We Have Spent the Decade Letting Our Tech Define Us. It's out of Control. P4-5
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Community Community The Embassy Junoon, of Georgia Pakistani P7 donates over P16 rock band, 70 various range is all set to perform in of genre books to Doha at Qatar National Qatar University’s Convention Centre (QU) Library. (QNCC) on January 30. Monday, January 13, 2020 Jumada I 18, 1441 AH Doha today: 120 - 200 State of unease COVER STORY We have spent the decade letting our tech define us. It’s out of control. P4-5 BOLLYWOOD HOLLYWOOD Deepika’s JNU visit ‘a PR How to watch the 2020 stunt gone wrong’? Oscar nominations today. Page 14 Page 15 2 GULF TIMES Monday, January 13, 2020 COMMUNITY ROUND & ABOUT PRAYER TIME Fajr 5am Shorooq (sunrise) 6.23am Zuhr (noon) 11.43am Asr (afternoon) 2.44pm Maghreb (sunset) 5.05pm Isha (night) 6.35pm USEFUL NUMBERS Tanhaji SYNOPSIS: Based on the life of Tanaji Malusare, a 17th- DIRECTION: Om Raut century Maharashtrian Marathi military leader. CAST: Saif Ali Khan, Ajay Devgn, Kajol THEATRES: Royal Plaza, Landmark, The Mall Emergency 999 Worldwide Emergency Number 112 Kahramaa – Electricity and Water 991 Local Directory 180 International Calls Enquires 150 Hamad International Airport 40106666 Labor Department 44508111, 44406537 Mowasalat Taxi 44588888 Qatar Airways 44496000 Hamad Medical Corporation 44392222, 44393333 Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation 44845555, 44845464 Primary Health Care Corporation 44593333 44593363 Qatar Assistive Technology Centre 44594050 Qatar News Agency 44450205 44450333 Q-Post – General Postal Corporation 44464444 Humanitarian Services Offi ce (Single window facility for the repatriation of bodies) Ministry of Interior 40253371, 40253372, 40253369 Ministry of Health 40253370, 40253364 Stand Up in the Keerthi’s friend’s gatherings and through which she get Hamad Medical Corporation 40253368, 40253365 DIRECTION: Vidhu Vincent introduced to Keerthi’s brother Amal and his friends Jeevan Qatar Airways 40253374 CAST: Nimisha Sajayan, Arjun Asokan, Rajisha Vijayan and Sujith. Diya and Amal become lover interests eventually. SYNOPSIS: Diya and Keerthi are friends. Keerthi is an This changes everything for everybody in the group. aspiring stand-up comedian and she is trying to fi nd some opportunities for her shows. Diya becomes a regular presence THEATRES: The Mall, Landmark, Royal Plaza te Unqu uo ot Q “Find e ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.” – Emily Dickinson Community Editor For movie timings and Kamran Rehmat further details please scan e-mail: [email protected] the QR code above with your Telephone: 44466405 mobile phone camera or visit qatarcinemas.com Fax: 44350474 Monday, January 13, 2020 GULF TIMES 3 ROUND & ABOUT COMMUNITY WHEN: January 15 – July 1 school includes Group Music lessons, Hip- TIME: 6:30pm – 9pm hop, Ballet, Drawing and Painting, Drama Get trained by experts to be a good speaker. Theatre & Taekwondo. Ages between 5 and 10 Smedley Toastmasters is conducting a years old after school hours six-month speech-craft programme that teaches new members to speak confi dently and develop leadership skills. For more information, 66053485, 33232490 or visit www.SmedleyToastmasters.org Shop Qatar 2020 WHERE: Malls in Qatar WHEN: Ongoing till January 31 TIME: Entire day The Colour Run 2020 water sports, Winter Dragon Boat Festival Shop Qatar has something for everyone, WHERE: QNCC is back to show us their fast rowing skills. including beauty masterclasses, fashion WHEN: January 25 Dragon boating is a canoe-sport and was shows, shopping off ers, mall activities and TIME: 7am – 10pm originally a traditional festival game dating shows, raffl e draws, and Chinese New Year Your Health First is a fi ve-kilometre, back 2,000 years throughout Southern celebrations. untimed event. At each kilometre mark, China. It has now become a popular sport Colour Runners are doused from head to toe with competitions held around the world. in a diff erent coloured powder. Participants wear white at the starting line and fi nish the race plastered in colour. Once the 5k is over, the fun continues at the Finish Festival, a larger-than-life party equipped with music, dancing, photo ops, activity booths, vendors, and more massive colour throws, which create millions of vivid colour combinations. Gems and Jewels Exhibition WHERE: Museum of Islamic Art WHEN: Ongoing till January 18 TIME: 9am onwards After School Activities The exhibition comes in celebration of WHERE: Atelier the Qatar-India 2019 Year of Culture and WHEN: Ongoing presents a look at magnifi cent gems and Music and arts activities for students jewellery from India. Set in Stone: Gems and taking place after they fi nish their day in Jewels from Royal Indian Courts showcases more than 100 pieces from across Qatar Metro Street Food Museums’ (QM) collections, including many WHERE: DECC Metro Station Sonu Nigam Live in Qatar masterpieces that have never been displayed WHEN: Ongoing WHERE: Asian Town Amphitheatre before. TIME: 12:30pm WHEN: January 23 Street Food is the ideal venue for a leisure TIME: 7:30pm onwards experience for the whole family off ering over Back by popular demand, Sonu Nigam, returns to wow his fans once again in a one-night only 20 dine-in options and 18-hole World Mini- concert. Presented by Q-Tickets the event is part of Shop Qatar Festival and under the aegis of Golf setup. Qatar National Tourism Council. Sonu Nigam has sung over 10,000 songs in diff erent languages and have received over 40 mainstream awards. Winter Dragon Boat Festival 2020 WHERE: Museum of Islamic Art WHEN: January 24 Public Speaking Classes for Adults Row, paddle, hurry up! Qatar’s largest WHERE: Sharq Capital, C-Ring Road Compiled by Nausheen Shaikh. E-mail: [email protected], Events and timings subject to change 4 GULF TIMES Monday, January 13, 2020 COMMUNITY COVER STORY Functional chaos Technology has grown from some devices and platforms we use to an entire environment in which we function, writes Douglas Rushkoff e may come to remember this the building, or are themselves oblivious to decade as the one when human their impact on our collective wellbeing. Just beings fi nally realised we are up because the public is fi nally ready to hear about against something. We’re just these tech industry shenanigans doesn’t mean not quite sure what it is. they are still relevant. We can’t even blame WMore of us have come to understand that our capitalism, anymore. The quest for exponential digital technologies are not always bringing out returns may have fuelled the development of our best natures. People woke up to the fact that extractive and addictive technologies, but the our digital platforms are being coded by people cultural phenomena they gave birth to now have who don’t have our best interests at heart. This a life of their own. is the decade when, fi nally, the “tech backlash” began. Diff erent worlds But it’s a little late. What this decade’s critiques miss is that Shoshana Zuboff recently published her over the past 10 years, our tech has grown from comprehensive Surveillance Capitalism to some devices and platforms we use to an entire deserved acclaim, but the book is really about environment in which we function. We don’t some decisions that Google was making twenty “go online” by turning on a computer and years ago to harvest our data and sell it to dialling up through a modem; we live online ‘ advertisers. The Center for Humane Technology 24/7, creating data as we move through our has called attention to the way that the lives, accessible to everyone and everything. manipulative techniques of behavioural fi nance Our smartphones are not devices that sit in our In Programmed or Be Programmed, have been embedded in our apps — bringing us pockets; they create new worlds with new rules all up to speed on the science of captology and about our availability, intimacies, appearance I argued that we have to understand addiction, circa 1999. and privacy. Apple, Twitter and Google are not These are necessary critiques, but they’re too just technology services we use, but staples in the platforms on which we’re focused on the good old days, when the business our retirement portfolios, on whose continued working and living, or we’re more plans of a few bad actors and the designs of success our fi nancial futures depend. some manipulative technologies could be At this point, the digital environment is no likely to be used by technology than identifi ed as the “cause” of our collective woes. more the result of a series of choices made by That’s really only half, or less than half, of the technology developers, as it is the underlying to be the users controlling it story. It’s blaming the developers, the CEOs, the cause of those choices. What happened to us shareholders, or even individual apps, programs in the 2010s wasn’t just that we were being and platforms for our predicament, when most surveilled, but that all that data was being used — Douglas Rushkoff, digital expert ’ of these players have either long since left to customise everything we saw and did online. Monday, January 13, 2020 GULF TIMES 5 COVER STORY COMMUNITY We were being shaped into who the But now we are resurrecting data said we were. The net you see obsolete visions of nationalism, and the one I see are diff erent. Your false memories of a glorious past, Google search results are diff erent and the anything-goes values of than mine, your news feeds are reality TV. We are promoting a diff erent and your picture of the spectator democracy o n digital world is diff erent. platforms, and, in the process, As the decade began and social we are giving life to paranoid media took over society, many nightmares of doom and gloom, people tried to call attention invasion and catastrophe, to digital technology’s more replacement and extinction.