A New Class

-- By ShayBanerjee - 10 Dec 2015

The centralized state and her corporate allies monitor with increasing discomfort the moral leaders of our New Technological Age: the Whistleblower, the Hacktivist, the Social Entrepreneur. Although their insecurity is understandable, it arises not out of fear for the welfare of the People, as they would have us believe, but insecurity over their own incompetence and corruption. Not to worry — their time will come soon enough, for a new order has been born.

Service Through Resonance

Confronting a stampede of 21st century cataclysms — the economic meltdown caused by criminal financial practices, the bloodcurdling terror caused by violent extremism abroad, the growing threat of anthropogenic climate change, the abuse of ordinary citizens by a newly militarized police, the corruption of government institutions, the ballooning cost of higher education — the State has repeatedly dragged her feet, proposing solutions as inadequate as they are rarely enacted. Meanwhile, she encroaches increasingly on our inalienable rights — killing and detaining citizens without due process, snooping on our private affairs, and violently crushing peaceful assemblies. Wherever the State has failed to advance the People's interests, she has chosen to oppress them instead.

Nor is the profit-driven Corporation — that hallmark of "free” enterprise pious in her sermon on market-driven growth but herself reliant on the crutch of state subsidies and protections — leading the People to better world. By now, a solar panel should sit atop every building, but all the Corporation provides is a smartphone atop every hand. Medical research and treatment should liberate the People from disease, but instead the Corporation provides widespread overmedication and costly drug dependence. Media should promote an informed citizenry, but instead the Corporation provides sensationalism, disempowerment, and quizzes telling us to which Disney princess our fashion taste most resembles. Where radical problems demand radical solutions, the weight of large-scale industrial innovation has instead devoted her attention to the fabulously banal task of exploiting the habits, behaviors, and fleeting inclinations of consumerist society.

Yet while the Icarus that is the Corporate-State apparatus ventures sunward, a new set of leaders pulls the People back. The world they construct is a more dynamic, pragmatic, and just one. In this world, government corruption is exposed and addressed, corporate leaders are punished for their crimes, and dreams of roadways emitting solar energy are converted into reality. In this world, power accumulates not through violence, hierarchy, or consumer manipulation, but resonance.

Power Through Democracy

Since the dawn of history, the individual human has sought to accumulate power — the ability to influence human activities and the distribution of scarce of resources. In consonance, Civilization — the collective human conscience — has sought to channel that inclination in service of the social good. The performance of the latter task has required all hitherto societies to collect social force and invest resources into dedicated centers of power — the regulator, the military, the corporation. Only now, with the construction of a fully interconnected network of communications, has that requirement been eliminated. Now, the complete decentralization of power into the hands of the masses is possible and supplants all prior forms of social organization. Rejoice humanity, for, finally, on comes Democracy.

On comes the Whistleblower, that now hidden, now open, agent of human freedom, driven not by greed but service to the People. Risking personal security, social exile, and even her own life, the Whistleblower is overcome with ethical obligation in the face of corruption and evil. Through the Internet she finds her Voice — uncontaminated, pure — and exposes the great lies of representative democracy and corporate responsibility for all the world to see. Like the Naked Emperor slowly realizing the true nature of his “new clothes,” the Corporate-State panics, searching the ends of the Earth to bring the Whistleblower to “justice.” To no avail.

On comes the Hacktivist, that uncorrupted, lionhearted enforcer of the People’s Will . Unlike the institutional actors she fights, the Hacktivist is driven by no agenda but her own — an agenda fully human, fully transparent. Finding strength in numbers and anonymity, the Hacktivist attacks oppression with the force of a People’s Hammer, punishing corporate enemies of democracy, despotic governments, overreaching militaries, child pornography distributors, purveyors of hate speech, and environmental polluters. Over time, the Hacktivist's technical skill grows with her numbers, and her power eventually eclipses that of the Corporate-State herself. Beaming with confidence, the Hacktivist sets her sights on that elusive enemy the Corporate-State has failed to eradicate for decades — and the violent extremists abroad tremble like the cowards they are. The Corporate-State, losing credibility quickly, temporarily allies with the Hacktivist to pursue her own ends.

On comes the Social Entrepreneur, that daring pioneer who measures success not by the accumulation of profit but the goal of genuine human progress. The Internet unlocks the raw power of crowdsourcing as a vehicle to channel capital toward new ventures. At first, the vehicle is employed to mirror the Corporate-State — used by profit-driven entrepreneurs to produce materialist goods of questionable social value. It is the Social Entrepreneur, however, who unleashes the vehicle’s true revolutionary power. After all, she recognizes, the single greatest instrument of human learning in the history of the world has always been, at its root, a crowdfunding project. Similar efforts, she realizes, can be used to drive a new energy future, protect natural resources, reform campaign finance, improve learning outcomes, cure disease, and protect privacy. Quickly, the allies of corporate power rush to discredit the Social Entrepreneur. Investment, they cry, must be for profit, not for good. The Social Entrepreneur continues, unabated.

Freedom and Struggle

A new class of Technologists has emerged, comprised of these three pillars, built in the People’s Image, made possible by a new age, guided in service of freedom, security, and prosperity. With its emergence will arrive new battlegrounds, new campaigns, new fights — a new class struggle for the beating heart of the human race. The particular form that struggle takes remains to be seen, but freedom demands these three pillars are protected, grown, allowed to flourish. The Corporate-State has no interest to do these things, so the People must.

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