The social media technology, as with Internet technologies in general, is a double-edged tool. It is certainly true, because it is known, that governments and corporations use social media to surveil populations. The motivations vary, but the means are the same. However, the population can also surveil corporations and governments using this same technology if they possess the skill and tools to do so. It is this factor that makes the difference.
This is not theory. In addition to earlier examples, the most recent examples of how this technology's power can be used against trusts public (government) and private (corporations) alike that get out of line--Iran, Egypt, Libya, and now Syria; Wal Mart will soon find out how it feels--demonstrates that the former dogma of the State being the sole legitimate exerciser of force is starting to decay.
In each of the above cases, dissidents against those respective states used networking technology--especially social media--to organize amongst themselves as well as to monitor the State. The governments in question then attempted to regain control by disconnecting the country from the Internet; Syria just did this yesterday, allegedly. However, in each case--including the Syria one--corporations such as Google and plenty of individuals intervened and established backup infrastructure that restored function to most of the blacked-out population. (This, in addition to people congregating into places such as Tahrir Square in Egypt; it's easy to spread the word when you're in one place.)
We are already in a place where opting out is socially detrimental to individuals; soon we shall cross the threshold where opting out is economically detrimental due to ongoing changes in the economy--global and local--that make opting out not-viable to pursue, and not long thereafter it will cease to be politically detrimental.
Social opt-outs get cut out of peer lives, as organization of social gatherings increasingly takes place on social media exclusively; if you're not a user, you don't get the invites and soon you are off others' radar entirely- out of sight, so out of mind. Employers use social media to make personnel decisions, starting from hiring and going on from there; if you can't be found, then you can't be trusted, so you don't get the job or promotion. As with employment, so will be the case for other organizations when seeking positions of trust within them. People do this because it is efficient shorthand, and efficiency is prized by all of the global first world.
This leads to the economic consequences. The mail order business of 20 years ago is the online retailer of today, and online commerce of all sorts has so seized control of the minds of economists, businessmen and politicians that a technological momentum is now in place. This force pushes for greater online dominance of the marketplace, and with it comes the dominance of social media--specifically, its personalization algorithms--to advertise, to collect feedback, and to maximize profit. Opt-outs will be left behind, and as more retail storefronts either vanish or become nothing more than showrooms where you can make online purchases after handling a sample item, this means that opt-outs will get shut out.
This also means that money will become increasingly digital, nothing more than bits in a file executed according to a program's parameters. Checks are already well on their way out, and cash is already under pressure to likewise disappear, leaving only digital banking; expect this trend to continue, with government and corporate support, with the consequence being that having your accounts frozen also freezes you out of the ability to buy or sell altogether- and, as with being searched, getting frozen is determined by someone else for reasons that can be quite different from the ones stated. (The State is explicitly allowed to lie to suspects.)
If you cannot effectively engage in social affairs, or participate in commerce, then your ability to deal in politics is nothing more than an empty claim with no power to support it. Real power is always the basis of political power, as those with neither social nor commercial substance--the poor and downtrodden--know too well. (Politics, remember, is warfare without the killing and dying.)
The governments of the world see this as the emerging reality; that's why there's so much effort made to fetter the Internet--SOPA, PIPA, CISPA, Great Firewall, etc.--at the national and international level; they know that the technology is now emerging to make national governments, and international bodies, obsolete. That's why crude attempts, such as those aforementioned, to disconnect from the Internet get made. That's why corporations with obsolete business models--MPAA, RIAA--push so hard for controls on network technologies. That's why there's going to be some heinous cyber-attack, blamed on Anonymous, done as a False-Flag operation by one or more of these governments in the near future; they want to do an Internet 9/11 to scare people into closing the only frontier left to us and turn online life into another free-range prison. There is nowhere to run or hide; opting out just means you get put on the train later. The only effective option is to get in, get mastery, and use the tools to defend yourself and keep your freedom.
Opting out, therefore, is not a viable option. The consequences, though they seem light and infrequent now, shall only increase in frequency and severity as days go by and our network technologies become deeply entrenched into the global structure of power and control that is our world's reality. Instead, the viable option is to engage and master both the theories behind the tools and the tools themselves.
To quote Ambassador Kosh (of Babylon 5): "The avalanche has begun. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."
No comments:
Post a Comment