Themes
Technology and the Commons
Data is not power in itself; it becomes political when the institution that turns it into a decision and the force that imposes the outcome come together. Beside “is our data safe?” we should place a harder question: whose future is being built with our data?
What is sold is not only our personal information; it is our attention, our hesitations and the probabilities of our future behaviour. Some part of our life should be able to remain in a darkness that is not measured, not predicted and not sold.
Digital platforms usually did not remove the middleman; they rebuilt intermediation. The middleman did not shrink — it became invisible enough to fit in our pocket.
The servers may be scattered across many places; the decisions may still be taken by a small team. Before announcing that we have abolished the centre, looking at where it has moved is the simplest but most necessary thing we can do in the name of freedom.
The power that slipped from the state's hands did not evaporate; it settled into servers, payment networks and app stores. Perhaps the basic political question of our age is not who governs us but whether we notice that we are being governed.
Where the state withdrew, authority did not vanish; it was reshaped in the hands of a network administrator, a company, or a small group writing the code. Being technically distributed does not mean power is distributed equally.
An open prohibition at least announces itself; when a piece of design produces the same result without declaring any ban, the address for objection grows blurred. Power does not always say “forbidden” — sometimes we simply notice that we cannot proceed on the screen.
No armrest carries a sign saying “no rough sleepers”; the prohibition has been lifted from the notice board and placed into the shape of the object. Design often works as the silent constitution of daily life, and its articles are never publicly debated.
A turnstile gives a metal answer to the question “who may pass?” Objects deliver no speeches; yet they build the stage of our behaviour — and their politics usually works in the comfort of invisibility.
“What matters is how we use it” is a comforting sentence; yet not every tool opens the same number of roads before us. The real question is not whether technology is good or bad: which behaviour does it make easy, whom does it empower, and who pays the price?
Leave your email to hear about new writings.
Cookies. We use cookies to keep visit statistics. You can decline and still read the site in full. Privacy and Cookie Policy