Category: Politics

Disruption achieved.  What now?

Returning to the generalization that the internet is the “best thing ever to happen to democracy,” I have to ask this:  if the proof of the pudding is in the eating, how do we like the soufflé so far?  Admittedly, the unprecedented scope of the Women’s March on January 21 would not have been possible without social media; but at the same time, I very much doubt that a candidate in the style of Donald Trump could have become president without social media, so I guess we’re going to have to live with that dichotomy.

Setting aside Trump’s policy agenda—to the extent that it is coherent—what I believe he represents above all is a vote of no confidence in the American system itself.  And to be honest, I believe Bernie Sanders’s campaign represented this for many people as well–albeit in a very different manner.  But what these two radically divergent populists had in common was a message that the middle class is getting hammered because the system has failed.  It’s why the Sanders-to-Trump voter is not the contradiction it might seem; but I do find it at least worth pondering that the election of 2016 was very much A Tale of Two Angry Old Men.  Not that I discount Hillary Clinton by any means, but it seems as though the venn diagram that combines many swing votes in the electorate who would never vote for Hillary with those who reluctantly voted for Hillary shared that common complaint that the establishment itself is the problem.

And now that we are watching Trump’s approach to “shaking up Washington” play out in an exhausting whirlwind of political heterodoxy, I can’t help but think about that youthful and ebullient mantra of Silicon Valley that preaches Disrupt Everything. Citizens across the political spectrum, fed up with the status quo on a wide range of social, political, and economic issues, either actively or passively endorsed this disrupt zeitgeist. Remember the old Facebook motto Move fast and break things that was echoed by the VCs and creators of tech startups?  Could that not also serve as the headline for Trump’s first weeks in the White House?

The cacophony of political theater and real policy proposals of the new administration has certainly been breathtaking, but it is also familiar territory to those of us who spend time scrutinizing the PR and policy aims of the internet industry. The disestablishment playbook of Bannon seems to share, one might say, substantial similarity with the disestablishment playbook of Google when that company opposes legal regimes like copyright law, privacy restrictions, anti-trust regulation, or even the notion of statehood itself.

Like the sledgehammer Trump wants to take to all regulation in order to supposedly “get business flowing again,” Google & Friends have repeated almost the same message to sell the idea that legal regimes like copyright are anachronisms standing in the way of innovation. The sleight of hand works well because the goal is vague.  That word innovation is no more clearly defined than the word great in Trump’s campaign slogan. But the spirit of disruption insists that we not discuss the nagging details about where we might be headed. It says that we must simply break things right away and have faith that benefits are sure to follow.

And I do literally mean faith.  Because an enthusiasm for mass disruption seems to come from a deep well of magical thinking. Whether this means an overtly theocratic agenda a la Bannon or an overtly technocratic one a la Google, both visions seem to share this one underlying message:  that many foundations of the American Republic (i.e. all things mainstream) are standing in the way of a bright future. It feels as though we are locking in a dismal choice between the catastrophe of a new, theocratic global order or the uncertainty of a quasi-democratic, technological, “leisure” society. Or perhaps some bizarre, dystopian version of the two.  Meanwhile, the AI technologists continue their race to bring about the singularity with the same determinist zeal that Steve Bannon exhibits about the prospect of a war with China. Are we truly that eager for self-annihilation? Again?  No wonder a reported 50% of these same technologists have invested millions on their survivalist backup plans.

Blind faith in information technology to preserve democratic principles is just that:  blind.  As I suggested in an older post, because social media has divvied us up according to our brand of outrage, it is helping to hollow out the political center, leaving a vacuum for autocrats (or technocrats?) to fill. It was just a few years ago, when the Snowden story broke, and everyone became all leak-happy, that I criticized my progressive friends for looking in every direction for conspiracies and for putting too much faith in the illusion of transparency afforded by digital technologies.

We forget at our peril how fragile the American deal really is—that it is nothing more than an idea we mutually agree not to destroy, no matter how much we disagree on specific issues.  As I wrote in response to this 360-degree conspiracy view, if we completely lose faith in all functions of government, it means we’ve lost faith in each other, which is the beginning of the end.

Michael Idov, writing for New York Magazine, provides a glimpse into his experiences living and working in Russia as a cautionary tale about what happens when that very fragile agreement does not exist—when trust itself is obliterated. In a description that reminds me of at least cybernetic America over the last several years, Idov writes:

“Russian life, I soon found out, was marked less by fear than by cynicism: the all-pervasive idea that no institution is to be trusted, because no institution is bigger than the avarice of the person in charge. This cynicism, coupled with endless conspiracy theories about everything, was at its core defensive (it’s hard to be disappointed if you expect the worst). But it amounted to defeatism.”

And that’s the underlying message being delivered 140 characters at a time from the Oval Office today—that not one institution can be trusted over the word of a single individual. It is a defeatist and dangerous message, but not one that was written by Donald Trump so much as it was exploited by him. We wrote the narrative ourselves. Feeling let down by the system, we went looking for saviors instead of leaders.

The detrimental effect of social media, feeding the illusion that this technology fosters real transparency, cannot be overstated. The very significant phenomenon that some citizens sincerely believe that a presidential tweet is more honest and informative than the investigative work of a veteran journalist may seem mind-boggling, but it was an inevitable result of disrupting everything. And it is certainly not only Trump’s supporters who’ve bought into this idea that we can all be our own news sources now because the “mainstream” cannot be trusted. To the contrary, every day I see some friend on Facebook shake a head at the White House calling a verifiable fact “fake news,” but in the next instant, share some misleading headline from a questionable source.

We usually talk about the United States in terms of strength and rarely in terms of its fragility.  If that sounds “weak” to some, a reading of the Framers’ own words will show that they understood exactly how fragile the Republic is—that the moment it ceases to be a statesman’s debate about common purpose, we’re toast. But honest debate cannot occur when we have to spend so much time disputing or proving the facts themselves. Twenty years ago, we argued about what to do next, but not nearly so much about what had already happened.

As a general analysis, it is extremely hard to believe that we were not better off with a little less “information” and a little less “transparency.”  Because there is simply no denying the evidence that millions of us—right, left, and center—are operating with our own sets of facts and “alternative facts.” At the same time, it is also questionable whether or not any bi-partisan cooperation could ever happen under the gaze of constant public scrutiny.

It’s a little late now, of course. With the Executive adopting an authoritarian tone, and a party-line vote like we saw in the confirmation of a patently unqualified Secretary of Education, we’ve clearly crossed some threshold in the realm of sincere debate that is neither liberal nor conservative.  But this is what comes from an underlying loss of faith in the system itself and the chaos of the tech-enabled “direct democracy” that is, in many ways, an antidote to corruption but which is also highly vulnerable to corruption itself.

So, mission accomplished. We’re disrupted. “Big League.”  What’s next?

Photo by michaklootwijk

Democratization is Killing Democracy

Burning Male Protesteron Fire Shouts at Riot Act on the Streets.
Photo by stevanovicigor Pond 5.

 

I’m not sure what further evidence we need to finally declare the “information revolution” a fiasco. If the mind-boggling reality of electing a president who normalized hate speech with his campaign is not sufficient evidence that the digital age has failed to produce a more enlightened electorate, it’s hard to imagine what it would take for progressives to accept that the web hasn’t done us any favors. Yet the internet industry will keep insisting that what’s needed is more. If we just digitize more, provide more access, and harvest more data, the promised enlightenment is still within our grasp.

In the age of Less, conservative meant an author and scholar like William F. Buckley. In the age of More conservative means a cult troll like Milo Yiannapoulous. In the age of Less, there were three TV networks whose news divisions were both unprofitable and mandated by law, making them honest brokers of responsible journalism that didn’t have to compete with show business. In the age of More, a meme or a tweet will suffice because the “mainstream media” cannot be trusted. In the age of Less, expertise and dedication to purpose counted for something. In the age of More, anyone can be anything, a mashup video can be filmmaking, a cut-and-paste blog can be news, and a know-nothing thug can be President of the United States.

Donald Trump is—among many other things—the result of caring more about democratization than we do about democratic republicanism. As readers who’ve known this blog from the beginning are aware, it was the anti-SOPA campaign that got me started—less so because of the copyright issue than what that campaign said about our political process in the digital age. People were so convinced they were right about the bill that they didn’t bother to consider the larger implications of how social media and Big Data could so dramatically override the more contemplative and nuanced process of representative government. Now, with the victory of a guy like Trump, it should be clear that democratization does not in any way have to result in a benevolent society. There is no wisdom of crowds.

The utopian pretense of “disrupting the gatekeepers” in order to make the world’s information and culture freely and widely available is—in addition to stealing the work of authors—a complete fallacy as a social good. Every American who voted for the least-qualified and most obnoxious candidate in living memory had ample access to information, but to what end? This is what comes from treating all expression as “content,” as more fuel to run the data harvest for the data industry. The promise of technology has led even progressives to place so much emphasis on tearing down “elites,” that they should not be surprised when fools win the day.

The courts said Google is free to digitize a corpus of literature in order to serve a society that doesn’t read. “Digital rights” groups work to keep copyright weak in the service of the “free flow of information,” which inadvertently equalizes the social value of the poet and the fascist. More “information” is no more the answer to democracy than “more speech” was when SCOTUS ruled in Citizens United. Historically, less—what some call “artificial scarcity”—has produced the benevolently influential outcomes I want to believe most people still hope for. After all, the reason thousands mourn the passing of Leonard Cohen today is because there is only one Leonard Cohen.

Democratization is governed by the economy of trending, and trending is garbage—producing circumscribed experiences, as my colleague Mike Katell rightly points out in his blog. He writes, “While we’re busy pontificating (myself included) on social media about our views and sharing our carefully curated information tidbits with our online followers and friends, remember that this narrowly focused information sharing is a central problem for political discourse.” Trending is glib. Donald Trump just trended his way into the White House with all the intellectual virtue of a mean-girl tweet.

Ironically—perhaps even counter-intuitively—the information age has produced a climate in which American politics is no longer a competition of ideas, and factions on both the right and left are equally guilty of feeding that monster. Not only is the bubble naive, it is also grossly inaccurate. But what now?

It’s true that Trump welcomed hate into his campaign and has yet to say anything to quell that fire. And when we read about high school students already harassing minorities, this conjures legitimate fears of American Brown Shirts—a history that itself seems somehow lost despite the free flow of “information.” Through the filter of social media, it’s hard to avoid the anxiety and very hard to distinguish between being vigilantly informed and hysterically manipulated.

As indicated in a previous post, I know that if my neighbor voted for Donald Trump on Tuesday, it’s not because he’s a KKK member or a neo-Nazi. I want to believe there are more of him than there are of them—that perhaps the litany of horrors populating my Facebook feed this week is not an accurate reflection of the sentiments of half of America. But there is no getting past the sense that democratization has helped make our politics more divisive not less—that the promise of connection through technology hasn’t really panned out as the great campfire many predicted. To the contrary, it’s more like a car fire in the middle of a riot.

Are Candidates Even Talking About the 21st Century Economy?

Photo by duallogic.
Photo by duallogic.

It’s very common to encounter broad complaints saying things like, “Copyright law should not stop me from fixing or altering my technology.”  Often, this generalization is made by people who don’t necessarily know they’re referring to Title I of the DMCA but who have read somewhere that copyright law prevents reverse engineering, maintenance, jail-breaking, and overall tinkering with products ranging from personal small electronics to cars, trucks, and tractors.

But as I first discussed in this post, the whole concept of ownership of many of our core products may be waning faster than these apparent conflicts with intellectual property law might ever be addressed. This transformation is highlighted by what seems to be an inexorable march toward an autonomous vehicle transportation system—a change that comes with consequences far more relevant than the matter of a “right” to fiddle with the gadgets we purchase.

With the announcement last week that the federal government officially endorses the development of driverless vehicles, it is noteworthy that no candidate running for any office seems likely to address the radical social and economic implications of this seismic shift in the transportation sector. Although I cannot bring myself to compare and contrast Donald Trump with any other prospective candidate for office, for the purposes of this post, suffice to say that between Trump’s version of trickle-down economics and Hillary Clinton’s version of focusing on the middle-class, it seems to me that neither candidate is talking about the same 21st century economy in which Wall Street is investing.

Candidates across the political spectrum keep referring to fair trade deals as a common scapegoat as a prelude to their myriad promises to “bring jobs back” to America. This is already a fallacy, pretending that we can reverse globalization through tax policy alone, or without a specific plan for investments—either public or private—that might actually grow domestic jobs.  Meanwhile, VCs, Wall Street, and the tech firms are placing big bets on a more generally automated future; and nobody seems to want to talk about the jobs we are, therefore, poised to eliminate over the next decade or two.  Not outsource through trade. Just eliminate right here at home.

For instance, a truly driverless future would probably wipe out a minimum of 10 million jobs, beginning with an estimated 8.5 million who work as drivers and at least a few million who work in some capacity related to the current ground transportation industry.  Granted there would be jobs created in order to build and maintain a new, driverless infrastructure, but only a fraction of the number that would be lost.  And equally if not more challenging is the question of whose investment would build this new infrastructure?

Let’s face it. The United States is bipolar when it comes to great building projects, which I think explains why our infrastructure is antiquated in contrast to other developed—and even developing—nations.  As if to emphasize our duality in this context, it’s notable that the two eras when most American infrastructure was built happen to have been based on antithetical models.  The first era was a period of unfettered capitalism, which built the foundations of the country’s industrial capacity from the mid-19th to the early 20th; and the second era was a brief period of outright socialism—the New Deal—which built highways, buildings, dams, etc. most of which is still in use today, even if it’s looking a little rusty.

Now that the Obama administration has given a federal fist-bump to the driverless vehicle—and if this does mark a tipping point when we can say this transition is inevitable—then we’re going to have to address the question of ownership (i.e. whose investment it’s going to be).  Would Americans allow Google, Uber, Ford, Lyft, and Tesla (GULFT) to own the entire transportation infrastructure for the nation?  Or would we build the infrastructure as a public work?  Because historically, allowing private industry to make that kind of stranded investment in exchange for monopoly control has not been particularly good for consumers or innovation.

Photo by jzehnder.
Photo by jzehnder.

When the nation was first being electrified, there was debate over whether we should build a distributed versus a centralized system.  A distributed system of smaller, co-generating plants would have been safer, more energy efficient, and less monopolistic. So, naturally  we built a centralized system.  This meant massive, stranded investments by the utility companies for which they could only be compensated through monopoly control of the market until those monopolies were finally busted up in the 1990s.  Meanwhile, consumers (a.k.a. “rate payers”) had no competitive choices, and the utility owners had zero motivation to innovate. As a result of this legacy, the United States remains a follower rather than a leader in advancing new, non-carbon-based, energy solutions.

So, now we fast-forward a decade or two in the world of ground transportation. We no longer own cars. We hail a driverless vehicle to take us to the grocery store where the goods on the shelves have all been delivered by a driverless cargo vehicle from a distribution center serviced by hundreds of other driverless cargo vehicles. Accidents are very rare, the air is cleaner, and (in theory) consumer costs come down. We no longer have car payments or auto insurance, and the lower cost of transportation could lower the cost of goods.

But those benefits may easily be diminished if we haven’t considered how to address the massive shift of 10-plus million people formerly employed in ground transportation-related jobs.  Plus, we now have a more thorough consolidation of transportation service than the railroad monopolies controlled at the turn of the 20th century.  Every vehicle trip is now part of a vast, networked system that relies very little on human labor. So who owns that system?  We have to assume that the capitalists currently investing in the model expect they will own it.  That’s a lot of control to give to GULFT.

Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and now the Obama administration are all projecting a future in which the transportation sector simultaneously sheds millions of jobs and centralizes control of the lifeline of the entire nation—and not one candidate from any party thinks this is significant enough to talk about.  Instead, they’re campaigning on traditional, and at times absurd, promises that they know best how to bring 20th century jobs “back.” In this one regard, maybe the future is already here because it doesn’t seem to me like anybody’s driving the bus.