Futurologists really must come to terms with the extent to which they have functioned as relentless defenders of the interests of corporate elites and the status quo all the while pretending to be champions of “accelerating change” and “techno-emancipation” in “The Future.”
Excerpted from Dale Carrico:
“It is a commonplace of futurological corporate propaganda since the fifties that increasing automation is going to lower average working hours or free up people to do more rewarding and creative work any day now, when in fact automation has always only threatened labor with unemployment, thereby lowering labor’s bargaining power, accompanied by a predictable diminishing of labor standards, diminishing of buying power, and diminishing of living standards for people who work for living.
The reason the futurological argument appears plausible, I suppose, is because futurologists like to pretend that emancipatory outcomes are somehow BUILT IN to the specs of the technologies they enthuse over. The reason the futurological argument should NOT appear the least bit plausible (apart from the fact that it is made over and over again and over again and almost never turns out to be true) is because emancipatory outcomes are political and not technical in nature. They demand political struggle and are not susceptible to techno-fixes in the absence of political struggle. Problems of poverty and ignorance and unfairness and inequity are political problems that require political will and social struggle (education, agitation, organization) even if, in part, to deploy available techniques in the service of desirable and emancipatory outcomes.
Bosses invest in new technology to make more money, not to improve the lot of laborers, and increasing automation and other productivity gains associated with technological improvements have been accompanied by increasing wealth concentration and increasing worker precarity precisely as these actual priorities would dictate. Although futurologists like to tell a different story, there is no reason to treat it as anything but a hoary and naïve science fiction cliché at odds with both a common sense understanding of how incumbent elites actually behave and all the obvious facts in evidence.
Using developments in information and transportation techniques (shipping container standardization) and technologies (digital networked surveillance and accounting) to outsource jobs away from expensive, often unionized, North Atlantic labor and costly regulations to protect our planet more than their profits instead to cheap labor in overexploited regions of the world where fellow human beings labor invisibly under appalling conditions and low environmental standards imperil the planet on which we all depend for our flourishing and survival is just another application of the same mechanism through which “technological progress” in automation has not translated to the political progress in the name of which it has been peddled to the people by futurological propagandists for the corporate-military status quo.”
I consider technology to be a double-edged sword. I keep hearing political radicals say things like: “3D printing will end capitalism,” and libertarians claiming that such an invention will make regulating commerce “impossible” because “everyone will have a 3D printer in the future”. I find these claims to be highly exaggerated.
The other day, I was watching a series of youtube videos featuring Jacques Ellul, who spoke about the darker side of technological advancement. It was very interesting and got me thinking. In some ways, technology challenges the current power relations, but in other ways it just reinforces them.
People who employ wage labor are in business to make money for themselves and their shareholders, if any. One way to do this is to reduce cost of raw materials and processing, the other way is to minimize the cost of labor. All moves to reduce worker benefits, worker pay, the minimum wage, and so forth, are aimed at reducing the cost of labor and thus increasing the bottom line – profit – of the company. People can easily find out how much each employee makes for each company listed on the major stock exchanges: for Morgan Stanley (http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/MS) the figure is: Revenue per Employee $542,012 – and so forth. The employee keeps a very small share of what he or she produces in value for the company, usually less than 30% and sometimes less than 15% for restaurant workers and other minimum wage employees. The amazing thing is that people work hard and spend money and go into debt to enter into such obviously bad deals, such exploitative relationships. Most people focus in on the behavior of their boss, but this should be a minor distraction relative to the fact that 70% or more of what they produce is going to the company and its executives and shareholders, not them.
I for one am not returning my washing machine any time soon 😉
I misunderstood the motive of the article, and agree
political progress is not as liberating as technological/evolution of tools,
But the article and quote:
“Futurologists really must come to terms with the extent to which they have
functioned as relentless defenders of the interests of corporate elites and the
status quo all the while pretending to be champions of “accelerating change”
and “techno-emancipation” in “The Future.”
Is not very motivated,
the adjacent possible has always promised/brought a better life,
fire, language, huts,
…from a personal/human perspective, I´d consider those innovation liberating…
perhaps I misunderstood even more from the article,
I only skimmed it, so if I make no sense then ignore me,
but I´m usually really inspired by P2Pfoundations blogposts,
and this was sort of just BULLSHIT 🙂
…you should have an edit function 🙂 I meant that political progress is always second to tool innovation, since the tools disrupt/enable alternative social organization, so it´s only natural that “political” progress is slower,
invent the wheel, and everyone suddenly has to change the way they used to transport stuff,
that takes longer then it took to invent the wheel,
a minority invents the technologies, but then the majority has to adopt it and change their habits, “politics”, naturally, that takes more time…
So, it´s sort of natural
See you in “THE FUTURE”, hehe
(P2P-Progressives really must come to terms with the extent to which they have functioned as relentless defenders of the interests of corporate elites and the status quo all the while pretending to be champions of “P2P-models” and “commons” in “The Future.)
Hehe, and to believe I trusted the both the P2Pers and the Futurists, silly me, now I´ll find someone who uses other words to describe stuff that´s happening in the human population..
Damn you P2P-futurists, you propagandists for the corporate-military status quo!!! (irony)
…why did I just write three comments…? 🙂 Öhm you can erase them if you want… you should have a delete function, automate/crowdsource it 😉 Cheers!
“Futurologists really must come to terms with the extent to which they have functioned as relentless defenders of the interests of corporate elites and the status quo all the while pretending to be champions of “accelerating change” and “techno-emancipation” in “The Future.””
I would give the same admonishment to P2P theorists who advocate the perpetuation of non-reciprocal, unpaid peer production and give philosophical cover to the continued corporate exploration of peer produced value.
PR