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< | A New Class Struggle | >
> | The Internet, Power, and Social Obligation | | | -- By ShayBanerjee - 10 Dec 2015 | |
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< | The 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 uneasiness regarding the new Technologists is understandable, it arises not out of fear for the welfare of the People, as they would have us believe, but insecurity over how incompetent and corrupt those in power are in comparison. Not to worry — their time will come soon enough, for a new order has come to replace them. | >
> | Introduction | | | | |
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< | Service Through Resonance | >
> | The proliferation of the Internet over the last two decades – like the invention of agriculture, the drawing of the written word, and the rise of industrial capitalism – is a historically disruptive techno-cultural development that is fundamentally reorienting the contours of human life. In this brave new world, the manner in which power operates is unprecedented– it is subtle, decentralized, and uncontained. If the primary responsibility of civilization is to regulate power, the extant generation must respond effectively to these new dynamics. How will we punish bad behavior and enforce social norms? What are the duties and rights of ordinary citizens, and what values must those obligations serve? Our species has asked itself these questions many times over 10,000 years. Yet at each inflection point, the answers have changed. | | | | |
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< | 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. | >
> | Situating Power in the Internet Society | | | | |
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< | 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. | >
> | The Ontology of Power | | | | |
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< | Yet while the Icarus that is the Corporation-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. | >
> | Before we regulate power, we must understand its conceptual geography. First, power is socially constructed, possessing no independent form. When an actor wields power, that power can only be defined in relation to the object on which it is exercised. Second, power is heterogeneous and fluid – it circulates through people, who often act as relays or serve as both subject and object. Third, power can either be coercive or non-coercive. Power is exercised through violence, but also through ideological constructions that influence beliefs, perceptions, and values. Fourth, power is not a means; it is an end. History is replete with examples of those in power exhibiting hypocrisy, abandoning principles, and deceiving others – all to maintain a grip on power. The objective of power is power. | | | | |
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< | Power Through Democracy | >
> | What all this means is that the study of power must begin locally. Its essence is not in the halls of government or any corporate headquarters, but at the outer limits of society– in the seemingly ordinary ways that power reshapes human activities at the lowest level, whether in the way we drive cars, or purchase groceries, or, indeed, interact with a computer screen. Online, power acts on us constantly – through advertisements, articles, the order of search listings, and the like. Increasingly, the cultural material that happens to be presented to us in the digital world is reshaping our belief systems and economic activity. If fully rational and conscious decision-making is indispensable to human freedom (hint: it is), we must not allow those who control these levers to prey on our cognitive-affective frameworks. | | | | |
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< | 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 levers of power descend to the masses and humanity puts her moral faith in the individual citizen, each held accountable only to one other. At long last, on comes Democracy. | >
> | The Information Epoch | | | | |
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< | 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 — immaculate, 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 Corporation-State panics, searching the ends of the Earth to bring the Whistleblower to “justice.” To no avail. | >
> | The emergence of the Internet is creating a revolutionary shift in the operation of power. Under feudalism, power primarily acted through control of the land: lords exerted complete and total dominance over the serfs and resources residing under their domain. Under capitalism, power operates through money-capital tied to commodity production: the wealthy affect human behavior and resource distribution by investing in labor and capital markets. In the Internet society, however, the currency of power is data and the mechanism by which it operates is surveillance. The more data an actor controls, the more it can manipulate human activity, reconstitute belief systems, and affect distribution patterns. | | | | |
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< | 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 anonymity, the Hacktivist attacks oppression with the thunder 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 Corporation-State herself. Brimming with confidence, the Hacktivist sets her sights on that elusive enemy the Corporation-State has hitherto failed to eradicate — and the violent extremists abroad tremble like the cowards they are. The Corporation-State, losing credibility quickly, temporarily allies with the Hacktivist to pursue her own ends. | >
> | The importance of this change cannot be overstated. In the Internet universe, data *is* power. At any moment, Mark Zuckerberg could, if he so chose, decide the fate of businesses, change the reading material of hundreds of millions of people, and alter the outcome of an election. Of course this man will give away 99% of his wealth. What are green pieces of paper worth to him? He already has more power than Warren Buffet could ever dream about, and it will cost him not a penny to maintain it. | | | | |
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< | 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 Corporation-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. Hurriedly, the allies of corporate power rush to discredit the Social Entrepreneur. Investment, they cry, must always generate a financial return! Who, the cynics demand, will ever deploy capital simply to advance progress? Yet the Social Entrepreneur proceeds, unflinching, unabated. | >
> | Searching for an Answer | | | | |
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< | Freedom and Struggle | >
> | The corporate data miners have, for now, used their newfound power primarily to affect shopping behavior and leisure activities. Yet even this seemingly innocuous task is incredibly damaging in a rapidly changing world. 21st-century civilization is facing a stampede of cataclysms —persistent unemployment, violent extremism, anthropogenic climate change, and the ballooning cost of higher education. In the face of these problems, we are fostering a generation that struggles to think creatively. Instead of solving problems together as citizens of human society, we are distracting ourselves with consumer fetishes, Buzzfeed quizzes, and news entertainment. The data miners will never help us find transformative solutions, but are more than willing to exploit our habits, emotions, and unconscious triggers for their own gain. | | | | |
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< | 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 Corporation-State has no interest to do these things, so the People must. | >
> | Will the nation-state save us? This organ functioned well in the industrial age, but increasingly it appears unable to regulate power in a decentralized, globalized, and data-centric world. This shortcoming could be tied to any of the 21st-century problems described above, but none better than the ongoing struggle between the American government and ISIS. Traditional tactics will simply not defeat an enemy tied together by globalized networks and possessing no centralized base of operations. Government surveillance is also not working, precisely because sophisticated actors know how to protect their data. Instead, the best way to shut down a decentralized enemy is to interrupt their communication networks. Denial-of service attacks have proven an effective weapon, but for that solution to be comprehensive, there must be more individuals attacking ISIS websites than combatants making new ones. Nation-states will never have sufficient manpower to fight this battle. The task falls on ordinary citizens – hacktivists – acting with clear mind and a sense of duty. | | | | |
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> | Conclusion | | | | |
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In genre terms, though, it's an aria: an exercise in rhetoric-with-music, not the political analysis of which it is only the operatic analogue.
I understand the temptation, myself. It's not that I've never worked in the genre. But without the benefit of some really clever co-authors, you do have to carry the burden of theoretical sufficiency. And you can't seriously get the reader to participate in the illusion that the whistleblower, the hacktivist and the social entrepreneur are forces on the relevant scale. Not even Mr Snowden—who is not a whistleblower but rather the most successful professional espionage agent of our time, a man who spied for humanity as a whole more brilliantly than anyone has spied for any country on earth for several generations—is a force on the scale about which you are ... well, singing.
In the end, I think, the decision about the direction of revision is
about the desire either to be in or out of the frame of resonant
fairyland. It's the world of Gesamkunstwerk, to be sure. But
still, I think, the sort of stuff law firm partners like to be seen
at, dressed expensively, when their brains are tired.
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> | The mechanics of power have changed, and sometimes the simplest description is the most accurate. We are rapidly entering an age of direct democracy, and the struggle for the human soul is quickly devolving into a war of numbers and know-how. No longer can we rely on governments to protect our species from mindless violence, environmental degradation, and corruption. Many citizens have already gotten the message, and are learning the technical skills necessary to protect their data, reclaim their thought-flow, and perform their obligations to human society. Others just finished a quiz telling them which “Game of Thrones” character they most resemble. | | | | |
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> | Soon, we will see if this great experiment we call “human civilization” is going to work. I do not how it will play out, but someday future generations will. | | |
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