varoufakis86_CHRIS DELMASAFP via Getty Images_facebookmetazuckerberg

El anillo de poder de Mark Zuckerberg

Dec 27, 2021 Yanis Varoufakis

ATENAS – Había una vez, en el antiguo reino de Lidia, un pastor llamado Giges, quien encontró un anillo mágico que, cuando lo hacía girar en su dedo, lo volvía invisible. Giges entró entonces sin ser visto en el palacio real, sedujo a la reina, asesinó al rey y se instaló como soberano. ¿Si descubrieras un anillo como ese, u otro dispositivo que otorgara un poder exorbitante, preguntó Sócrates, sería sensato usarlo para hacer o tener todo lo que se te ocurra?

El reciente anuncio de Mark Zuckerberg de un fabuloso metaverso digital que nos aguarda a los seres humanos otorga nueva pertinencia a la respuesta de Sócrates: La gente debiera renunciar al poder excesivo y, específicamente, a cualquier dispositivo que pueda concedernos demasiados de nuestros deseos.

¿Estaba Sócrates en lo cierto? ¿Renunciaría la gente razonable al anillo? ¿Debiera hacerlo?

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 4 Comments on this article

F Ahmed Jan 6, 2022

:) Argued well.
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Prashant Kotak Dec 29, 2021

There is no point focusing on preventing Zuckerberg from creating the metaverse, or on Bezos looking to rule space, etc. If it isn't these existing tech titans, it will be others who will emerge instead, but the effects of technologies causing the disruption will have the same type of results. Or, it might be at national governance level, e.g. China, with effects as deleterious.

I contend, the focus of this article is missing the point - about the nature of algorithmic technologies, the nature of human societies, and the relationship between them. The problem stems from the fact that algorithmic technologies are not human scale, therefore human societies cannot hope to counter the undesired effects of technology by looking to any of the traditional levers of political governance, outsourced to elected representatives - legislation, taxation, penalties, incentives, disincentives, bans, etc. None of that stuff is going to work, except in the very short term, because they are all overwhelmed by the automated scaling that algorithms afford. For a start, the technocratic governing class mostly comes from humanities backgrounds or hybrid disciplines like Economics, and for technocrats, they don't actually have a good grasp of the fundamentals, or the scale, or the reach, of ubiquitous computation.

And this is the point: no western societies are going to accept some fundamental unavoidable truths, until they are forced to, until the realities of the 21st century are bearing down on them with full pressure, and as increasingly larger numbers become victims, or disenfranchised or just plain fall ever further behind as tech driven change ramps and creates a chasm between the strata who are participants in technology ecosystems, and those who don't understand the technologies and end up becoming victims of the outsize, out-scale effects of tech change.

There is only one way out of the conundrum, distasteful and difficult as it is: to be able to retain some degree of control in the emerging 21st-century techno-states, it is necessary for pretty much the entire population to become IT literate to a level where they can understand how technologies work, become aware of what is being done by technology, and can therefore make informed choices, and so are able to put pressure on our ruling classes while this is still possible. This is parallel to the way most people are now literate – most in the advanced nations stay in education till at least 18 and very significant numbers continue education beyond that, but a mere few decades ago, the numbers with skills in abstraction, as demanded by increasing numbers of professions of the 21st century, was much much smaller.

The difference today is, even faster change has to be embraced by everyone, because like it or not, everyone is going to see multiple paradigm shifts within a single working lifetime, where they are forced to adapt and reinvent themselves every time – and another wave of change arriving just as you have got your head above the water is nothing other than hugely stress inducing unless you are trained for it, and our societies are geared toward accepting rapid change as a fact of life. I appreciate populations won’t accept this willingly, for lots of reasons: because it’s not something remotely human scale. Because it forces people out of their comfort zones in totally unprecedented ways as never before in history. Because rapid change becomes ever more stressful as age increases. Because inertia. Because people believe their own ‘self-myths’ - "...I’m not good at this at all, but I’m only good at that, I can’t do this, I don’t have the mindset..." and so on and so forth. Because.

But the question for all of us is: we wouldn’t give our children the option to opt out of the modern world by not going to school for eight hours a day every day to learn new things, and instead play video games all day, we know what the consequences of such a licence would be, so why are we allowing the adult population this option? Incoming rapid change is now a reality for everyone, not just the next generations.
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Dec 28, 2021

This comment was removed by a moderator. Replies to this comment may also be deleted. Please note that we moderate comments to ensure the conversation remains topically relevant. We appreciate well-informed comments and welcome your criticism and insight. Please be civil and avoid name-calling and ad hominem remarks.
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Nicholas Di Paolo Dec 28, 2021

We need more articles explaining the dangers of Techno Feudalism.
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