Within a year, much of the world has adopted the norm of wearing masks to protect against the Covid-19 pandemic. Notwithstanding the political jostling that such face coverings have come to represent, it has become a social norm driven by circumstance.
Scholars have undertaken extensive work on the life cycle of norms to demonstrate how they cascade into society and eventually become internalised.
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But to what extent does technology have a normative function – the power to shape human behaviour and deliver real-world consequences? In the absence of robust safeguards and in states with fragile democracies, could Africa become a testing ground for tech-enabled social engineering? Shaping norms or beliefs, governing how we vote, who we love and stirring up existing ethnic or religious cleavages?
Within a year, much of the world has adopted the norm of wearing masks to protect against the Covid-19 pandemic. Notwithstanding the political jostling that such face coverings have come to represent, it has become a social norm driven by circumstance.
Scholars have undertaken extensive work on the life cycle of norms to demonstrate how they cascade into society and eventually become internalised.
But to what extent does technology have a normative function – the power to shape human behaviour and deliver real-world consequences? In the absence of robust safeguards and in states with fragile democracies, could Africa become a testing ground for tech-enabled social engineering? Shaping norms or beliefs, governing how we vote, who we love and stirring up existing ethnic or religious cleavages?
THE STANDARD By
Frankline Sunday |
March 16th 2021 at 06:00:00 GMT +0300
Six years ago, Alice Njeri Maina was shocked to find her name listed at a credit reference bureau for defaulting on a loan she never took.
The account was registered under her son’s name. A puzzled Njeri, therefore, visited her bank’s Nakuru branch to follow up on the issue. The bank promised to investigate.
Unknown to her, another borrower with an identical name and an account at the same bank had taken a loan in 2011, which was in arrears for Sh167,000. Njeri’s name had been mistakenly listed at the CRB for four years.