Technology is a key struggle against authoritarianism
It may be a super obvious point but technology is a huge part of all our lives now. However we are seeing a distinct shift towards billionaire control and mediation over even more aspects of our lives.
The effects of this are yet to be fully understood. Many progressive commentators have warned that we heading or perhaps already are into an age of Technofeudalism, Enshittifcation, AGI cults, and even Techno Fascism.
In terms of of how this affect our daily lives. On the personal level, we are being manipulated by the oligarchically controlled attention economy, addicted to our weird little dopamine releasing computers in our pockets. Both the NHS and Coventry City Council have contracts with Peter Thiel owned company Palantir. They literally name themselves over a piece of evil tech from Lord of the Rings and Peter Thiel is an open fascist and uses his enormous wealth to fund authoritarian and destructive causes.
It is vital that progressive forces in the UK begin organising in these areas. Unfortunately we are very far behind where we should be. Many left wing organisations are completely complacent about the influence of this situation. It’s only since the horror of the genocide in Gaza and complicity of the U.S. that the social movement has begun to question what the progressive digital rights, privacy and hacker scene has been warning about since the 1980s. From my perspective, sadly all of that movements predictions about the dangers of tech authoritarianism have come true.
One of our big influences is really ahead of this Cooperation Jackson, they use the term Social Digital Commons in their recently video as part of their Build and Fight program:
https://www.youtube.com/live/xiV9ZmsaWn8
https://www.youtube.com/live/xiV9ZmsaWn8?si=89Zl-fMw78rUEvGV
Closer to home, there is amazing stuff being done in Catalunya and wider Iberian movements which I will maybe go into detail on another time.
Anyway, what can we as a small community based co-operative do about it?
Quite a lot, it seems. We should include in our programme, explorations and commitments to some of these broad ideas:
- Commitment to using open source commons software (ideally developed and hosted by tech worker co-operative).
- Reducing our reliance on U.S corporate platforms, only using them when absolutely necessary to reach wider audiences.
- Speak out and criticise technofedudalism and fascism.
- Encourage the usage of end to end encryption when possible to project our member’s and community privacy and digital rights.
- Encourage the use of open protocols, open data, transparency and accountability, project managements, cybernetics in our organisations.
- Investigate innovative new technologies such as Peer to Peer (P2P), radio/off grid/mesh networks, federated software and online democracy tools to build a more resilient tech infrastructure as move into a more unstable world.
- Participate in the wider progressive tech movement community.
I think it terms of tangible practices, I would like to investigate whether it is possible to setup a new hackerspace organisation in Birmingham called Liberation Computer Club. We could meet in the new Artefact cafe to share knowledge and play with technology:
I also have started drafting some tech reforms for our meta organisation: