Could Big Data, AI And Robotics Lead To This Spine-Chilling Future???

We’re entering a new era of human development.  Experts and futurists will argue endlessly about whether we’re entering the anthropocene, an age in which creativity is the driving force (like agriculture or industry have been before), or a technology age, in which technology is the driving force.  

If the latter, we face an uncertain culmination to all this advancement. Will technology be the great equalizer (a topic I have covered in my post on ‘Automated Luxury Communism’) or continue to widen the gap between the digital haves and have-nots?

The Internet of Things is less about convenience than it is about commerce. Not only do companies sell us the gadget, but we continue to pay rent to the company by giving them our data, which they can mine to sell us more things, or sell the data itself to another company that wishes to sell us more things. 

Even as individual companies weather the storm of bad PR when it is revealed that your smart TV or child’s doll can record and transmit private conversations to a third party — and that we’ve all given implicit consent for this by agreeing to terms and agreements and policies that would take hours to read and even longer to understand. Each negative news story suggests that the public will rise up and say, “Wait a minute…” Yet none has triggered that response so far.

More frightening, perhaps, is not that this information will be used to sell us things, but that it could be used to harm us. Hackers have shown that they can access everything from a smart toilet in Japan to a self-driving car in the US. The more automated our lives become, the easier it will be for those who wish us harm to interfere with our lives.

But even more insidious is the idea that our data could be used against us by those who are meant to protect us. Police, insurance companies, medical doctors, employers are all already using data to make decisions about us based on statistical averages rather than the person as an individual.

And that is dangerous. That is where we run into the problem of digital feudalism, where the tech-elite control and rule the world.

Feudalism says that power rests with those who control the means of production. In the middle ages, that meant the kings and nobility who owned the land. In the industrial revolution, it meant the people who owned the factories and eventually the governments who controlled and regulated them.

If we are indeed entering an age of digital feudalism, then the lords will be those who control the technology that the rest of us rely on.  Perhaps the “crown” — various governments — will control the lords through regulation and taxes; perhaps not.  The lords then will decide who has access to the technology, and the rest of us, the peasants, will simply lease the technology that controls our lives. 

Just as feudal serfs in the middle ages could never advance to the point of owning the land they worked, because the deck was stacked against them, so we peasants could never escape the automation and technology we lease from the digital overlords.

It’s already happening, to some extent.  If you want the latest app, the latest gadget, you must agree to the company’s terms. If you opt out, you cannot use their technology. They control it.

So far, these technologies aren’t required to survive in society; most of us choose to lease them and pay with our privacy because we like the convenience more than we like living “off the grid” or becoming a technophobe.

But what happens when all payments are handled through an app like ApplePay and cash and even credit cards become obsolete? What happens when all cars are driverless and we no longer have the option to drive “manually”? When we want to watch television, or talk on the phone, or surf the internet, or even borrow a book from the library, our actions are recorded as a matter of course?

We are headed towards a future when it may be nearly impossible for the average person to “opt-out.”  We can’t stop the forward march of progress — nor would we even want to. But as we advance, we have to ensure that technology is the servant, not the other way around. We must force the lords of technology to keep their part of the bargain, to have our best interests at heart and keep us safe.

In short, we have to ensure that as we lease ourselves, our rights, our data to the digital feudal lords in exchange for their technology, we also keep some measure of control.  

As always, I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. 

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