A call for imagining alternatives is a good first step. Unfortunately I
don't see the a sustainable force to implement the imagined, as
proposed. It is telling that Morozov correctly identifies problem as
political, not technical, but then invokes 'Rebel Tech' as a solution
(Morozov's 'Rebel Tech' sounds like something from Star Wars fighting
the Empire - but G. Lucas never revealed who is funding the rebels.)
The reality is more depressing - Big Tech will end when capitalism ends,
so the imagination muscle should be applied there first.
[from
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/11/big-tech-progressive-vision-silicon-valley
]
It's not enough to break up Big Tech. We need to imagine a better
alternative
Evgeny Morozov
As Facebook all but pleads guilty to a severe form of data addiction,
confessing its digital sins and promising to reinvent itself as a
privacy-worshiping denizen of the global village, the foundations of Big
Tech’s cultural hegemony appear to be crumbling. Most surprisingly, it’s
in the United States, Silicon Valley’s home territory, where they seem
to be the weakest.
Even in these times of extreme polarization, Trump, who has habitual
outbursts against censorship by social media platforms, eagerly joins
left-wing politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in
presenting Big Tech as America’s greatest menace The recent call by
Chris Hughes, Facebook’s co-founder, to break up the firm hints at
things to come.
Neither the Silicon Valley moguls nor financial markets seem to care
though. The recent decision by Warren Buffet – one of America’s most
successful but also most conservative investors –to finally invest in
Amazon is probably a better indication of wait awaits the tech giants in
the medium term: more lavish initial public offerings, more Saudi cash,
more promises to apply artificial intelligence to resolve the problems
caused by artificial intelligence.
More than a year after the Cambridge Analytical scandal, the Big Tech
debate is still mired in the same hackneyed categories of market
efficiency, tax evasion, and odious business models that had launched
it. If we are going to break up Facebook, shouldn’t we at least break it
up for reasons other than its effects on competition or consumer welfare?
The two ideological camps, despite their presumed convergence on the Big
Tech issue, are unlikely to use this debate to reinvent their own
political projects. Those on the right who hope to score electoral
points by bashing Big Tech are still mum on what their preferred
alternative future looks like. Furthermore, in as much as these
movements pine for the return of a conservative and corporativist
society ruled by forces seated outside of elected institutions, Silicon
Valley, with its extensive digital infrastructure for permanent soft
governance, is their natural ally.
In the international context, this insistence on salvation by Big Tech
acquires an extra twist as there’s so much more salvation – and, also,
national development – to be meted out by those very technology giants.
This prompts some populist leaders to fantasize about turning their
entire countries into efficiently-run fiefdoms of some Big Tech
overlord. Thus, the Bolsonaro government in Brazil has proudly announced
that they “dream” of having Google or Amazon take over the national post
office, soon to be privatized.
Today’s crisis-prone Brazil reveals yet another consequence of
surrendering the space formerly occupied by politics to the
savior-industrial complex of Big Tech. The long-term effect of their
supposedly revolutionary activity is often to actually cement the status
quo, even if they do it by means of extremely disruptive solutions.
Nowhere is this more evident than in how digital technologies are being
used to deal with the most burning of social problems. Thus, as crime
rates have skyrocketed, Brazil has become a hotbed of innovation in what
we might call Survival Tech, with a panoply of digital tools being used
to check on the safety of particular streets and neighborhoods and
coordinate joint community-level responses.
Thus, Waze, a popular Alphabet-owned navigation app, already alerts
users in large cities like São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro that they are
about to enter a risky part of town (the provenance of the data that is
feeding such recommendations has been quite murky). Likewise, residents
concerned with crime rates in their own neighborhoods increasingly use
tools like Whatsapp to share tips about any suspicious activities in the
area.
As things get worse – and not just in Brazil – such Survival Tech,
allowing citizens to get by in the face of adversity without demanding
any ambitious social transformation, stands to flourish. The last
decade, with its celebration of austerity, has been good for business as
well. In fact, the entire technology boom that followed the 2007-08
financial crisis can be effectively explained through this lens, with
venture capitalists and, later, sovereign wealth funds, temporarily
subsidizing the mass production of Survival Tech for the dispossessed
and the disaffected.
“Survival Tech,” however, is too lousy of a brand to merit its own
conferences or laudatory manifestos. Instead, we prefer to celebrate the
“sharing economy” (with startups helping the poor survive by accepting
precarious jobs or renting out their possessions), the “smart city”
(with cities surrendering their technological sovereignty – in exchange
for temporarily free services – to the digital giants), the “fin tech”
(with next-generation payday loans based on user data being marketed as
a revolution in “financial inclusion”).
Unless the underlying economic conditions improve – an unlikely
proposition – governments will continue their implicit alliance with the
technology industry: this is the only way to guarantee that the masses,
increasingly unhappy with the massive fiscal and behavioral sacrifices
expected of them – eg the prospect of higher environmental taxes already
stokes riots in Europe – get at least a modicum of security and
prosperity, however short-term and illusory.
Hence, we arrive at today’s paradoxical outcome, whereby 99% of
technological disruption is there to merely ensure that nothing of
substance gets disrupted at all. Pathology persists – we just adapt to
it better, with sensors, maps, AI, and – why not? – quantum computing.
The real gospel of today’s Big Tech – sanctioned and celebrated by
governments – is innovation for the sake of conservation.
Such programs might be launched and celebrated under the banner of
“digital transformation” but, in reality, they imply very little
conscious and guided social transformation at all. Rather, what is sold
under that label is the very opposite idea, ie the notion that
individuals and institutions need to adapt to – not to transform – the
technological world around them. As preached today, “digital
transformation” is all about transforming institutions and individuals
to match the seemingly unchangeable social conditions – not the other
way around.
The favorite policies of today’s progressives – breaking up the Big Tech
or even redistributing their data – might resolve some real problems.
But it’s hard to see how such measures would undermine the world of
Survival Tech. After all, such virtual gear can be perfectly furnished
by hundreds of start-ups – the alternative world of Small and Humane
Tech, so beloved by Silicon Valley’s critics – and not just by the likes
of Microsoft or Amazon.
In contrast, we can imagine an alternative future world of Rebel Tech,
which does not perceive social conditions as set in stone, to be
accepted and adjusted to, by means of latest technologies. Instead, it
deploys bespoke technologies to alter, shape, and – yes – rebel against
entrenched social conditions. The distinctions between Survival Tech and
Rebel Tech are not philosophical or eternal; clever policy can get us
more of the latter and less of the former.
Breaking up the tech giants, having them pay a fair share of taxes,
making better use of their data are all necessary but, alas,
insufficient conditions for effective social – not just individual or
institutional – transformation. Today, such nominally progressive
slogans are often made from depressingly conservative vantage points.
They imply that, as long as the tech industry accepts its responsibility
as the anointed successor to the car industry – becoming, in the best of
cases, the ecologically-friendlier driver of economic growth –we would
eventually go back to the comfy and prosperous social-democratic world
of the 1960s or 1970s.
As appealing as this vision might seem, it merely camouflages the lack
of any strategic thinking on behalf of the progressive or social
democratic forces that are backing it. The rise of Big Tech is a
consequence, not the cause, of our underlying political and economic
crises; we will not resolve them merely by getting rid of the Big Tech
or constraining their operations.
Small and Humane Tech might be of some help. However, without an
overarching vision – and a concrete plan – for ditching Survival Tech in
favor of Rebel Tech, progressive forces would not have much to say about
technology – and, by extension, of contemporary politics as well. “Small
tech” cannot afford to be so small-minded.
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