WORLD WITHOUT MIND: THE EXISTENTIAL THREAT OF BIG TECH
By Franklin Foer
Over the last twenty years (I think it’s been that long) there have been any number of books published about the impact of the digital revolution on the economy, on culture, on politics, and even on our brains. And while I haven’t done a thorough statistical analysis I think it’s safe to say that the majority of these books have taken a negative view of that impact.
In that regard Franklin Foer’s World Without Mind is nothing new. There are two points that he emphasizes that are worth taking note of though. Both stem from his focus on Big Tech not as some impersonal force of nature, but as the expression of a targeted corporate agenda.
In the first place, Foer stresses how we are “not just merging with machines, but with the companies that run the machines.” “Technology” is not an abstraction. It does not provide a public space. There are no neutral platforms. When you interact with the Internet, even if just browsing, you are interacting with a corporation that is monetizing that interaction in some way. We tend not to think about the invisible corporate structures and algorithms that shape our experience of the digital world but we should, because they influence not just what we buy and sell, but what we like and dislike and how we feel about ourselves and others. And this is not a shaping that is taking place naturally. Big Tech is taking a guiding hand. “The problem is that when we outsource thinking to machines, we are really outsourcing thinking to the organizations that run the machines.”
The second point Foer makes is related to this same hidden corporate influence. We have a tendency to see the outcomes of the digital revolution as being the result of impersonal, and immeasurably vast, economic forces. The collapse of newspapers or the taxi business are just what happens when billions of consumers decide they want something cheaper, or more convenient, or more immediate. But this is to again underestimate Big Tech’s agency. Foer, editor of a journal that was purchased by one of the accidental Facebook billionaires, had a front-row seat at what was really happening in the world of print media. For the platforms to be profitable, content (or information, or knowledge) had to be made free. Which is to say worthless. This was done deliberately. “The Big Tech companies didn’t just benefit from the economic collapse of knowledge. They maneuvered to shred the value of knowledge, so that the old media would come to helplessly depend on their platforms.” Amazon lowers the prices of books because they don’t want the books themselves to have any value. The value will be in its devices and its site. Google and Facebook punish companies that don’t share their vision of intellectual property. Which vision has it that, as long as it isn’t Google’s or Facebook’s intellectual property, it should be free. At which point, its value lost, it can be absorbed by the tech giants and remonetized.
The knock-on effects have been catastrophic. “By collapsing the value of knowledge, they [Big Tech] have diminished the quality of it.” And this is just the cultural industry we’re talking about. Much the same goes for most goods and services. Yes we can blame consumers for some of this, if blame is the right word, but we should not ignore the pecuniary motives of those who have profited the most from this great transformation.
Notes:
Review first published online September 3, 2019.
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