Technology & Governance, along with inequality and climate change are the themes of our lifetimes. It is so pervasive that it dominates our thinking. There are multiple dimensions but the focus here is to understand how the age-old fascination with technology has taken bizarre turns with the advent and commercialization of the internet and electronics & semiconductors, with two distinct dimensions. One is the dynamism between military and civil applications and the interaction between the two. Second is that, human beings, divided between being people and consumers, are yielding more and more to technology, which has its consequences.
The fascination with and fear of technology is perhaps as old as the discovery of fire. While this fascination and fear has persisted through history, it acquired a sharp focus around the time of development of capitalism (normally considered to have begun around the early decades of the sixteenth century), as the new class of industrialists used technology to expand markets. And we see this relentless pace enveloping almost all aspects of our lives but only to the extent that it fetches a financial return. One of the (probably unintended) outcomes of this unleashing of technology was the creation of broadly two sets of people – those convinced technology has the potential to deliver us to higher levels of living and those fearing it will take us away from what makes us human.
Underpinnings of technology
At one level, the fascination with technology is an articulation of a deep human desire for an anchor or a messiah but this is a fundamentally flawed thinking because technology can’t deliver on its own because it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It is owned and controlled by companies and institutions including governments amidst a vast web of complex laws and rules and regulations, although the specific nature of control and management keeps changing. Unfortunately, much of the debate in the media on technology and innovation suffers from a complete lack of understanding its underpinnings. Often, beyond repeating ad nauseum how the ‘market’ promotes innovation, we don’t come across any situated discussion of technology and innovation and the dynamism between the two.
Take for instance the famed Silicon valley, widely offered as evidence of ‘innovative spirit’. Margaret O’Mara’s book ‘The Code’ with the sub-title ‘Silicon valley and the remaking of America’ provides a trench view of how American defence and space exploration drove the earliest phases of what became Silicon Valley, clearly showing that it did not come into being as a result of some mystical ‘spirit of innovation’. Most of these new businesses – electronics, semiconductors and chips – began with military use and later diversified into civilian use. The politically aware can recognize the deep influence of Cold War, with the former USSR and the US governments competing with each other in the race to space which led to the multiple new businesses which became core to Silicon Valley. But for the Cold War, the Silicon Valley as we know would not have come into being. Situating a new technology within this military-civil dynamism, ‘Chip war’ by Chris Miller offers a fascinating account of how technology originates, grows, gets imitated upsetting status quo, how hubris leads to willful ignorance, how an entire country owes its existence to a certain technology (Taiwan and semiconductors), how military use drives innovation but civilian use drives expansion.
Technology is an umbrella word and it is sensible to speak only of technologies because there is no one path followed by different technologies in their struggle to come to fruition and achieve dominance. Be it cancer research, material science, farm chemicals, space and orbits, semiconductors, communication protocols including satellites, computing (especially quantum computing), climate change to mention some of the most prominent fields, each is a fiercely guarded and regulated field clearly demarcating who are allowed entry and who are denied. As I have repeatedly observed, the production and distribution of research is institutionally controlled, private and public, which also explains why certain kinds of research is sponsored and why some are shunned.
Control – who does and for whose benefit
Since the birth and commercialization of the internet, this debate has acquired dimensions none would have considered part of any discussion on technology. I refer specifically to the continuing debate about technology’s ability to enhance access to democracy, to alter power equations between the privileged and underprivileged (technology as an equalizer), its power to make life easier and so on. What we have witnessed since is not just far away from such rosy portrayals but a deeply troubling phenomenon of control and exploitation.
Tim Wu’s ‘Who controls the internet?’ shows how the internet is a business controlled by some organizations, not just a technology. ‘The age of surveillance capitalism’ by Shoshana Zuboff with the compelling sub-title ‘The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power’ offers a detailed account of how everything we do becomes fodder for businesses to exploit to further their businesses. While discussing how business interests are camouflaged in commercial surveillance, to such an extent that it beguiles ordinary people into an unsuspecting enthusiasm, she observes that we fail to ask the questions: ‘Who knows? Who decides? Who decides who decides?’ Governments too have (mis)used technology to engage in often unlawful surveillance of citizens, benefiting from the technologies and practices used by businesses to gather information about consumers, as Zuboff notes (Page 383). The advent and use of algorithms, deeply influenced by bias, has only intensified the manipulative dimension of technology in recent times. I intend to explore this disturbing matter of bias in algorithms, looking at some of the most incisive research.
Consider the cloud. I have just finished reading Satya Nadella’s interview with The Economic Times (ET, January 5, 2023) describing how the world will be a better place thanks to Microsoft technologies, including Azure, its cloud platform. So does Google and so does every IT company. Nadella’s unabashed enthusiasm for the cloud can be infectious if you are not on guard because the cloud along with AI is the new God before we bow down in worship. While I admire Nadella’s enthusiasm for the technologies championed by Microsoft, I am also compelled to observe that there is more to technology than what is conveyed by business leaders and politicians.
One of the books that explores the darker side of technology is ‘New dark age’ by James Bridle with the counterintuitive sub-title ‘Technology and the End of the Future’. He says this on cloud: “Today the cloud is the central metaphor of the internet: a global system of great power and energy that nevertheless retains the aura of something noumenal and numinous, something almost impossible to grasp …. The cloud is a new kind of industry, and hungry one. …Absorbed into the cloud are many of the previously weighty edifices of the civic sphere: the places we shop, bank, socialize, borrow books, and vote. Thus obscured, they are rendered less visible and less amenable to critique, investigation, preservation and regulation”. There is an interesting discussion of the book by Will Self in The Guardian on June 30, 2018 (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/30/new-dark-age-by-james-bridle-review-technology-and-the-end-of-the-future).
Bewitched and bewildered
There seems to be a sharp polarization that permits no middle-ground – either you are a technology pessimist or technology optimist. Is a balance possible, even if at intermittent intervals? Perhaps, we, the 99%, should look at ‘balance’ in a different way. As consumers, we are so bewitched and dazzled by all that technology can offer us, making several activities easier to do, that we yield, often willingly, to its temptations. Businesses capitalize on this and we yield more. Zuboff makes a telling observation: “Surveillance capitalism offers solutions to individuals in the form of social connections, access to information, time-saving convenience, and, too often, illusion of support” (Page 383). Among certain population, this illusion of support has led to harmful consequences: a news report in The Times of India (January 09, 2023, Page 16) says that Seattle’s schools have sued tech companies arguing that these companies have “successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth, hooking millions of students across the country into positive feedback loops of excessive use and abuse of defendants”.
If we, as consumers, keep giving in, we are simultaneously aiding in the creation of more and more powerful and intrusive businesses and institutions. However, as individuals, we ought to embrace another perspective, articulated by Andy Grove, the famed CEO of Intel and author of the expression ‘Only the paranoid survive’, which was even the title of his autobiography. If we, the 99%, have to survive and live with dignity amidst all the overwhelming dominance of the business use of technology, we ought to become paranoid. That will determine whether we are a people or just fodder.
Takeaways
First step is to grasp the underpinnings of technology
Control is central to technology
What gets pushed, what gets shunned reveals a lot about who controls
Dark side of technology should always engage our attention
Only the paranoid survive
