There’s a great deal of talk about how wonderful modern technology is. The internet, cell phones, and computers are the stars of this firmament. I believe such talk is somewhat overblown; the latest tech revolution is not as significant as many that have come before.
At least not in terms of doing good.
Let us examine what all this infotech really has changed.
Control. Massive control. Surveillance.
Just in time inventory. Not possible 50 years ago.
Second to second tracking of workers without having to have a supervisor physically watching them. Amazon warehouse workers carry devices which allow their workflow to be tracked to the second. And if they aren’t making their seconds, the supervisor is right on them. This wasn’t possible 30 years ago. If you wanted to have that sort of control, you had to have a supervisor physically watching them, and the cost was prohibitive.
This sort of tracking is used for clerical workers as well.
Outsourcing work that had to be kept domestic before. The massive call centers in Delhi and Ireland were not possible even 30 years ago. The cost was simply prohibitive.
Offshoring work, like manufacturing, was difficult to offshore before. Without real-time, high-density communications, cutting edge manufacturing overseas was very difficult in the past. You could offshore some things, certainly, but those industries tended to be mature industries: shipbuilding, textiles, and so on. Cutting edge industries, no, they had to be located close to the boffins or they were offshored to another, essentially First World country–as when Britain offshored much of their production to the United States in the late 19th century.
Commercial surveillance. Everything you buy is cross referenced. When you buy something at a major retailers, the store takes a picture of you and matches it with your information. All online purchase information is stored and centralized in databases. This information is shared. This includes, but goes far beyond, internet surveillance; witness Google or Facebook serving you ads based on what you’ve read or searched. Add this data to credit reports, bank accounts, and so on, and it provides a remarkably complete picture of your life, because everything you buy with anything but cash (and even some of that) is tracked. Where you are when you buy it is also tracked.
Government surveillance. Millions of cameras in London and most other First World cities. Millions of cameras in Chinese cities. Some transit systems now have audio surveillance. Because the government can seize any private surveillance as well, you can assume you’re being tracked all day in most First World cities. Add this to the commercial surveillance system described above and the picture of your life is startlingly accurate.
As biometric recognition system comes online (face, gait, infrared, and more) this work will be done automatically.
What the telecom and infotech revolution has done is enable wide scale CONTROL and SURVEILLANCE.
These are two sides of the same coin, you can’t control people if you don’t what they’re doing.
This control is most dictatorial, amusingly, in the private sector. The worse a job is, the more this sort of control has been used for super-Taylorization, making humans into little more than remotely controlled flesh robots.
It has made control of international conglomerates far easier; control from the top to the periphery far easier. This is true in the government and the military as well, where central commanders often control details like when bombs drop, rather than leaving it to a plane’s crew.
This is a world where only a few people have practical power. It is a world, not of radical decentralization, but of radical centralization.
This is a vast experiment. In the past, there have been surveillance and control societies. But the math on them has always been suspect. Sometimes they work, and work brilliantly–like in Tokugawa Japan, certain periods of Confucian Chinese bureaucratic control, or ancient Egypt.
But often they have been defeated, and fairly easily, by societies which allowed more freedom; less control, less spying, and supervision. Societies which assumed people knew what to do on their own; or just societies that understood that the cost of close supervision and surveillance was too high to support.
The old East German Stasi model, with one-third of the population spying on the other two-thirds was the ludicrous extension of this.
What the telecom and infotech revolutions have actually enabled is a vast experiment in de-skilling, surveillance, and control–beyond the dreams even of the late 19th century Taylorist movement, with their stopwatches and assembly lines. Nothing people do, from what they eat, to what entertainment they consume, to when and how well they sleep; let alone everything they do during their working day, is beyond reach.
This is not to say there are no good results from infotech and computers—there are plenty. But contrary to the idea that these technologies would increase freedom, they appear, on a daily basis, to have decreased freedom and privacy and promise to radically reduce them even more.
The second set of questions about any technology are how it can be used for violence, how it can be used for control, and how it can be used for ideological production.
(The first question, of course, is what is required to use it. More on that another time.)
Infotech may enable totalitarian societies which make those of the past look like kindergarten. We are already far past the technology used in the novel 1984 (Big Brother could not record, for example). That much of this surveillance is done by private actors as opposed to the government, does not reduce the loss of freedom, autonomy, and privacy.
Combined with making humans obsolete, infotech and the telecom revolution are as vastly important as their boosters say.
But, so far, not in a beneficial way. Yes, they could be used to make human lives better, it seems the real traction of the telecom and infotech revolutions remarkably began/coincided with neo-liberal policies which have hurt vast numbers of people in both the First and Third Worlds–precisely because they helped make those neo-liberal policies work.
Technologies are never neutral and there is no guarantee that “progress” will actually improve people’s lives. Even if a technology has the potential to improve people’s lives, potential is theoretical; i.e., not the same as practice.
Infotech and telecom tech are primarily control technologies, the same as writing was. They vastly increase the ability to centralize and to control a population’s behaviour.
(Read also: The Late Internet Revolution is Not So Big A Deal)
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S Brennan
My grandfather, in the early 60’s could board a 707 in New York and arrive in LA in far less time than I can today. And no, I am not counting 4 hour layovers with the long waits to be “screened”, the jets were 50-70 knots faster, back then your time was worth more, today less.
Not counting longer hours AT WORK, we spend far more time commuting making for much longer work days, back then your time was worth more, today less!
Software “upgrades” require workers to constantly relearn the same task because some young “genius” observed that a carefully thought out interface “looked tired” and glitzed it up. Think about the almost perfect Google Maps driver interface being redesigned by people who take private buses to work. Way back in the ’90’s your time was worth more than today!
Life is all the “time” YOU will ever have and if we let the elite do so, they will suck every bit of it out of you.
Jeff Wegerson
Sorry I can’t pass this opportunity up:
“…which have hurt vast numbers of people in both the 1st and 3rd world.”
But what about the people in the 2nd world?
V. Arnold
Jeff Wegerson
April 24, 2016
But what about the people in the 2nd world?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Catching up rapidly; but thankfully about a decade behind. There are more than a few areas which have just gotten or are just getting electricity.
Drinkable tap water is a rarity outside of the major cities.
CCTV cameras are propagating like rabbits though…
For all of the reasons Ian listed and a few more; I am glad I’m old (71). There is scant evidence life will get better in the very near future; which may be the only future we humans have. Our shameful behavior towards each other is a mere reflection of our behavior towards spaceship Earth.
Adam Eran
You’re right in saying the new technology is a mixed bag. The historical analogy I’d suggest is printing. This meant congregations were no longer at the mercy of their priest’s biblical interpretation (of ultimate values).
So… the reformation followed Gutenberg. This cured many of the Church’s corruptions, but also produced turmoil (and the counter-reformation / inquisition).
So…not that some of the results are less-than-optimum, but it’s amusing to read a blogger who writes on/for the internet to have such a dark take on technology. What would you be doing without it?
Ian Welsh
Reading more books. Oh dear.
I don’t think my being able to write for the internet makes up for people being de-facto enslaved at their jobs, or for a panopticon.
But, maybe that’s just me. I should be more selfish. It’s been good for me, who cares how many other people it’s fucking over or if it will enable a totalitarian police state which makes 1984 look tame.
Y’know, I’m old enough to remember before cell phones, the internet and even PCs, let alone mobile and smart phones. Heck I remember before answering machines.
Before answering machines, ah, now there was fucking Nirvana. We had no idea how good we had it.
Barry
Lessig’s Code Version 2.0 seems relevant to this subject:
http://codev2.cc/about/
neoliberalkilla
@Adam Uh, did you not read the post? He said that there are some good things about infotech. Read the FUCKING post before commenting.
CH
A huge cultural upsurge followed the introduction of printing to the West. Note though that the attitude of authorities to the changes that followed was often violently hostile, and that it came at a time when profound tensions over the allotment of power, both clerical and governmental, were just coming to fore–tensions that would ultimately explode into a centuries-long bloodbath.
If printing had arrived three centuries earlier, or three centuries later, there’s no guarantee it would have had such a great effect on Europe’s cultural development–its impact in the Far East, where it originated, seems to have been much more limited.
It’s the centripetal forces that seem to prevail in our time, not the centrifugal ones, so I’m not sanguine about the prospects for a new Reformation and Enlightenment emerging from the computing and telecoms revolutions.
The trend to date seems depressingly consistent: Copyright laws are refashioned into tools to limit the spread of knowledge. Patent laws are refashioned into tools to prevent new technologies from displacing old ones. Every time technology opens a door, authority promptly slams it shut again.
Have you noticed, though, that he self-hosts this blog–both his own essays and and his reader comments, NB–and refrains from using paid advertising? Just how commonplace is that among A-list bloggers, would you say? How commonplace is that for anyone, nowadays?
CH
“…and his reader’s comments…”
markfromireland
@ Ian
Sitting here nodding vigorously with tears in my eyes.
markfromireland
@ CH
/* Pedant mode = 1 */
and his reader’s comments
should be:
and his readers’ comments
(He has more than one reader, more than one of those readers comment).
A possessive plural ending in S takes the apostrophe after the S.
/* Pedant mode = 0 */
markfromireland
Ian – off topic for which apologies.
I thought you might be interested in the Guardian article:
Read in full: You can buy a cheap chicken today, but we all pay for it in the long run
Ian Welsh
Bear in mind that the printing press led to wars that killed millions and millions of people and allowed for the creation of despotic states. Centralization that was not always better than what came before.
People have weird ideas about the Middle Ages. In many respects they were often better to live in than the Renaissance/Reformation/Enlightenment.
NP
I made the following remarks to a friend the other day.
The internet economy began in 1995. By the year 2000, the internet economy was in shambles, largely because it was based on a lot of Wall Street fuckery as all bubbles are. It’s now the year 2016 and the economy has been garbage ever since.
The internet is perhaps the most transformative technological achievement ever, but the economic benefits (such as they were) only lasted for 5 years. Now, if anything, it’s used as a way to further wealth inequality by accelerating the outsourcing of “knowledge work” and enabling a perverse idea of what it means to have a “sharing economy.”
Peter Van Erp
I’m an architect, and I began my career just before computers became widespread. At weekly job meetings, the general contractor would bring a couple page typed report on the job status. When computers came in, the report jumped to a hundred pages. More “information”, but far less actual understandable information.
“People have weird ideas about the Middle Ages. In many respects they were often better to live in than the Renaissance/Reformation/Enlightenment.” I no longer remember the exact quote, but a great error in history was to mistake the setting sun on the middle ages for a rising sun of the rennaissance.
gaikokumaniakku
“Just in time inventory. Not possible 50 years ago.”
You are correct to say that the Just-In-Time logistics of 2016 require 2016 tech, not 1966 tech.
Minor sidebar: Henry Ford invented a lot of the concepts that are now cutting-edge management science, and pushed them as far as he could with the tech that he had.
Major Point: plug-and-play 3D printing was also not possible 50 years ago.
Technological tools empower the people who actually put those tools to use. If the majority of people have no interest in tools, those uninterested people can’t empower themselves.
” But contrary to the idea that these technologies would increase freedom, they appear, on a daily basis, to have decreased freedom and privacy …”
The InfoTech Revolution still has a chance to empower individuals, to decentralize decision-making, and to transfer social momentum from transnational exploiters to community-based cooperatives.
Freedom and privacy have been eroded by the malicious actions of psychopaths. The tech itself is like a fence. The destruction of liberty is like English kleptocrats forcing peasants off the commons and fencing the land into sheep pens. Don’t blame fence technology; don’t blame the sheep; blame the kleptocrats.
Radical decentralization has a very small number of people who actively work with the necessary technology. Radical decentralization has a lot of passive supporters who like the idea but can’t understand the tech and don’t want to try to learn.
Radical decentralization is not guaranteed to succeed, but if you’re sympathetic to the goal, it might be more productive to write proactive, encouraging essays to motivate the currently passive supporters so that they will put forth the effort to become active technologists.
Mary Margaret Flynn
I am remembering the movie “Other Peoples’ Lives”, about the Stasi in East Germany before 1989; a terrific and even more terrifying today (than when I first saw it) about surveillance of every one by corporations and governments. the wall has come down, we’ve had the Middle East “Spring” but nothing is changed.
Oaktown Girl
@Mary Margaret Flynn – Yes, I remember that movie very well. At the time, I told as many people as I could about it, emphasizing the path the U.S. was going down, and going down particularly rapidly since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Clearly (and I’m sure most of you have considered this as well) the long game being played is to have today’s young people so conditioned to being watched and monitored, pretty soon the overwhelming majority of the population will no longer even connect mass surveillance to a loss of freedom (and the loss of everything that goes along with that). Us old fogies will just be shouting into the wind…those of us who haven’t been locked up or otherwise “disappeared”.
Speaking of technology, Paul H. Rosenberg on twitter posted a relevant link to a NY Times piece. While the rich have always been able to avoid the rest of us (to a certain degree), now they can avoid us (and avoid caring about us) even easier and in more places.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/business/economy/velvet-rope-economy.html?emc=edit_th_20160424&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=2027049&_r=0
Robert Dudek
Let’s assume that corporations and government will try to collect as much information about that. Knowing that, it should be possible for individuals and groups to provide mis- and disinformation. The object being to render all the data suspect and therefore much less useful.
Lee Grove
Add one—a BIG ONE–to your list: The utter destruction of the K-12 classroom learning environment: students spend the vast majority of their time trying to surreptitiously–or blatantly–use their cellphones in class; and if not actually using them, they are preoccupied with the thought of using them. It has been going on for almost a decade now, and we will start to see the results in that we will have a population where nobody can do anything that requires focus; it will be as if the entire upcoming population of college students has ADHD.
Welcome to the high-tech third world.
V. Arnold
Lee Grove
April 25, 2016
Well Lee, you have a clue; but fail the really big picture regarding the abject failure of western education (which is a misnomer).
John Taylor Gatto’s book, The Underground History of American Education, lays out the sad fact of “western education”; which has nothing to do with education; but rather, an indoctrination for inclusion in society as a passive participant.
Docility is paramount in members of U.S. society so as to maintain the status quo; working according to plan, near as I can tell…
EmilianoZ
Some people should revise their cinematographic classics. For instance, Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times”. Things were already pretty bad for the factory workers at the beginning of the 20th century. You dont need tracking devices for that.
Bill H
When I was growing up there were two schools of though. One camp wanted to become lawyers and doctors so that they could become filthy rich. The other wanted to become scientists because we were sending men to the Moon and they wanted to be part of that kind of exciting endeavor. There was a smallish cadre that wanted to join the military and save freedom and democracy from The Red Menace.
Now there are two schools of thought. One camp wants to become lawyers and doctors so that they can become filthy rich. The other wants to become computer wizards so that they can become even more filthy rich. No one wants any part of science or engineering because we aren’t doing anything sexy there and you can’t get filthy rich doing it.
In the 60’s we decided to send men to the Moon and did it in ten years. Now we can’t do it at all, and did not bother to keep detailed records of how we did it then. Having decided to send men to Mars, we figure it will take thirty years or more to do it, are behind schedule even for that, and are not convinced that we can even do it.
In 1947 the US Health Service was tasked to eliminate the threat of mosquito-borne Malaria in the southern part of the nation and did so in two years. Today we are wringing our hands over the Zika virus and quaking in fear, unable to even start fighting the threat; terrorized because, apparently, we do not even remember having defeated a similar threat a mere fifty years ago.
We are living in the “information age,” but it appears that history is not part of that information. It is certain that we are not living in the “accomplishment age.”
Bill H
Well, okay, sorry, the defeat of Malaria was 70 years ago.
reslez
The US anti-malaria program in the 40s used DDT. It worked well despite its now well-known toxicity because it was targeting a virgin population. Unfortunately the agriculture industry subsequently took over mass spraying of DDT which created resistant mosquitoes and wiped out parts of the life cycle. Similar to the way the agriculture industry is currently destroying antibiotics for short-term commercial gain.
Gaianne
I am late to the discussion, but I just want to say: Thank you, Ian, for an essay that succinctly cuts through the lies and nonsense that bombards us every day about the wonders of our technological dystopia.
Sadly, few of my friends can even notice what is happening to them, let alone do anything about it.
For me, a happy decade of internet surfing is winding down as the internet gradually sinks into incoherent noise and utter insanity.
And of course, what you say about surveillance and control is the real point, and probably always was the real point.
–Gaianne
realitychecker
A lot of good points made here, but let me state the essence real simply: Screens are like a leash, and the leash is just getting shorter and shorter, from TV to cellphones. Future citizens will feel that their whole universe is a 2″ by 3″ piece of plastic.
How wonderful for the Masters. The Matrix, without the plumbing.
V. Arnold
realitychecker
April 27, 2016
A lot of good points made here, but let me state the essence real simply: Screens are like a leash, and the leash is just getting shorter and shorter, from TV to cellphones. Future citizens will feel that their whole universe is a 2″ by 3″ piece of plastic.
Well, right/wrong, true/false, or yes/no; I like what you posted.
Rings true for me…