in some cases our own friends and families.
As freaky a thought this might seem. It's not always a dangerous thing. In fact, we even have a proper, purposeful and academic word for it “Social Engineering”.Now, social engineering is a vast ocean to explore, a rather interesting one at that. But we’ll start with a casual dig at one aspect that is a regular at most our internal discussions. The Human--and how he/she works on a social level.
A human being is actually a biological creature from birth, the inherent capacities of the child can develop only in society and a person is shaped by social influences- his/her parents, teachers, siblings, friends, partners, bosses, act as influencers, they work like social engineers and construct you into the person you are today. This means you are the average of at least five people you spend the most time with.
A Person, a social animal- This individual lives in a society, a society is nothing but a combination of many individuals, who are working and living together to exist in this world. They are like living organisms within a bigger organism, trying to make things around them better. Each with its own goals and direction. Just think of your family. Everyone at home has different likes and dislikes. And that is the beauty of it – that everyone is different and can make their own decisions. However, each one has to follow the regularities, customs and ground rules of anti-human behavior at home or the outside world. These guidelines are very important to know how humans act and interact with each other. Any irregularities can make us rethink or react!
Now, we know that biological organisms can be manipulated Like hybrid animals and plants, cloning, genetic engineering. So, manipulating a social organism is social engineering. While there are many other forms of social engineering, we will be focusing on “us”, the social animal
The idea was that modern employers/leaders needed the assistance of specialists—"social engineers"—to handle the human problems of the planet, just as they needed technical expertise (ordinary engineers) to deal with the problems of machines. The discussion of the possibility of such manipulation took off even more after World War II, with the advent of television. And discussions of techniques of social engineering, particularly in advertising, are still quite pertinent in the western model of consumer capitalism today. Social engineering can be used to achieve many objectives, as demonstrated by the different governments and other organisations that have used it.
Now, to influence popular attitudes, social behaviors:
1) We must have reliable information about the society that is to be engineered and
2) Effective tools to carry out the engineering
Both of these became easily available roughly over the last one hundred years [examples - Population data, Qualitative and quantitative techniques, Market research, tapping into the big 5 personality-OCEAN, TRPs, Big data] And both these become easily accessible to governments and large corporate.
For various reasons, the term has been seen as negative. Most law and policy do seek to change behavior and could be considered social engineering to some extent. Prohibition on murder and rape, Liquor store ban on the highway, beef eating, lovers holding hands in the public are all policies aimed at discouraging these things. It could just as easily be used for something evil as well.
In the political arena, this is called political engineering. Democracy can be questioned in such situation and it can affect the safety and survival of literally billions of people, in this scenario. For example, there are widespread theories that say that Donald Trump used certain social engineering techniques to win the election.
So, what they did was look at social media, to see what people were saying, therefore what they wanted to hear and said the exact same thing they wanted to hear. Do you realise what this means? It means, what you shared on Facebook or tweeted or said on any social platform is getting people elected to important offices.
Social engineering is an extremely powerful tool that could pretty much define our futures. To make the best decision and get similar outcomes for a sustainable society, we should definitely use advanced techniques and reliable statistical data.
For those with the question “who is controlling me?” we leave you with a quote from Voltaire - “To Learn who rules over you simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise.”
Written by Sunil Mukkath (sunilmukkath@elastictree.com)
A senior researcher at Elastic Tree. Let us know what you think about this article. Submit your queries, comments, insights at info@elastictree.com.
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