The role of Technology in Shaping Politics and Society

[Prole]

Hello Everyone,

I would just like to ask what are everyone's opinions about technology, and more specifically, it's role in shaping politics and society at large.

Technology allows the average citizen to become more informed and as we become more informed the general trend I've noticed is we also become more "liberal" in the classic sense of the word. Vietnam saw the Television play an active role in shaping public opinion about the military and it's intervention that otherwise could have gone unnoticed were it not for the ability to see what was actually occurring. The same trend still holds today with social media shaping public opinion on Israel/Gaza that even a couple years ago went, relatively, unnoticed.

Technology has also allowed the labor of the average worker to be far more efficient, and although to date no meaningful social change has come from this I believe the increased automation and technological advances will eventually be what frees us from our reliance upon labor. This is why I believe technology, as it's improved and implemented, will gradually shape us into a left-leaning socialist society.

There are dangers as well of technology being used to stifle the natural emergence of this potential society in favor of continuing the status quo, meaning increased control and profit for the ownership class. This should be a motivator for us all to play an active role in the direction technology is heading, and ensuring it's implementation benefits humankind as a whole.


I'm interested in hearing any and all opinions on the role of technology in politics.

[Revolver]

This is a central issue for the League: the role of automation, and specifically labor-displacing technology. There is a very interesting recent Pew survey on the role of automation , and there was another interesting article on this that I will have to track down that came out last month I think. But the overall picture right now is bleak; the benefits of technology, that is to say the increase in productivity, have not created the 20 hour or 8 hour workweek that people were predicting in those more hopeful times (i.e., the 1950s). Instead the benefits of automation and improved productivity have trickled to the upper layer of the income distribution, and workers continue to work more and receive less. Agriculture has been completely changed by automation, and the service sector is increasingly automated as well. The crisis point in advanced economies is likely going to materialize when the so-called "white collar" jobs begin to disappear as a result of automation. This is likely to encompass complex work that we cannot conceive of as automated at present, including much of the work performed by attorneys, physicians and other health care workers, etcetera. And so where will that pool of labor go? And that's where the concept of the "new class" comes from, that dispossessed sector that still has a need for life's necessaries but has no ability to effectively participate in the labor market and earn a living wage that can secure them.

[Red Economist]

I think I'm fairly average for a Marxist on this; technology generally makes us more free to do things especially if it increases labour productivity, but we're still limited by social organization as to how it's used.

In the case of television, yes, it has increased the amount of information in circulation, but it has also increased the amount of control and is therefore an anti-democratic technology which will have to be replaced before communism can properly take shape.

The internet gives me some cause for concern, as whilst it has created an explosion of information [god bless wikipedia, it's not accurate, but so useful], it is also concenrtrating that information into fewer hands (Google, Facebook, etc) and that kind of implies that net neutrality will be threatned in the future. The internet is challenging our existing social relations by undermining the nature of personal privacy, intellectual property and copyright, not to mention our sense of what is real and true (so many right-wing nuts on youtube!) and has made it much easier to practice mass surveillance.

[hi NSA employee, don't you have better things to do? wasn't it bad enough when you had reality TV? go on; I'm sure there's some terrorists on second life who need finding. Same for you GCHQ.].

I think automation- in absolute terms- is a good thing as it means people have to work less, but getting laid off does imply a future conflict between automation and wage labour under capitalism.

[Revolver]

I think I'm fairly average for a Marxist on this; technology generally makes us more free to do things especially if it increases labour productivity, but we're still limited by social organization as to how it's used.

An interesting corollary: Both labor-enhancing and labor-displacing technological developments are likely to increase autonomy provided the technology is democratically or socially controlled, and not privatized in the hands of the ruling class. I would suggest that an increase in productivity, standing alone, means nothing; it only hints at future possibilities under new social conditions. Under existing social conditions the benefit simply accrues to those who control the technology and the labor that it enhances, not to workers. And if it is labor displacing, it simply accrues to those who control it, not the workers. Of course this will not only increase inequality of wealth and income, but also create crisis events, spur speculative financial transactions and require increasingly authoritarian governance structures to protect ruling class interests.

In the case of television, yes, it has increased the amount of information in circulation, but it has also increased the amount of control and is therefore an anti-democratic technology which will have to be replaced before communism can properly take shape.

The internet gives me some cause for concern, as whilst it has created an explosion of information [god bless wikipedia, it's not accurate, but so useful], it is also concenrtrating that information into fewer hands (Google, Facebook, etc) and that kind of implies that net neutrality will be threatned in the future. The internet is challenging our existing social relations by undermining the nature of personal privacy, intellectual property and copyright, not to mention our sense of what is real and true (so many right-wing nuts on youtube!) and has made it much easier to practice mass surveillance...
I think automation- in absolute terms- is a good thing as it means people have to work less, but getting laid off does imply a future conflict between automation and wage labour under capitalism.

I think it is not so much that the technology must be replaced as it must be subject to socialization and democratic control. The genie is out of the bottle, there's no feasible way to eliminate technological developments that spread on this scale. Can they be democratized? That's the real question, isn't it? And with respect to automation I think the issue is, again, who controls the technology and its productive capacity? Because it implies labor-free or at least labor-minimal production, and that also likely means the possibility of abundance in a way that would not have been possible in earlier revolutionary eras.

And with respect to the technology, it also has the capacity to deal with some of the thornier technical aspects of social organization under socialism, including demand and supply and control of environmental externalities, to name but a few.

[Prole]

I think it is not so much that the technology must be replaced as it must be subject to socialization and democratic control. The genie is out of the bottle, there's no feasible way to eliminate technological developments that spread on this scale. Can they be democratized? That's the real question, isn't it? And with respect to automation I think the issue is, again, who controls the technology and its productive capacity? Because it implies labor-free or at least labor-minimal production, and that also likely means the possibility of abundance in a way that would not have been possible in earlier revolutionary eras.

And with respect to the technology, it also has the capacity to deal with some of the thornier technical aspects of social organization under socialism, including demand and supply and control of environmental externalities, to name but a few.

This is the direction I find myself leaning towards. There have been attempts to halt or restrict technological progress in the past however none of them have had lasting success. Technology, for all intents and purposes, has a life of it's own and will continue it's evolution.

Even within our current environment there exists technology to empower the masses and whittle away at the control certain entities have over us. Open sourced operating systems such as Linux, encryption programs, or anonymous browsing software come to mind when I think of the tools available to us today. I believe that their progression will continue as well and I'm reminded of a quote by John Gilmore in 1999.

The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.

I believe that technology follows a similar evolution to everything else we can observe, which can be generalized as following the path of least resistance. If we value efficiency we must inevitable confront forms of censorship and control.

Or at least, that's what I hope.