<nettime> The Unimaginables

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

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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