Technology’s Imposition: Violence and “Democracy”

The technology imposed upon us is not free; it entails costs beyond the money we spend on personal purchases or the increase in public-utility bills. It becomes firmly entrenched in our lives before the realization that people are being killed for us to have it takes hold. Just like the piano keys of the 18th century, modern tech gets cleansed of the blood long before we consume the product. And, like the music emanating from that instrument, we become engrossed and distracted with a cool new invention, completely alienated from the process of how we came to acquire it–by violence.

Lay people rarely engage any in-depth discussions about technology even though it is omnipresent in most of our lives in the modern Western world. Supposedly, we live in a democratic society in the U.S.. Yet, the masses don’t have input on the way our society progresses. In fact, we don’t think of it at all. Each generation has different experiences than our parents and grandparents. That’s progress, we’re told. But, what and who are the material drivers of that progress, along with the material circumstances that bring it about? Human society has steadily made improvements on ways of living as part of our evolution as a species. Spinning fiber into string may not seem innovative in our contemporary lives, but at one point it served as revolutionary technology. String allowed humans to create nets, thereby increasing the opportunity to capture more yield when fishing, and feed more people. It allowed people to weave cloth–strips of which at one point in time functioned like currency. The point is that humans always innovate ways to improve our lives. Yet, we now live under a system where–according to some metrics–these can be considered improvements. However, others lead lives that devolve in ways that the beneficiaries of these so-called advancements don’t ever see, or have to consider.

Technological advancement under capitalism is market driven, which means profits over everything, including death and destruction of the natural environment–all flora and fauna. Cristofori invented the piano in the early 18th century, a grand instrument that graced the homes of the elite of the Western world. When the melodic tunes flowed from its soundboard, how many thought about the annual massacre of 75,000 majestic African elephants as their fingers flitted over keys cleansed of the spilled blood it took to create it? The desire for material consumption is promulgated by the ruling class, thereby further entrenching the slaughter required to produce the luxuries of the haves that the have-nots often strive to acquire too–none of which are human necessities, but leave society ensnared in an endless loop of unnecessary, conspicuous consumption.

A Leap Forward?

We are often told of the great transformation at the onset of the Industrial Revolution, fueled by the need to expand capitalist accumulation following the calculus that chattel slavery was a waning profitable means of production. Many new inventions came to market for the masses to experience. There is no explanation of the material circumstances required at the start of the value chain to produce whatever inventive outcomes are imposed on our lives. The advent of electric power in the late 19th century provides the base for other technologies we experience now; street lights, air conditioning, computers, smart phones, etc. Those of us who turn the lights on and off each night never have to think about the mechanisms in place allowing this to happen, specifically minerals extracted from the earth like uranium–used not only to light up our lives, but to create the bombs used to maintain the violence required to collect the ore from the land of others in the first place.

Telecommunications, driven by the need to transmit information quicker to allow capitalists to accumulate more wealth, saw the construction of the fiber optic sea cables that allow masses of people to access the internet right now. Once the first successful cable was laid between New York and London in 1857 to support that quicker communication in the form of the telegraph, the groundwork was laid for continuous advancements. As the mass public was also allowed to make use of telecommunication technology, no one thought of quartz, copper, or germanium (among other minerals) that needed to be mined to build the cables, nor ever consider the entire network residing on the ocean floor–which enters the U.S. via San Francisco in addition to New York. For this network to grow meant setting up a system to constantly extract resources from land outside of the Western world.

Aluminium is a staple on the shelves of modern grocery stores, whether it is the foil rolls used in our kitchens or the soda cans so easily discarded. Aluminum requires bauxite of which the U.S. has almost none. Perhaps the booming steel-mill industry in the U.S. ceased because the iron and manganese required for its production were not readily available in North America, necessitating the extraction of these resources from other lands to sustain the industry. When U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik made public statements before Congress in defense of tariffs, he stated that, “The issue is you can’t fight a war without steel and aluminum production in America.” Steel manufacturing returning to the U.S. doesn’t resolve the issue of primary ingredients needing to be imported, but, in fact, relies on public ignorance of the steel-making process. It hinges on the masses not understanding that acquiring the ingredients is not based on a fair trading relationship–that tariffs cannot resolve, but military/mercenary violence ensuring capitalists can extract what they need cheaply to maintain their industry profits at the cost of human lives.

Data Centers

The tide of so-labeled Artificial Intelligence (AI) is coming. It’s being imposed. In a democracy, the masses could stop it. Since it’s been decades of back-room dealing in the planning, there’s nothing democratic about its rollout. The emergence of data centers to support AI technology, collectively occupying thousands of acres of land across the U.S., rather than for food or housing, was not something the public had a voice in creating. Knowledge workers in offices are being mandated to integrate AI usage into their work product, presumably to help train that system en masse, and thereby actively participate in the demise of large segments of a future human workforce. Even though we’re told that the servers to maintain AI require exclusively fresh water and consume lots of energy–let alone the earth’s minerals constantly needed to build its infrastructure–the masses have no input on whether we choose to use it. What happens when human populations begin competing with data farms for clean water, a primary human need? Or, when we cannot heat and cool our homes because those data farms consume more energy than the out-of-date U.S. electric grid was designed to deliver? Yet, the building of the data centers to support AI moves forward without prior public knowledge or consent, and with the collusion of elected officials who are in place to conspire with the business community’s profits to the detriment of ordinary people who supposedly voted them into office.

Billionaires such as Bill Gates insist that AI will take over human jobs such as doctors and teachers within the next ten years. (If humans aren’t needed, is that a call to terminate masses of the population capitalism deems surplus?) Yet, in order to have AI replace these jobs, it requires more exploitation of certain human labor to extract the mineral resources from the Global South to support this change. When public policy supports the whims of wealthy oligarchs in control of society’s productive forces without input from the people most impacted, this contributes to social murder–mass premature death. There is no one to hold accountable other than the system of capitalism itself. Constant inventions require resource extraction for the masses to consume to generate wealth for companies that have nothing to do with providing life’s basic requirements of water, food, shelter, etc. The next time one gets excited over the newest advancement, stop to think critically of how it came about, and it won’t seem so nice, but convenient that you are not the one experiencing the violent exploitation at the bottom of the food chain.

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