Should You Care About Politics?

William Gibson's paranoid fantasy of a world ravaged by ruthless, greedy, competing multinationals is becoming a reality. One result is that politics and political issues - especially those relating to technology - have never been more important, despite our increasing alienation for what most of us call politics. Talk about "consensual hallucination." If you care about politics -- or don't -- let fly here.

Jim Deggan, a self-described Linux Geek from Sunnyvale, California, e-mailed me last week that he hangs around sites like this one specifically to avoid talk of conventional politics, "or any reference of any kind to people like Al Gore and George Bush." He appreciates the advance warning Slashdot provides: that he can block all stories with the "United States" logo and thus access a politics-free environment. But he was curious, before he blocked, about whether there was some reason why he shouldn't. (Maybe the real question is whether it's even possible). He was surprised to see me writing about politics at all, since he assumed from my previous writings that I didn't like the subject any more than he did.

Nobody can blame Deggan, a database administrator, for wanting to avoid the bizarre ritual going on in that other realm. Most people on this site feel just the way he does. But the truth is, he can't avoid politics, even if he wants to. And since he cares about technology, there are compelling reasons why he might want to pay attention and perhaps, one day, even participate.

It's been more than a decade since William Gibson articulated the idea of "cyberspace," and the surreal revolution he predicted has not only come to pass but has become one of the most significant political forces in the world. Computer networks are blasting away the existing political landscape, reconfiguring it in ways we are just now struggling to figure out.

Gibson's paranoid notion of a world ravaged by ruthless, greedy and competing multinational corporations whose power derives from hyper-linked information networks is transcending fiction. The skirmish between AOL/Time-Warner and Disney over cable domination and other issues is a prescient conflict-of-the-future right out of Gibson and the non-virtual games "Mage" and "Shadowrun." The disorienting thing is that we have two political cultures, the old and the new. And the new tends to make the ancient mistake of underestimating the old, corporate and otherwise. Government is seen as clueless and toothless, but program's like the FBI's "Carnivore" program and laws like the DMCA suggest they still have plenty of sharp teeth, a strong reason for caring about politics.

The odd reality is that some techies can be "tech smart" but "world dumb" -- that is, their work and interests tended to be internal and circumscribed. Some (not all) think that knowing about programming is the same thing as understanding technology or its impact on the world beyond. Many think they live and work beyond the reach of politics or government. This intensity, I suggested to Deggan, kept them from grasping the fact that what they are do is often intensely political, both directly and indirectly. Code, for example, is more significant each day, relating to freedom, culture, intellectual property, commerce. The content, language and architecture of cyberspace now affects almost every aspect of the political and economic system.

What economists like to call "late capitalism" -- the emergence of a new post-capitalist, techno-driven global economy -- is characterized by the astonishing growth of multinationals : Microsoft, Barnes &Noble, Wal-Mart, Bertelsmann, McDonalds. More powerful than most governments, these conglomerates operate beyond conventional oversight or regulation, acquire culture, business and media, render conventional political boundaries obsolete. They operate in a new kind of social geography, powered by technology. They corrupt politics by becoming its primary bankrollers. They smother innovation with legal assaults, assault individualism. Simply put, they have taken over, without much of a tussle. Our only hope is that eat each other, as Gibson suggested.

Technology is the central element in their rise. The focal point of these companies' power is an electronic network that covers the planet, and a marketing system to expand and inventory it. This power has no world headquarters; it's in the ether, built into the very architecture of the cyberworld Gibson foresaw. That's what makes technology so political, and gives us so many powerful new reasons to care about it and the political environment surrounding it.

This new kind of politics provokes relevant questions about whether conventional civic systems can or ought to survive, but at the same time it makes politics more important than ever. Ironically, though there's less reason than ever to pay attention to the two-party politics practiced in Washington, there are more reasons than ever to care about politics itself.

Among them: privacy, ownership of ideas, control over software and hardware that powers the network, the use of supercomputing to address social and medical problems, the open source challenge to proprietary institutions (which is shaping up as one of the landmark political struggles of the new century), the use of computer-assisted gene mapping to engineer human life at the hands of for-profit bio-tech companies, and control over creativity itself. Compared to the Bush-Gore-Nader agenda, those kinds of political issues are in urgent need of debating.

The truth is, technology and politics are no longer separable. Almost every citizen, from the hapless buyer trying to get tech support to the parent eliminating a potentially retarded embryo has to deal with technology, even though we don't have any national philosophy of technology and it almost never surfaces directly as an issue in our political system.

Congress is awash in last-minute bills relating to telecoms, free speech online, encryption, privacy, pornography. The gaming culture itself has become one of the biggest mainstream entertainment cultures on the earth, even though the violence allegedly caused by videogames has become a frequently invoked issue in the presidental election, raised by Gore, Cheney, Bush and Lieberman.

Right down to its conception as a communications tool that could survive the Cold War, everything about the Net is intrinsically political, from the distributed architecture incorporated into its design to the empowerment it provides for its users. Conventional politics will shortly feel its effects on the way money is raised, voters vote, volunteers are recruited, on the potential for new candidates and parties to reach new audiences. Whatever the early coders and hackers intended, the information revolution they've created is an in-your-face slap at the way much of the world has done business for centuries.

As interactive tools transform the lives of millions of once disenfranchised kids, who now have access to much of the world's archived information despite frenzied efforts to block and filter them, technology has also empowered and politicized the young. That has traumatized educators, politicians and parents, but the fact is that kids can escape suffocating adult restrictions on their cultural and social lives. In political terms, that may be the biggest whopper of all.

So the citizens of cyberspace have a tricky dilemma. While it's difficult to take seriously a system that labors for months and finally offers us George Bush, Al Gore, Ralph Nader and Patrick Buchanan and their Pleistocene campaigns, it is becoming almost impossible to live in this space and avoid politics. If you don't find it, it will find you.

Next: Birth of the CyberNation. Filling the new space with an ethical platform.

Comments

Politics is contemptible, but necessary

[YIAAL]

Robert Heinlein said it best: for all its problems, politics is the only way to get things done that doesn't involve breaking heads. And if you leave it to the crooks and empty suits -- which is what we have done -- the results are disastrous. BTW, Heinlein's book "Take Back Your Government" is still in print, and surprisingly useful 50 years after he wrote it.

VOTE VOTE VOTE or LEAVE and pay taxes elsewhere!!!

[maynard]

Yes, I completely agree with this sentiment. I have promised myself that from now on I will vote in every local, state, and national election. And I will NEVER AGAIN vote for a Democrat or Republican candidate. I will vote in this order of preference: Green, Independent, Libertarian.

What's wrong with this country is not "Liberal" or "Conservative" philosophy, but entrenched power locked in place for our representatives by multinational corporate power through media management and campaign contributions. The whole system is completely corrupt.

I've protested. I've sent letters (snail-mail) to my representatives. I've voted (though I missed '96). Frankly, no matter what I do I feel completely unrepresented as a constituency and citizen by those in political power. I'm at my wits end here. I'm a pacifist, so no black bloc activity for me.

So, some of my friends tell me that if I don't like it here I ought to leave; these folks are somewhat nationalist. You know, I'm seriously considering emigrating from the United States and removing my taxes from the US revenue base. Maybe they're right! It's the only protest I can think of left to do. If a few tens of thousands of well paid geeks up and blew out of here that would make a real dent on the tax base. A few hundred million anyway. Money is something I know these politicians understand.

I don't mind paying taxes. I'll pay taxes for education, health care, supporting the elderly, safety regulators, defending our borders, etc. But I'M SICK OF PAYING TAXES FOR INTEREST ON OUR NATIONAL DEBT!. I'm sick of paying taxes for ridiculous "defense" systems like SDI, which clearly can't work and serves only as a money funnel to defense contractors. Look at the Bush tax cut: forget how it's spread to benefit mostly wealthy tax payers, and instead consider the rationality of dumping a trillion dollars into our economy at the same time the Federal Reserve is raising interest rates. The Fed doesn't want to stimulate the economy... they're trying to control inflation at the same time the Republicans promote a highly inflationary tax cut, which WILL NOT PAY DOWN THE DEBT! The Democrats are no better... just look at the crap Gore promotes.

Maybe it is time to blow the hell out of this country.