SMOKERS’ CORNER: BIG TECH'S BIG RUSH

Everyone seems to be in a hurry. This impatience is not about what was once called ‘the rat race.’ The rat race was towards a well-defined goal. Yet, it was cyclic for most. Round and round they went. The faster they ran, the stronger the system that they were a part of got. The race was organised by a well-oiled bureaucracy, and overseen by governments and corporations that provided incentives for people to stay in the race. 

Increasingly, however, people are dropping out of the old rat race. It had turned them into nuts and bolts in a machine. Their goal was to survive and race up a mechanical hierarchy, even though most just kept going in circles. From the late 1920s till the early 1970s, the rat race remained to be a thing. 

However, from the 1990s, when digital technology first began to expand, it introduced itself as the tool with the potential to dismantle the old machine and free the people trapped inside it. Instead of people going in circles to achieve ‘meaningless’ goals, the new technology was to ‘empower’ them to become individuals who could write their own destinies.

The creators of this technology promised that it would unleash “direct democracy”, increase “real communication” and usher in a system in which anyone willing to use their imagination, creativity and “dream big” would have the opportunity to prosper. 

Technological advancements come with the notion that they are liberating people from the old, soulless forms of capitalism. But are people being duped and led towards societal collapse and an authoritarian techno-capitalist future?

But, eventually, the new technology ended up creating a whole new machine: “Techno-capitalism.” Being part of this machine is not as ‘soulless’ as it was in the old one. In fact, the new machine is addictive. It feeds illusions of freedom and power to what are still nuts and bolts. People flock inside it like sheep, but with each believing they are “different”, “unique”, and “special”. 

The capitalism that was active from the 1930s till at least the early 1970s was constantly modified to co-opt various aspects from ideas that were actually opposed to capitalism. This was done to keep those in the rat race from causing any disruption. 

The capitalism produced by the new machine glorifies everything digital. It glamorises artificial intelligence (AI) and popularises words such as “disruption”. It has made billionaires out of the ‘nerds’ who oversee its workings. The new machine’s nuts and bolts are unlike those of the old machine. These ones are made to believe that they are functioning of their own free will. They really aren’t. 

The billionaires who oversee the workings of the new machine are not like old capitalists who were only interested in profit, but were also willing to modify their ambitions to mitigate the possibility of the nuts and bolts rebelling against the machine. Unlike the owners of the old machine, those running the new one are “incurable idealists.” Yes, you read that right. At least this is how they often portray themselves. 

They position their businesses not as enterprises gunning for profit, but as conscientious projects which — through cutting-edge technology— will end environmental degradation, disease, poverty etc. This is often referred to as “techno-optimism.” To its critics, though, it’s a scam. 

For example, techno-optimists have been touting electric vehicles as an effective means to mitigate greenhouse gases. But The Guardian reported in January 2023 that, in the US alone, transition to electric vehicles could require three times as much lithium as is currently produced for the entire global market.

Techno-optimists have also been hailing the potential of AI to resolve various long-standing problems. But, according to a July 2023 report in Scientific America, AI technology is likely to get worse, because the shoddy AI-generated content that is already on the internet is corrupting the training data for models to come.

The Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis refuses to call tech billionaires, ‘techno-capitalists.’ According to him, capitalism is being replaced by “feudalism in a digital guise” or “techno-feudalism.” Millions of people serve big tech overlords by handing over data to access their ‘cloud space.’ To Varoufakis, the consumers of tech giants are modern-day serfs. 

In January this year, at Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration ceremony, heads of major American tech companies were seen posing for a photograph. This is the same event in which the billionaire Elon Musk was accused of making the Nazi salute. He is a declared Trump supporter, but the alleged Nazi salute saw some of his critics claim that he was an “accelerationist”. 

‘Accelerationism’ is a philosophy that seeks to speed up the intensification of societal collapse, to create a new order. Accelerationists look to use digital technology and its social, economic and political impact to bring forward a collapse that they say is inevitable. 

Accelerationism emerged in the 1990s from the fringes of British academia as a postmodernist take on Marxism. Whereas the 19th century philosopher Karl Marx’s prediction of capitalism collapsing under its own weight, followed by a communist utopia, failed to materialise, the expansion of digital technology in the 1990s excited a group of young British academics who saw the end of capitalism caused by the “liberating” potentials of digital technology. 

One of the leading thinkers of accelerationism was Nick Land. Convinced that the new technology would puncture capitalism, he advocated its acceleration through various means, so that a new, “more equitable order” that he and his colleagues were anticipating would arrive much earlier. 

Land eventually ended up living in China, which he claimed was “the most accelerationist state.” Interestingly, though, on his return to England, Land’s accelerationism wasn’t seeking a more equitable order anymore. It was now seeking authoritarian city-states, with each being ruled by CEOs. 

Land then went on to become a guru of sorts for far-right groups. He also became popular among big tech heads. He urged his followers to bring populists such as Trump to power. 

To accelerationists, right-wing populists became important because they (the populists) seek to do away with “limitations” such as economic regulations and “worn out” government and state institutions.

Apparently, this, coupled with tech giants and their technology, will bring forward a future controlled by authoritarian CEO types in charge of technologically advanced city-states. The presence of big tech folk at Trump’s presidential inauguration has sparked fears that this dystopian version of accelerationism has seeped into big tech companies. 

It won’t be far-fetched to assume that people’s impatience today is being triggered by accelerated digital technology, on its way to land the world in an authoritarian techno-capitalist future. So do stop and smell the flowers every now and then. Slow down.

Published in Dawn, EOS, February 9th, 2025

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