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< | As we learn to adapt to the internet society that captures almost all parts of our existence, the fair distribution of power and control in this new age remains strikingly imbalanced. Not only a handful of mega corporations in the West monopolize this new continuum of our existence, but they also effectively prohibit billions of people from accessing this unprecedent source of knowledge and intellect. Trillions of dollars concentrated in a few companies are spent to solidify the perception that the “internet” itself is Google, Facebook, Twitter, and a few others. People are constantly kept in the dark by these companies and effectively prohibited from learning about the alternatives. Their data is continuously harvested for reasons unknown. As such, the most vital question that needs to be resolved as we are further connected to each other by the minute is that how we are to democratize the internet.
Traditional colonialism may be for the most part dead, but the few privileged classes in the West still has an immensely tight grip on the rest of humanity. Christopher Wylie’s “Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America” clearly illustrated how data collected by Facebook in exchange for free access to its platform allowed private companies to carry massive psychological campaigns on entire societies. They first use smaller datasets to test their influence on smaller societies located in one of the former colonies, where their actions can go completely unchecked. And Wylie shows that the immense data that Facebook harvests is then used in the Western societies that allow these companies to safely exist in the first place.
This is not the first time in recent history that a source of power is concentrated in the hands of the few. However, this is certainly the first time in history that a few companies have complete power as to determine how we think and act. In this regard, the power concentration of today is a lot scarier than the monopoly Standard Oil had in the early 20th Century. A few companies in the world have a dominion over our minds. And this is simply unacceptable. It is not possible to be free in the age of the internet where the central mechanism of how we are connected to one another is owned and manipulated by a few entities.
The mission is clear: we need to break these monopolies and intervene in this market failure. But how can we achieve this mountain of a task? The challenge lies in the fact that we live in broken societies; we are controlled by crooked politicians who worship money and power. The monopolies of our current age have immense financial resources, and they have certainly enough of it to influence our political agendas. Assuming that “We the People” can define our destiny as a society, we need to take immediate action in how we democratize this next medium of human existence.
First and foremost, we cannot simply allow hundreds of years of inequalities to persist in this new age. We have to accept knowledge as a basic human right and provide all tools and basic knowledge necessary to allow people to make the best use of what the web offers to them. This does not mean that we should destroy all differences in wealth and power overnight; however, it means that the next generation of humans must be allowed to have equal opportunities in their access to knowledge and intellectual growth.
Even though it goes against the long-established patent rights, it is in the government’s, and the people’s, best interest to nationalize certain patents and allow free access to the use of them. Most groundbreaking scientific patents are a result of billions of dollars of government investment, meaning they were directly funded by the taxpayers. We cannot allow risks to be collectivized while allowing profits to be privatized. It is in the right of the people to seize control of what belongs to them and allow the new generation to truly write their own destinies.
A seizure and emancipation of patents would allow cheap reproduction of hardware and software around the world. This would necessarily mean that hundreds of millions of people may get their hands-on machines that would fully allow them to truly connect with the web. However, such a scenario on its own does not guarantee that people would be truly freed. The bright and able minds of the world have to come together to write user-friendly online manuals and perhaps digital classes to teach ordinary people of all ages how to best utilize the machines they have. Governments are for the most part incredibly inapt in equipping their people with the necessary knowledge to bring about social mobility. As such, even though perhaps we can trust our power as the people to free some patents, we cannot rely solely on the government to educate people in how to use computers for attaining knowledge. I believe this will necessarily be a collective effort of dedicated idealists around the world.
Another issue that needs to be resolved in democratizing the internet is the monopolies in existence. Will they simply wither away if people know that they can use safe alternatives? I do not believe that it will be the case; human beings are strange creatures after all, and the “sexy” services and hardware provided by the 21st Century monopolies are highly attractive to them. They do not even realize that they are being kept in the dark; their minds are controlled by people unknown to us, and they keep living in an exquisite Truman Show. As such, do we proceed with breaking Facebook and Google into smaller pieces? And even if we can, how are we to deal with the Chinese internet giants? Does the humanity need to live in completely segregated online worlds? Or can we unilaterally breakdown the CCP’s monopoly over the Chinese internet? The problems are relatively easy to identify, but the solutions seem to be a lot more complicated. | >
> | The Matrix: A Non-Fiction
Surveillance is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as a close watch kept over someone or something (as by a detective). Traditionally, it was an invasion of privacy with the goal of exposing illicit activities.Surveillance was always associated with feelings of fear, anxiety, stress, and distrust.
In the past century, a new form of surveillance has emerged.As Shoshana Zuboff described it, surveillance Capitalism depends on exploiting and controlling human nature. Companies like Google and Facebook extract information from us, and employ it to re-design our behavior with the goal of profit maximization. Quite simply, these companies are using technology not only to invade our privacy, but also to gradually, slightly, imperceptibly change our own behavior and perception.
The technologies being used target our conscious and subconscious behavior and emotions. They tap into our desires and manipulate us into reacting the way they want us to. We have willfully surrendered our free will and agreed to be manipulated and engaged rather than actively making free undirected choices. Their goal is to automate us.Surveillance capitalism is even being used by governments to control societies as a whole by affecting elections, suppressing opposition, and directing the population to adopt the government's way of thinking.
The Matrix is a “science fiction” movie about humans trapped in a simulation being controlled by machines, while other humans play with the switches. In the world of surveillance capitalism, is the Matrix still a science fiction?
Why are we not scared of surveillance?
It is no longer a secret that these tools are being used to surveil us and modify our behavior in order to maximize company profits. Yet somehow, even when Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before the Senate post the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook was still making billions. So why do we not fear this surveillance?
We do not fear it because the tools are attractive, give us a false of control, and have embedded themselves into our existence.
Fear is an emotional response largely motivated by what we perceive threatens our existence. This response can then be tempered by a conscious realization of the situation. These platforms surveilling our every move and mood are purposefully designed in a way that attracts us to it, like humans are attracted to beauty. It is not violent nor ugly. We perceive it as an object, not a being threatening our existence. All the while this object is taking on a physiological nervous system interconnected.. Google, Facebook, Apple, ByteDance? and all other companies pour millions of dollars in product design.
Moreover, they market themselves as tools that are there to serve us, giving us a false sense of control. Meanwhile we have become preys to this instrument. Users of email, social media, health apps, and smartphones in general are in a continuous state of distraction. Without knowing why we find ourselves on social media and unintentionally jump from one platform to the other.
Finally, these tools are embedded into our daily lives and we have relied on them enormously that we are unable to envision an alternative. We feel we will be isolated from society, incapable of monitoring our health, lost, unable to find a date, etc. We have surrendered into a fascist way of thinking that no one will question things if the trains run on time. We got used to it, so why change it.
The Way Out
We need to start seeing things the way they really are. The internet is a physiological nervous system. It is a being on its own that can be used by companies and governments to surveil, control, and alter our behavior. This is a real frightening violent threat to human beings and our freedom of thought. As such, we need to treat the beautiful tools which are at our disposal but not under our control as a hostile agent with a structure and mind of its own, which activates our defense mechanism. The idea is not to put the genie back in the bottle, nor to completely shun these tools. Rather, the idea is to | | | \ No newline at end of file |
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