The New 21st Century Dystopia, an editorial
This is about as political as I ever care to get, so please indulge me. It was less than 10 years ago when conspiracy theorists and political documentaries were looking closer at the ‘1% elite class’ and the power they wield to marginalize a population (ref: Peter Joseph’s Zeitgeist film). Some of it was healthy expression and social activism against anti-consumerism and economic inequality, like the Occupy Wallstreet movement. Some was wild extremist conspiracies like the presence of a deep state or the Illuminati. Certain accounts, from interviews to documentaries, seemed convinced that a secret society was pulling all the financial strings for the future.
Some claims have been as preposterous as having a new generation of Rockefellers & Morgans, being in control of macro-level events like a 9/11 Conspiracy, to influence financial markets and keep the population under the control of fear. And before we dismiss these notions as paranoid delusions, it’s hard to deny the more obvious influences and not so subtle influence we see everyday in mass media. Even before the Information age as we know it, we felt this power, from wartime propaganda to the rivalries of American moguls like Rupert Murdoc and Ted Turner.
Even without large scale conspiracy events, our mega media and news conglomerates (AT&T, Newscorp, Comcast,etc) have adapted very well to social conditioning, advertising and lobbying interests – with the help of clever little algorithms. And once that AI accelerates further, the dangers increase to what could be a very subtle unconscious manipulation and supreme control of public sentiment.
In that landscape, this economic elite, the ones at the top of the pyramid with the highest concentration of wealth and power, only stand to prosper lavishly. Their ideals and ultimate objectives for the future are quite simple: 1.) keep the wealthiest in power without expanding the total population at the top. 2.) keep growing but marginalizing the middle-class as the main consumer market and 3.) ignore the bottom and let them live by the law of the jungle (i.e. dog-eat-dog).
For objectives one and three (the top and bottom) – the solution is straightforward and already going to plan quite sufficiently. In fact, as AI technology advances, the concentration of wealth can very easily stay very small and tight, there is no need to grow a large wealthy upper class with the automation of companies and heavy consumer influence. And as major markets like the UK and US explore very extreme versions of Nationalism, some might say Isolationists, we might picture a dreamworld fortress, closed and locked down to refugees, immigration and the risk of a lower poverty line. All the while, our free market economy encouraging an ever-blurring line between lower and middle class, without having to sponsor much aid at all.
Further, the really interesting and slightly more subtle challenge is how to fully tackle objective two (growing and marginalizing our middle-class, middle market consumers). It seems a wild assertion in science fiction (from Minority Report to 1984), that tyranny could come in the form of technology. Outfit an entire society of billions with an RFID chip, track all locations and behaviour, control all finances and access to buildings and transport. And if anyone seems to step out of line, they’re shut off, locked out completely. Science fiction right? Well whether it was done by conspiracy, secret state planning, or by organically accelerating corporate interests: we are there now, it’s not an implant yet, but it is in that shiny sleek new phone you can’t live without. We all got duped into carrying geolocation and listening devices everywhere we go. Pretty soon it will be our main wallets, key fabs, and identities.
So, let’s take a deep breath here. Maybe you’ve pulled back at this point or much earlier, when the guy that says I don’t go in for conspiracy theories, just smattered you with a few truckloads. Perhaps the notions of conspiracy theories and power concentration elicits an eye-roll or an accusatory cry of ‘cray-cray’, tinfoil hat lunacy. Perhaps you love it a little too much, allured by the escapism it provides like some underworld cyberpunk fiction. Maybe you’re slightly aware that it’s a comforting distraction designed to reduce your problems and offer a person to blame. Perhaps you’re adamant that our current state of media and technology is simply emergent consumer trends – perfectly synchronised and efficiently set in motion by healthy markets; nothing morally blameworthy or self-aware.
Afterall, the 5 horsemen of Big Tech, never intended to marginalize you, they just want to sell you cool shit. But individualist agendas like privacy and ethics will always make way for the big turning wheels of opportunism, which is run on steady profit and marketplace growth. So even if that big moving machine is emergent, and not up in an ivory tower twisting it’s moustache and plotting it’s supremacy, I think history has shown how opportunism seeps into the priorities of individuals and organisations with power. If mobile phones are as prevalent as they are today by tyrannical design or abstract greed, I only ask what’s the difference? And who among you think that was a one-off leap of socio-economics, never to be repeated?
Well historians and economists know better and have rung the alarm bells for the future, even if no one else has. We are in the middle of a full scale global pandemic, where the aforementioned media corporations are working hard to harness the power of fear and influence for alternative agendas. We are addicts to our scrolling news feeds, clickbait sound bytes, outraged tweets, and the endlessly reinforced feedback loops of confirmation bias.
Let me ask: what seems more realistic to you versus conspiracy theory: that our media conglomerates and big tech will work tirelessly and collaboratively to solve the pandemic? (And I’m leaving big pharma out of this for now, because, well, that just all seems too obvious). Or that the ears are perking up to this new lightning rod the power and control, this global state of fear, for financial gain? Whether emergent or by clever people in power, I beg you to consider that financial markets will find a way to benefit massively from the sentiments of a global population under lockdown. And if we blink we won’t see it coming.
So what do we do? Believe me, I am constantly divided between economic growth and human rights, never exclusive of each other, and not always at odds. Like any good nostalgic liberalist, I believe in a free market economy, basic intrinsic human rights and popular opinion for democratic decisions. But that level of ideology seems to be collapsing under our feet. It seems to me that countries that sign-post capitalism as a solution, are also adopting extreme closed-border nationalism, disguising themselves as democracy but not really encouraging free market trade, or human rights support. Further, I don’t believe popular opinion can remain a leading macro-indicator of truth, with big data and algorithms pulling all the strings, and hacking our cavemen brains better and better.
I offer only this simple warning: that we could move subtly and slowly towards a world we no longer recognize, one that feels more imperial than democratic without ever noticing. One that has made global common interests less en vogue, like ecological concerns, and ethical baselines for AI and biotechnology. A world that has forgotten to focus on basic human rights in favor of concentrated power, whether that power is ‘allowed’ to remain in the hands of the wealthy elite, given over to our robot overlords, or most likely, so hyper-engrained to our behavioural conditioning that we do not even feel the pinch of the shackles we wear.
My warning then is not a rebellion nor is it a call to reform governments, unions, nations, corporate interests. My warning today is for the individual, to whom I say: be wary of the buckets of bullshit we get force-fed every day. Know what you’re voting for between short-term and long-term interests. Know what media diet you’re consuming and the influence it’s having on your conscious and subconscious way of thinking. Feelings and intuition are fine, but use them as pattern recognition, not as shortcuts to thinking. Think critically, challenge the norms and reject false premises. But most of all, adopt the movements of digital mindfulness, exercising your control to unplug. Avoid your compulsive scrolling. Read more diverse opinions that make you uncomfortable. The global population of 7 billion is a complex place, and there is no nobility in reducing the issues to a category, a side, a tribe or a gut feeling. Be a modern thinker, and reject your invisible oppressors, those dragons of chaos.
Paul Carreo 