Storytime: A stranger comes to town

I tend to think in stories or narratives. It’s my way of making sense of what seems to be an increasingly nonsensical world.

Thinking in stories is hard-wired into us; it’s a critical human survival mechanism. Understanding stories and what they mean is at the heart of human adaptation and development.

A stranger has come to our town, a stranger seeking money and power. We have seen strangers before, but this stranger brings even more amazing new toys, capturing our attention, then stealing our data, our information, our writing, our photos, our music and art, our work and our lifestyle choices. This stranger is making obscene profits from their theft by selling who we are to people and companies that specialise in telling us what we need, or, worse, by exposing or exploiting our own vulnerabilities to gain attention from others.

Time for a story.

I recently attended the launch of brand-new fences around my local tennis club. One of my roles as a committee member was to meet and greet the local politician who had supported our fence funding submission and was coming to celebrate our club’s achievements.

During our conversation, I asked the politician what they noticed when they looked around.

There were about 80 people gathered in our grounds and on our four tennis courts. Some were playing tennis, there was a fastest serve competition, a barbecue, a coffee machine; a few older teenagers were coaching a larger group of children. There were vibrant huddles of young people, families, older adults in chairs, children running around, a scene we would all be familiar with.

The politician said, "What am I looking for?” I asked her how many mobile phones she saw. She looked again. Not one person was on a phone. She smiled and passed me her mobile phone, saying, “Do you mind looking after this for me for the next hour?”

When I think about the work of charities and community groups, how we describe our work, our value, I think we often underplay the real benefit we provide in promoting and encouraging the sharing of our stories. I’m not sure what the monetary value of such interactions is, or how they inform policy or practice, but I know they build understanding, connection, trust, compassion, belonging, care. For most of us, these are the essential elements of a meaningful life.

I also know that in telling the stories of entrapment and exploitation by big tech we can provide strong support to our eSafety Commissioner and groups like the Alannah and Madeline Foundation. The battle to retain some limitations on the exploitation of the vulnerable by big tech is clearly a David and Goliath struggle.

We can all help in our own way, including acknowledging the small but significant policy gains we do manage to make. This week, the eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, registered six new codes under the Online Safety Act, designed to limit the growing number of children accessing harmful content online. "Having worked in the technology sector for 22 years, I know what they're capable of," she told ABC TV’s 7.30 program. "Not a single one of them is doing everything they can to stop the most heinous of abuse to children being tortured and raped."

We can all enjoy our tech but still insist on guardrails and limits around companies and what they promote and profit from.

We can model and teach responsible use of technology in our own lives and in our organisations.

In a world where attention has become a commodity, we can promote attention on the moments of real connection and insight, the things that do matter in the lives of our communities. We can provide alternative platforms for unfiltered, unmonitored, person to person interactions and storytelling.

The story of the stranger who comes to town always ends with a major change, a new state of normal, a new way of seeing or being, a new beginning of one kind or another.

Technology is changing the world we live in, as it often has. And the new technology we are grappling with today will be superseded by even bigger changes we will need to deal with – not just in relation to online safety but as AI and quantum computing evolve beyond our imagination. All these changes will affect how we communicate, the way we use data and information, and the tools we use to relate to each other.

As charities and community groups, we have a critical role to play in shaping what a changed world looks like. The best way to do that is by telling our stories, connecting people and communities to opportunity, support, and each other.

We will achieve the kind of world we want to live in only if we work together to ensure that exploitation for profit is not the dominant driver of our response to the stranger in town.

David Crosbie has been CEO of the Community Council for Australia for the past decade and has spent more than a quarter of a century leading significant not-for-profit organisations, including the Mental Health Council of Australia, the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia, and Odyssey House Victoria.