Bonum Certa Men Certa

Technology: rights or responsibilities? - Part IV

posted by Rianne Schestowitz on Oct 21, 2024,
updated Oct 21, 2024

By Dr. Andy Farnell

Back to Part I

Back to Part II

Back to Part III

"Responsibility" is a much more complex claim than it first appears and does not easily fall to the ableist objection nor to technological totalitarianism. Our responsibilities to each other as citizens (governing and governed) are wider.

Digital justice

Most of the people I encounter who would identify as activists, journalists, campaigners, lawyers, advocates or progressives are driven by a familiar sense of social duty and justice. Indeed it's a trait they share with those who are less vocal, ordinary civil servants, soldiers, healthcare workers, police, and teachers. People who fully participate in society, who care about other people and their well-being, defence and safety.

Responsible people aim to leave society in better shape than when they were born, rather than just make a buck, bathe in the vainglory of status and legacy, and "die on the biggest pile of toys". Historically, for the most-part they've never cared about nor even seen technology, except where it helps them do their job or where it intrudes and obstructs.

legacy

But a growing cohort are increasingly aware of the ways that technology is itself the source of problems they work to correct - a source of abuse and insecurity. Digital systems have become an overbearing epidemic. Intrusion, obstruction, devaluing, and stripping of dignity become daily injustices people struggle to name or discuss with colleagues and bosses.

epidemic

Examples like wearing of body-cams that turn humans into fleshy CCTV poles, or hostile school technology that turns teachers into passive administrators; these are things that civil professionals struggle to challenge. Of course they should, since many of the harms being perpetrated against the public - which are sources of mental ill-health so widely experienced - now occur through tech rather than directly by other people.

mental ill-health

Existential angst over climate is not our main source of torment, rather it is our helplessness in the clutches of systems of living that we feel we cannot escape yet have no stake in except as "consumers", "targets", "subjects" and "users". While we are incessantly told this provides "food and security" it violates almost all the principles of justice and rights. Bare existence does not suffice human needs. It is by definition a Dystopia, a "technically" perfect society which is not worth living in.

To the extent we as professional classes are recruited as instruments of hostile systems and fail to push-back and speak-out, we are responsible for harms. That guilt and conflict is very distressing. Today professionals feel they have ever-less control, authority and dignity in their roles and so are exiting, taking early retirement, or soft-quitting. Regularly now I hear super-intelligent people at the peak of their experience and powers say "I've had enough". Industry leaders and PhDs are choosing organic farming, brewing beer, or just staying at home to spend time with children in order to escape a culture of mindlessness.

guilt and conflict

While older people may have the savings, stability and maturity of outlook to quit miserable enslaved existence, what about younger people? The term "recruitment crisis" is not something unique to the military. A global workforce crisis is touching every facet of human affairs. Gen-Z are not satisfied with purposelessness, insecurity and domination as foundations for working life, but have, through technological dependence, placed their heads entirely in the mouth of the beast. Zoomers and the Alphagen coming up behind them are the new blood for the survival of our society, but cultivated technological ignorance is disempowering them. They know what works, but have no idea how it works or how to change it. They have yet to understand the extent to which they are manipulated. A new form of digital literacy is thus required. A new hacker culture is needed to move past this stuckness now dubbed a "permacrisis" for youth.

Questioning technology is the last unacceptable heresy of secular dogma, on par with defaming the clergy in a rigid theocracy. Although we know that "AI" decision making threatens to further erode professional judgement and undermine humane relations, even if there are people capable of saying so there is nobody left capable of hearing it. At least nobody that matters. To "matter" would require power, but leaders have already abdicated that power. The adults have left the room. Therefore, if the next generation want to overcome technological slavery they must do so themselves.

generation

As the hegemony of BigTech "investment" occludes more of everyday life this is a social catastrophe unfolding that governments do not even have a language to describe. Our leaders are betting the farm on pulling a magical "AI rabbit" out of the hat at the 11th hour. In a culture of growth uber alles, if growth cannot be realised through economic freedom then economic slavery will do. Our present governments are quite ready to sacrifice the values of Western liberal democracy at the altar of tech if it allows us to "compete" with illiberal regimes.

Few would dispute that technology today is driven by an insane greed for growth, profit and a fetish for efficiency, rather than actual utility. It has become a runaway self-feeding phenomenon. It seems tragic that after 3 million years of human technological evolution, and given the food, environment, energy and conflict problems we face, that our species still focuses on a few microscopic and pointless values: growth, efficiency, money, vanity and banal entertainment. All are overrated, and most work against our long-term survival goals, but our inability to move beyond them and beyond our smartphone and social media hell seems insurmountable. Our entire species seems stuck in a kind of tragic logical dead-end.

With regard to rights, we live in a liberal society, and people have the right to build businesses and make a living in any legal way. But rights to develop, sell and use technologies with deleterious side-effects are almost never weighed against the rights of those on whom they impinge. In this regard rights are always situational. They speak to a parochial present. They have no currency as "rights to a future" or respect for coming generations. Nowhere in the text of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights do the words "future", "responsibility" or "consequences" appear.

rights to a future

Unlike other trades, digital tech has some peculiar properties with regard to reach, scale, impact and indirection of harms. Digital technology is highly addictive and its pushers (who refer to the public as "users") have none of the impediments traditional narcotics suppliers faced. Addictive software products can be replicated at zero cost and distributed instantly across the globe. Silicon is the second most abundant element on Earth after Oxygen, and the cost of hardware is essentially that of rather cleverly baking sand in an oven.

Digital harms are also cumulative and viral. Each layer builds on priors such that progress begets progress but by the same token mistakes beget further mistakes. Harmful technology is also desirable. It signals status and creates mores and fashion. For example; personal drones and camera-glasses are a social "fuck you" to everyone else, but we tolerate transgressions as we are easily hypnotised by the questionable utility of new trinkets. We selfishly fantasise about our own empowerment and are apt to enthusiastically spread desire, a trait seen in the fascinating phenomenon of Chindogu and the "I am rich" smartphone app.

I am rich

Developers of technology play to this childish individualism. There is almost no "joined-up thinking" around directions in tech. It seems almost impossible to find developers who wish to design more simple benevolent applications with limited scope rather than something that will proliferate and inevitably become an enshitified monstrosity. The language of venture-capital funded Silicon Valley "bros" has its own code for betrayal of public good like "pivoting". This culture is drenched in megalomania and open in its disrespect for "users" who are seen as stupid and gullible cattle. All discussions of tech are about an "arms race" in which technologies are implicitly typed as weapons.

Indeed it's a mindset that openly discusses the weaponisation of digital systems against society, especially the old, young, women and ethnic minorities. It celebrates anti-intellectualism, revels in the harm its products cause, celebrates disruption and chaos, and treats those who do not embrace its callous neophyte values as "throwbacks" and "Luddites". In Mark Zuckerberg's eyes people are "Dumb Fucks". And Zuckerberg is probably the least odious of the current crop.

chaos

In Plato's terms these kind of people are unfit for governance. They, and their technologies, lack the virtues and competencies necessary for a balanced, harmonious, and equitable, world according to the justice of a republic. Yet increasingly "tech bros" are positioning themselves as a de facto governing class and imposing their one-dimensional values on society.

Technology does not have to be this way. It could benefit everyone. It could be secure. It could be respectful. It could advance democracy. It could enhance education. It could be something we design and work on together. Instead we get patrician, dystopian traps, surveillance capitalism, criminally-minded business practices and worthless information slop from BigTech that seems to have a perverted and grubby enchantment with spying on everything.

spying

More than gold, oil and drugs, information technology has produced more billionaires than any other venture. No governments have had the courage to intervene and regulate. Instead of taking pride in British innovation which created many world-changing inventions, the UK government under Prime-Minister Keir Starmer is set to treacherously remove the last threads of regulatory safety and trade law in order to encourage more BigTech "investment" in (capture and destruction of) Britain, and the enslavement of its people to foreign money and values.

Lack of regulation has led to such inequality that for the first time in centuries there is serious consideration of ways to safely deflate economies and redistribute wealth and power in order to avoid revolution or unrest. Maybe something along the lines of the religious moral concept of a jubilee is needed soon? Governments around the world, even in the USA, are poised to break up BigTech and pass sweeping new laws to curb its anti-democratic power. Surely, encouraging even more growth of BigTech is societal suicide? It is abdication of democratic governance.

regulation

But embedded in the origin story of Silicon Valley as an offshoot of Californian counter-culture is a different tale. The geeks who inherited the Earth mostly started off as "helpful computer guys" who just wanted to "make the world a better, fairer place". The tragic irony of consumer computer technology cannot be emphasised enough.

silicon valley

Many influential technologists have been motivated not by a gap in the market, but by experiencing or witnessing injustice. They've seen a gap in the rights and opportunities of people. To take Steve Jobs' biography on face value he was foremost a technophile and lover of enabling creativity, and only incidentally a shrewd, mean and unlikable businessman.

It's said that there are two dominant motives for people to make or do anything; to alleviate suffering, or to obtain convenient utility. Injustice is a severe discomfort to mentally-well people. Dr. Richard Stallman was famously inspired by the absurd injustice of not being able to modify a program running on his own computer. That inspiration led to the idea of Software Freedom, a creed that united hackers around the world.

But an ancient nihilism is rearing its head. Perhaps because its proponents are not well grounded - something understandable in the global poly-crisis. It is Thanatos or abandonment of the "will to power" and self-directed living. It comes with the bankrupt philosophy of technological determinism. Although we talk about "liberating" technology we often use the term "dystopian" in the same breath.

We must not ignore the deeply troubling political implications of a culture that feels downtrodden and yet wants to be liberated from responsibility by something "strong". This happened before in the mid 20th Century. We talk of authoritarian tech, but we do not hear much about "right-wing" or "left-wing" technology. Is that distinction meaningful? Does the disregard that Silicon Valley has for minorities and difference require understanding as "far-right tech"? If so let's remember that anything propagating extremist political values, including technological values, has never been favourable to rights.

Common purpose ultimately led to the Free (Libre) Software movement, which arguably built almost all the software that runs the world today. The key principle in effect with Libre software is the ability and duty to share - to simply pay back what you have been given and pay forward to future generations with what you have created - though Stallman seldom uses the words "duty" or "mutuality" when talking of "freedoms". Today a new common purpose is needed that champions justice of technology rather than mere freedom.

To quote another insightful tech thinker, Prof. Ross Anderson says; "There are basically two ways of getting what you want. You can make something or trade it for something else, which we call economics. Or you can just take it, by force - which is politics." BigTech uses force, albeit a less violent force, that goes far beyond markets and choice. Its use of regulatory capture, bribery, abuse of patents, "lawfare", intimidation and sabotage is unmistakable gangster behaviour.

economics

Of course Anderson echoes fellow Scotsman Adam Smith, who is perhaps most interesting as an ethical philosopher as well as being known as the seminal "economist". Smith emphasised the positive (societal) aspects of trade and industry rather than what has become the BigTech American Libertarian creed of purely private gain and domination. In Smith's world, corporations are defined as much by duties as their commercial "rights".

neutral

Contrary to common misunderstanding technology is never neutral. All technology carries values. Justice, if it is a value that exists within our technology must come from its operators. We alone can choose how to use tech, whether to use tech, and what we use it for. Justice cannot come from its designers, manufacturers, and salesmen who have learned to be helpless before the forces of efficiency, convenience, vanity, greed, and unchecked growth.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Pushers of systemd Rewrite History (Richard Stallman Said UNIX "Was Portable and Seemed Fairly Clean")
Unlike systemd
Trajectory of The Register: From News Site/s Into "B2B"... and Into Microsoft Salespeople
Something isn't right at The Register
Doing My Share to Tackle Online Slop and SPAM
Trying my best to 'fix' the Web
Slopwatch: Fakes, FUD, Duplicates, and Charlatans Galore
The Web as we once know it is collapsing. Some opportunists try to replace it with low-quality slop.
The Register UK Seems to Have Become American and Management is Changing (Microsofter as Editor in Chief)
The Register 'UK' is now controlled by the Directions on Microsoft guy
 
Gemini Links 27/07/2025: DAW Mixer Chains and Simple Software
Links for the day
The Register MS is Inventing or Giving Air Time to New Conspiracy Theories so as to Distort the Narrative As High-Profile Agencies Fall Prey to Microsoft Holes
But the problem is holes, i.e. Microsoft making bad products; the problem is Microsoft
When You Tell You It's Free, Does That Mean No Charges (If So, Who's Paying and Why)?
there's "no free lunch"
Most Editors at The Register Are American, Including the Editor in Chief, a Decade-Long Microsoft Stenographer (Writing Prose to Sell Microsoft)
It's not easy to tell where the site is based (we tried) because it's hiding behind ClownFlare and CrimeFlare hasn't been well lately
"New Techrights" Soon Turns 2 (A Few Days Before the FSF Turns 40)
We have a lot more to say about LLM bots
When Silence Says So Much
Garrett, a 'secure' boot pusher, will need to defend himself in the UK High Court
The Register in Trouble
There is not much that can be done at this point
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 26, 2025
Misinformation in Social Control Media
Social control media passes around all sorts of tropes
Slopwatch: Fake Linux 'Articles' and Slopfarms With "Linux" in Their Names/Domains
throwing bots at "Linux" to make some fake articles
Links 26/07/2025: Amazon Shutdown in China, Russian Economy Slows
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2025: History of Time (1988) and Gemini Games
Links for the day
Links 26/07/2025: 50 Percent Tariffs in Amazon, Dying Intel Offloads Network and Edge Group (NEX)
Links for the day
Blaming Programming Languages for Users' and Developers' Bad Practices
That's like blaming cars for drivers who crash into things
Many People Still Read Techrights Because It Says the Truth, Produces Evidence, and Does Not Self-Censor
Unlike so many other sites
The Register is Desperate for Money, According to The Register
I decided to check how they're doing as a business
Microsoft Finally Finds a Use Case for Slop?
Create low-quality chaff to shift the media's attention?
Microsoft Windows Lost 400 Million Users in a Few Years, Why Does The Register Double Down on Windows With New US Editor?
days ago they hired a new US editor
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 25, 2025
For Libel Reform One Must First Bring (or Raise) Awareness to the Issues and Their Magnitude
I myself know, from personal experience
Links 26/07/2025: Rationed Meals in the US and TikTok Repels Investments (Too Toxic)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/07/2025: "Bloody Google" and New People in Geminispace
Links for the day
Response to Solderpunk (Father of Gemini Protocol) About the Gemini Community
Solderpunk responds to non-sequitur
HTML and the Web Used to be Something a Child Could Learn, "Modern" Web is a Puzzle of Frameworks, Bloat, and Worse
When the Web was more like Gemini Protocol
New US Editor in The Register is 84% Microsoft/Windows Booster
It'll be worrying if it carries on like this
Links 25/07/2025: Slop Blunders and China Has Code of Conduct for Lawmakers in HK
Links for the day
Gemini Links 25/07/2025: Some Books and Babies and Capital
Links for the day
Links 25/07/2025: NOAA Cuts Endanger Lives, "Europe's Self Inflicted Cloud Crisis"
Links for the day
They Try to Lecture Us on Ethics
They even removed "master" from Microsoft GitHub
The Future of the Web is One Rendering Engine or 'Flavours' of Chrome
The future of the Web does not look bright at all
Best Sites Are Not Optimised for Any Browser, They Work Equally Well With All of Them
Red Hat (IBM) is making rubbish sites
YouTube is a Spamfarm, Slopfarm, and Clickfarm (a Lot of Numbers There Are Fake)
Those who don't fake look unpopular and unimportant
We Don't Do JavaScript and Pages Are Small
Thankfully Gemini Protocol has nothing like JavaScript
'Tech' is Not Technology
Some people use terms like 'Old Tech'
IBM's Debt Rose by Almost 10 Billion Dollars in the Past 6 Months Alone
The "hey hi" circus is coming to an end
Yes, Master
Gaslighting by actual racists
Microsoft Bribes and Buys Politicians to Tell Europe What to Do About Free Software (Which It's Attacking)
Microsoft: we speak for the thing that we are attacking! Follow the money...
Making Backups Quickly and Reliably
Backups are imperative, more so in an age of uncertainty, unpredictable weather, and worsening standards (quality of products going down while prices go up)
Techrights Investigation: Estimating the Point in Time LinuxIac Turned Into LLM Slop (Part of the Time)
Bobby Borisov got lazy
10th Month, Ten Weeks From Now, at Ten AM
In Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 24, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 24, 2025
A Nadella Memo Distracts From Microsoft's Cheapening Of the Workforce
Right now the "MSM" (mainstream media) is flooded/overwhelmed by garbage pieces that relay lies for Nadella
Vanishing Faces of GNU/Linux
Free software projects do not depend on any one person or company to still exist
Microsoft Says It Lost 400 Million Windows Users, Now It's Waiting for GNU/Linux to Stop Booting on 'Old' PCs
When it comes to Windows, Microsoft is fully aware of the issue and statements it made earlier this summer suggest it lost 400 million Windows users
Slopwatch: LinuxTechLab, linuxsecurity.com, LinuxIac, and More
Also: The Register's Microsoft agenda (new editor)
Gemini Links 25/07/2025: Gemtext Aware Titan Editor and Gemini Protocol Comeback
Links for the day