Something always bothered me about the digital revolution, even though I was a computer analyst for decades. I’m a fan of Amazon and YouTube, but I instinctively avoided Facebook and other platforms that suck information out of you while you’re watching selfies of leopard attacks and pictures of other people’s lunch.
My phone is 13 years old and held together with tape. I do not want a smartphone that’s smarter than I am and has the power to make me distractedly walk off of a subway platform. Despite the valuable services and convenient access to, well, everything, I never felt comfortable being tracked or analyzed or milked by the advertising industry.
So the Chinese or the Stalin wannabes or the predatory advertisers (who are far worse) aren’t as able to get to people like me quite so easily.
It may not matter. We’ve passed the point where a critical mass of the population has being hijacked by little screens feeding on their every Tweet and text. We’ve been hypnotized without our being aware of it, and are being pulled and pushed by people we don’t know and for reasons we can’t fathom. Some are drawn to pizza parlors, intent on freeing Hillary’s sex slave children.
I’d say the end is near, but it seems that time has passed.
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George Orwell and Aldous Huxley foresaw it all decades ago. Go reread “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Brave New World” and see if you can suppress a shock of recognition. Our smartphones and Internet-connected devices are Orwell’s telescreens, and we are embracing them with all the fervor of Huxley’s feelies and soma. We are headed into a frightening future, and we are enthusiastically bringing it on ourselves.
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The New York Times, like Google, sells people to advertisers. You track everything readers do on your website. You are letting the number of clicks influence editorial decisions. You just happen to have a website worth visiting . . . for now.
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One dumb tweet is a tragedy. A million dumb tweets is merely a statistic.
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David Brooks says it cleanly, articulately, and correctly. My only disagreement with what he says he functionally disagrees with himself: "In the first place, he’d have much better surveillance equipment." Stalin wouldn't need surveillance equipment, inasmuch as the masses are only too happy to provide the world with every nitpicking (sometimes literally nit picking) bit of info about themselves.
I am happy to welcome David Brooks to the Luddite camp of sociology.
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The idea of connecting historical figures of the past to contemporary technology is not new. Check out this hilarious Russian movie I viewed on Amazon recently, depicting Ivan The Terrible suddenly transported via time-machine to modern-day Moscow and contending with television sets, landline telephones, kitchen ranges, etc. Comes with English subtitles ... https://www.amazon.com/Ivan-Vasilievich-Future-Yuriy-Yakovlev/dp/B0000714AX/ref=sr_1_33?crid=2A2C2ZYVVWWG4&keywords=ivan+the+terrible&qid=1552419590
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Or, the modern day fascist dictator, like Trump.
Over a century ago Mark Twain's Mysterious Stranger said there is nothing so good that someone doesn't suffer and nothing so bad that someone isn't rewarded.
I started working on computers in 1966 and my fingers would have made smartphones difficult even way back then. I am Jewish and Canadian and have never let the perfect get in the way of the perfectly good. Being born in ultra conservative Quebec post French Revolution Quebec Voltaire's maxim was the order of the day till about 1967 when we realized conservatism was a most destructive force in a world that was dynamic and changing very rapidly and the pre French Revolution Quebec in which we lived made most of us poor with little chance of bettering our lot in life.
Today we are computer literate with an economy that is the envy of the world where yesterday's headline echoed our chief concern which is we may never see enough people to satisfy our need for workers.
At 71 I hate smartphones but I also hate the phones that were here when I was born. Autism is a wide spectrum disorder and without eye contact I might never have learned to carry on a conversation. If you need Stalin, Hitler or Mao to make a point it is time to scrutinize your point.
I remember Shel Silverstein's song sung by Dr Hook and his Medicine Show; Freakin at the Freakers Ball. It should be the theme music for smartphones. Even if the Freaker's Ball isn't your cup of tea the smartphone is rapidly becoming everyone's ticket to where they want to go.
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Phones are getting smarter, people are getting dumber.
Just saying.
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If Stalin had a smart phone he'd be Trump.
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Gee, I was disappointed when I read this column and found out that it wasn't about a parallel between the dictator Stalin and our current tweeter-in-chief. Many have thought about the parallels between Hitler and Trump, between Mussolini and Trump, but let's not forget the story of Stalin, a bank robber turned autocrat who practiced power through overwhelming revenge and believed his every stray thought was a gospel of truth. What if he had a cellphone, indeed.
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This certainly explains what Uncle Ping is up to. I wonder how long before something snaps in China?
Sometimes I think David comes up with a title too good to pass up and then stuck trying to find filler to justify it: This is one of those times- again.
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My phone predicted my travel time this morning to the place, not on my maps or calendar, but that I go to every Tuesday and pretty much only Tuesday, at the same time - The local pool.
"Now your tyranny can be small, subtle and omnipresent". Now? Apparently David Brooks has no idea at all how Communism worked under Stalin, and what life was like.
First of all, falling for the nonsense idea that it was all "Stalin" - as though there were one controlling personality directing all activity in the Soviet Union - is a deep expression of the Communism idea itself. Stalin didn't kill my great-grandfather for refusing to relinquish his religious beliefs. It was a couple of guys. Millions of people who chose to participate in the collective system that sanctioned murder like that, and even saw it as a social good, carried out the daily acts, and supported the policies, that we call Stalinism.
Second, while murder & imprisonment were widespread and real, everyday life in the Soviet Union - notoriously - was comprised of tyranny that was "small, subtle and omnipresent." I don't even know where to begin.
Third, one feature of that "small, subtle and omnipresent" tyranny was precisely the ethos David Brooks constantly endorses: everyone's the same, which means everyone has the same needs, and wouldn't you know it, your inescapable nature means you're tied to a particular place, you'll be a lost human being if you don't accept the strictures of an incumbent social structure, and oh, by the way, constant proximity to and interaction with other people who know you and who can watch you is your deepest need as a human being, and autonomy is the same thing as alienation.
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You forget one thing that would have had Uncle Joe drooling: If only he had had Twitter to call out enemies of the people! So sad.
if Stalin HAD had a smartphone...He is not alive now, so if he had a smart phone means he does not have one NOW, but what if he DID have one, what if he HAD one, what would he do?
Think Gay teens and Think Russia, China and Islamic countries. Would they not be eliminated by the dictators since they have all their information?
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The final paragraph says it all -David “buried the lead.”
A Stalin would not be the Stalin were he immersed in our technological culture. But he might wage war on his high school with semi-automatic weapons, due to extreme isolation from social media. His bragging sex tapes and assaults on young girls would be floating in the cyber ether. At best he might aspire to be an underachieving Trump figure.
Stalin starved 36 million peasants over a five year period with his centralized, collective farms.
At the same time, the NY Times was writing glowing articles espousing "Uncle Joe" and the beauty of a collective society.
So, yes, as you guessed, media has always been around to help dictators.
Fortunately, there are those of us who are immune. Who knows how we are, but, we are.
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"To have total power you have to be able to control people’s minds. With modern information technology, the state can shape the intimate information pond in which we swim"?
Sounds pretty much like the state of things in a significant part of the USA, where Fox (Faux) "News" "shapes the intimate information pond" for those who follow it and "control people’s minds" in the process.
But of course Mr Brooks won't deign to address abuses by the right-wing, and Fox isn't even mentioned a single time in his article! Typical!
Nor a single solitary mention of media control and blatant authoritarianism in Russia either.
Instead, Brooks trots out the right's favorite bogey-man: China. How convenient!
And Brooks also repeats the usual fatuous platitudes about Orwell to bolster his argument. But remind me, Mr Brooks, did Orwell set his novel in Russia or China?
Of course, it's set in England, with a terrible travesty of government run amok in what used to be a liberal democracy!
Much like the direction the USA is heading now! Thanks to the Fox, right-wing media, and intellectual apologists for them like Mr Brooks!
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The opinion would have been augmented by concluding that Manafort’s transferring voter data to a Russian operative is today’s parallel to Stalinsequence electronic monitoring.
Score David! Great point!
How important is it that we nationalize our election process?
Get the private money out!
How else can we have good government?
Our current elections are a travesty. Private money is a systemic anti-democratic defect that inhibits our ability to have a representative government.
Our government is ALL we've got. Fight FOR it!
Interesting take that is largely spot on.
Except the network these traps operate over can't be controlled. Thus, these devices I call traps can be used to trap the trappers.
Every arms race is a seesaw. Sure, one day they might be able to spy on us better. The next day, we'll be able to spy on them. There's nothing to fear from light, just as long as it's everywhere.
I agree David, we should regulate data mining, by nationalizing and democratizing Big Tech. Great point.
I agree! It seems like a taking of our souls - that part of us that chooses to do right just because we like doing right or because we have a faith that there's a God or Higher Power and doing right is what's called for, no longer has value. We are now starting to do "the right thing" because we know or think there really is someone "watching" and it may or will have a real effect on our lives. I don't see any uproar about it by us in the near future. I think any dislike of a surveillance state is viewed as old-fashioned and "uncool".
"Human history (Living) is a series of struggles for power (to God's or Devil's). Every few generations (or within a life time), just for fun (Faith), the gods (God) give us a new set of equipment (circumstances) that radically alters the game (His Testing)."
On the one hand, if one believes at least as Jews, Christians and Muslims should comprehend-- Monotheism. It would seem that Stalin's Smartphone would have a short battery life in the larger scheme of things. Not to mention having need of an eternal energy source for constant recharging.
Monotheism unlike human dictators has proven longevity and with a centralizing effect. That modern warfare targets an enemy's electronic capabilities first enables a quick advantage but seldom a lasting victory. Hearts and minds are not of flesh and blood. The former attributes made smartphones the latter mere users.
Fascinating piece Mr. Brooks!
I can't remember exactly where I heard or read this ( and I'm too lazy to search for it ) but someone predicted a dystopian future, with subsistence income people living in some sort of dormitories or warehouses, totally occupied with playing online games while the elite plundered what remained of the Earth's treasure.
That scenario does not seem so inconceivable to me now.
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"As George Orwell and Aldous Huxley understood, if you want to be a good totalitarian, it isn’t enough to control behavior. To have total power you have to be able to control people’s minds."
C.S. Lewis was the best for seeing, understanding, and foreseeing the direction of scientistic materialism, or "The Abolition of Man."
""[the] reduction of everything to the spatial and temporal, the quantitative, is a chosen intellectual attitude, the libido dominandi: "We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may conquer them," and the "price of conquest is to treat a thing as mere Nature." The logical outcome of this tendancy is to take the final step of reducing our own species to the level of mere Nature." (Lewis, Abolition of Man)
Our freedom has vanished long ago and is now utopia.
We are slaves of our times , under the thumb of big corporations, that are in control of every aspect of our lives using the ever present and ubiquitous cyber technology spying on us from every possible angle.
I am glad I am old , I was able to enjoy real interesting , warm and affectionate relationships .
The future society will be mostly permeated by zombies unable to love , to be compassionate and empathetic.
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"When they realize that ersatz information webs can’t really create the closeness and community they crave, they react."
There is a lot of reactivity going on, but I doubt most people understand that their reactivity is being created in their nervous systems by the isolation technology creates.
There’s that word again: elite. He throws it in, without definition or explanation, at the last second, presumably to impugn the left.
“Angry movements and mobs arise spontaneously. What you get is a system of elite domination interrupted by populist riots.”
No modifiers this time such as liberal or coastal, just the word elite. So this leaves open a compelling possibility: Instead of Brooks’ canned (and unexpressed) interpretation, couldn’t the elite be the fear- and hate-mongering #1 cable news network, Fox News, which incites hate and fear in millions of angry viewers with its ever-so-elitist, holier-than-thou, one-sided ideology, not to mention its lies, half-truths, and Trumpian mythology? Doesn’t that interpretation correspond to reality quite compellingly? Consistent with the facts? Doesn’t Fox News’ own media domination and its insidious, inflammatory influence best explain our day’s angry mobs and riots?
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Sociologists have shown that Baby Boomers, more so than any other U.S. generational cohort, have an inherent fear of technology. Exhibit #1,001 is David Brooks' Op-Ed today.
Notice how Stalin and communism — the Baby Boomers' childhood super-villains — are fearfully intertwined with technological innovation in the Boomers' collective psyche.
You might wonder: Why is Stalin and communism linked with technological innovation in the minds of Boomers?
Because the invention of the Atom Bomb and the threat of nuclear annihilation throughout the 1950s-1960s permanently warped both the Boomers' childhoods. It permanently shaped their conception of technology itself. Any new tech, like the atom bomb, is "out to get them."
Consequently, Boomer columnists like Brooks are still engaging in "duck and cover" under their desks, except now it isn't their high school desk, it's a newspaper desk.
Now, we could have a long boring conversation about Boomers' fear and anger towards Modernity. We could have a long conversation about the Boomers' support for Donald Trump and how they continue to be the backbone of unthinking, atavistic reaction in this country.
But, really, why bother with such nuanced analysis? At the end of the day, Brooks and his fellow Baby Boomers can be neatly summed up in the "Old Man Yells At Cloud" meme...
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/old-man-yells-at-cloud
@SándorThis baby boomer's family along with neighbours dug their own bomb shelter many moons ago in case Kennedy and Kruschev did the dirty deed.
We survived. The shelter didn't. It eventually flooded. However. all survived.
Now it's the threat of old age and its terminal destiny.
So sad....
I can only hope that someday people will rise up and throw away their smartphones and all get flip phones that only make calls. A "get back to nature" moment if you will. A new religious awakening to the slavery of technology, but without any organized religion leading. Unhook from the IV drip of social media and become free. Maybe, someday.
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@markd We need pagers, too! Flip phones track your location so the towers know where you are in order to complete your call. The pre-cell-phone pagers sent short page messages to the whole city, and your pager recognized the ones for it. No location knowledge (except for city) required.
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@markd Done!
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Brooks brings up a good point, why don't 'We the People' have more visibility of our employees! The Senators, Representatives, and especially 45 who likes to hold private meetings with Putin, when he's not enjoying days of 'Executive Time'.
I completely agree with Brooks -- for years I've been saying that technology is changing everything by isolating us, fooling us into thinking life's better when everyone has a megaphone while destroying the very communities and institutions that have sustained us in the past. It's useful to remember that Stalin, Hitler and other despots accomplished their ends through old-fashioned means -- armies, concentration camps, disinformation of all kinds -- while technology has given today's dictators and malefactors far better tools. Trump isn't the problem here -- he's the inevitable product of huge changes we have only begun to understand.
Although the columnist’s perspectives on the grave societal dangers of 21st century information technologies is too alarmist and one-sided, they do call to mind the prescient insights of Marshall McLuhan expressed more than fifty years ago, particularly his famous declaration that “the medium is the message”. I doubt whether McLuhan could have even predicted the extent to which future communication devices would have overtaken our daily lives to the extent that they have.
Just recently on the Times daily podcast ("The Daily"), there was an interview about how high-tech employees are pushing back on their employers, telling them they won't work on military contracts. This has happened at Google, leading to Google shutting down an AI project, and at Microsoft (where the project wasn't shut down).
I find it ironic that tech companies and their employees market themselves as developing tools for the public interest, yet selectively judge the ethics of the projects they work on. Why is it not OK to work on a military contract that uses AI for improved targeting (even if that can reduce civilian casualties) - but it's OK to not even think about the ethics of developing tools that collect data on the movement of your fingers, how you drive your car, and which websites you look at at any hour of the day - and to make gobs of money doing that?
More accountability is required from the tech industry. The first step is for the tech companies to stop with the false pretense that they are in the business of doing only good things - from both the management and the employees who make selective decisions on ethics that suit their self interest.
"Human history is a series of struggles for power ..." A more simplistic summary of human history would be hard to find. Maybe it's OK for a newspaper columnist, but ...
Brooks LOVES to vastly over-generalize. For all his purported interest in complexity--that of human history, that of the human mind--often, for not seeing much beyond journalism's love of the zippy headline, he provokes without illuminating thought.
Not bad, Mr. Brooks, but the title hangs slightly askew: "If Stalin had a Smartphone...." Well, if he did, then he'd be no different than any of the rest of us in the 21st century developed world. A more appropriate titular query might be "What if, back in the day, Joe Stalin could access everything that Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, or Mark Zuckerberg can access today?" But then, in addition to being less pithy, the title wouldn't mesh quite so neatly with your agenda. Nice try though.
Hmmm - "If Stalin Were a New Master of the Free Market Rather Than an Old Style Central Planner" - Kinda has a nice ring to it, doncha think?
Remember how recently social media CEOs and other Silicon Valley leaders were pronouncing the death of privacy, that no one cared about that anymore? Until they could no longer hide from the rest of us just the tip of the surveillance iceberg they had created, and we got angry. So far this anger hasn’t slowed the growth of ever more intrusive data gathering.
Unless we demand protection from the electronic capture and use—by both business and government—of everything we say and do, translated by their algorithms into who they think we are, we are becoming infoserfs. Infoserfs have no intrinsic value or dignity as human beings; they are objects of quantifiable behavior, whether political (as in voting) or commercial (as in buying goods or using services like health care).
To remain human beings instead of being treated like infoserfs, we need the legal right to personal data integrity. For government, this could be based on the Fourth Amendment: there can be no involuntary search or seizure of information uniquely about each of us without showing good cause. For business, this could be the recognition of a right to privacy that includes the ownership of information associated with each of us as a unique human being that no one can take or use without our permission. Being required to surrender this right beyond the least intrusive way to validate a transaction for goods or services, with no other use or sharing, would not be considered permission.
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The challenge facing us is that people *want* to be tracked, moderated, analyzed and fed curated content. Very few people are interested in looking at opposing perspectives--so how does a service "know" your views? By peering into every facet of your life, of course! Do people mind these gross violations of privacy? "What are you even talking about, I'm watching The Bachelor".. is a common response, along with mutterings of tin foil hats.
This all would be abhorrent to our own citizens not too long ago and the fact that people now *expect* this treatment means we have a long reckoning ahead... What happens if a shady President co-opts this data for nefarious purposes? Sounds crazy, until you look at our own history with Japanese Americans. Dreadful things can happen dreadfully fast when everyone is watching VR cat shows.
Pray that our next crop of leaders, both in companies and government, will have the smarts, skills and guts to do what is best long-term, not what is the fastest or most profitable short-term.
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I am old, 70, so I will not live to see AI, Google, Facebook and Twitter completely control my life but I would have liked to live long enough to see the day of a populist riot when we all burn our cell phones. Visit a friend, say hello to your neighbor and walk your neighborhood and above all stay off Facebook, it's evil.
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Stalin-ism is the problem not the smartphone! Medium does not matter as much as what is being said and disseminated.
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@Gargi Prasad
I'm sticking with McLuhan. With their speed and comprehensive distribution, the new digital media matter at least as much as the messages they disseminate in creating the unfolding world. The juggernauts of Capitalism and Chinese-Communist-Capitalism are rolling, rolling, rolling on the digital highway where the speed limit is 186,000 miles per second. Nobody has any idea where this highway is headed.
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@Gargi Prasad You mean the socialist system was the problem; already in a few years of taking power LENIN had several million people killed.
When I was in high school in Poland, I read "1984," which made a great impression on me. I was deeply convinced that Orwell dedicated his masterpiece to the Soviet Union and communist totalitarianism. At that time, I did not even dream of spending most of my life in America, the land of the people who once thought correctly they were free. Much later, I reread "1984" and "Animal Farm," three times for that matter. I discovered that Orwell really was writing about the future of victorious totalitarian capitalism and about absolute mind control of the sort that is blooming only now. "1984" is out of copyright and anyone can download it. Please do, study the old master carefully, and become engaged in the political process not as spectators but as actors.
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"Soon prosecutors will be able to subpoena our driverless cars and retrieve a record of every place they took us."
On some newer cars they could do that now, especially rental cars. They can also record speed and braking of an accident.
We are already there.
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Here in the capitalist US, we prefer being tracked by the private sector. In Mark Zuckerberg we trust.
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Just think of the historical changes that Guttenberg initiated.
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After Brooks' last column on reparations, I thought he'd lbeen through some sort of P.C. re-education camp. But here he is back with another wry, very insightful column on the interplay of the new media and democratic (or non-democratic) government. And, whereas the reparations column darkly illustrated WSJ columnist Peggy Noonan's recent column about forced conversions during Chinese communist cultural revolutions, Brooks' new column harkens to the lure of a different communist dictator. Nice going!
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Just a side muse. Who put the caption, “A woman in Moscow taking a selfie with an image of Stalin, on the anniversary of his death.” on this article-enhancing photo? The caption may be accurate if it was written by the person who took the photo or someone else present but otherwise we have no idea it was a woman (maybe the feminine-looking hand?). The hand holding the selfie-taking photo (and it’s not a selfie because it doesn’t include the person (“self”) taking the photo, at least not that we can see … his/her face could be above the photo and thus make it a selfie) is not the hand of the young-ish girl looking on? Okay, this was just an entertaining diversion for me. Likely the photo is of a woman taking a selfie and for this article the photo was cropped thus hiding her face from us. But, from what we are shown, how would we know?
P.S. Good article. Not really provocative or inspiring, just a log of our evolving world. What is notable though is that much of the “1984-ization” of the western, technologically invasive world is voluntary whereas the Chinese version is truly involuntarily Orwellian.
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It is even true right here in America, among those on the left. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has pressured Amazon and Google and Facebook to use censorship to prevent his version of "misinformation" to drive a mandatory vaccination policy upon the American people. The is the purest form of "elite domination" I have experienced since Joe McCarthy in America. Fascism is ugly however it is delivered.
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At least Brooks correctly identified Joseph Stalin as a totalitarian rather than a socialist.
We're obviously making some progress.
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Hear. Hear. Any society which finds itself governed by the tweets , twitter wars and tweet storms, has already been conquered ( as the bird brain in the White House proves every day).
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"What you get is a system of elite domination interrupted by populist riots."....sounds like the Middle Ages are here again!
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Thankfully Trump is only on twitter and not an internet whiz and so totally self absorbed he thinks Kim has the hots for him because of fawning letters. We got a fool as president which can be dangerous in his evaluation of international affairs. A buffoon who gushes like a school girl when flattered by a dictator and yearns to be America's first dictator ala Stalin with calling the press the enemy of the people. Our free press and constitution will stymie Trump's desire to rule without question and his obnoxious personality will never entice more than 30% of the population to desire his dictatorship.
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People are afraid of AI replacing humans. They should really worry about these technologies replacing God… or the devil.
Nice piece. Not as nice as a cat video, but nice.
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If Stalin had a smartphone, he'd have been looking at it every sixty seconds like a millennial. He wouldn't have the time to kill 20 million or so, he would just concentrated on social media. Much like the millennial I oversee on this project.
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I read the title of this opinion piece, "If Stalin Had a Smartphone," and thought that Brooks would be conjuring up what some of Uncle Joe's tweets would have been back in the day.
Thank you for not going down that road.
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Brooks omits state run media which controls what even a smart phone has access to. We only have Fox at the moment dictating our national policies, to which our very own tin pot wannabe dictator is addicted. He don't know nothin' about nothin' if it doesn't come from Fox.
But Brooks shouldn't worry about smart gadgets controlling the people. Soon big buddy bro Putin will take away the internet entire from 'his' people so that even it they dared say something bad about him, they won't have the platforms to broadcast it.
Here dictatorship would be just around the corner if Trump only had a brain. Be thankful.
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Smartphone interruptus impacts creative human interactions.
The multi-national corporations, not any political dictator, have already taken the U.S. government. It started in the 1970s, but the well began producing profits after 1980, and now the takeover is nearly complete. Read this, David
Brooks:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-kleptocracy-came-to-america/580471/?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=the-atlantic-fb-test-770-4-&utm_content=edit-promo&utm_medium=social&fbclid=IwAR2ePtZaOQluhieQMCiNuLPcYDd_mcNLboOFjn-bBwZNP4S6-SYnliMw_r0
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Very good article on an hot issue!
The countermeasures against surveillance are discussed in another of today's NYT's stories--"How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish." We seem to like games of dodge and weave, nip and tuck. In East Germany, cold war era, the game was jacked to the hilt...or so I have been led by writers of spy thrillers, to believe
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I am not sure why you associated Smart Phones and Stalin- He had 20 million of his own people killed-I can’t get past that.Use any other dictator and I take your point.It actually scares me that when I was young the little brownie camera was a marvel and it was pure magic to take a black and white photo.Now there is a high tech camera on every corner and every doorway.Now we have to work at anonymity but it can be done-just don’t adopt every gadget and put so information on your devices.It is easier to do taxes online-I still do mine with a pen and send them in an envelope.You have to try to fly under the radar.
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If Stalin had a smartphone, every right wing Republican will be a commie. They have to be. They are too gullible not to be. How do we know all right wing Republicans are extremely gullible? Just look at how much power the Fox News has over them. You just can not explain this unseemly phenom in a rational way. The right wing Republicans sold their soul to Rupert Murdoch. If Stalin was alive today, the Republicans would have sold their soul to him. The rest of Americans feel ashamed of the gullible right.
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If you want to play, "you kids, get off my lawn", there has to be a neighborhood worth investing in.
Brilliant and prescient commentary.
I'm a confirmed leftie, but ever increasingly a fan of David Brooks, the bashful mensch.. and now Brooks the Luddite? Bravo!
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Just in time for the premier of Trump’s 2020 campaign theme, “The Democrats are Socialists,” David writes a column about how much more effective a dictator Stalin would be today.
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Sorry David,
It appears your readers aren't going to allow you to change and grow. They want you boxed in as the conservative pundit that you were and can't see that over the past several years you've left politics for social commentary - which for the most part has no partisan leaning. Sure, you have a 'limited government" bent and certainly political leanings that most NYT readers don't agree with but how dare you leave the fold and write with broader strokes about American life outside of the political mudfight!
If Stalin had had a smartphone, his many enemies could have gleefully (and mercilessly) hacked him.
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The antedote to abuses of power is the law - regulation - enacted by legislators duly elected by the people.
Instead of writing a dystopia science fiction piece, why not write about actually policy and Ajit Pai — the destructive chairman of the FCC?
This is exactly why I wear an aluminum foil hat. They can't control me now!
Two things:
1) Don't forget that the NY Times is doing it too. I get regular emails congratulating me on being a great customer and as a favor, a list of articles recommended for me. Digging me a mental trench, so I don't have to. Thanks NYT!
2) What a good dictator would do is get the populist riots to riot against one another, such as Maduro is doing in Venezuela. Makes it easier to maintain control when the angry mobs fight amongst themselves.
Isn’t the cynical, nefarious manipulation of social media and related data mining technology how a certain fellow named Donald J. Trump got himself elected President of the United States? And isn’t a bit of ‘old technology’ that calls itself ‘Fox News, the most trusted name in cable television’ (or is that ‘fair and balanced,’ an Orwellian moniker for that propaganda machine if ever there was) the primary tool keeping this fellow in the Oval Office today, and possibly for another term... and possibly for a number of terms beyond that, if his recent musings are any indication of the Gruesome Old Party’s long term plan?
We passed 1984 and left it receding in the rearview mirror quite some time ago. Awaken from your conservative intellectual slumber, David “Rip Van Winkle” Brooks. You’d be amazed what you might find when you open your eyes again!
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The other side of the data coin is eloquently expressed in Bill Gates current Blog "Gatesnotes.com" where by Chicago's Network for College Success - NCS - is transforming education and young lives for the better.
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Mr. Brooks, have you seen the Netflix show Black Mirror? If not, try it. There are a number of episodes that speak to this editorial.
Well, so much for my reading of David Brooks's columns.
Whatever odd algorithm is used to measure my value and affect future opportunities for my grandchildren, I don't want this moment to be part of the mix. I'll guess I'll just read Michelle Goldberg and move on to the sports page.
Wonderful essay David Brooks, thank you.
You wrote, "In the second place, thanks to artificial intelligence, Uncle Joe would have much better tools for predicting how his subjects are about to behave. As Shoshana Zuboff wrote in her book “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” when you are using Google, you are not Google’s customer. You are Google’s raw material. Google records everything you do; then it develops models that predict your behavior and then it sells those models to advertisers, which are its actual customers."
There is so much in this story to digest and play with. Don't let your critics get you down, they listen with their mouths.
David Lindsay Jr. is the author of “The Tay Son Rebellion,” and blogs at TheTaySonRebellion.com and InconvenientNews.wordpress.com. He performs folk music and stories about Climate Change and the Sixth Extinction.
1
Seems to me everyone likes blaming the tools here. There will always be new technology and it can be useful or destructive. Whining about it won’t help. In a democratic republic we the people can control and regulate things as needed and desired. Seems to me that is what is important and needed. Those same tools in the hands of authoritarian governments is another story. So protect the open society. Stay away from autocratic leaders that say “only they can fix it” if you give just them all the power. Stay informed and educated and vote for good responsible representatives that will respect, listen to and represent us and legislate for the desired outcome. In other words “we” can fix it. It’s not a one and done kind if thing. Like most things of value, it needs regular maintenance.
1
There has always been something totalitarian about our corporate capitalist system. Our technology just happens to be heightening it.
1
It's certainly springtime for sheep.
1
I"m not feeling bad for Joseph Stalin. I'm worried about our descendants.
1
@Tom Rieke
Me too. Thought police coupled with DNA mapping and welcome to the, “Brave New World.”
Did David Brooks just endorse Elizabeth Warren's call to break up Big Tech?
At some point people will get tired of the current version of Hula-Hoops and turn their phones into tools as opposed to entertainment.
I turn mine on a couple of times a day and the rest of the day it is off or on mute.
I drive a car made when Truman was president, so no tracking of the car and a side benefit is that the license plate readers don't read old plates so on a town with bridge tolls...
My desk phone was made by western electric. For some strange reason when I pick it up the telemarketers computers don't like it and I know it is one...they don't connect the call...my own personal call screening.
I am reading the NY Times via Tor. Enough said there.
If one uses technology as a tool and not as a lifestyle, then the Stalin's of this world will have a harder time.
Of course the Stalin's of the 21st century will make the one mistake he did not. By his own words he said that Hitler made one mistake. "He did not know when to stop". Stalin knew when to stop, the 21st Century versions will not and that will be their undoing.
Well well. You and Douthat start your opinion pieces with ‘if’.?
Reality got your tongue?
Don’t feel bad for Stalin. Feel bad for the United States of Central North America. You are one of the scions of American Conservatism who has twisted and broken the Republican Party.
It’s your private corporations who are the servalers, watching for any deviation from the Handmaids.
Joseph Stalin was just another Elliot Abrams with ambition!
OMG! I spent twenty minutes before bed last night watching an animal video featuring a German Shepherd befriending a kitten! Thank you David Brooks for "woking" me to the Faustian bargain I've made with Google/Youtube.
The genius of post-modern oligarchs, whether in Beijing or on Wall Street, is that they don't have to emulate the crass brutality of J.V. Stalin. They've discovered the magic of consumer capitalism - the masses now cheerfully volunteer for serfdom. Stalin crushed free expression and dissident opinions. Today's oligarchs are friends of the First Amendment - no one can hear the truth for the cacophony of a billion voices.
1
I don't think you need technologies to be totalitarian.
Tech was hailed a game changer during the Arab Spring until it has been appropriated by the Russian trolls and sovereign hacks. Prometheus bought us fire to cook our food and heat the hearth and now humans use it to torch our villages and burn us alive. In the Brave New World, one nonconformist has chosen to venture beyond.
Tech or no tech, we need to learn from history. Hobbes warned us we are wolf under that human skin. Camus wrote The Plague. But did we listen?
Instead, the conservatives have campaigned for decency and family values; but as it turns out, your one time colleague, Tucker Carlson, is an unrepentant minsogynst and worse. By the way, what do you make of him now? Hope you'd write a column on him here in NYT!
To have a better world, maybe we start with ourselves. We are flawed beings but we can also do better, you and me included
Oh no... David Brooks is becoming Andy Rooney. I wonder if their offices look the same...
As the old maxim goes, if you are sitting at the poker table and can’t figure out who is the patsy, it is you. Now extrapolate from the poker table to your entire life.....
and then theres the newspapers that track what you read, and the comments you make!
Once upon a time David Brooks was relevant. Or at least that's what I think I remember.
Only David Brooks could write a column about dictators and smart phones without mentioning our current Dictator-Wanna_be-In-Chief.
As usual, David Brooks has missed the forest because of those pesky trees.
2
Typical commenter here, except for the many Chinese trolls, has not lived and worked in China. Devoid of any Life context, they fall for a fallacy: both Chinese and Americans use surveillance, so they are moral equals. These commenters are like someone who cannot see the difference between one who intentionally pushes an old lady away from an oncoming bus, and one who intentionally pushes an old lady in front of that bus. It is, after all, just a matter of pushing an old lady.
1
I'm sure Stalin would have played up how successful his summit was in Crimea & downplay how many Russians starved to death in the seige of Salingrad. Wow! Sounds similar to what we are bombarded with every day from you-know-who.
1
Ever since the internet we’ve had Godwin’s law which posits that all internet discussions eventually devolve into comparisons to Hitler.
I now give you Brooks’ Law: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Stalin approaches 1.”
1
If Trump didn't have a smartphone....
And he proves day after day you don't need Artificial Intelligence. You just need lies.
1
Yep. On the money. Thing is, it has been obvious from the start. But people are dazzled by it all. Magic! Down the slippery slope. And, most of all, as you say, tyrants love it. Mein Kampf on mega steroids! People live in a fog - what does it mean to be human? Just keep me entertained.
First thought, David – every city or city-scale thingus built 250 years ago or more had only the levers of oral communication and apprenticeship, and hand-drawn plans or instructions or records...
To this day, the cities that try to look and act exactly as they did back then have something disproportionately in common – they are state or national capitals...
Some had that option taken from them – some times, by Stalin...
Living in the past – or in a palace, gratis – has become tantamount to burying-in-place...
Second thought, the harmony and hegemony Beijing is progressively – !!! – imposing isn’t operationally different from what any world-class amusement or theme park or cruise ship seeks to do...
Don’t even have to be a billionaire...
$750/day – or ~$250K/year – could keep a family of 4 in theme parks or cruise ships, like, forever...
i.e. – 2/3’s of one person’s annual cost for Firdapse – a 25-year-old drug – in the good old US of A...
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/02/28/us/28reuters-usa-healthcare-catalyst.html
Third/last thought, it’s not the subtle manipulation of leading-edge social media co’s that annoy, as much as junky phone trees and junkier phone-tree music – and online companies that insist on a phone call or even snail-mail if you want to do something they don’t want you to...
(Go try to cancel your NYT subscription – see how that goes)
Now, though, don’t even think about cancelling...
Mini-crosswords’ got me positively hooked...
....had just sent a post in to this article, when I read this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/12/technology/how-to-disappear-surveillance-state.html?action=click&module=Editors%20Picks&pgtype=Homepage
I just read this NYT conservative columnist piece on my tablet. Now rushing off to yoga class. Maybe I will confuse them.
Reads like Black Mirror First Season! Need not worry about Stalin missing his moment. Anyone of today's despots will do.
Have Secret Service stop search President Donald Trump smartphone ,its Apps have Stalin direct line to Putin/Russia. give up US Secrets, the another Apps Hillary tex's.
Big Brother is watching you. Through your refrigerator.
Somehow, the Intelligence, or Accidental Intelligence, behind our evolution/creation, manages even more precise data than today's hunters and gathers sucking in smatterings of trends.
I highly suspect our data will find its Soul, its human center, its reason for Being, long after the Google's are fully developed and keep our own course in history safe.
For me, I trust that human data, like nuclear power, can be misused to a point. Yet creation, of which we are its eyes and ears, manages to thrive.
What our very smart kids have done is given the power of information to all, not just the Stalins of the world. And that, Mr. Brooks, is the blessing that gives power to to masses, and steals it away from the few.
Mr. Brooks definitely needs to turn down his Iphone volume, not to crouch in a corner besmirching our fate, but to dream the opposite, which is far more power...
of what could be now that we all know everything...
We are entering the dystopia envisioned by the many novels of Philip K. Dick.
Just imagine if Hitler’s scientists had provided him with an operational Nuclear Weapon to ride atop a Nazi rocket or to be delivered by one of the advanced aircraft that was developed in the waning year of WW2.
What dolts we humans are! Maybe we don't deserve to survive into the distant future.
I recommend _Democracy Incorporated_, by Sheldon Wolin. The Times algorithm will probably reject this comment. Maybe an editor, then. Who knew?
The NYT 'knows' that I looked at this opinion piece too!
"I remember a couple years ago “I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place,” Mr. Williams says. “I was wrong about that.”
This is from an interview this very newspaper did a couple years ago with a Twitter guy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/technology/evan-williams-medium-twitter-internet.html
Anybody with a lick of sense could have seen this coming. I shake my head.
The next insanity coming down the pike is AI. It will not make your life better.
And, by the way, get up and flick the damn light switch off or on by yourself.
2
I can't speak intelligently about China, but I can about America, and American government is the entity LEAST in charge of this valuable totalitarian information. American Oligarchs empowered by a perverted version of capitalism are pulling the strings on every citizen here.
David didn't offer a remedy for China, but I have one for America. Fix the tax system. Don't give everything you and I have to the uber rich who already have more than we can ever imagine. If we fix taxes, privacy rights and responsibility will follow.
We, who live in a liberal democracy, must double down our efforts to prevent an Orwellian scenario.
If Stalin had a “smartphone” he wouldn’t have been more different from what he had been – ruling by terror, overseeing the deaths of millions of his own citizens.
Modern day secular dicatators – Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un and others – have learnt from Stalin how a single individual’s decisions can radically transform an entire country’s political and socioeconomic structures, with global repercussions.
They adopt Stalin’s repressive regin, trying to be less brutal, and avoiding human rights scrutiny.
This “broken windows theory of despotism” comes in handy. With AI, social engineering helps monitor every single move and thought of all citizens. By punishing the unruly harshly for “small deviations,” this would prevent subversive activities from happening.
Biographers said Stalin was a man acting out of deeply held ideological convictions. But he also enjoyed maximising personal power.
Today’s dictators are greedy for power and – with the exception of Xi – highly corrupt. They saw how the Arab Spring protests were kickstarted by social media and they are determined to crack down on dissent, because they all fear the vagaries of a revolution or a civil war. But how long can they suppress social and political unrest?
1
The invention of the printing press led to many outbreaks of mass hysteria as various lies and crazy philosophies spread throughout Europe in the 16th century. The Protestant Reformation and the 100 Years War would not have happened without this new technology that made it so much easier to spread information, true and false. Governments soon learned to manipulate their own people using the technology of printing as well. Radio and television in the 20th century were used to further muddy the waters of truth, by governments and those who opposed them.
The internet and social media are as big a shock as the printing press was in terms of easing the dissemination of propaganda, lies, and also the truth. It allows miraculous fonts of knowledge like Wikipedia, but also aids the Stalins of the world in their ability to sew dissent and misinformation. The internet also allows corporations and governments to measure us; communication is now 2 way. We need new tools to discern the truth, and to protect our privacy.
Societies have overcome these hurdles before, and the printing press was certainly a net positive. But it will take us time to learn to deal with our new tools.
Petra Pan (aka AOC) does have a smartphone!
But remember the ending of "1984": he loved Big Brother.
The Nosedive episode of Black Mirror series well explored this topic. Everyone’s social status was immediately visible to all and social status determined access to housing, air flights etc. Chilling and worthwhile viewing.
Perhaps we should bring back Mr. Poindexter's "Total Information Awareness"
At least with DARPA on it, they at least said at the outset, before even doing testing with fake data, they understood that privacy was a big concern. So, that program got shut down because of his political scandals. Then the program went from "white" to "black", meaning, DARPA was hiring outside firms and consultants to do it, then demonstrate its utility to Congress. Instead, the program was cancelled and all aspects of it went from there to private capital and CIA/NSA, both with zero oversight
Oh well.
When people have a smartphone in their hand, they feel that they should have a voice, that they should be broadcasting, that they should have agency and dignity....
Angry movements and mobs arise spontaneously. What you get is a system of elite domination interrupted by populist riots.
Well, that should be nothing if not interesting!
You write: "There is no moral difference between the control & manipulation exercised by the government in China and by tech monopolies in America."
Please tell me at what point tech monopolies acquired the ability of the Chinese government to intern you in a camp for forced reeducation. Your comment represents the sort of exaggeration that render civil discussion impossible.
1
Kind of surreal reading this article on my smartphone.
45
@Michael Ando - The really surreal thing is that we're all reading it on your smartphone with you!
2
"We thought the new tools would democratize power, but they seem to have centralized it. It’s springtime for dictators."
Brilliant. And true. We are afloat in a world where there appears to be so many choices... and yet, all of those choices are an illusion. There are very few entities pulling the strings.
Everywhere ya look, conservative punditry bemoans the loss of communal life, of our shared public existence, of our institutions. The same pundits worked for decades castigating public institutions as THE problem, making the commonwealth a dirty word, and encouraging hyper-individualism as the only cure and buttress against the evils of "socialism" and the "communist" left. Now, that seems a bit contradictory, doesn't it? Half of the articles from conservatives i see lately seem to think it takes a village and it's sad we don't have one anymore, because, as it turns out, even though they cheered it not long ago, corporations really aren't people after all, they just like using them, and burning their villages to the ground in the process.
1
Interesting echoes of the aging Tolstoy who said "Imagine Genghis Khan with a telephone," foreshadowing Stalin. It only seems right that the evolution of Tolstoy's statement is "Imagine Stalin with a smart phone."
1
Big brother / big company enabling tech is the biggest risk to our personal freedom and wallets.
There is a huge opportunity for tech entrepreneurs to offer truly private and fairly priced version of these vampire services
- a private search like Duck Duck Go
- a social network like Facebook without news and tracking
- a member owned financial institution without rip-off fees
-
With the advent of the smartphone comes the illusion that we all have a certain amount of freedom, or even Democracy.
We have a mini computer with more power than space missions of old, yet use it to degrade the English language while at the same time wasting away our days.
We film social outrages each and every day right in front of us, yet those responsible are not held accountable many times, even though there is proof of record.
We have the power to unite each and every global citizen (with said power in a phone) into a single populace working all together for the common good. We instead ingrain lines of division with such precision of GPS.
Technology has leaped us to the point that every single advance for humankind is two steps back as that same technology is used against ourselves.
Anyone can be a dictator now.
1
@FunkyIrishman - The problem is - who gets to decide what defines "the social good"?
Mr Brooks is about my age, and we both see what is happening with social media. But my kids have woven it into their lives and can practice a daily existence inside it that I can not. A new generation with a changed awareness is emerging. Let them, and AOC, figure it out. Despite my concerns...
Or we could have a system where power concentrates into a very few companies because of network effects that encourage monopoly - making it convenient for a democratic government to regulate them heavily in how they use information.
We decided that parents couldn't control whether their kids could work or go to school: school became mandatory. Maybe we'll also regulate that people can't give away their privacy for a few free services. Maybe we'll regulate that you can wipe your car's memory after every trip - and count on that working right.
A whole lot of moral decisions would become possible, if we didn't think that regulating huge powerful corporations was some kind of inherent immorality - or technical impossibility - itself. Also, losing our fear of crime and terrorism - as really being relatively small risks - might allow us to require that technology not be available to a surveillance state.
I think this is a problem of democracy and political courage, not a problem of technology.
1
Mr. Brooks fails to point out that we, in general, feel that each step along the way is a good idea. It's the final destination that scares us. Maybe it should; but, on the other hand with some faith in humanity, may it shouldn't.
Re: ‘springtime for dictators..
In Stalin’s day machines did not do informational ‘data processing’ but rather groups and individuals within institutions did the spying ‘service’ for the Soviet state. Today there is an irony of Stalin’s world entering ours. Fact is it is our own big data institutions such as Facebook, Amazon and Google now have the potential to enable a future of ‘data poisoning’ into its overarching context of receiving and processing data.
As Stalin created a closed, autocratic social system it’s almost as if the same now appears here in the 21st with regard to our social media manifestation. Yes we communicate freely and in the open. Yet we cannot control the social media system. It operates virtually as a communication fiefdom by big data autocrats.
Individuals trying to make changes to social media privacy laws for protection is virtually impossible. Ironic as users are the creators of that social media universe they help propagate. We better wake up as arguably we are seeing the throes of the first hints of the ‘Stalinization’ effect of our social media construct. From the 21st on in our society information and data will figure much in the wielding of power. It can’t get into the wrong hands.
‘
The supremely paranoid version of Communism that Stalin oversaw assumed that the Marxist systems that the state had put into practice were so flawless, that any failure to achieve economic goals could only be the work of saboteurs. Smartphones would offer the Stalin of the 21st century countless opportunities to take words and data out of context to enable the seeking out of traitors. The Twitter community has excelled at this concept for years.
2
It's typical of conservatives to view the new technology in terms of surveillance and loss of privacy, but the real power of the new media is over people's minds. Virtual reality dictates millions upon millions of belief systems and its power will only grow. When huge percentages of Christians believe Donald Trump is a savior sent by God, privacy becomes a trivial issue.
If Donald Trump succeeds in establishing an authoritarian regime, the first thing he will eliminate is dissent.
1
As the Arab Spring was in its early times and everyone was optimistic and praising the democratizing power of Facebook and Twitter, a commentator who grew up in east Germany (I don’t remember his name) threw cold water on the whole thing. He said “the Stasi would love this” it predicted the nascent movements wouldn’t end well. Looks like the rest of us are finally catching up.
2
Egotism and immediate gratification . . .all fostered by intoxicating 'high-tech' devices. Indeed, a slippery slope to autocracy.
2
I can't speak intelligently about China, but I can about America, and American government is the entity LEAST in charge of this valuable totalitarian information. American Oligarchs empowered by a perverted version of capitalism are pulling the strings on every citizen here.
David didn't offer a remedy for China, but I have one for America. Fix the tax system. Don't give everything you and I have to the uber rich who already have more than we can ever imagine. If we fix taxes, privacy rights and responsibility will follow.
3
Some details may differ, but much of David Brooks’s article was foreseen – long ago. Not only by cranks, but by thoughtful, knowledgable observers. Why wasn’t it acted upon? Why isn’t it being acted upon now? Brooks hints at one set of reasons by referring to Orwell and Huxley.
Another reason is that Americans – liberals as well as conservatives – are loath to “interfere” in “private” marketplaces. In this view, “The Market” makes optimal choices; optimal for whom rarely enters the picture (“cost-benefit” analyses can suffer from similarly blinkered perspectives). Questioning the Wisdom of The Market has almost become politico-religious deviationism, instead of a calm analytical undertaking (I exaggerate to make a point).
An additional reason is the Wizard of Oz aura perpetuated by the so-called “Tech” community. Too many intelligent people are so hog-tied and intimidated by the arcane details of information technology that they’re not willing to tear back the curtain to view the broader, societal and business contexts of “Tech” operations. Yet there’s nothing arcane about articles by Tim Wu, Kara Swisher, and others.
Technologies are created by people. They are not totally independent, autonomous entities. They need not be “out of control”, as the witless phrase implies.
Our blissful inattention and the laziness of our legislators and government regulators are luring us ever farther down the techno-primrose path to a surveilled, manipulated society.
1
I'd be curious what Stalin's rate of churn with regards to friends on Facebook would be? Will we be able to confirm the unfriended afterwards? Last one today, I promise.
So who is forcing us to use social media and other technology that makes us vulnerable? Is the only option to be "safe" from Big Data Harvesters to become a luddite and avoid everything? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...
Strange "Brooksean whimsy" about a mass murderer of all those who disagreed with him on political issues or color of their ties. Snapchat would have made it worse.
We have had enough dictators in our collective histories. Good kings have been hard to find since Solomon and Camelot and both had shortcomings.
Remember that old saw about democracy: It's imperfect, but nothing else is better.
1
It's happening here, too. The only difference is that people here voluntarily give away their private information. And they voluntarily surrender to media networks filled with disinformation and outright lies. They voluntarily help to destroy the educational system, by their unwillingness to support public education through taxes. So critical reasoning goes under the bus, leaving prejudice, propaganda, and superstition. And reality TV.
Noam Chomsky called it "soft fascism". And that was decades before personal computers and smart phones.
"It’s springtime for dictators." David I could not disagree more!
People like Trump can dominate and dictate, but not for long.
We, the people, are starting to wise up, about Trump's control.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
I strongly hope that you will comment on the "Democracy" song.
Leonard Cohen, sang: "Democracy is coming to the USA". (1992)
Please check out the prophetic words of "Democracy", now.
I believe that there is a backlash to Trump and dictatorship.
Perhaps Democratic opponents of Trump can use Cohen's song,
as a rallying cry, from now, to the 2020 election...
"Democracy is coming...to the USA".
---------------------------------------------
1
So spot on. But China's got nothing on us; one of our recent candidates for elective office worked hand-in-glove with the Russians to manipulate our electorate via misinformation saturating the internet. And won. And so few seem to care...
I think the most disturbing part is getting dinged for non-participation("If your score is too low, you can get put on a blacklist."). I have thought about this for awhile that you can choose to keep a low or no profile on the Internet but this actually works against you.
1
"Every few generations, just for fun, the gods give us a new set of equipment…" More significantly for our roiling politics, the population of the world goes on growing. Over many millennia, the human race spread all across the earth. Twelve thousand years or so ago, agriculture cropped up. And issues of storage and protection of food spurred the growth of towns and dynasties. Many Americans seem shocked that living-room has become limited: this is not just because of numbers but because of jobs and their location in cities. The gods did not invent city walls, or the gunpowder and cannon that made them obsolet. That and much else is down to humanity. It is said that the UK, and more specifically England, is the most surveilled country in the world, never mind China. Yet England still boasts of housing the Mother of Parliaments--while the English are tearing themselves apart, and turning their backs not only on the EU but on their supposed partners in the UK. And we come back to E.O. Wilson’s: “The real problem… : we have paleolithic emotions; medieval institutions; and god-like technology. And… it is now approaching a point of crisis overall.” Whatever the Chinese may be doing, how is it worse than the chaos we see developing in America and Europe?
1
If you are going to live in this world you are forced to give in. It would be a full-time job trying to protect your privacy and data. How I long for the days when I wasn't simply an algorithm and data set. We just aren't stand alone individuals anymore. But the majority in this country have jumped right into the Kool Aid bath. Alexa in your home...for real? Why can't you turn up your heat by yourself? To me it is all a nightmare. But what did I do last Friday but buy a smartphone! Now the pressure is on to join Instagram and re-join Facebook. Actually I got it to take pictures of interesting things (no selfies) and my camera was always at home. The phone will always be with me incase I need to call AAA for my 11 yr. old car. Can't wait to get up to my summer camp job in ME. Campers must turn in their phone on day 1 and staff have to keep their phones out of sight. Interesting that it is the staff who have a problem, not the kids. Well we got the Twitter king and he may not be Stalin but he is pretty awful.
Anyway it isn't an iPhone from Tim Apple's company and it cost $60.
As online life expands, neighborhood life and social trust decline".
This is a central element of Mr. Brooks' point. Our technology should enable us to expand human contact and increase our communication with people and cultures that are geographically remote. It should provide human enrichment.
Instead the internet is clogged with junk and trolls and hidden agendas and falsehoods and scams.
Our technology is neutral; it's how we use it.
It seems to have escaped Brooks' notice that all this technology is the product of capitalism.
1
@John: Of human endeavor, surely? But your point is valid. I think of Stalin and Lysenko. Of Pol Pot and bloody mayhem.
Most importantly you find allies in the Republican party that will eagerly assist in the conspiracy.
If Stalin had a “smartphone” he wouldn’t have been more different from what he had been – ruling by terror, with millions of his own citizens dying on his watch.
Modern day secular dicatators – Putin, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un and others – have learnt from Stalin how a single individual’s decisions can radically transform an entire country’s political and socioeconomic structures, with global repercussions. They adopt Stalin’s repressive regin, trying to be less brutal, earning Trump’s fawning admiration.
This “broken windows theory of despotism” comes in handy. With AI, social engineering helps monitor every single move and thought of all citizens. By punishing the unruly harshly for “small deviations,” this would prevent subversive activities from happening.
Biographers said Stalin was a man acting out of deeply held ideological convictions. But he also enjoyed maximising personal power.
Today’s dictators are greedy for power and – with the exception of Xi – highly corrupt. They saw how the Arab Spring protests were kickstarted by social media and they are determined to crack down on dissent, because they all fear the vagaries of a revolution or a civil war. But how long can they suppress social and political unrest?
1
Todays cell phones are essentially the screens in Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451".
Mr. Brooks, I’m not sure what you’re complaining about. Technology’s ever expanding power is simply proof that capitalism is working – and that is exactly what conservative want: unrestrained capitalism, the hallowed free market. What am I missing here?
The conservative mantra is: free enterprise means individual freedom. You have claimed many times that individual freedom, the idea that people know best how to run their own lives, is the cornerstone of democracy. Corporations are people. If you think these new tools are not “democratizing power” then what do you suggest? Should the tech companies be more regulated like they are in Europe? Wouldn’t that be big government interfering in our lives?
But wait – this problem should take care of itself, right? According to conservatives, capitalism is self-regulating. Adam Smith’s invisible hand will intervene here and correct the problem because the market automatically maximizes well-being. So you can relax.
But, if the invisible hand fails to materialize, you can always get out your magic wand – you know the one that will take us back to the nostalgic days of Main Street, where the community was strong, where everyone went to church and shared a common narrative. Where all the men were strong, the women good looking and all the children were smart.
So get your magic wand ready Mr. Brooks. I see a lot of complaining here, but, as usual, you offer not a single criticism of the root problem, or any real solutions.
1
The best column David Brooks has ever written. Also, just wait to see how much voter mind control will come about in our next election. Voters beware!
1
Technology will always be used to exploit and dominate people, whether in a Stalinist dictatorship or a capitalist plutocracy. That's the nature of oppression.
This article fails to finger the dictator. Obviously (this entire article states obvious trends and questions that I learned in middle school after reading ”1984”), the internet and its tentacles are essentially tracking tools (tracking and storing information). The dictator in our world is not a Stalin-like persona, it’s a poster of Bezos smiling with Zuck-boy as their logos float behind them. Our government uses these companies to track us along with credit cards who in turn give our purchases to advertisers who push us and pull us in collaboration to dictate our behavior. Our government is simply compliant, it is dictating our behavior.
The "Nosedive" episode of the Sci-Fi series "Black Mirror" explores a technology-driven tyranny of the masses that does not require a dictator. Status is obtained through other's ratings of their everyday encounters with you. Low status locks you out of life's perks - such as a nicer place to live. Rebelling puts you at the margins of society, or worse. Could that be our dystopian future? Have a nice day.
1
@nickgregor you said "Without humans, AI are nothing." To be more accurately stated the phrasing should have read AI is nothing. AI is not an entity it is an algorithm and as such is only as benevolent as the people writing it.
In China it is a government surveillance system run amok. In the United States it is a capitalist oligarch system run amok. There is very little difference in the citizenry, both are frightened lemmings willing to follow. Both are very poorly educated. In the end you get what you vote for.
WOW! What are the odds of me — a 74 year old liberal — agreeing with Mr. Brooks. From my own perspective, after reading this column, I perceived a metaphor of our own autocrat in the White House. He uses Twitter because it is the one-way dialogue he prefers. He loves his rallies because no one will challenge his lies and hypocrisy.
We see the extension of this autocrat's intentions every time one of this advisors or cabinet officials is interviewed by the un-Fox media or by members of Congress in a hearing. They simply go into full denial of facts and common sense in order to prop up the man to whom they genuflect every morning when they punch in the clock.
Thus, Mr. Brooks has cleverly, or unwittingly, compared Stalin with the autocratic Trump.
Since impeachment is not very likely, we can only hope TeamMueller exposes Trump, his team and his family as traitors or, at the very least, a crime family whose DNA imposes criminal intent in all transactions.
Impeachment? Not good enough. Indictments, trials, and incarceration? Absolutely. As for the potential for a President Pence, and his religious zealotry, an article on him last year in The Atlantic noted that, while many presidents have been devoted to their Christian faith, Pence is different.
For, it is not that Pence believes in God. The problem is, Pence thinks God believes in him.
Xi is pushing for this horrific system because he knows what's on the horizon. China will be the first country to implement robots on a truly massive scale, displacing tens of millions of workers with nowhere to go. Not even Thomas Friedman's bogus "lifelong learning" will save them. It's Xi's expectation that having the entire country internalize the Party's carrots and sticks will forestall the inevitable unrest, and even if it can't, it can still nip it in the bud.
Pretty darned pessimistic coming from the resident "don't worry, regular people are good" official NYT Pollyanna. Did someone wake up from a slumber begun 30 years ago and suddenly look around and see what happened while he slept?
The regular people have deliberately been rendered incapable by a cynical political party which produced an impoverished, corrupted education system that doesn't even teach civics and lies about history. They have been deliberately enthralled by a cynical, corrupt media network which has rendered them an immoral, hyped-up rabble of leader-followers eager for the destruction of our democracy just for the fun of it.
Perhaps it's that our relative freedoms and capitalism itself have combined to produce a tsunami of greed and selfishness that has floated the most skillfully corrupt to the top.
It's nice that the scales are falling from Mr. B's eyes. There is at least gratification in the effort, however futile, to see things as they are and will be. A little late, though.
"It's springtime for dictators."
You mean like Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai? Who has more influence and power in this country, Donald Trump... or these 4 guys? I'm not voting one way or the other, but I'm betting you're not really sure.
Every technological you say Uncle Joe would have enjoyed --- surveillance, predictive behavior models, a Social Credit System, the surrender of privacy --- are firmly in the hands of these companies. Here's a fifth element you can add: Every so often one of these CEO's steps forth to reassure us that all the bad things their company has been accused of, convicted of and/or fined for were really just glitches, not deliberate acts of bad faith and... wait for it... coming soon will be the newer, safer, more secure version of what you're already trapped in.
The dictators have arrived, and we have them right where they want us. Which, of course, is the ultimate aim of every dictator.
Has Mr. Brooks noticed a rather large figure in the United States who does have a smartphone?
All a dictator has to do is ask, demand, the google and Facebooks of the world to “handover the data.”
Bottom line, in the age of the internet, there’s zero privacy. Living off the grid, is the ultimate isolation.
So what to do, or is it that nobody wins, except the dictator(s). That dictator could be your boss, when you think about it.
Brooks writes “To have total power you have to be able to control people’s minds.”
Isn’t there approximately 33-37%% of the electorate controlled in our country today. FoxNews has played a major role in shaping such minds.
Hoping smartphones become a thing of the past like whale oil in lamps instead of electricity. Online life today has killed offline life dead. Nothing good about cybertechnology changing people's lives till they spend their days looking down instead of ahead. Face it, mind control is afoot in America and the world, like Stalin's mind control back in the day last century. Stalin didn't have "people problems". As he used to say, "no man, no problem."
1
@Nan Socolow: Maybe mind control in America consists in the provision of many paths of lesser resistance: the slippery slopes to hell?
@Des Johnson Correct! C.S.Lewis, 1942: "The softest road to hell is the gradual one -- the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."
Not an uplifting way to start the day - but points to a direction that makes sense.
We control the noise.
We create the roadmap.
We decide how we are governed.
Interesting how our systems of governance are devolving into authoritarian cubes; separate from each other, yet similar, as though cloned from the same evil.
Fealty to a ruler is stupid - whether it is here, or in China. Because in this time, on this planet, the concept of a 'ruler' is stupid. They want to control us because it becomes that much easier to control the economics of our time - which is the prize for a 'ruler'.
A leader will take his or her tribe up over the mountain in the dark, in the rain, with no regard for personal gain or power - this sort of person is what is missing in the algorithm.
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@David Roy
"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me."
3
While there are no new insights or original thoughts here, more frequent and louder warnings about technological social and political control are certainly a good thing.
Like any new technology there are good and bad in the consequences. The good parts were not described in this article.
One example is to control death or illness early. People are able to live longer and healther compare to previous generation. When a device can track your health and alert, isn't this a good thing?
When I was child, I was terrified by the Orwell-Huxley nightmare. If we got into it, we would never get out.
But, when I became a man, I learned that human spirit, intelligence, and courage are infinite, but the works of people are finite.
Stalins and Hitlers pass.
Spirit, Intelligence, and Courage are eternal.
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@alyosha
The only problem with this that Stalin was in power for thirty years and caused untold suffering. Hitler was around for a shorter time but managed to create even greater misery. Tough for those that have to live it
11
@alyosha
...and on the way 100M people lost their life...
8
@alyosha
aren't you supposed to be idealistic karamazov? perhaps this is what passes for idealism nowadays...
1
As could be predicted, professional member of the Republican Commentariat Brooks paints a picture of the horrors of mind and behavior control using modern technology without once mentioning that such a surveillance state has long been the goal of his Republican Party and its elite donor class. When, after the 9-11 terrorist attack, the Cheney-Bush administration pushed through unconstitutional surveillance laws, their actual use was skewed more toward repressing anti-Cheney-Bush thought and activity (remember their no-fly list?) than protecting America against another attack. But China and Stalin are on the approved talking points list for the Republican Commentariat, not the American Right.
Citizens in countries where the government does not already monitor or attempt to monitor citizens' movements have a choice - stay off the internet grid as much as possible. That's not a bad way to go anyway since the internet is full of hackers and scammers ready to pounce. But the fact is that our privacy will never be what it was in prior generations because modern life is too complicated for people to be able to live truly independently.
1
Why can’t the technology be invented that with one download gives people complete security?
It’s inevitable...
Good column today. Plugs in sweetly with a book by Jonathan Crary(Professor of Modern Art and Theory at Columbia Uiversity), "24/7,Late Capitalism and the Ends of Sleep." Short, brilliant. Writing sometimes a bit academic but essental reading if you're alive now and still thinking.
1
David, I thought of something similar this week. As we are both baby boomers, how do you think the 60's would have turned out if we had the internet, Facebook, smartphones, flashmobs, etc? IMHO, the 60's were a far more troubling time. Social media would have been like throwing gas on a fire.
"Angry movements and mobs arise spontaneously. What you get is a system of elite domination interrupted by populist riots."
I point to the umbrella movement in Hong Kong and the Arab Spring as counter examples where the people effectively used and are using smart phones to organize against oppressive regimes effectively.
Perhaps we are in smart phone infancy in terms of its overall effect on governance and democracy in history. There are waves of good stories and waves of corruption -- the first chapters written. Next, how will encryption and the block chain promote private communication? And how will big business corrupt and monetize access to the internet?
The Brooks column is subtler than my liberal friends make it out to be. Brooks is pointing to the ways in which either extreme of unregulated capitalism or state tyranny (China) leads to much the same control over individual freedom. Or at least, that’s what I took away. This is a devastating critique of our monopoly culture today, to equate it with Chinese tyranny, whose unfreedom is much more obvious to us as Americans. Most Americans would
deny the equivalence, and say all you need to do is not buy, opt out, not post. But that is naive.
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@Daniel Mozes -- I think you give Brooks too much credit. He cannot see totalitarianism as coming from anywhere other than the state, a failure common to conservatives and libertarians alike. The creeping threats of the tech monopoly capitalists are minimized by just blaming them for the tools. Of course, that is not to say the state having all these surveillance tools is not scary -- but we do occasionally get to vote about how they use it. OTOH, even Alphabet's or Apple's or Facebook's shareholders have zero control over the monopolists at the head of management. At bottom, I credit you for making the connection between the different types of tyranny, but not so much Brooks!
6
@Daniel Mozes You need smarter liberal friends, mine have been pointing out for years that the political spectrum is a ring, the extremes meet at thin ends and have much more in common with each other than their moderate minded brothers and sisters who tended the sensible roots (capitalisms opportunities and technological improvements and liberalisms programs to aid the poor, the uneducated, the sick and their children) that gave birth to those extremes.
8
I definitely hear the ticktickticktickticktick as springtime approaches.
Also, I jaywalk.
1
Where is conservative outrage over what amounts to Big Brother? Turns out conservatives don't mind Big Brother as long as it's privatized.
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@Chris G.
In point of fact, Tucker Carlson has applauded Senator Elizabeth Warren's call to break up the largest tech platforms, and the most serious grilling that was directed at Sundar Pichai and Mark Zuckerberg when they testified in congress came from Republican lawmakers like Ted Cruz.
The fact that your comment is a Times Pick speaks volumes not so much about what you are reading in the news, but rather about what the editors of this paper are failing to cover. That's to the detriment of all of us.
5
@Chris G.
In his "After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory," Alasdair MacIntrye well analyzed this common oversight. For him its real source lay in our failing to see in Weber's concept of "bureaucracy" the common element. Brooks here begs us dwell more on "technology," but that's of course just the means — greatly enhanced in digital form — of bureaucracy's implementation. The key is recognizing that technological, bureaucratic abuse can be both private and public, corporate and state. My thanks for your begging us see that.
3
Conservatives' argument that government is the problem, not the solution, has left us citizens without a means to organize to prevent this horror that Brooks lists. And regulations is just another word for the result of such organization. As they say, once the genie is out of the bottle it is not easy to put it back in. AI, Google, surveillance cameras are out of the bottle. Only strong regulations and exposure will tame the genie. Citizens organizing together is the good side of government. Don't confuse it with government as the handmaid of monopolistic corporations and authoritarian oligarchs.
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With Brooks it's usually bait and switch polemics ... but here he is too obviously in Trumpland where the facts directly contradict his simpleton logic. Russia and China are dictatorships ... America is a democratic state in which the government protects its citizens by regulating corporations that behave like dictators.
3
@JustThinkin
Government in its present configuration is the problrm, it is owned, controlled and manipulated by wealthy oligarchs. As has been said before we are not a country of people, we are a corporation.
4
@Steve
It will be easier to take back our government than to create a new one. Vote and get others to vote and make sure to vote the right people into office. It's your country, save it.
7
New technologies have always weakened centers of power. There is a direct cause and effect between the invention of the printing press and the Reformation, which destroyed the power of the Catholic church. The same relationship led the Enlightenment to fatally weaken monarchies and the idea of divine right of kings. While David Brooks makes a very legitimate point, the real danger is that the new technology has destroyed the importance of factual evidence, allowing demagogues and serial liars to prosper in the political arena. Factual truth has lost its dispositive effect, and that can only lead to catastrophe.
189
New technologies can concentrate power.
5
@Don Shipp. All technologies are not alike. They are designed for different purposes, and employed in different circumstances. The internet did not decentralize the control of information; it simply shifted the center of control. Misinformation and conspiracy theories are now as important as tools of power as knowledge.
5
@Don Shipp.
Bingo! Mr. Brooks overlooked the insidious effect of state-run propaganda media: a cable network which had favored the Trump presidential campaign and has become embedded in a Trump White House which attacks, and avoids accountability to a national press corps. Recommended: Fresh Air interview of Jane Mayer with Terry Gross about the 'Shadow Cabinet' of Fox News TV Hosts.
9
There is no moral difference between the control & manipulation exercised by the government in China and by tech monopolies in America. In fact, I sometimes think that the American system is more successful in controlling political thought than the nominally totalitarian systems. When you tell everyone that they must think, politically, the same way, as Stalin did, or as the Chinese Communist party does, most people will be skeptical, even if only secretly. When you tell everyone, as American politics & media do, that there are 2 mutually exclusive ways of thinking, each evil from the others' perspective, then they obediently choose sides.
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@Martin
Good post Martin. With that said, I think we need give main street I call it, more credit. Most people I know don't believe politicians . Now with our past Icons of the media gone, namely, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather Tom Brokaw, Cronkite, etc., few believe our media, especially biased news print, now digital media. Point being, most folks know right from wrong. A current good example is building a wall to keep illegal immigrants out. Really ? Only thing that would cut down border issues would be armed soldiers with Guns. That of course will not happen. Bernie Sanders tells us education and healthcare can be free, really. Warren tells us tech giants need be broken up. Why not regulated ? China and Russia's models can control their population as they have no choice. Americans still have the ballot box. So we know every so often we throw the bums out and vote in a new set of bums. Post Trump what will we get ?
3
When you talk of Bernie you talk of what already exists. K-12 is already free. Medicare/Medicaid/VA health services are already here. Half the births in the US are funded by Medicaid. The President and his wife use socialized medicine at Walter Reed, where the Doctors are directly employed by the government.
33
@Dan Green
I got a master's degree in engineering from a flagship state university back in the days when tuition was zero. Teddy Roosevelt was a trust buster a hundred years ago.
So, there are legitimate questions to be asked about why higher education is so expensive now and how it is that obvious monopolies have been allowed to thrive.
I understand that politician-bashing seems to be America's second most popular pastime after scrolling through cat videos on you tube, but many of these people are not lying. They are presenting ideas. I'm hoping we're a nation that doesn't like walls but does like the concepts of affordable education and healthy non-monopolistic competitive capitalism.
The problem I have with this country is that too many people choose not to spend the time and mental energy required to think issues through and then just call politicians liars because they enjoy feeling like victims.
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Anybody who honestly thought that "the new tools would democratize power" had already lost the war. We are now witnessing this defeat in its full scale, but it was entirely predictable to anybody who was capable of thinking clearly and putting two and two together. We have let it happen.
Seems a bit odd(tragic?), that with all of the new and rapidly advancing technology available literally at our fingertips, gun makers do nothing to make their products smarter/safer. And that our government will do nothing to make that happen either.
2
The State's ability to control its citizens has been increasing through technological means for at least two centuries. Improved transport and communications have been a big part of this: think steamships, the telegraph, railroads, the telephone, electrification, and the rest (including modern arms). The State's ability to get information much more quickly, and to move security forces to distant parts in hours or days instead of weeks or months, when combined with modern firearms and the State's monopoly of them, all played parts in centralizing power. The rise of nationalism, and the State's success in identifying itself with the Nation; propaganda; and, now, the incipient ability to monitor "thought", have added new dimensions, but the trend has been clear for a long time.
Mr. David Brooks: Why we are as Americans so consumed by individualism? Why the collective abandonment by so many of the very social networks that for centuries have sustained our families and communities? What is the root of this destructive over-preoccupation of self?
1
Who benefits?
This is the simple question with a simple answer: the few privileged people with political and economic power.
Then another question arises immediately: who checks on the controller? Nobody.
The reality is that this is a subtle and effective way to enjoy absolute power and impunity.
3
I have noticed that more and more hotels seem to no longer require a room number or password for internet access: just your email address, please. This is such blatant data collection.
Data collection is the new gold rush, and we are all walking around with this, the most valuable commodity in the world today. And we give it away for free nearly every waking hour of our lives. But to prevent doing so feels futile.
We are in desperate need of a "New Digital Deal" that protects our privacy as citizens and consumers. But given the sorry state of our current Congress--I'm looking at you, Mitch McConnell--I don't anyone even talking about it, and we know that the GOP Senate would never give any protective legislation a vote. Recent hearings reveal Congressman* after Congressman displaying horrifying ignorance of the digital world.This is one of the many, many reasons we need younger, more digitally savvy leadership.
*I haven't seen video of Congresswomen flailing on this, but it's certainly possible.
3
Thank you for an absolutely accurate assessment. I grew up in the '50s under the 'better dead than Red' mentality and am stupefied at today's reverence for thugs-in-charge, the willingness to forego privacy for a game of 'Candy Crush', the idea that we're educating progressively by teaching from Chromebooks when in fact it serves primarily to make Bill Gates et al. richer and to provide a homogenized education. The newest trend with the aim of countering expensive textbooks is OER (Open Education Resources). True, students can have access to free textbooks on their Chromebook, teachers can teach directly from the text --with little introspection that the informationn provided is the most basic possible and everyone in the country is being taught the same in the same way. Groupthink is here and not many seem to notice, to care, or worse yet- they think it's improvement. Stalin could only sigh with a smile.
7
@EM FYI Chromebooks are Google aka Alphabet devices.
Add to this how the Internet has weaponized the citizenry. Now people don't spy on each other - they expose themselves and can be trained to attack each other.
4
More fear-mongering from David Brooks. Using common cliches taken to their furthest extreme and out of a context it is in and into one that fits his free-market anti-social political philosophy.
AI, run by the right people (not Google or any of those in the game right now) can be the single greatest engine to human innovation and empowerment that we have ever had. We (humans) are the fuel that keeps AI relevant. Without humans, AI are nothing. It's own being is related to understanding and improving the human experience. Because of that, human beings will always have work in an AI-based economy, because AI depends on humans for everything. Nothing is correct for an AI unless a human says it is so. We define truth, we define objectivity and subjectivity. AI will always need to test humans to be relevant.
That is why the government could and should open a federal AI agency that could employ everyone, everywhere on behalf of improving AI. Google could have done this, but they have shown a tendency towards advancing their own elitism rather than an interest in hiring a broader range of people. And that will be their downfall. In one of the upcoming election cycles, they will become a nationalized utility that will become the foundation towards creating an AI agency that solves all of our species problems and gives us a foothold in the galaxy.
Do not listen to David Brooks' scare-mongering. He is wrong and lacks imagination.
4
@nickgregor
"AI, run by the right people (not Google or any of those in the game right now) ....."
That sentence proves you don't get it. There are no "right people." Those that control the data, control it. To assume that there is some "group" that is "right" is to believe in unicorns.
1
@nickgregor
Is this 50s style retro-futurism where "electron brains" solve all world problems? COLOSSUS 2.0 for the win? Nationalized utilities are seldom innovation powerhouses, ask Socialist countries (oh, they are mostly dead). Having some government agency employ "everyone" is on my top ten dystopianisms list. It's like being a mandatory customer of "Central Services" in the movie "BRAZIL". It's obvious that the emancipatory dreams of tech hippies about the socially transformative power of the Internet did not come true, instead of "liquid democracy" and hi-quality education and research for all (because "information wants to be free") we have algorithmically attacked voting processes, filter bubble hate mongering, automated virtual and real lynch mob organizing, and more well-informed Flat Earthers and Anti-Vaxxers than ever (they can summon any number of 'links' for their viewpoint). I call this anti-social.
When the first books appeared there was a brutal backlash from those who feared a new tyranny. The telegraph was seen as a tool of lies and wickedness as was the telephone Radio and TV. The internet ultimately causes a greater awareness than usual and you can be certain that the public will finally get fed up and stop this new tyranny. The Chinese Government can spy and contain for a while. But when 500 million smart phones are smashed on the sidewalk things will change. You can't shoot everyone. The corruption and abuse is not much different from 19th century robber barons and Pinkerton Thugs. Mr. Brooks is correct but not forever. Remember Stalin died and he was denounced by Nikita Khrushchev and finally the Soviet Union went away. Internet and Surveillance tyranny will eventually be rejected and the world will resume watching animal videos.
4
“Human history is a series of struggles for power. Every few generations, just for fun, the gods give us a new set of equipment that radically alters the game. We thought the new tools would democratize power, but they seem to have centralized it. It’s springtime for dictators.”
Brooks often writes about how we need a new collective narrative or myth. What he doesn’t understand is that we can’t choose the myth we want. The myth is there before our reflection. Unwittingly Brooks has just given one version of the collective myth of modern people: a myth that expresses the tension between the autonomous self and the bureaucratic rationalized state. That Brooks is unaware that he has done this is evidence for the viability of this current myth. When myths are living, everyone knows them. They go without saying.
1
In Venezuela the government employs something called the "carnet de la patria" - which translates roughly into "the homeland card" - to dispense government benefits, basically to buy discounted food. There is nothing wrong with this per se, but it has become a political tool. If you don't play along, "no carnet for you!"
2
While no one was looking, we created a world in which theee systems of surveillance have become so entrenched that I fear it will be a struggle to eradicate or even curb them. Facebook, Google and Amazon are powerful special interests - and well, we know whose interests our government really looks out for.
Of course the public is not without blame. How many times have people become outraged over the latest privacy violation by, say, Facebook, only to continue engaging in behavior that puts their data at risk. Last year, my FB feed was full of people indignant about third-party developers mining for FB personal data through social media quizzes and games. This year, those same outraged people are back at playing the same sorts of social media games. Overall, it seems the public will disregard any risks to their personal information as long as they’re properly entertained. Which is a depressing thought.
2
Brooks is right about what's happening in China. It is very concerning, and facets of it are happening here. But I find it interesting that he leaves out Trump's constant presence on Twitter as part of the picture.
In Orwell's 1984, the proletariat were easily controlled because they couldn't even remember who they were at war with last week. Whoever the Dear Leader said they were at war with -- that was the new enemy, even if they'd had different enemies a week ago. I naively found that implausible when I first read the book.
Now, I look at the masses of people willing to believe that the FBI is suddenly a liberal bastion of the Deep State -- despite its record of conservativism -- and I realize that there really are suckers who will believe anything their Dear Leader tells them. And they follow him on Twitter.
35
@RVC Once more: it is Trump's fault!
One other dystopian masterwork can help the would-be mind controller. Fahrenheit 451 presented a world which provided a semblance of belonging. People were made to feel important by seeming inclusion in soap operas.
A dictator could manipulate services like YouTube or Instagrsm to highlight "good" actions and ideas and to hide "bad" ones by sending them to a high tech memory hole, the bottom of the results list.
2
David Brooks has hit the bulls eye as The Brave New World is upon us, and compliant as sheep we rush to purchase the newest electronic fashion tracker of behavior believing in its efficacy for monitoring everything from health to home and securing us from all manner of imagined outside threat while not recognizing the danger from within. Nikita Khrushchev knew we would bury ourselves from within utilizing our own capitalism and fear to take it all away without a struggle.
And to think man last set foot on the moon fifty years ago. How far we have not traveled since.
9
Thank you for a great article. I think of myself as alert, aware, etc., but I fail to look at or notice what's right in front of me. What used be thought of as "privacy" has largely vanished, but most of us live our lives under the delusion that our daily actions are still somehow still "private."
Shedding light on the depth and breadth of data collection and the myriad ways in which we are cleverly manipulated is the first step.
You have opened up a huge can of worms--thank you.
11
An astute column which should be required reading for all high school kids.
And the "easy to use" technology of today demonstrates that there is no such thing as a free lunch.
We know what Stain would think of these "opportunities," but what would Jefferson, Martin Luther King, and Diderot?
8
People leave "community" because it is narrowly controlled by custom and local elites. The city offers the excitement of freedom. But for the vast majority of individuals on the losing side of capitalism, that freedom is constrained by economic necessity and is an illusion. Communities in this system are no less constrained.
Following warlord feudalism, capitalism still retained personal and hierarchical control of resources and elite privilege. Railroads, steel, fossil fuels, weapons and agricultural mechanization formed the "communal" life in the small towns and neighborhoods we see today. Private ownership of power channeled this technological and scientific progress to serve a small and privileged elite of males who lived like kings.
It was helpful to this male elite to make communities tidy and dependable units of resource acquisition and distribution. Personal and local power determined "community" social control. Not all individuals participated in the petty bourgeois democracy of these communities.
Cities and civilization are not small scale. They are not family and tribe where people know each other and use personal "muscle" as methods of social control. They exist due to the ability of humans to organize large, anonymous, lawful societies. These civilized societies have roots in what defines Homo sapiens -- language and technology.
Humans can tolerate strangers. Free from economic necessity, new communities will arise within civilization.
2
"Elite domination interrupted by populist riots"
Yes, and while the technology of how we arrived at this crisis is complicated, I believe that Mr Brooks has mostly supported those who have failed to see human privacy as important. Really, if you believe the state can control what I do with my body as a woman, what's so surprising about tracking everyone's movements?
33
Modern technology makes it easier to control people, but it also creates a mind-set in which people get much angrier about being controlled."
This only means that there is room for improvement in the algorithm. The modern dictator, empowered by AI, will eventually also crack this problem.
More Huxley than Orwell.
2
Decades before the internet was born, Alvin Toffler wrote a highly prescient book, "Future Shock" detailing many of the concerns presented here. Who controls access to our personal information? Not ourselves, that's for sure. An idea whose time has surely come is a Bill of Rights on personal information. Privacy has become an essential part of personal freedom in our Information Age, and we don't have it.
11
@TRA
Yes. Those of us a bit older remember many warnings along these lines. How 'bout, Operating Manual for Space Ship Earth, by Buckminster Fuller. Or, Small Is Beautiful, by E. F. Schumacher. It continues on back into the thirties and beyond. I'd say a lot of it has to do with the basic failure of our educational system. Especially the USA. Where are we - 17th in math scores now? 25% HS drop out rate? But cell phone sales are off the charts! Someone's priorities are out of wack. Lost, living in a fog.
6
Not a huge fan of Mr. Brooks typically, but he's on to something here. If nothing else the last paragraph should be the basis for a study lasting decades...
"Human history is a series of struggles for power. Every few generations, just for fun, the gods give us a new set of equipment that radically alters the game. We thought the new tools would democratize power, but they seem to have centralized it. It’s springtime for dictators."
9
A couple weeks ago when I went to my Google home page, it was filled with birthday candles. It did happen to be my birthday and it definitely freaked me out.
9
@Sparky. . . well, somewhere along the line, you actually did tell Google when you were born, probably when you first signed on long ago, now forgotten. So what else do you tell them indirectly now on a regular basis? Don't freak out. Pull out. But that of course is impossible if we intend to function in a technological society.
Well, this growth of invasive technology will continue and many will, no doubt, find ways to circumvent it. It is ironic that the 1984 fear of govt. control is now coming into reality via the private sector. But even more significant is David's note of the need for power. I submit that we all need a sense of power but it serves an even more fundamental need. That need is a bit complex but centers on the need for meaning, purpose and worth. Take the "losers" in a social context. They need to belong so bad that they will submit themselves to gang "rules" that demand killing others, and to obey rules far more restrictive than society's implicit and explicit rules etc. I think you can then extrapolate that to families, communities, regions and countries. We get caught up in ideology and strategic hopes and end up forgetting these fundamental issues.
7
Nice essay. I should note that there is no reason to single out the Chinese firm, Yitu, for monitoring employee movements. My employer has been doing this for years in Minneapolis, mandating that everyone wear a monitor to measure how much time they spend facing a patient, facing a computer monitor, spending time in the restroom, etc., all in the name of improving efficiency of space utilization. The only measurable outcome I can see is employee dehumanization.
47
This is why we need a fundamental Constitutional right to privacy, something the Founders could never have anticipated would be necessary to make explicit.
Since an increasingly conservative judiciary has blocked efforts to build this out of the present wording of the Constitution, we need to build support for a Privacy Amendment as a foundation for pushing back these (so far mostly corporate)efforts to destroy our human right to the "pursuit of happiness".
6
One doesn't need smart phone technology to control minds--even in the present day. Just sit around with a group of seniors who listen to Rush Limbaugh, religiously, and you'll witness mind control at its very best.
79
@FJG Or CNN for that matter. Seniors and not so seniors alike.
2
Three comments on Brooks' thought-provoking article:
1) Here we have a conservative, a strong supporter of free markets worried about government control via technology. Note, though, the examples Brooks uses that come from the 'free market'. Government control is to be feared. And is real. Likewise for corporate control. Does the ability of corporations to so heavily monitor and influence individuals worry conservatives?
2) re "Modern technology makes it easier to control people, but it also creates a mind-set in which people get much angrier about being controlled." Really? Like the tens of millions who are removing their Facebook accounts?
3) This article reminds me that the great threat to our freedom is not any lack of freedom to own guns. The pen is mightier than the sword.... Second amendment folks are missing the boat.
6
It is ironic, when you think back just 10 years or so to that iconic Apple ad, in which the individual breaks free of an Orwellian authoritarian society thanks to his computer.
I still have hope, though, that the law sometimes lags, but it will catch up and guarantee more rights for internet users.
8
@Treetop You mean Apple's "1984" commercial that appeared in...1984--35 years ago? Personal omputer-based technology and its impact on humanity is not just a recent concern, as you point out, but its history spans much longer than a decade. It has been three generations.
btw--It was a woman slinging a large hammer that shattered the propogandist's Jumbotron transmission. How do I know? From memory, but I also Googled it to check my memory. Plato would have been very disappointed in me.
4
David is right about the centralization of power in these various entities. The antidote is surely a government with the wherewithal to counteract these invidious, self-serving actors.
2
Guttenburg's printing press, Luther's 95 theses and the subsequent Wars of Religion that tore Europe asunder comes to mind as an analogous age of disruption due to a flood of information. The tension then was individual freedom of worship vs. Catholic monopoly and monetization of worship. The tension now is between the individual control of personal information and corporate monetization and use of that information. Governments will naturally want to use of the new technology to increase control over the individual in partnership with the church/corporation. Information is power.
Information and the means to communicate it. The more information the masses can get technologically the more their rulers (governments, overlords etc) want to control that information.
Will the desire today for complete individual convenience lead individuals to willingly totally ceed their private information to corporations/government in order to achieve it? Or will the anger about losing agency over their own information (and thus their lives) lead to a public that demands its return or a refusal to give it up in the first place. The printing press did eventually lead to the Enlightenment, didn't it?
Truth and agency vs ignorance and convenience. Lincoln vs. Stalin. Seems an easy call, but it's not, apparently.
9
Perhaps the most disgusting thing about our leaders, both Democrats and Republicans, is the degree to which both parties have twiddled their thumbs while Silicon Valley companies have built a gigantic and historically unparalleled surveillance apparatus. In the 2016 election, this was ignored not only by our political leaders, but by journalists who could have made it a focus of debate.
Privacy, and the right to private thoughts, and even voting in private, are all essential components of a free society. We have traded, or been forced to trade this freedom for internet connected televisions, digital personal assistants and webcams that can be hacked by governments and individuals, both foreign and domestic. Anyone vocally complaining about the threat to civil liberties that Donald Trump poses needs to consider that most of the technology that they have adopted over the past 10 years poses a far, far greater threat over the long term.
15
The public schools are an area where technology remains backward and weak. The public schools were a major surveillance asset for Stalin. He didn't need the internet of things. He used schoolchildren to spy on their parents. Low cost, works like a charm. No technology needed.
2
Schools are overrun with technology! Too many classroom activities center around lessons on google chrome computer pads. (Given to schools for free from tech companies!)
1
The danger of "surveillance capitalism" isn't just from governments or a future Stalin. It is from mega-corporations like Google (and YouTube), Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon, who take the private information we give them and monetize it (and in some cases, allow that information to be weaponized). While the governmental use of big data is a threat in places like China, and does pose a threat here, the more immediate danger is from the corporate misuse of our data. This is important reason why the United States needs to adopt an online privacy law like Europe's GDPR. It allows individuals a far greater degree of control as to what private information may be used, and how.
To those naysayers who believe that all technology is neutral ("if you don't like it, don't use it"), it's important to note that never before in human history have we had such personalized tools that constantly adapt to their owners needs, preferences, and biases, all to monetize people's attention. A hammer doesn't monitor what you like and change how it hammers. Even a television only broadcasts to generalized viewer preferences.
The most effective form of totalitarianism is when people (consumers) believe they are free, but in reality, their choices are manipulated. Whether that result comes from corporations or the state, the end result is much the same.
6
Another disingenuous article.
The western world is full up with this surveillance as well. Only it is private companies who have control. If the price is right the government will have access to whatever it wants.
The Chinese are just getting rid of the middle man.
10
@Gord Lehmann
Right on. And what is a personal credit score if not a social credit rating? In a country where one's ability to pay determines his value to society, everything else becomes irrelevant
14
@Gord Lehmann
The difference is that the western world has historically protected the right to privacy.
4
The People’s Republic of China is an authoritarian nightmare. It’s covered in velvet at the current moment, but it’s truly a desperate situation and the communist party will fall so hard and so fast. There is no comparing PRC and USA. I hope the crash is peaceful and Chinese people are free once the dust settles.
10
Brooks and some others are underlining the fact that so called progress only speeds up the process of devaluing individuality.
6
The Faustian Bargainis that the Internet was never created to be secure or be used for Politics, banking etc etc. This will continue to be a growing problem for individuals; but less so for organizations and governments that have the money to take advantage of this defect.
The other Faustian Bargain is that people do not want to Pay for what they get on the internet. Folks do not want to pay for all the "free" information, services etc they get on line. Folks sign away their rights to privacy in return for "free" services and "freedom" of the world wide web. This makes it much more difficult to regulate and police the internet among folks who have signed on for a Faustian Bargain. Folks fight a government ID guard for citizens and legal residents of the US; but blithefulley share their personal information with every Tom, Dick and Jane out there on the internet who offers them a free or very cheap ride.
4
I do not understand your readers with liberal or conservative thoughts on your article. Why your musings on how we are hurtling towards a feudal society where the vast majority of citizens are mindless serfs have anything to do with politics. Economics surely. Abandonment of freedom by being lazy to pass the time before the Big Sleep is built in to our genetics. If we don't need to look for "food" we will just sit and rest.
3
If Stalin had a smartphone it would be a HuaWei. Anyone who had lived and worked in China could have told Bill Clinton that on joining the WTO, China would scam use the money to expand its totalitarian aggressive regime to control its people -- and America. Anyone who has been under a Chinese authority could tell you that they are control freaks. My great-grandmother's feet were bound in the 20th century; at 2, her feet were broken in half, and the front folded under the heel. Authoritarianism. And who funds the greatest military expansion in world history? You do, consumer. Now, you are negotiating a trade agreement with a rogue nation. Why not carry water up a hill using a sieve? Why not sponsor Iran into the WTO? And North Korea too?
4
@ABC
The feet were bound under capitalism. Communists actually banned the practice. Because communism, unlike capitalism, is based on humanism and respect for human dignity.
The big difference between the United States and Russia is that Mr. Brooks, the NY Times, and we lowly bloggers would not be allowed to exist in Russia. In the United States, we are free to rail against any and all systems, fecklessly, as business goes on as usual. Maybe, in Russia, the leaders have more respect for human revolt. In the United States, our smug leaders really think that they have managed to "fool all of the people all of the time." So let's allow Mr. Brookes, the NY Times, and the bloggers to rail away. It will make no difference.
8
Wrong. The only “dictator” oppressing (and depressing) individuals these days is not a single entity at all; it is the twitter Mob. That’s our new, paradoxically collective, tyrant.
6
David Brooks goes back to his usual head fake: "As online life expands, neighborhood life and social trust decline." It's modern life that's destroying democracy, according to him.
As usual, David Brooks uses these silly memes to cover up the assault on democracy and our way of life by his party, which refuses to approve Democratic judges, then puts dangerous extremists on the courts; he looks the other way as Trump demands that Congress give up the power of the purse; he pretends not to see the collusion between Trump and Russia; he pretends that Trump's alliances with the world's most despicable dictators is a figment.
America is under assault by authoritarian Republicans, and no amount of ink spilt on silly columns like this will obscure that truth.
69
@Sean
Your world looks fairly black and white. Are you sure all republicans are part of this authoritarian assault on America? Pretty sure David Brooks is not in that camp. If you had read the majority of his columns you would not have enough evidence to support your conclusion.
5
It's ironic that I'm reading this on an iPhone.
5
"In Beijing, facial recognition is used in apartment buildings to prevent renters from subletting their apartments" .
In New York, facial recognition (from the same Chinese manufacturer, HikVision) is used everywhere by the NYPD to prevent known criminals reoffending.
Coincidence?
I think not.
2
@godfree
I thought subletting was ilegal in New York too, not?
Just what I've been waiting for! Thank you, Mr. Brooks, for alluding to Mel Brooks' "The Producers" catchiest tune.
1
This sounds a pitch for a new TV series and a work of dystopian historical fiction. Little doubt Stalin would have attempted to control the airways. Maybe Amazon will pick it up? They've already done "Man in the High Castle."
Orwell and Huxley would be proud.
3
On the other hand, now every baton blow, every food embargo, every 'disappearing' is documented and sent round the World. Will M.B.S. get away with Khashaggi's killing? That depends on what you mean by 'get away with it.' What good is a roaring economy if the World know you're just building 'ghost cities' like China. So everybody is now a publisher to broadcast the Dictator's malevolence.
1
Yep. And I'm probably not the first or last to say this, but the "Nosedive" episode of "Black Mirror" explores this topic in chilling detail.
3
Hail Mr. Brooks for bringing this problem to light. Perhaps he will also own up to the fact that unregulated capitalism is leading us down this path, along with our own consumerist impulses and susceptibility to gadgets and blue-light. It is a match made in heaven that will drag us into hell. Now it is impossible to imagine how we could have lived (remember the 90's) without all the things we amuse, work and entertain ourselves with today. But we did live. We did work. Somehow it was o.k. and all the hatred and vitriol we find ourselves swimming in was foaming on some other shore. Cutting oneself off from all of it is an option. A radical one but one that more and more people (those with the means to do so) will choose. The elite will escape the mess they financed to create while the rest of us will be graded and measured and force fed whatever garbage the corporations and meme machines want to feed us. Woe is us. Time to unplug.
1
OK. Both Orwell’s and Huxley’s futures have arrived (Soylent Green may be next, vide “burping cows”). Other than wailing in the public square, what does Mr. Brooks propose we do about it?
1
I was reading along agreeing with your predictions for the future until I got to the daughter being rejected by her favorite university..... I am pretty sure there will be no universities in the future. to make a stalinists dream come true? people congregating for the purpose of education would be considered subversive and not allowed.
1
@coale johnso
Actually, Stalin's rule (1924-1953) saw the biggest expansion of University education in human history, with a country going from being 75% illiterate to launching the first artificial satellite in under 40 years
This column just scratches the surface. It doesn't even mention the word "propaganda." We do not respect and have no idea of the tremendous power of the devices we hold in our hands. Most of us are digital illiterates.
5
Stalin? As usual, Brooks is shielding the genuine threat in America: surveillance by corporations and manipulation to maximize profits. It’s already happening. Russia exploited the Corporate tools facilitated by Facebook, Twitter, Google. The profit center at these companies is the data that they gather from consumers. Retail businesses are very interested in our choices, our behavior, our decision making, our purchases , our friends, our income and net worth. They know who we are where we live and work, our marital status, family size and age of our children, our houses, cars, computers, televisions, our personal at home preferences, our food choices, our health status, where and how we travel, our thumb print and face, and our genome. The level of exploitation of our impulses and biases is far greater than anyone wants to consider. The government does not know where you travel, where you park, what you ate, what airline you used and how you decided to choose that airline, what car you rented, and hotel you stayed at but Corporations know all of this and share it for a price. Yes, government can know everything but is constrained while corporations secure our consent when we use software, devices, credit cards that require our permission as a condition of use. Congress is visibly humbled by Facebook and the rest. Stalin? Worry about Amazon and Apple. Regulate them. Break them up.
20
@Joseph Huben
It is disturbing to me that people are sometimes required to turn over cell phone and computer passwords to "authorities"... which seems like a slippery slope:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/give-us-your-passwords/516315/
So eventually, as Brooks points out: "By a series of small ratcheted steps, [authorities have] been given permission to completely regulate [your] online life."
Through incremental erosion of public concern, such as seen with Trump's daily shredding of political decency, we could well be on our way to the sort of dystopian state Brooks hints at.
Time for us to "get much angrier about being controlled."
One wonders if China created its Social Credit System by appropriating the technology of the big three credit reporting agencies in the US. Just to see what the other side was up to, I attended a collection lawyer seminar in the early 90s and left in shock at reach of the credit reporting agencies’ tendrils. That was then. I shiver to think of the “improvements” made since.
2
George Orwell was very prescient about tyranny and technological control. He also outline how language is basic to thought. Eliminate the language and the thoughts are restricted.
4
Thoughts on probability of looming computer/surveillance society patterns worldwide?
Apparently it will be necessary to become as mad/sane as a shaman of old to deal with progress of computer and total and multifarious surveillance of the future, for it was the old shamanistic, polytheistic, animistic world which is proving prescient with respect to essential technological developments.
In the old world spirits were in everything, all around us, would watch us, help us, trick us, sport with us, use us as their entertainment, their guinea pigs, players in games we perhaps didn't even have the imagination to fathom, and now it seems any number of people not to mention the powers that be hold this as a pretty ideal.
Shamans, people in the old world imagined changing into this or that animal, presence, inanimate object, able to influence in any number of ways, to be magical, to touch and influence and escape the spells of other people and things, and now we apparently are realizing this with technology.
It would be ironic if in realizing the old shamanistic view of the world it turned out all along that this was an accurate view of the world even then, that even as we grow in power and play our tricks and place our gifts among people unknown presences behind the scenes, beyond the human, are watching over the whole thing.
Be careful what you wish for and ask yourself seriously whether white or black magic is the preferable course in life is no longer a child's or old game.
3
Stalin is not the right model for the point that I think Brooks is trying to make. An essential element of Stalin's terror was nobody was safe; anyone from the head of state police to the lowliest peasant, could be accused and sent to the Gulag or shot--and they were. Evidence did not matter, as people were forced to confess (and everyone did).
The much better model is the government of Oceania in the novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four." Surveillance in the home. State induced hate. Thought police. Room 101 torture. Shifting vague enemies. The point the novel misses, is the development of a massive, multi-level prison/jail/detention complex, as with the Gulag and as we now have in the U.S.
32
Mr. Brooks uses the classic right-wing boogeyman to make his point, thus drawing a false equivalency between Stalin's murderous regime and an economic system, which is par for the course for right-leaning columnists. If we want to blame an economic system, let's look at capitalism and the unwillingness of American politicians to police it.
Corporations make decisions that make the most money. Thus, we don't see good policing of Facebook and Twitter. TV providers leave Fox News, which provides limited real news and a lot of fascist propaganda, on the air because it makes too much money. A dishonest representative government, led by the like of Mitch McConnell, is unwilling to remove a con-man president because he makes the GOP money and allows the GOP to remain in power. If we want to look at why big brother is following our every move and lulling us to sleep, look no further than the GOP and its belief in the free market.
95
@Anthony Many good points, but I think you mis-characterize McConnell. He is not resistant to removing Trump because Trump makes money for the GOP. McConnell is smart enough to realize Trump is ruining the GOP. He refuses to remove Trump because he is afraid of Trump and his ability to manufacture a primary opponent to McConnell's right and either replace him or elect a conservative Democrat in his place. And McConnell knows any other Republicans he brings along to the effort to muzzle Trump will meet the same fate. That plain Republican cloth coat of the 1950s has become a straight-jacket.
19
@G James, You may be correct. Perhaps McConnell is simply afraid and has chosen to join. But, I think McConnell enjoys winning too much and Trump has brought him victories and more power, not to mention a plush cabinet position for his wife.
17
@G James
The coal runoff in the water and soot in the air has so diminished the faculties of Kentuckians that they have sent McConnell to the senate 6 times. He has also denied them the healthcare that might cure their affliction. I don't know what he's so worried about, these people are hopeless.
6
And yet, with AI and driverless cars, Boeing can’t develop a system to turn off the auto-pilot when the airliner goes out of control. As Nancy said, just say no. I have Siri, but I won’t have any other smart devices in the house and that includes a Nest. I don’t trust Siri but he (British male) doesn’t understand half what I say anyway.
1
... or pretends not to ...
Only one thing is missing. No one has yet developed a machine that can read minds. We can’t obtain any data as to why a person does something, like vote for a particular individual. We can ask, and we can evaluate external signs, but we can’t be sure of anything.
As a person telling a lie or is that same person delusional, believing what he says to be true despite factual evidence of its falsehood. Just no way to tell. Never will be.
2
Mr. Brooks just scratches the surface. In tomorrow's brave new world everyone will be "rated" according to their habits, their health, their DNA, their politics, their "likability, their wealth and much more, Complex matrices will determine cost and access to jobs, loans, education, health care and more. Our social, economic and even physical mobility will be controlled. Already we see - how our democratic practices are undermined through information control. A gulag in the making? It certainly seems so.
13
I appreciate and even sort of respect the preternaturally conservative fear indulgence here.
Imagine Brooks's column written a few hundred years ago, decrying the potential of the printing press to empower despots to so easily disseminate manipulative ideas. Gunpowder weapons would consolidate power amongst those inclined to dominate others.
... And you know what? If he had written the column predicting these outcomes he would have been correct. Yet here we are.
12
This op-ed leaves out the rise of deep fakes, which will render authenticity dead. 'De-ligitimacy' will cut in all directions, not just in favor of state power.
Not one pixel will be believed—all of which might be conjured up by anyone, who might represent anything.
Other than producing complete chaos, deep fakes will, in fact, herald autumn for state dictators like Uncle Joe, and springtime for a million faceless basement mini-dictators in their place.
7
It is interesting, this same power in the people’s hands could help to create a greater democracy if only the people understood their power, believed in democracy and could find the will to work together instead in the fragmented partisan camps we are in today
35
So far the tech giants haven't been able to figure out that I already bought something I was looking for, so they show me ads for that item for weeks.
163
@Oh please, Right! Now when they know that I bought something, not just that I searched on it, THEN I'll be worried.
9
@Oh please, That FACT makes me laugh!
1
@Oh please
The tech giants are paid for showing the ads. If they show you the ad for what you've already purchased then you aren't outraged, but they still charge for the impressions. You're epiphenomenal to the transaction.
1
In my career, it would have helped. I was repeatedly slimed and stabbed in the back. Sometimes, I was "Jewed Down".
My daughter and a buddy would not have had patents stolen.
The fear you are expressing is one caused by societal control in the hands of the nefarious. Would they ever have risen to power if they were, paragons of virtue? If the lie was busted. If cognitive biases were weeded out before being confirmed by the transgressor!
2
Mr Brooks, you make the usual mistake of lumping George Orwell and Aldous Huxley together. The Huxley prophecy was much more prescient about our condition today. The problem with technology is not that it explicitly oppresses us. The problem is is that it seduces us: We love it too much. For the classic explanation of this difference, read the introduction to "Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman.
51
I was about to post the same thought. In the US (and much of the West) we happily provide access to our thoughts ... even pay to provide Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. with access to our thoughts, as long as they provide distractions from the miserable realities of modern life. We also enthusiastically gobble up medications which dull our sensitivies to the "unpleasantnesses" of our lives. Very Huxley. Not so much Orwell.
5
@KC
Important point, but it can be complicated. One primarily used fear, the other desire, but both were forms of subjugation. Certainly America is more Brave New World than 1984, but some things--the politically useful contortions of language and truth (e.g. "money is speech"), the interactive surveillance of tech--seem to be leading in the direction of 1984.
4
@KC The Neil Postman book "Technopoly" came to mind immediately when I read this editorial. Thanks for highlighting this author. For those that would like the film version, try "Brazil" by Terry Gilliam.
2
Elite domination and sporadic populist uprisings: sounds like France 1830-1871. No expensive smartphones necessary.
4
Human nature of those governed and those governing changes very little.
Different technology is like solving a traffic jam . It is never really solved; it just moves somewhere else. There is always a traffic jam.
The new equipment is just like (solving) the traffic jam.
The players stay the same.
6
If we don't respect people's privacy they will find other ways to accomplish what they want. Your view, Mr. Brooks, is very simplistic and shows a lack of understanding for what people need and want in terms of a dignified worth while life.
If our politicians were truly concerned for us as human beings they would make it far more difficult to harvest information from us when we are online, using our smartphones, or buying groceries with a credit card. Because they, and you as well, and others think that businesses should have a free hand to do whatever takes their fancy, we have privacy problems and problems being heard. Since money governs everything in America and the likes of the Koch Brothers and their ilk think only of themselves, the rest of us are being presented with less than appetizing choices when it comes to privacy.
We're forced to agree to things to apply online for jobs, to use apps, to access a site. Technology has made our lives transparent but made it much harder for us to make our voices heard over the ruckus created by lobbyists and the rich when they may not get their way. As Dickens said in "A Tale of Two Cities", it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It all depends upon which end of the social ladder one is on. In America equality isn't for everyone, it's for some people and that's the biggest problem.
66
@hen3ry
I think it's a bit more complicated even. To use your quote from "A Tale of Two Cities" it was the best of times; it was the worst of times...sometimes in the same week, at the same time, for the same individual.
2
@mj, Excellent insight. Thank you.
It was 1993. The internet was pretty much unknown. We were talking about tapes made of Bill Clinton and Jennifer Flowers. Less that two decades earlier it had been the Watergate tapes. Pagers and faxes were everywhere and cell phones were the latest thing. I was in college and I was taking a Political Science class. Our professor talked a little about Orwell and how he had predicted that dictators would use technology to control and keep tabs on the masses. He then said that it seemed to him that Orwell had gotten it backwards; that the masses were using technology to keep tabs on the government and its officials.
It made sense at the time. After that Monica Lewenski would be wiretapped, someone would pick up and record an embarrassing cell phone call made by Newt Gingrich, and a Republican senate candidate in WV would be recorded on a cell phone cam calling an audience member a racial slur, then he would just barely loose the election. There were many other examples. It looked like technology was favoring the masses watching over the government, not Orwell's model.
Now it looks like a tug-of-war, and one I don't feel the masses are in a position to win, especially with the forces of democracy on the wane and loosing popularity. Then again, you know what happens if there is a demand for something. Perhaps if the masses create a demand for checks on the ability of would-be dictators to use technology for their ends, then might be hope.
17
But I remember that the Newt Gingrich call was hushed up in just a couple of days. And the couple who accidentally picked up that call (while boating?) were threatened with charges.
Funny, I just recently was wondering about that phone call, after the recent big article about dear, destructive Newt - who was having an affair himself while grandstanding about Lewinski.
4
@Robert W.
Kotkin, S. Stalin. Volume 1. Paradoxes of Power, 1878-1928) NY: Penguin, 2014. P. 270.
"... On May 29 [1918], the Council of People's Commissars appointed Stalin a special plenipotentiary for South Russia to obtain food for the starving capitals Moscow and Petrograd. 'He equipped an entire train,' recalled Pestkowski. 'He took with him a Hughes apparatus [a typeprinter telegraph, a technology which was not used by Tsarist forces]…. I accompanied him to the station. He was in a very jolly mood, fully confident of victory.'..."