I don't buy into their analysis of "tech exceptionalism" that sets up
a dichotomy between an unruly cavalier geekdom and a state that just
wants to protect its citizens. It avoids complexity and complicity at
all levels.
Technology has power because it's useful. It's useful to firms that
want to make piles of money. It's useful to governments who want to
spy and control. It's useful to people who _need_ next day delivery on
garden furniture. It's useful to people lost in the desert.
The problem is it's so damn useful we're ALL hopelessly addicted to it
and completely in denial of its harms and impending unravelling.
What I didn't read anywhere in this analysis was any talk of
empowering people. No mention of individual self-determination,
autonomy, investment in local and small scale technologies, positive
regulation _for_ peoples rights, or the basic right _not_ to be forced
to participate in an unsustainable technological project.
As Eisenstat and Gilman paint it - industry, state and people - that's
two wolves and a sheep arguing about what's for dinner, or as Junior
Murvin would say - Police and thieves in the street, scarin' the
nation... or as I call it, when the distribution of technological
power is 49.5% State, 49.5% Industry, 1% People - technofascism.
