Welcome to the Age of Digital Imperialism

Silicon Valley's belief in the power of positive tinkering is well described as "evangelical". These true believers seem unwilling to accept that technology, the art of tool-making, is morally neutral: it amplifies, rather than fundamentally improves, a human nature which remains as morally ambivalent as ever.

Barring an unlikely quantum leap in the moral fibre of the species, the Valley's laudable, if somewhat Victorian, goals to improve the human condition might better be served by a greater focus on climate change and energy science: a more concrete way to enhance the quality of life for the species than developing ever better ways to exchange ephemera via cellphones.

The fascination of the digital age is the superficiality of it all. The USA has no real cultural values, it has imagined ones: rugged individualism, innovation, humor. And those and more are the ones that "travel in the hold" as it were. But in the final analysis, the country is fascistic in its lockstep mentality, timorous beyond belief, and its (I must generalize here) pathological hatred of learning, especially history, is what is really being transmitted. What the technology is allowing is the value that anyone can be an artist, it is easy.... It comes from a culture in which Beethoven is a dog and Rapunzel another tacky Disney character.

Facebook is a nascent political platform for Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to advance their political ambitions. It may seem tacky to talk about Ms. Sandberg in this manner so soon after her husband, David Goldberg's untimely death, but she was the one signaled she is back to back to business as usual with her Facebook grief post marking 30 days since his death.

It is her own ambitions which compeled her to talk about her tragedy. In the pre-social media world, people tended to mourn (and celebrate) events in their lives privately. It is always an act of power when a well-known figure makes a public statement, and Mark Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg control one of the largest platforms for making such announcements outside of those who own newspapers, or TV and radio stations. This is the real importance of Facebook in our world. It is their media empire.

I believe one, or both of them, will run for political office within the next 20 years, and they will use the work they have done at Facebook as a spring board. There is nothing wrong with this, per se, except that both are shrewd operators who cloak their ambitiousness in the language of doing good for others, while making billions of dollars surreptitiously by selling their Facebook members browser usage habits to the highest bidders. I don't trust either one of them any more than I do Rupert Murdoch, or most politicians. Voter, beware.

"Thai stance on pornography has been markedly more conservative than the West’s. Production"
Huh! This from a country known for child prostitution, sex tourism, and live sex shows. But selfies are bad!

Huh? A country with an institutionalized traditions of sex tourism, monarchy, military dictatorships, and kleptocracy has a problem with selfies? Bah humbug.

America's digital imperialism should be celebrated, nay, championed.

This is the triumph of America's ideology (versus say the ideology of Marx or Pol Pot). Cultures take years to evolve from old people telling the young what culture is, why they should be reverential toward them, why the current and unequal distribution of power should be preserved at all costs. Heard the blather about Islamic culture lately? Bull Connor was talking about culture he wanted to preserve. King had a new ideology - is all.

Those talking about culture remain some combination of wretched, unjust, ignorant, poor, regressive, (try parts of Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, South Asia, the Middle East, Sub-saharan Africa) or angrily outdated (France). Every country that is ideologically forward (super low context culture) remains just, free, rich (Switzerland, Norway, parts of Germany, and the gloriously imperial US).

Weak cultures should die their natural deaths, they should be supplanted by new, progressive, powerful ideologies. Why? Because we can thing, that is why.

Cultures are not cute pandas that must be kept alive despite their complete inability to adapt and survive, nor old growth trees that cannot evolve fast enough and likely thinking-inhibited.

Oh I am liking this digital imperialism.

Kalidan

Interesting that in this era we value racial diversity but not cultural diversity. The world, humanity and the arts will be a far poorer place when we all speak the same language, dress the same way, eat the same foods and generally replace our individual heritage with something bland and global.

"Executives of these companies genuinely believe that over the long run, information technology — including, naturally, the services they themselves provide — is crucial to bettering society." I don't know why none of the comments addresses this vital point by the author - and how vitally wrong he is. FB & Google are out to make a buck. They would rather gobble each other for profit than work with each other to be as virtuous as the author suggests. The sad thing is, it makes their trumpeted virtue true double-speak. And that's been forever what we citizens have to sort out and hold our powers to: we want truth and justice but we won't get it without higher principles in play. Do you trust any government in debt or a corporation to play by higher principles? Don't. Never do - and you're one step ahead of being fooled.

The premise that we're dealing with American technology (and the ideological premises it supposedly encodes) is simply false. Much of this technology was created either outside the United States (e.g., the UK, Scandinavia, Australia, Israel) or by foreign engineers working in the US (e.g., Andrew Grove, Andreessen himself, Sergei Brin, etc.). It is the very definition of a global technology. Silicon Valley is a global hub, not an American one. There's a good reason why social media are so vital in the Middle East, Africa and Asia: far from radically transforming those cultures, they fit neatly within them. Egypt, Turkey and South Korea have not become libertarian through Twitter. ISIS is not a manifestation of YouTube's cultural hegemony. Thailand did not need Silicon Valley to commodify its young women; they've been doing it for centuries.

To conflate the Internet with colonial missionaries is to confuse the question with the answer. The Internet is an enabling technology allowing each user to explore the world and find their own answers. That those answers may conflict with prevailing doctrine is not the consequence of imperialism but of human curiosity.

While sharing can bring people together, my experience is that it creating silos of ideology and pointing out stark differences in values within my family and among (former) friends. Seemingly benign posts about football and food cause anxiety about head trauma for grandkids and diabetes in America. Humble-brag posts about the virtues of corporal punishment, 'My parents beat me, and I learned respect' have polarized relationships with childhood friends. Facebook and phones are as divisive as they are awesome.

Here's the issignia of digital imperialism I see most often:

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I think it is not so much American culture that is being spread by this digital imperialism, but a certain subtype of American culture, that is, the hyper-individualistic, hyper-materialistic culture of Silicon Valley. This is, after all, a big and hugely diverse country, with many regions, ethnic groups, social classes, and values. As an old woman with rural, communitarian values, the digital culture, while often useful to me - is as alien, shallow and sometimes repellant as it might be to a Thai grandmother.

To many of us, the "sharing culture" reeks of narcissistic infantilism. But we cannot escape it. Don't say you have a choice. In the absence of regulation, tech companies do all they can to establish a "norm" that is then forced on all. Think biometric data being required for payroll, health insurance, etc. Enough already!

To build on Srini's point, if societies (as opposed to governments) outside the U.S. want to propagate their own cultural values, they are free to write those apps, make those videos or movies, or define that musical genre to do so. The barriers to entry have never been lower. To the extent those values resonate with audiences, their values will see adoption.

This article, like most dealing with this subject, ignores the most overriding impact of the digital revolution, stemming from its merger with the feminist revolution to reveal a stunning truth about the human condition. I make this statement of fact: the primary consequence of the feminist revolution has been to liberate women to be what nature has programmed them to be: sex objects for men. Cell phones and social media have provided women with the instruments to venture in a big way where their instincts compel them to go. Given their freedom from historically male-imposed restraints, how has it most significantly affected the lives of the overwhelming number of ordinary females? It has produced a deluge of females eager to show as much of their naked skin as the law allows--and willing frequently to step over that boundary. Teen aged girls now proudly and voluntarily show off their bodies in ways that, barely 20 years ago, only paid adult "models" would have done, and their products distributed in packages delivered in brown paper wrappings and shown to small audiences with the curtains drawn. Now, with cell phones, computers, and the social media, the sky's the limit.

Alleged American cultural imperialism is a red herring. The driving force behind all this is women's lib unleashing women's most primal instinct: to be sex objects for men.

NYT, what Luddites the Magazine reveals to be, draped in carefully marketed technorati-clothing! You might wring your hands, although the option exists to celebrate the fertile ground we've established for technical innovation. Some nations have absorbed our former manufacturing base, a few other do quite well pirating creations originated here. And there are others that have and will continue to innovate ahead of our curve, and still others that tinker with what we've begun only to turn it around to something even better. As all cultures on this planet struggle with the pace of technology, jarred from the cozy comfort of cultural mythologies, be a bit braver. If it doesn't destroy us, it will make us better. Standing still is never an option anyway. And the ruling military junta in Thailand, whether it ascended to power with or without bloodshed, will eventually come to terms with its teen-girl soft-porn-selfie-fascination that Apple wrought. And here, we'll come to terms with our own challenges. It's not often neat and predictable. But we'll manage eventually. Just as you guys did, staying afloat with a digital platform.

We're changing the world, one boob at a time.

You can call it digital imperialism - but it is still cultural imperialism. But the thing about this form of imperialism is that people have a choice. They don't have to drink Coke or wear Levis or log on to Faceboojk or tweet. We are not shoving it down anyone's throats. They swallow quite voluntarily. Because it is cool to be American.

The author begins with sexual selfies/self-expression (titillation?) and ends on phallic imperialism. But I can't help but laugh at our human predicament, addicted to pornography in every way imaginable. It's all an expression of some form of desire. It's good to love our bodies, minds and their possibilities, but I wonder what the Buddha would say. Perhaps "fleeting pleasures and self centeredness can't lead to lasting happiness." I think happiness is a worthy goal, and I doubt tech companies are going to take us there.

In 1982 in my rustbelt hometown of Flint MI they embarked upon a program to bring computers into our elementary school classrooms. We're an impoverished city and most kids had never seen a computer before. We became quickly competent in computer technology, modem telephony, networks, and were coding our own programs and games in no time. It's the single reason I'm in tech today. The opportunities are literally endless.

The big down side has been the unexpected dopamine loop created by people interacting with their devices. Remember B.F Skinner and his pigeons, endlessly pressing the lever for the reward? Even while walking or driving - people on their phones - sometimes to deadly results. They are powerless and helpless to the new notification or vibration of life from this little box. Is this the new drunk driving? Should we change MADD to "Mothers Against Device Dependency?"

How will the rest of the world respond? Just as it is responding now, to include ISIS successes at using the digital technologies to advance their cultural imperialism.

Technology is a handmaiden of Capital with a capital "C", and carries the values of Capital which is less and less tethered to nation-state foundations. Capital traverses the globe seamlessly with global economies integrating continuously and with governments weakening under pressure of the expansion of Capital. Do you recall the heydays of the Tom Friedman chant in praise of global capitalism, when he proclaimed that it's "GE" not Colin Powell that helps maintain a detente between India and Pakistan? That kind of signalled the weakening of the power of the state and the rise of the power of capital to settle public, geopolitical issues.

What then are the values of Capital? Nothing except those which expand their bottom line and power. Internet-empowering Capital as opposed to goods-generated capital of the 20th century does not sustain the cultural values of America exclusively; it sustains and spreads the values of Capital, which is to spread endlessly and get in its fold as many sheep as it can regardless of the sheep's ethnicity, color, race. Diversity and pluralism are the values, however, the goal is still to convert---to the ways of Capital.

21st century technology breeds an entirely different brand of imperialism.

I strongly object to any reference to Edward Snowden which does not include the word "traitor".

I'd like to coin the term "commercial surveillance" if nobody has done that yet. For all our ambivalence about governments tracking our telephone calls for national security reasons, we seem to have far less concern about the way we invite corporations to provide us with free apps and other conveniences so that they can monitor our activities and sell us stuff, or sell our information to others... as the writer says so well, " For institutions, as with consumers, all resistance recedes once they understand what is possible, once it’s all made to seem not merely acceptable but inevitable and desirable."

The idea that things like internet pornography, cellphone & internet rudeness, universal monitoring, Facebook & the commercialization of relationships represent "American values" is an idea that most Americans would rightly contest. Many of us have not bought into the techno-utopian drivel of the developmentally arrested narcissists of Silicon Valley, even though we have to use their products. Still we are told, a hundred times a day, that technology is the point of life, and that economic interests (narrowly defined as corporate whims) are our only values.

Perhaps we readers can learn something from other countries about how to resist the imperialism of "our own" corporations?

I really don't think that cell phones promote values just because they make it easier to take pictures and share them. That is like saying that bricks promote the value of universal housing (they do make it easier to build housing, after all) or dollar bills promote the value of charity (they do make it easier to donate money, after all). I don't think that any reasonable person would ascribe those values to those inanimate objects, except perhaps in such a way that pretty much any value could be ascribed to any object, thus making the author's statement pointless.

That leads to another issue. If you say that making it easier to photograph breasts promotes Western values, then I don't see how you can't say that making it easier to photograph Buddhist temples promotes Thai values. Therefore, which values is the cell-phone really promoting? Isn't it really promoting many different, often contradictory values (thus, again, making the author's statement pointless)?

On another note, the author is not really correct in saying that smartphones, with "tiled grids of apps on-screen, are patterned largely on Apple's bleuprint." Sony Ericsson (Japanese/Swedish), Nokia (Finnish), and Blackberry (Canadian) all had tiled grids of apps on-screen before the first iPhone ever came out. Believe it or not, other countries actually innovate some things!

And that's just a start. Our technology-enabled "virtuous circle for all who share their virtues" is expanding fast, and likely to continue — our inflationary universe on a human scale. As usual these days, new and improved software and hardware, products of our inchoate ambitions and ingenuity, will facilitate that expansion. The genie is out of the bottle and cannot be returned.

What may result? Undreamt of opportunities and difficulties, hopes and concerns, many of them already stirring among us, appealing to us and challenging us. As always, our imaginations and actions reach for stars, real and metaphorical.

My particular creative pursuit (words and art at www.squeezeshot.org involves thinking and imagining long and hard about such developments and the human nature that underlies them. I find that fascinating. In my case, I dwell particularly on the notion of tiny drones coming into everyone's hands, with great consequence to self and society. It is a futuristic notion, but not very; drone technology, including miniaturization, is advancing rapidly and becoming increasingly popular. It is just one of many fictions that may come true, and soon; one of countless facets of the change that the Magazine article addresses, change that is well under way.

The notion that this is a "peculiarly American vision" of the future seems to a bit of a stretch. Before I left South Africa in 1993, the phone company had discovered that it was more cost effective in new neighborhoods to simply put in a cell phone tower and issue cell phones to new subscribers than string ground lines.

Arriving in Hong Kong later in that year, I discovered a fully developed cell phone culture in which just about every member of every family, children included, carried a cell phone. As well, a technology which I've never seen here called "leaky coaxial cable" was deployed all through their subway and traffic tunnels so that cell phone users would lose their calls when they went underground.

Hong Kong Chinese had completely organised their lives around cell phone communications. Groups would call around and agree to meet up at a particular place for any of a wide variety of reasons. This was especially true of the children, who used the whole city as an extension of the living space in their rather cramped apartments.

It is worth noting that the cpu chip that drives the whole of the smart phone revolution, the ARM, is entirely a British product. Fifty billion of them have been produced to date. It first appeared in the Apple Newton tablet over twenty years ago.

The digital world is an international phenomenon, most definitely NOT a particularly American one. To suggest that it is some how a new form of American cultural imperialism is total nonsense.

It's more than just pushing American cultural assumptions onto the rest of the world. It's pushing a peculiarly juvenile, upper-class white man-boy tech nerd's vision of living life onto older people. Childish names ("apps", "Uber", "Android", "Tumblr", "Google", "Tweet", and so on), too-much-free-time concepts (online coffee delivery, TV on your phone, smart clothing, refrigerators that track calories), ADD-speed upgrades and obsolescence cycles, and obsession with appearances and hypermasculinity. ("How big is your phone?") Life is a videogame for them, and it's being forced on the rest of us.

When I was a child, I looked forward to becoming an adult. But technology and its fanboys are trying to turn adults into perpetually distracted, entertainment-consuming, toy-obsessed adolescents, and I'm getting sick and tired of it.

I recently returned from a two week trip to Russia, including not only Moscow and St. Petersburg but smaller and more far-flung cities. What struck me, besides the same (individual as opposed to group) warmth of the people, was the invasion of American cultural imperialism.

Whether its liberating or not the fact is that English/American words, symbols are pervasive even in a nation that uses an utterly different alphabet. From Burger King "crowns" on Russian teenagers leaving Gorky Park to the advertisements for American cars and fragrances that adorn buses, billboards, and Russian TV, it is clear that American culture, good, bad, and ugly is being exported and enthusiastically imported despite official efforts to resist it in the Rodina (motherland), An article in the TIMES Magazine called "The Agency" chillingly tells how far the Putin government will go using many of these same social media tools to portray America as a disintegrating nation of massive poverty, violence, and disaster (no, not just the FOX or MSNBC versions).

In our recent modern era of wildfire globalization, ancient cultures that have existed millenia stable and unphased are now being challenged for their survival in wholesale, this is all true; disappearing languages, rustic rural peoples migrating to cities for jobs, losing their familiy's identities, etc, the list is a long one, and it is a problem. Per the path we seem to be on, does humanity really want to live in a world stripped of its organic, ages-old local authenticity and flavor, to have instead endless freeways and parking lots, cookie-cutter brand name malls and glass-tower downtowns, spread homogenously across the entire land like some monstrous Corussant, the Star Wars imperial home planet which is 100% covered in city? The obvious collective answer seems to be a firm 'no', as everyone generally likes and wants nature, given choice.

This is a known issue, the deculturalization of innate, longstanding local cultures and traditions by the inescapable exigencies and demands of an all-surrounding capitalism, including our fancy new American-pioneered, digital and handheld gee-whiz technology, apparently wreaking havocs to young people's internet-muddled egos and self image-based personal lives all across the world.

However the article only makes a nominally alarmist suggestion that there is 'something else afoot' amidst these new trends. Its nothing new: this phenomenon has been going on and accelerating since global capitalism combined forces with TV decades ago.

In a globalized world there are fewer boundaries of any kind. Countries may try to maintain their own standards on many fronts. But it is a losing battle as information on line, like water finds it own level. But to describe it as cultural imperialism is just anti-American propaganda. It is cultural imperialism that we put information on line about Tiananmen Square on line. There is no free lunch when it comes to globalization. America gets low priced goods but losing high paying blue collar jobs. Thailand gets an export economy which raises their standard of living but finds their domestic moral standards harder to maintain. The trend seems toward individual freedoms over state censorship, hardly an example of imperialism.

No doubt a cultural component comes with the technology but intent is but another corporate ruse.
A public company, or one intending to be, is bound by one mission and one mission only...PROFIT.

From Wikipedia:

"With the ascendancy of San Francisco representative Nancy Pelosi to Speaker of the House, the term [San Francisco values] experienced a surge in popularity following the 2006 midterm elections. Newt Gingrich, for example, sent a fundraising letter to supporters, saying, 'Will everything you've worked so hard to accomplish be lost to the San Francisco values of would-be Speaker Nancy Pelosi?'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_values

Technology is not just spreading San Francisco values in foreign countries, it is spreading them throughout America. This looks like the Bay Area-ization of the USA. To many, that is progress.