"Not one of us" by Dr. Andy Farnell
Dr. Farnell has this new article about technofascists and "US tech oligarchy" (or "broligarchs" as he also calls them). Here's the opening part:
Elon Musk has brought embarrassment to nerds and technologists everywhere. We must turn our backs on him, his ilk, and their childish technofascist ideas.In the 1980s it was not easy to be a geek. Western schools implemented some variation of Jante Law or a Tall Poppy code, making kids with non-standard interests marginal. We gorged on optimistic sci-fi film and novels. We had big ideas about how tech would free humankind, bring unlimited free education, free energy and limitless growth amongst the stars. Computers would be a leveller, a saviour, bringing wealth and good living to all. And if all that failed, we could build virtual cyberspace worlds and hide in them.
Hmm, all a pretty immature set of ideas looking back at it, no? Optimistically wanting to "just make the world a better place" can be a dangerous mindset under conditions, like:
- believing one has a unique power and destiny to change things
- thinking you are "smarter" than others
- seeing everyone else as stupid and in need of guidance
- knowing nothing about history, geography and the present global context
- not relating to other humans socially or understanding human psychology
At school, to believe such stuff made us ridiculous amongst peers, if not unpopular and out of the reproductive race. Besides, when I was a geeky kid, at the time the world seemed perched on brink of nuclear annihilation. Only old people talked about things like privacy, democracy, freedom, agency, and human dignity, with six years of world war and sixty million deaths still in clear living memory.
When the Internet arrived for regular folk in the '90s the nerds rejoiced. We all woke one day to find the world talking about our stuff. We had made it to the news. Other people, particularly business people, had also realised "it's more fun to compute". We felt validated, a sure sign of impending dramatic irony.
For the mostpart the geeks were meek, and had no ambitions to inherit the earth. For years, decades, and for reasons nobody can explain, we just helped other people with their computers. For free. The rest is history, as they say. The Internet was a 'culture-shock' and 'meta-crisis', a chapter of the "Information Age" that changed what everyone does and how everybody thinks.
Read on at Cyber Show (C|S). █