The Empire Strikes Back
The Technocrats of Silicon Valley are the Governor-Generals of a new type of extraction economy.
It’s becoming increasingly fashionable for us as Brits and indeed our Western European friends to indulge in endless self-flagellation for our colonial past. Penitence is mandatory if you want to be affirmed as politically and culturally savvy. The articulation of guilt, shame and remorse for the exploitation perpetrated by our forebears is seemingly required in escalating measure. Of course, there is much to feel guilty about. Amongst other things, the British Empire’s insatiable appetite that powered the extraction of endless tonnes of raw material and used the labour of slaves to fuel its progress, was, with hindsight, breathtakingly abhorrent. The Empire’s extraction machine, led by a bureaucratic administration of Governor-Generals and their countless aides oversaw the rape and pillage of countless colonies resources of the then ‘Great British Empire’. ‘Great Britain’ grabbed whatever it could lay its hands on and it’s reach stretched around the globe.
Of course, we now live in an ‘enlightened’ age, we’ve ascended from this iniquitous pit, collectively we now occupy the intellectual, moral and ethical high ground. Or do we? Economies supported by the oppression, exploitation and enslaving of others is a thing of the past. Or is it? “Of course”, you say, “things are different now”. Are they?
The seemingly unforgivable sins of the past have hijacked our collective consciousness. A movement that has many of the characteristics of a new religion – The Social Justice Movement, serves only to amplify the shame and guilt associated with the transgression of our forebears, so much so that we have little or no capacity to recognise that a new, even more powerful Empire has been taking the globe by stealth. The Technocrats of Silicon Valley are the Governor-Generals of a new type of extraction economy. Their appetite for power, control and manipulation is insatiable. The colonisation of the globe is their aim, and no people group, country or continent are off-limits. Traditional boundaries that impeded the exploitation machine, such as geography and culture are transcended by these new superpowers. You see, you can’t take evil out of the system without addressing the evil in the human heart.
It was the innovative genius of Tim Berners-Lee that has led to this new Empire’s mass exploitation. Over 50 years ago he developed what was then an obscure platform called the Internet, part of the Word Wide Web. It was aimed at helping scientist to freely share data. Berners-Lee wanted this new platform to hold the principles of decentralised power and democratic leadership. It was to be unbridled by fees, patents, royalties or any other controls in order to thrive. His vision was that this could be a means by which millions of innovators could be empowered, designing and owning their own products and taking advantage of the new opportunity it presented. From the beginning, Berners-Lee fully comprehended the astronomical power of the Web and that it would radically transform governments, businesses and society. He also envisioned however, that his brainchild could, in the wrong hands, become a destroyer of worlds. In making the decision to release the source code for free, making the Web open and democratic, a platform for all, his invention soon took on a life of its own. He now believes his deepest fears are being realised!
Data Extraction Economy
We live and by default participate, in a world dominated by Commodity. The commodity of primary value has changed over the centuries. Once upon a time, land and the various markets it supported was the dominant commodity. The industrial revolution created huge economic and social change as mining and metals became the principle commodities that drove the mass production of the 19th Century. In the 21st century, it’s data. Collecting and selling information has become the pathway to make your fortune. You only need to look at the list of the World’s Top 10 richest people to see how this has market has radically changed the mix of this elite group of Governor-Generals over the last 15- 20 years. Elon Musk - he needs no introduction; Jeff Bezos - the inventor of the monolithic Amazon; the famous x-tech giant Bill Gates and then there’s the young fresh faced Mark Zuckerberg who invented Facebook in his dorm at University in 2004. Nineteen years later he now controls over 60 social media platforms, and as a consequence he potentially controls how and what 3 billion people across the globe believe, think and feel!
What is the commodity that has driven their wealth? It’s the Monetised Attention Economy. Tristan Harris, an ex-Google Ethicist, describes many of the social media platforms as being built on a predatory capitalist attention model. By this he means that profit is the aim of the provision of information. In very basic terms, this is how it happens: - someone knowingly develops an addictive social media platform to which you become addicted - say, Facebook. They collect information about you and then sell it to someone else who in turn will try and sell you something. Simple! All of this takes place without you even knowing it’s happening. What’s more you labour free of charge for their profit as you scroll endlessly on your handheld device! That’s how someone becomes one of the richest men in the world, he simply enslaves and exploits people like you!
The market is huge! Currently there are 4.5 billion internet users, 60% of the world is online and to date we have 3.8 billion social media users. Exploitation – defined as ‘the act of selfishly taking advantage of someone or a group of people in order to profit from them or otherwise benefit oneself’ is the guiding mantra of the people who operate these monolithic tech Empires. This is exploitation on a scale never seen before in human history. It’s estimated that 3 billion people’s attention is being mined for saleable data every day.
Empires Dehumanise People
The problem with the attention economy is that when information becomes abundant, attention becomes finite. You can’t grow the attention economy, so you are forced to have to compete with other platforms that are equally attempting to attract your attention. How do you acquire additional attention? The answer - Outrage and Sensationalism. These along with aggrandizement and hyperbole have increasingly become strategies adopted to win your time and attention and as a consequence allow the data leach to take every opportunity to drain you of as much profitable information as is possible. The more outrageous the comment, photo or video, the more opportunity there is for taking a larger slice of the finite attention economy cake. This methodology heralds an even bleaker outcome – social polarisation. Social media platforms become a means of exploiting, even creating division that in turn, powers up the attention economy. Dialogue and discussion are expended as conversations become more performative and appealing to an audience. Consciously or unconsciously inciting clashes of ideology and dogma, spur on tweets, likes and comments thus fuelling the fires of the Data Extraction Economy.
Don’t be deluded, imperialism and its desire for power, influence and control at any cost isn’t dead you see, you just can’t kill it. Empire, imperialism and colonisation are at best an ideology and at worst a satanic dream. The desire for ‘profit’ summons and emboldens desires that exist deep in the recesses of our hearts and souls. This lust for power and control that inevitably results in manipulation, exploitation and oppression collude with the desire for ‘profit’ and in turn enslaves countless numbers of people. The sins of our forefathers are indeed being visited on us. Breaking free from these powers is seemingly impossible.
The illusory freedoms that the current Social Justice movement and other movements are fighting for cannot simply be confined to the outing of systemic evil in all its guises. No, these unseen powers of darkness and decay hold all of us tight in their grip. Whilst we are making well-meaning, but in the grand scheme of things, feeble attempts to unshackle ourselves from embedded injustice, little seems to change. The truth is, the job is beyond us, we need some help from without, indeed from above, to secure our true emancipation from this prison of death and decay. We really do need a saviour. Don’t worry! To use the prophet Isaiah’s language, ‘a child has been born unto us’ and ‘a son has been given’ and it looks highly likely that the government may well rest on its shoulders in the future! As the world of exponential tech reaches new heights many gather in wonder around the manger of its most recent miraculous newborn - AI. As we peep into the manger our collective wondering leads most of us to the conclusion that this baby has not come down from heaven but come up from hell! A new King has been born; a new Empire is in its infancy. This tech child has the colonisation of the globe in its sights, and it seems we are powerless to do anything about it!
What are we going to do? We need some help.! ‘Where does our help come from?’ the psalmist asks as he lifts his eyes upward; ‘My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.’ Never before in human history have we faced a power that can colonise the hearts , minds and lives of countless billions of people. God help us, we need it! The Empire is about to strike back!