Gizmoification and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. We observe as there are repeated increasing infringements on human dignity by technology which has, over time, especially in late capitalism, transmogrified itself from a force for societal and civilisational development, into a force for decay, misery and the reinforcement of ruling class powers and interests. Throughout recent history the capitalist technophiles have wreaked havoc on society through their increasingly perverse experimentations and “contributions”. Nothing highlights this more sublimely and locally than the impressive recent ITV drama “Mr Bates vs. The Post Office”. It shed light on how tech corporation Fujitsu secured lucrative government Post Office contracts after buying up a British company involved with Whitehall, imposed a new computer system known as Horizon on post officer workers, that they knew was faulty, enabled them illegal remote access to sub-postmaster accounts, manipulation of finances, and eventually led to hundreds of wrongful convictions, thousands of bankruptcies, numerous suicides, ruined lives and all manner of other diabolical results. And the reason why? A faulty, rapacious, unquestionable gizmo. The Post Office and Fujitsu had decided that the hallowed importance of the mechanoid oscillations of their beloved Horizon system was above that of truth and the livelihoods and wellbeing of its workers. And even now, after all the public outcry, court cases, overturned convictions, compensation pay-outs etc., have the technophiles and corporate types of Fujitsu paid a single penny or suffered at all? Of course not. The corporation still maintains Post Office contracts to this very day! The techno-capitalists brush off the scandal like it was a flake of dandruff. No bother. Time and again, this story has played itself in techno-capitalism and stories like the Horizon scandal barely scratch the surface, with many similar debauched sagas never reaching the public eye. What a stinking system. No wonder Ted Kaczynski said that it would be better to dump the entire thing and take the consequences!
Even the haughty scholars and elite philosopher types are waking up to the absolute diabolical catastrophe of gizmoification. Yanis Varoufakis himself has recently released a new tome entitled ‘Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism’. Indeed! Gizmoification, technologification, technofeudalism, or whatever label you want to use, will lead to the system destroying itself. This was first explained by Kaczynski in ‘Why the Technological System Will Destroy Itself’ in 2011. The full argument will not be repeated here, but we may summarise a few points thus: as a self-propagating system, techno-capitalism acts according to the laws of natural selection which operate in all environments containing multiple competing systems, be they living organisms or not. It possesses short-term survival advantages that increase the likelihood of persistence without addressing long-term detrimental side effects of said advantages. This, when combined with the might of modern global capitalism (mass communication and transportation) necessitates its eventual disintegration. This is because, unlike biological organisms or natural habitats, the scale of the techno-capitalist system is massive. As such, any change or fluctuation is likely to have massive, exponential and globally consequence effects. Prophetic! Just observe the catastrophic and worldwide effects as a result of the Russia-Ukraine war or the recent blockage of the Suez Canal. The complexity of the technological system is simultaneously its greatest weakness. However, academics like Varoufakis of course do not espouse such a Kaczynskian view, rather his argument is that capitalism, as a result of what we call gizmoification and the domination of technology, has evolved into technofeudalism: a new mode of production more akin to the system medieval serfs suffered under for centuries. He cleverly and smugly explains how power has been transferred from the traditional capitalists of old (the factory-owning types and so on) to the owners of “cloud capital”, modern feudal tech-overlords or “cloud fiefs” who command gargantuan gizmo-marketplaces such as Amazon, Ali-Baba etc. These new arenas where the majority of exchange takes place extract rent from both vassal capitalists and buyers by hyper-powerful cloud-monopolists like Bezos and Zuckerberg: nobody is safe. Simultaneously, all the users of these cloud marketplaces, algorithms, devices and apps (you and me!) perform constant free unpaid labour: they help to refine, adjust and personalise various algorithms with their daily input, with the result being evermore finely-tuned gizmos capable of ever-greater attention capture and, eventually, rent or profit extraction. When you think that you are innocently scrolling through TikTok, Instagram or whatever, you are performing a serf’s work. No, worse: it is slavery. These algorithms are digital bodyguards who protect and uphold the interests of the rich and ruling classes whilst keeping everybody else firmly in place as slaves.
Before we digress any further, the importance of highlighting these relatable examples (The Horizon scandal and ideas from Varoufakis’ new book) is to show that even the mainstream are beginning to illuminate a key process: the increasing indignity levied on regular people by gizmoification and technology. And we haven’t even touched on the consequences of gizmoification for Earth’s climate and biosphere!
Technology is more ubiquitous than ever, more interconnected and globalised than ever, with the average person from New York to Bucharest to Lagos having greater technological power and bandwidth than ever before, with access to personal smartphones, high speed internet, communications and so forth, even in the so-called “third world”. And yet, the entire global system is closer to collapse than ever: gizmoification has seen it so that we are threatened by the great levellers of war, nuclear holocaust, pandemics, climate change, ecological and economic collapse. The standard of living, even in the West, is approaching an all-time low. So what use is the latest smartphone or a social media account with thousands of followers? Ah, yes, the ability to watch these events unfold, almost in real time, on our screens. Never before have brutal clips of warfare, terrorism, torture and bloodshed been so easily-accessible for all. Who knows what effect this wreaks on the psyche? One can only shudder. One brief search on your favourite social media site will fill your feed with a litany of horrific imagery. The entire symphony is one of absurdity. Alongside all of this, the citizens of the world continue to engage with, click, feed and refine the algorithms that so capture their attention – all free of charge of course – and only for the owners of the digitopshere to turn around and demand rent for the privilege. It is no exaggeration to say that the majority of people in the world now spend most of their lives in a virtual cyberspace that is actually nowhere. We are the modern citizens of Alex Proyas’ ‘Dark City’. Deepfakes make it impossible to fully discern what is real. Technology has decimated the collective human attention span and has dulled our senses. Large numbers of the children of today require multiple streams of simultaneous digital entertainment to keep them occupied. The prevalence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is increasing near-exponentially, even in adults (1) (2). Artificial intelligence is continually improved and developed, replacing scores of human workers, increasingly leaking into our reality and replacing genuine human-to-human interactions or digital connections. The gizmos and algorithms have colonised our brains.
Even those who would never admit that gizmoification is a force for evil can no longer deny the fact of the unexpected, unpredictable and negative consequences of technology. Guy Debord described his idea of “the spectacle” as capital that is accumulated to such a degree that it becomes imagery, or the immense accumulation of images that supplant social relations between people. We are so dependent, so constantly and intensely connected to this Debordian spectacle of mass media and instantaneous digital communication that, if and when our connections are cut, we feel agony, we bleed digital blood. We experience withdrawal symptoms. This constant technological battery on our senses and psyches, whether from social media algorithms or digital workplaces, has resulted in a new type of human being. There are scores of examples of such people who, when confronted by violence, injustice or any other horrific or extreme event, choose to film the episode on their phone, the importance and necessity of the future dopamine-serotonin flood into their neural synapses from clicks, likes and attention far outweighing the moral importance or necessity of assisting someone in need. The algorithms are reducing the total quality of homo sapiens. Technology, our supposed great emancipator and driver of the future, has resulted in the gizmoification of the world, stifling humanity. Unplug yourselves whilst you still can.
References:
Comentários