The Digital Human

One of the major criticisms of social media is that it's disconnecting us, as individuals, from society and from real physical interactions.

But if a key element of 'tribe' is communication and connectivity then the digital world arguably holds unlimited bounds for tribes.

Mumsnet for instance has changed how we view mums as a social group. While marketers and advertisers may have seen them as a target market, they probably never thought they would be an ever-connected all-powerful tribe who could even make politicians quiver in their boots.

In this weeks' episode of The Digital Human, Aleks Krotoski asks if rather than separating us, the digital world is helping us revive old tribal connections.

If the internet has heralded the death of distance, what do these new kind of tribes look like? And do we relate to each other in different ways now that so much of our lives are lived online?

Contributors: zoologist Desmond Morris; author of The Patter Michael Munro; academic and journalist Meredith Clark; internet activist Ethan Zuckerman and digital anthropologists Daniel Miller and Elisabetta Costa.

Producer: Caitlin Smith.

There's nothing more human that adapting a tool to make your life better, it's the rationale behind every innovation. Aleks Krotoski explores how our digital tools can be reinvented in powerful ways by individuals seeking a better life. Whether it's how smuggled USB sticks filled with content from the outside world inspire North Koreans to defect to the south, or the way a single photo of woman running with her hair flowing inspires a campaign against compulsory Islamic dress in Iran. What ties these stories together is hope. And it's the hope that the world can be made better that makes us look to the tools we have and how they might be re-purposed to make that a reality.

In this episode of The Digital Human Aleks Krotoski asks if social media is creating a new era of shame. Psychotherapist Aaron Balick explains how shame needs a witness in order to be felt, we need to be able to see our selves through the eyes of another. If we break a social norm we are made to feel shame. Shame is a powerful emotion that can control our behaviour and infiltrate every aspect of our lives, influencing the way we live. Seraphina Ferraro's experience of shame went further, she found herself trapped in an abusive relationship by shame. Even after leaving Seraphina felt too ashamed to speak about what had happened. However, she discovered that the antidote to shame is empathy, others sharing their own experiences of shame has helped her in her recovery. Aleks explores the cost of shaming someone offline and online and the price of that shaming by those who have been shamed. Is technology increasing our ability to shame and how does this online shaming impact lives offline?

Produced by Kate Bissell.

For many of us the modern world is thankfully one of abundance, where we can indulge ourselves at every turn. But why is it so difficult to say when we've had enough; of foods we know aren't good for us, of TV programmes that play the next episode automatically, of the fleeting social connections we get through online platforms?

As advanced as our technological world has become our brains haven't evolved much since we lived on the African Savannah. And all the things that we sought out to survive there remain hardwired into us today. And it's the consequences of that Aleks will explore.

Some of the tricks nature plays on us go even further back in evolution. Take the humble if duplicitous Cuckoo, laying eggs in another bird's nest. When hatched the cuckoo chick's mouth is that bit wider, that bit redder than those it's sharing the nest with (should any other chicks have survived). The result is the deceived parents will feed it preferentially as the best bet for survival. That extra redness and wider gape is an example of a phenomena in animal behaviour called super normal stimuli. We encounter something we like but with its attributes boosted and we go mad for it, there numerous examples across the animal kingdom.

The difference with humans is we've learnt to super-normally stimulate ourselves; with foods with more sugar and fat than occur in nature, with images of the opposite sex carefully manipulated to make them even more arousing. We've mastered how to push our buttons and we do it, or have it done to us repeatedly.

Aleks sees how this plays out across a range of experiences from the playing of slot machines to competitive eating, to learn the tricks being played on us and how we might outsmart the tricksters.

Producer: Peter McManus.

Aleks Krotoski explores living in a digital world.

Spam and its prevention have been a driving force in the history of the internet. It's changed laws and communities, language and culture.

It comes in all shapes and forms, the most popular of which is advance fee scams. You know the drill: an agent for the widow of charitable billionaire wants to give you a share of a multi million-dollar 'inheritance'... in return for your help in getting access to it by posing as a cousin or a niece.

But this type of spam isn't just a feature of digital living; it's been around a lot longer than that.

The Digital Human traces the roots of the longest running spam scam in human history, before casting ahead to a world of intelligent spambots.

Aleks Krotoski asks if scams are symptomatic of their time, what do they tell us about now and what do they say about us?

Producer: Caitlin Smith.

From funerals to the Burning the Circle festival held every year on the Isle of Aran to surgeon's scrubbing up before an operation, Aleks explores the very human experience of rites of passage and ritual and why this very human experience can help make sense of ourselves online.

A modern day rite of passage could be getting your first mobile or social media account but do we have rituals to accompany these new keys to the adult world? And why should we need them?

Produced by Kate Bissell.

Sin eating was an age old British practice carried out by those on the fringes of their communities. When someone died the sin eater would consume a ritualistic meal over the corpse and in doing so they would take on their sins. Whether they were outcasts because of this, or to start with folklorists can't say. What is known for certain though is that they were among the poorest - who else would do it?

While the practice may have died out over a hundred years ago there is a digital equivalent. Content moderators working in huge numbers across the world are fighting a losing battle both to keep horrible images from slipping into our social media feeds but also against the harm they suffer from witnessing so much gruesomeness.

Aleks Krotoski will hear about what happens when you stare into the abyss for too long.

Producer: Peter McManus.

Aleks goes in search of silence. In our digital world has silence become harder to find, or are we looking for it in all the wrong places?

Leif Haugen is a Fire watcher who spends six months of a year stationed at Toma lookout, on a mountain in Montana. He says only fire watchers who are at peace with themselves are able to stick it out. Living in silence makes you look inwards at who you really are. Silence is the absence of something but the presence of everything.

Isobel Anderson suffers from tinnitus and at its peak felt like she was being tortured or stalked. The culprit wasn't an external sound that she could switch off; it was inside her brain. Her mind tuned into the inner electrical currents and motions that we all experience but hers never fade away. She knows there’s no such thing as silence but what she misses is being able to control her sound environment.

Jessica Vitak is a writer who lives in London and uses technology to control her sound environment. She wears noise cancelling headphones to drown out the distractions of the city but she admits it does make her shut down a little.

Dr Helen Lees is an Associate Research fellow at York St John University and she argues that being distracted by our screens means we miss out on the silent experience between people, the language of silence spoken.

Produced by Kate Bissell.

Aleks Krotoski tells the story of a film that doesn't exist and the online community convinced that it does.

We hear from people who have come together on the online site Reddit to share their memories of the film, including a former video shop worker called Don.

Many of them have very clear memories of watching Shazaam and are convinced it's disappearance is related to a strange phenomenon called The Mandela Effect, so named after the late South African activist Nelson Mandela.

We follow Don on an epic journey as he tries to uncover proof. Along the way we'll encounter conspiracy theories, alternate worlds, computer simulations and a recently deceased Australian inventor called Henry Hoke. It's going to get weird.

But what does this willingness to believe in something despite all evidence to the contrary tell us about the online world and the way communities form in the digital sphere?

Aleks speaks with anthropologist Genevieve Bell about the stories we tell; cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman and Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University Nick Bostrom. Amelia Tait of the New Statesman explains how the story of Shazaam has evolved online.

Producer: Caitlin Smith.