Category Archives: slavery

July 9, 2024 · 1:44 pm

Scientism, multistakeholderism and the Global Digital Compact

Recent AI global summit in Geneva: the glitz and glamour of digital tech

The Internet and World Wide Web have been used to bring many benefits across the world, but they have also been used to cause very significant harms. To deny this, is to fall into the trap of scientism, science’s belief in itself. Science is not neutral and value free as many scientists would have us believe. Above all, scientific enquiry and innovation are not inherently “good”, however that is defined. Moreover, science is not necessarily the best or only way of making truth claims about our existence on planet earth.

The recent “Open Letter to the United Nations” by a distinguished group of 37 scientists, notably including Vint Cerf (described in the letter as Internet Pioneer) and Sir Tim Berners-Lee (described as Inventor of the World Wide Web), raises very important issues around the nature of digital technologies and the so-called multistakeholder model. In essence, it seeks to persuade those involved in the Global Digital Compact “to ensure that proposals for digital governance remain consistent with the enormously successful multistakeholder Internet governance practice that has brought us the Internet of today”.

While I profoundly disagree with the agenda and process of the Global Digital Compact, I do so from the other end of the spectrum to the arguments put forward in their Open Letter. I have three fundamental objections to their proposal: that they largely ignore their responsibility for the harms; that their interpretation of multistakeholderism as being bottom up is flawed; and that, in effect, they represent the corporate interests that have for long sought to subvert the UN system in their own interests.

Science and innovation are not necessarily good

The Internet and World Wide Web were originally invented by scientists (“engineers” as they are referred to in the Open Letter), who were caught up in the excitement of what they were doing. As many of their subsequent statements have suggested, I’m sure these engineers believed that they were doing good. Thus, as the letter goes on to state, the success of those involved in the subsequent development of the Internet and the Web “can be measured by where the Internet is today and what it has achieved: global communication has flourished, bringing education, entertainment, information, connectivity and commerce to most of the world’s population”. While they acknowledge later in their letter that there are indeed harms resulting from the use of the the Internet and Web, they say little about the causes of these harms , nor about the structures of power in their design and propagation. By claiming that the basic architecture of the Internet must not be changed, because it is empowering, they fail sufficiently to take into consideration the possibility that it was their original design of that architecture that was flawed and enabled the rise of the very many harms associated with it.

There is nothing inherently “good” about science; it serves particular sets of interests. Scientists are therefore as responsible for the harms, unintended or deliberate, caused by their inventions as they are for any “good” for which they are used. The letter claims that the technical architecture of the Internet and Web cannot on its own address the harms it is used to cause, but offers no evidence in suport of this argument. If the Internet and Web had not been created as they were, if the architecture had been different, might not the harmful outcomes have been avoided? Did the engineers and others involved take the time to consider the full implications of what they were doing? Did they consider the views of philosophers and social scientists who have studied the diffusion of innovations and their potential harms in the past? Or were they caught up in the technical interests of positivist science? I do not know the answer to these questions, but I do know that they are as responsible for the scale of the harms caused through the use of their inventions, as they are for any good.

On multistalkeholderism

The arguments of the Open Letter are based on the notion that multistakeholder processes have been “enormously successful” in bringing us “the Internet of today”, and that the Global Digital Compact should not damage these by replacing it with “a multilateral process between states”. Accordingly, the authors should also recognise that it is these same multistakeholder processes that have also brought us the harms associated with the Internet and Web. Moreover, the claim that this multistakeholder model of Internet governance is “bottom-up, collaborative and inclusive” is also deeply problematic. Just over a decade ago, I wrote a critique of multistakeholderism (see also my Reclaiming ICT4D) in which I highlighted that despite such aspirations and the efforts of those involved to try to achieve them, the reality is very different. Those arguments apply as much today as they did when I first wrote them. In essence, I argued that there are two fundamental problems in the practice of multistakeholderism: unequal representation, and the decision making process. I challenge the claim that in practice these processes are indeed bottom-up, collaborative and inclusive. The following are just some examples in support of my case:

  • The world’s poorest and most marginalised people and communities do not participate directly in these gatherings.
    • how many people with disabilities or ethnic minorities actually contribute directly?
  • Most of the organisations claiming to represent such minorities sadly usually have their own interests more at heart than they do of those they claim to speak for.
  • There is a very significant power imbalance between those individuals, organisations and states who can afford to participate in these deliberations and those who do not have the financial resources or time to contribute.
    • Small Island states are notable in their absence from many of these processes, simply because of the cost and time involved in such participation.
    • The large, rich global corporations can afford to engage and lobby for their interests, whereas the poorest and most marginalised face almost impossible difficulties in seeking to compete with them.
  • There are enormous linguistic and cultural barriers to full and active engagement.
    • This applies as much to the technical language and processes used in these deliberations as it does to the dominance of a few interrnational languages in the discussions.
  • The processes of consensus decision making are extremely complex, and require considerable experience of participation before people can have the confidence to contribute.
    • Almost by definition, minority voices are unlikely to be heard in such processes of reaching a consensus.

I could highlight many more examples of these challenges from my 25 years of experience in attending international “multistakeholder” gatherings, from the Digital Opportunities Task Force (DOT Force), to the regular cycle of subsequent WSIS, IGF, ICANN, and UN agency gatherings. This is not to deny that many such multistakeholder gatherings do indeed try to support an inclusive approach, but it is to claim that the reality is very different to the aspiration. The image below from the GDC’s page on its consultation process suggests where the power really lies.

It is surely no coincidence that the third of these sub-headings focuses on the $5tn+ represented by the market cap of private sector companies. This need not have been so. They could instead have given a clear breakdown of the exact numbers of submissions from different types of organisation.

The corporate interests underlying the UN digital system and the Global Digital Compact

It is somewhat ironic that this Open Letter is written by “scientists” who in reality largely represent or serve the interests of the digital tech companies, in an effort to roll back what they see as the growing interests of governments represented in the GDC drafts. In stark contrast, I see the entire GDC process as already having been over-influenced by private sector companies (see my 2023 critique of the GDC process). In theory, states should serve the interests of all their citizens, and should rightly be the sector that determines global policy on such issues. It is right that regulation should serve the interests of the many rather than the few.

Here I just briefly focus on three aspects of these challenges: the notion that the Internet is a public good or global commons that serves the interests of all the world’s people; the private sector representation of the scientific community; and the undermining of UN priorities and agendas by the private sector in their own interests. Before I do so, though, I must emphasise that there are many individual scientists who do seek to serve the interests of the poor rather than the rich, and a few of these do also have considerable knowledge and understanding of ethics and philosophy more generally. I also acknowledge the problem of what to do about disfunctional and self-seeking governments.

The Internet as public good

The arguments that the Internet and Web are public (or for some “common”) goods that should be kept free so that everyone can benefit, and at its extreme that access to the Internet should be considered a human right, are fundamentally flawed. People do not benefit equally from such goods (these arguments go back to Aristotle, and can in part be seen in Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons). Those who benefit the most are the rich and powerful who have the finance, knowledge and ability to do so. This is why digital tech has become such a driver for increased global inequality at all scales. Those who are creating the contemporary digital system are doing so largely in the interests of global capital (for much more detail see my arguments in my Reclaiming ICT4D, Power hierarchies and digital oppression: towards a revolutionary practice of human freedom, and Freedom, enslavement and the digital barons: a thought experiment).

An unhealthy relationship between science and private sector companies

Not all science and innovation are funded or inspired by the interests of private sector corporations, but it is increasingly becoming so, especially in the digital tech sector. Not all scientists or engineers fail to consider the possible unintended consequences of their research and innovation, but many do. All of us have choices to make, and one of those is over whether we seek to serve the interests of the world’s poorest and most marginalised, or the interests of the rich and powerful. Moreover, it is important to recognise that historically it has usually been the rich and powerful who have used technology to serve and reinforce their own interests. There is a strong relationship between power and science (see my The Place of Geography, and Reclaiming ICT4D, both of which draw heavily on Habermas’s Critical Theory, especially Erkenntnis und Interesse). Scientists cannot hide behind their claim that science is neutral or value free.

These challenges are especially problematic in the digital tech sector. Thus, leadership and membership of entities such as the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), and the W3C (Board of Directors) are all heavily dominated by representatives from private sector companies and computer scientists with close links to such companies. It is just such people who have signed the Open Letter.

The private sector subverting the UN system in its own interests

It is entirely apropriate that there should be close dialogues between governments and private sector companies. Likewise, it is important for there to be dialogue between UN agencies and companies. Indeed, international organisations such as the ITU and the Commonwealth Telecommunications Organisation have facilitated such engagements between companies and governments since their origins, to ensure that informed decisions and agreements are reached about telecommunications and digital tech policy and practice across the world. However, despite the neo-liberal hegemony that aspires to roll back the role of government, it is still governments that wield the political power – rightly so.

Recognising this, private sector companies have worked assiduously over the past three decades to increase their influence over the UN system through direct funding, sponsorship, and technical “expert” advice (see my A new UN for a new (and better) global order (Part One): seven challenges and A new UN for a new (and better) global order (Part Two): seven solutions for seven challenges). This has been particularly so with respect to the digital tech sector, and was clearly evident in the origins and evolution of the processes leading up to the creation of the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Tech Envoy and thus the Global Digital Compact (see my critique of these).

In conclusion

Constructive criticisms of the Global Digital Compact are always welcome. There is, though, a strange irony that representatives of the very interests that played such a strong role in shaping the GDC should now be criticising the way it has developed. My earlier strident criticisms of the GDC were in part that it already reflected too much private sector interest, and that it would do little in practice to mitigate the very considerable harms and digital enslavement caused through the design and use of digital tech (see my Use it or lose it – our freedom). Perhaps I should therefore be grateful that computer scientists and corporate interests are so critical of the draft. This raises some important questions that could be explored in much further detail:

  • Could the architecture of the Internet and Web have been designed differently so as to ensure that it was not used to cause the harms and abuses that are so prevalent today? My hunch is that the answer to this is “yes”, but that it would have been much more difficult, and would have required very considerable more work and thought about its design at that early stage.
  • Are those who designed and created the Internet and Web responsible for these harms? Again my answer to this is “yes”, but I appreciate that not everyone will accept this. In origin, the earliest engineers and computer scientists working in this field were focused primarily on the “science” of these innovative technologies. I have never asked them the extent to which they considered the ethics of what they were doing at that time, or how much they examined the potential unintended consequences. However, almost all these “scientists” were the products of an education system and “scientific community” that was grounded in empirical-analytic science and logical positivism (see my critique in The Place of Geography). Moreover, these scientific communities were always closely engaged with private sector companies (and indeed with the USAn military-industrial complex). There is little doubt that the evolution of the Internet and Web over the last 20 years has been driven primarily by the interests of private sector companies, and they too must be brought to justice with respect to the damage they cause. As for the signatories of this Open Letter, if they claim to be responsible for its positive aspects, then they should also accept that they are responsible for its more reprehensible features.
  • What do we do now about it? This is the really important question, and one that is too complex for those involved in the Gobal Digital Compact to resolve. At best, the GDC can perhaps be seen as a statement of intent by those with interests in promulgating it. It can be ignored or kicked into the long grass. It is impossible to reach a sensible conclusion to these discussions in time for the so-called Summit of the Future in three months’ time. In the meanwhile, all of us who are interested in the evolution of digital technologies in the interests of the world’s poorest and most marginalised must continue to work tirelessely truly to serve their interests. One way we can do this is to work closely with those from diametrically opposed views to try to convict them of their responsibility to craft a fairer, less malevolent digital infrastructure. The geni is out of the box, but it is surely not beyond the realms of human ability to tame and control it. The “scientists” behind the Internet need to step up to their responsibilities to humanity, and start playing a new tune. Some are indeed doing just this, but we need many more to step up to the mark. The so called “bottom up, collaborative and inclusive model of Internet governance” has not well “served the world for the past half century”. It has served some incredibly well, but has largely ignored the interests of the poorest and most marginalised, and has done immeasurable harm to many others. Governments have a fundamental role in helping scientists and companies to make a constructive difference through approproiate regulation and legislation. Whether or not they will choose to do so is another matter entirely.

1 Comment

Filed under digital technologies, ICT4D, Politics, slavery, United Nations

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 26, 2024 · 7:39 pm

Use it or lose it – our freedom

I have written elsewhere at some length on digital enslavement, the ways in which citizens across the world are increasingly being forced into sharing their data with global corporations who then profit from their use and sale (see: Freedom, enslavement and the digital barons and Power hierarchies and digital oppression). A recent journey on the London Underground (metro or subway for non-English speakers) reinforced this point and made me increasingly concerned, nay frightened, by the potential dystopia into which “we” are blindly walking, or (un)subtly being cajoled into accepting. Let me tell the tale, and then draw six observations from it. I end with some practical suggestions for reclaiming our freedom.

Transport for London (TfL) created the Oystercard in 2003 as a pre-paid card through which customers could pay for travelling on various forms of transport in London. It was marketed widely because it was easy to use; TfL have nevertheless gained a vast amount of data about passenger journeys from its use. I have always topped mine up with cash so that my financial expenditure on bank cards could not be linked directly with my travel. I also have a railcard that enables me to get reductions on certain forms of travel, but have long resisted linking this to anything else. Incidentally, I likewise refuse to use mobile payment apps such as Apple Pay, Venmo, Google Pay or ParrotMob, because I do not want them to exploit me further by using my data to generate additional profits at my expense. However, the price reduction on London travel by linking my railcard to my Oyster card has “persuaded” me in the end to link the two. Interestingly, I was not able to do this myself, and because there was no longer a ticket office I had to ask for assistance from the one TfL employee in the vicinity, who was overseeing control and security for 10 or more gates at one of London’s busiest terminals. I was very pleasantly surprised by how helpful and professional he was. He agreed that I was unable to do this myself, but he kindly took me to one of the ticket machines where he could access the relevant links and make the connection. The machine, though, did not take cash and so I could not top the card up; it would of course have accepted a payment card. I had to go back to the kind assistant, who then found the one machine in the area that did indeed take cash. En passim, he mentioned that in the future the machines will only take cards, and that it is likely that the Oyster card will soon be phased out to be replaced solely by bank card, or mobile payments (see many discussions, posts, documents and reports on TfL’s Project Proteus).

I tell this tale at some length because it perfectly captures the six interconnected aspects of our increasing entrapment, exploitation and enslavement through the use of digital tech that I wish to address here. Most will find the above account commonplace and innocent. I don’t, and I tell the story as a cautionary tale in the hope that it will help more people resist our ever increasing digital oppression. The meaning of the title should be clear. If we don’t use cash, through which it is extremely difficult to trace our movements and expenditure, we will lose it, and with it the freedom not to be surveilled and not to be exploited through the extraction of our personal data.

We increasingly have no option: cash or nothing

From a consumer perspective, it is remarkable how swiftly a “no cash” policy has come upon us. We are told that it is much easier to use cards, it is quicker, and we don’t have to carry around heavy weights of cash. A website aimed at foreign tourists, for example, notes that “Alas, various forms of transport – such as London buses – cannot even accept cash payments. Where cash is accepted, it is also often the most expensive way to pay. Cash is thus best avoided”

But how true really is this? If the machines are not working it can take much longer to pay by card and sometimes it is impossible; paying cash is swift when there is a competent human behind the till; and paper money really is not very heavy. Think of what we lose: the beauty of banknotes (see Virginia Hewitt’s Beauty and the Banknote, as well as the work she and I did together on banknotes in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union); the feel of “real” money, rather than just a virtual transaction; and, above all else, it cannot easily be traced back to us as individuals. We are incresingly being forced into using cards not for these claimed benefits , but rather because it is in the interest of companies that we do so. What is particularlty worrying is that it is increasingly becoming impossible not to use cards. Even in such lovely, quirky coffee shops such as Store Street Espresso, I had to use a card.

The expanding use of cards increases the extent to which we are being tracked and monitored

At a relatively benign level, it is often argued that people make a conscious choice, and weigh up the relative benefits of using a card or not. However, I wonder how many people really do understand just how much information they are giving away when they use their bank or payment cards. How many are happy that they are being exploited in this way? Just as social media platforms extract vastly more data than most people realise (see Matilda Davies‘ recent piece on Every scary thing Meta knows about me — and you), so too do cards of all sorts, from credit and debit cards, to loyalty cards, to payments card and beyond. Again, the key point here is the rapidly growing scale at which this is happening. Not only, do we increasingly have to use cards, but the interconnectedness of the systems means that the extent to which we are being tracked and our data extracted is also dramatically on the increase. Why have we become so inured to this?

Our real-time travel is increasingly being connected to our expenditure, behaviours and purchases

Not only are our past purchases, transport journeys, and behaviours being tracked and analysed, but with the greater power of data management systems and ever more sophisticated machine learning algorithms, this information is now being used increasingly in real time to ensnare and exploit us. When these data are then cross-linked to biometric records and security cameras we become even more entrapped and exploitable by those who use and supply these technologies. Surfshark, for example, calculates that London has the fourth highest city density of CCTV in the world at 499 cameras per square km (read to the end to discover which are the top three citites – I was surprised!). Even using cash in London is now only a partial means of escaping from the ever greater real-time machine surveillance by state apparatuses, and enslavement by private sector companies.

Who benefits? Is it ever in our interests?

How much do we really benefit from such digital enslavement? Proponents of the use of digital tech in this way always point to the potential benefits of going cashless: it is quicker and easier; customers benefit from companies passing on savings from no longer employing human staff; and it is more consistent and accurate. Even if these were true, is it actually in the interests of citizen consumers? People will clearly respond in different ways, depending on their own circumstances, and how much they value their privacy and personal security. However, those who have lived in a different world, the world of the past, know that systems did indeed work then, and that the supposed benefits of digital tech are very much less than is claimed. Let me give but two examples:

  • First, most payment machines at railway stations (certainly in the area around London) are poorly designed and it is often very difficult to find the best fare for a particular route. I have always found the staff at ticket offices to be much more knowledgeable about the best tickets to buy, and the complete transaction is frequently therefore swifter when talking to a human than using a machine. Machines also frequently do not work, which causes chaos. The difficulties that many elederly people and those with disablities have in using the machines is also of particular concenr.
  • Second, the use of digital tech in this way deliberately limits human interaction. Yet we know that communal interaction is essential for human life. Increasing evidence suggests that rising mental health issues are in part due to this loss of real and physical regular communication, as a result of this being mediated by digital tech. Buying a ticket from a human actually requires communication, and can be a very valuable opportunity, especially for the lonely or the elderly. It also provides a reminder of exactly how much one is spending, esdecially if cash is used. Just passing a payment card over a device often means that customers have little knowledge of exactly what they are paying, and as a result we can frequently pay much more than we had intended.

It is surely the companies who benefit most from the implementation and use of digital tech, rather than citizen consumers. The companies who provide the tech, both hardware and software have all benefitted hugely from a shift from human labour to digital. So too have those companies providing the services, be they train operators or the digital finance institutions. When these become integrated as discussed above, the potential profits from combining data from different sources become even higher. Moreover, our data is then sold to others who also use it to enhance their profits. All this is extraction of profit from our individual actions (travelling and purchasing), and as we increasingly have fewer and fewer options, we increasingly lose our freedom and become enslaved.

Another dimension to this balance equation of “who benefits?” concerns the employment of staff. Lack of data makes it extremely difficult to calculate the overall costs and benefits of replacing human staff by machines, but companies are unlikely to make this transition if they did not see it in their long term interests. Moreover, replacing railway staff by machines reduces the risk of strike action by staff, thus making the system more reliable from the companies’ and citizen consumers’ perspectives. The dehumanisation of labour, though, is a very important issue in itself, and many staff made redundant in this process are unlikely to gain jobs in the tech sector that replaces them. It was therefore a very positive move in October 2023 when the UK Government rejected the planned closure of hundreds of ticket stations across the country in response to the most responded to public consultation of all time. The British public, when asked, clearly do not see much of this digitisation to be in their real interests.

The security dangers

There are also very real security dangers associated with the increased use of digital payments systems and cards. These come in two main forms: the dangers of immediate theft and loss of identity for citizen consumers; and the wider threat to companies and individuals of being hacked.

  • First, the use of digital systems, especially when so much identity and financial information is stored on our mobile phones, means that it is much easier for criminals to steal such integrated information than it was previously, when everything was separated out. In the past, we did not often carry very large sums of cash around with us and few of us ever carried our passports or other identity documents, and yet those who steal mobile devices and access the information on them today are able to gain very rich rewards. Even just losing a phone can be devastating for many people.
  • Second, the hacking risks for both companies and individuals remain very high. Imagine the impact were criminals and/or foreign states to close down all of the ticket machines across rail networks, or interfere with signalling networks. Such critical infrastructures remain vulnerable (see list of significant incidents by CSIS), and it is only a matter of time before more attacks are experienced. Banking systems are also vulnerable, with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace listing some 200 cyber incidents targeting financial institutions between 2007 and 2022. Such incidents affect services, but other hacks are focused on the acquisition of identity-related information that affects some or all users of a particular service. There have for example been several hacks that have affected TfL customers, notably the 2020 report that Oyster Online accounts had been accessed maliciously, and the 2023 report that the Russian ransomware group C10p had attached a TfL supplier with 13,000 customer contact details being compromised.

There is no doubt that increasingly integrated data sets containing information about our identities, our location and travel patterns, our finances, and our behaviours make us more vulnerable to financial and identity theft than was previously the case. This places additional burdens on us to put in place our own safety and security mechanisms if we do not want to be overhelmed by those who use digital tech for malicious purposes.

Freedoms and digital enslavement

Freedom is the power to act, speak and think how we want; we are enslaved if we lose that freedom of choice. The above examples suggest that we increasingly have very much less choice and power to act how we choose to by those who restrict the ways in which we purchase goods; we are thus becoming enslaved. Increasingly we cannot avoid being surveilled and our data extracted from us when we travel in London, or indeed in many other places. We are being forced to use cards that enable us to be identified everywhere that we travel within the city. Imagine what a “malign actor” (state, company or civil society) could do with these data?

Moreover, I suggest that those who restrict our freedoms and enslave us in this way are acting very deliberately in their own interests, which are mainly pecuniary. We are moving ever more into what might be considered as a new “mode of production” whereby surplus profit is generated from our very selves. Worryingly, that is not so different from the profit generated from the harsh manual labour of slaves. It is a gentler form of slavery to be sure, softer, less immediately visible, and perhaps even more insidious. But it is no less real. I am not the first to refer to digital slavery in my written work (see for example Chisnall, 2020, who focuses especially on “alienation from self”), but it is a notion with which I have been grappling for several years, and the purpose of this post is very much to try to increase wider awareness of thse complex and difficult issues.

Reclaiming our freedom

There are many ways in our daily lives through which we can seek to resist this dangerous trend, and reclaim our freedom, the most important of which I currently see as being the following:

  • Insist on our continued use of cash: use it or lose it. Paying for goods and services using cash is a very important way through which we are able to prevent others knowing how and on what we spend money and purchase things. Even this, though, is becoming more difficult as companies are increasingly also turning to video recordings of our transactions. If enough people continue to insist on using cash, though, we can together form a sufficient mass to prevent further inroads to this freedom. We should also be vocal about it, telling as many companies as possible why we are no longer using their services.
  • Maintain as many multiple identities as possible. In the recent past it was not so difficult to create multiple identities. It was easy, for example, to create bank accounts in whatever name one wanted. Now, this is much more difficult, but it is still possible to create separate identities, for example by having several mobile phones, each linked to different sets of cards. Ultimately, these usually have to be linked to a single address, and therefore if companies understand this connection they can indeed join up the dots, but at least such actions we take can make it more complicated for them. For those with mutliple citizenship it becomes easier, since they can link different phones and cards to different manifestations of identity such as passports.
  • Beware of video surveillance. It is increasingly difficult to avoid video surveillance, and readers of this post will have very differing views about the use of surveillance by states to monitor their citizens. That having been said, there is much available advice online about simple legal ways through which it is possible to reduce, or confuse, the effectiveness of such surveillance. However, I think it is a different matter when it comes to surveillance by companies of people’s shopping behaviours (see for example digifortUK, or secureredact), and it is perfectly legitimate to seek to avoid these especially in contexts where they might be used in combination with other data such as loyalty card use or payments. The challenge, of course is that video surveillance is becoming much more sophistictaed, with gait recognition systems being even more difficult to avoid than simple facial recognition (see for example, Harris et al., 2022; Recfaces; Privacy International, 2021).
  • Minimise the integration of identity sources. In an increasingly inteconnected world, it is becoming ever more difficult to isolate different part of our lives, but ideally we should seek to minimise the linkage of different aspects of our identity. For example, many people create a separate obscure e-mail account (definitely not a Google mail account) that they never use themselves, but into which they direct all their “rubbish”. Whenever they make a purchase, they simply use this email address. Likewise they have distinct bank accounts and loyalty cards that they only use for partcular kinds of activity. Anything we can do to make it difficult for sophisticated digital systems to track us and combine our data, thereby shackling us like slaves, has to be a positive step towards freedom.
  • Making clear and thought-through decisions about what we are happy for others, particularly states and companies, to know about us, and then protecting what we wish to remain private. One of the most insidious things about the creators of digital systems who enslave us is that they are not transparent in how they do so. Most people are blissfully unaware of the things that I have written about here, and are probably quite happy about it. They feel liberated and free through their use of digital tech, rather than being enslaved through it. It is incumbent therefore on all who care about these issues to seek to enlighten our fellow citizen consumers and help them reflect on their behavours, thereby gaining some emancipation and an ability to escape the shackles that bind them.
  • Adopt as much as possible of the existing good advice on the safe, wise and secure use of digital tech. There is already a considerable amount of guidance on using digital tech safely, but it is insufficiently used. All too often when people are first trained in the use of these technologies they are told about all of the positives and few of the negatives. We need to have a much more balanced approach. Digital tech can be used to do good or to cause harm. We need to mitigate the harms to enable the good to flourish. Our own recent work in Nepal, South Africa and Brazil has highlighted how many different approaches can be tailored to the particular needs of specific communities. Other readilty available resources include those by Softwise, Kaspersky, the UK’s ICO and National Cyber Security Centre, and CyberWise.

Finally, we need to take time away from our use of digital tech and reclaim our sentient contact with the real word of nature that surrounds us. Several years ago, I coined the hashtag #1in7offline, to capture the idea that if you can’t spend a day a week offline, then at least try doing so for an hour every seven hours, and so on. Ultimately, we need to rediscover and cherish our “being in the world”, for it is precious. The only way to escape the tyranny of the digital barons (and the knights who fight for them) is to remove ourselves from their grasp while we still can. We can start to do this a step at a time, but we must do so. Otherwise, we willingly succomb into the new slavery that they seek so avariciously to impose upon us.

Notes:

According to Surfshark, Chennai, with 657 cameras per square km is highest, followed by Hyderabad with 480, and Harbin with 411.

3 Comments

Filed under digital technologies, freedom, ICT4D, slavery

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

June 2, 2023 · 11:17 am

Power hierarchies and digital oppression: towards a revolutionary practice of human freedom

I recently spent three hours completing an online financial expenses claim form for the finance department of our university relating to an overseas research trip.  There were only 20 items of expenditure to be entered.  However, each of the receipts had to be copied, reduced in size to suit the requirements of the software and uploaded into the system, along with separate details of the credit card payments for them. These had to be matched with numbered explanatory entries on another page of the online form, none of which could be automatically generated, and each of which required separate keyboard entry.  On average, it therefore took me nine minutes per entry.  I’m sure that anyone who has been forced to use Unit4’s Agresso software will know just what a cumbersome and time-consuming piece of software this is.  Of course, it purports to reduce the time spent by staff in the accounts department, thus reducing the university’s expenditure on staffing, but this is at a significant cost in terms of the amount of time that I, as a user, have to spend.  In the past, using hard copy receipts and forms, this task would have taken me much less than an hour to complete.  My time is precious, and this represents a significant waste of time and money for myself and the university, over and above the costs that the university has incurred in purchasing the software and training staff in its use. 

This is but one example of the ways in which digital tech is being designed and used to shift the expenditure of labour from the top downwards, and from the centre to the periphery (see my 2020 post on this for more examples).  End users now have to do the work that those at the centre of networks (such as organisations, institutions, or governments) previously had to do; end users produce and upload the data that the centre formerly collected and processed.  This is one of the main reasons why workers and citizens are now forced to spend considerably longer time and more effort completing mundane tasks, for the benefit of more powerful centres (and people) who give them no choice, and force them to conform to the digital systems that they control. 

Examples of everyday digital oppression

There are many examples of this tendency, but the following currently seem to be most problematic (over and above the ever present challenge of spam, hacking and online fraud; I do not, though, address issues such as digital violence and sexual harassment here because I have written about them elsewhere, and want in this piece to focus instead on the everyday, normal processes through which structural imbalances are designed and enforced in the everyday use of digital tech):

  • The (ab)use of e-mails, especially when disseminated by the centre to groups of people.  It is easy to send e-mails from the centre to many people at the periphery or down the hierarchy, but the total burden of time and effort for all the recipients can be enormous. This is particularly with respect to copy correspondence, which adds considerably to the burden (see my e-mail reflections written in 2010 but still valid!).  It is increasingly difficult for many people to do any constructive work, because they are inundated with e-mails. 
  • Being forced to download attachments and print them off for meetings.  Some people “at the centre” still require those attending meetings to print off hard copies of documents before attending.  This is quite ridiculous, since it vastly increases the total amount of time and effort involved. If hard copy materials are required, these should always be produced and distributed by the centre and not the end user.
  • Extending the working day through access to and use of digital tech.  The above two observations are examples of the general principle that digital tech has been used very widely to extend the working day, without paying staff for this increase.  The idea that e-mails can be answered at home after “work”, or  personal training done in “spare time”, are but two ways through which this additional expropriation of surplus value is achieved.
  • Companies requiring users to complete online forms and upload information.  This widespread practice is one of the most common ways through which companies reduce their own labour costs and increase the burden on those for whom they are intended to be providing services.  Creating online accounts, logging on with passwords, and then filling in online forms has become increasingly onerous for users, especially when the forms and systems are problematic or don’t have options for what the consumer wants to enquire about.  Such systems also take little consideration of the needs of people with disabilities or ageing with dementia who often have very great difficulty in interacting with the technology.
  • Users having to download information, rather than receiving it automatically at their convenience.  Centres, be they companies or organisations, now almost universally require users to log on to their systems and go through complex, time-consuming protocols to gain access to the information that centres wish to disseminate (banks, financial organisations, and utility companies are notorious for this).  In the past, such material was delivered to users’ letter boxes and could simply be accessed by opening an envelope. Again, this is to the benefit of the centres rather than the users.
  • Useless Chatbots, FAQs, online Help options and voice options on phone calls.  Numerous organisations require consumers/users to go through digital systems that are quite simply not fit for purpose and often take a very considerable amount of users’ time (and indeed costs of connectivity).  While some systems do provide basic information reasonably well, the majority do not, and require users to spend ages trying to find out relevant information.  Many organisations also now make it very difficult for users to find alternative ways of communicating with them, such as by telephone.  Even when one can get through to a telephone number and negotiate the lengthy and confusing numerical or voice recognition options, it frequently takes an extremely long time (often well over 30 minutes, or a 16th of the working day) before it is possible to speak with someone.  Sadly, human responders once contacted are also often poorly trained and frequently cannot give accurate answers.
  • Having to use yet another digital system chosen by centres and leaders to exploit you in their own interests. There are now so many different online cloud systems for communicating with each other at work (or play), such as Microsoft’s Teams, Google’s Workspace, Slack, Trello, Asana, and Basecamp (to name but a few).  None of us can expect to be adept at using all of them.  However, leaders of organisations and teams generally impose their own preferred software solution (or those ordained by their organisation) on members.  Rarely are they willing to change their own preferences to suit those of other team members. Hence, this reinforces power relationships and those lower down the food chain are forced to comply with solutions that may well not suit them.
  • Filling in forms online that are badly designed, crash on you, and often don’t have a save function for partially completed material. I am finding this to be an increasingly common and very frustrating form of hidden abuse.  The number of times I have had to fill in forms online that take far longer than just writing a document or sending an e-mail is becoming ever greater.  This is particularly galling when the software freezes or the save function does not work, and everything gets lost, forcing me to start all over again.  The hours I have lost in this way (particularly in completing documents for UN agencies) are innumerable.
  • Time wasted in having to scroll through quantities of inane social media to find a message that someone has sent you and is complaining that you have not yet responded to it.  The answer to this is simply not to use social media, and especially groups (see my practices), or to “unfriend” people who do this, but increasingly this is yet another means through which centres seek to control and exploit those at the peripheries or lower down the work hierarchy.
  • Centres simply failing to respond to digital correspondence, especially with complaints, and forcing users to keep chasing them online. I have lost count of the number of times I have had to fill in an online form, usually about something I have been asked to do by a company or agency, or concerning an appointment or complaint, only for them never to reply.  This forces me to waste yet further time trying to contact them about why they haven’t responded!

This list of examples could be added to at great length, and mainly reflects my own current angst (for earlier examples see On managerial control and the tyranny of digital technologies).  To be sure, not all digital systems are as appalling as the above would suggest, and credit should be given where due.  The UK’s digital service, https://gov.uk is generally a notable positive exception to this generalisation, and I was, for example, very impressed when I recently had to use it to renew a passport. However, to change this situation it is necessary to understand its causes, the most important of which are discussed below.

The rise of digital capitalism and the causes of digital oppression  

Five main causes lie at the heart of the above challenges.  Underlying them all, though, is the notion that it is right and proper for companies to seek to expand their markets and lower their costs of production in the pursuit of growth.  Capital accumulation is one of the defining (and problematic) characteristics of all forms of the capitalist mode of production, and new digital technologies have two key attributes in supporting this process: first, the use of digital tech very rapidly accelerates all forms of human interaction; and second, their use can replace much human labour (thus increasing the human labour productivity of those remaining in employment) .  On the assumption that the cost of introducing digital tech is cheaper than the cost of human labour, then digital tech can be used dramatically to increase the rates of capital accumulation and surplus profit acquisition by the owners of the means of production.  However, if there is insufficient demand in the market, not least because of falling purchasing power as a result of reduced levels of human labour, then the twin crises of realisation and accumulation will inevitably ultimately cause fundamental problems for the system as a whole.  It must also be realised that (as yet) digital tech does not actually have any power of its own. The power lies with those who conceive, design, construct and market these technologies in their own interests.  As the apparent AI ethical crisis at the moment clearly indicates, the scientists who support this process are as much to blame for its faults as are the owners of capital who pay them.  Five aspects of this underlying principle can be seen at work in leading to the current situation whereby those at the system peripheries or the bottom of hierarchies are being increasingly oppressed through the uses of digital tech (as described in the examples above):

  • First, labour costs have generally long been perceived as being the critical cost factor in many industrial and commercial sectors.  The digital tech sector has therefore been very adept at persuading other companies and organisations to do away with human labour and replace it with technology in the productive process.  The labour that is left must be forced to work longer hours while also increasing its productivity.  However, companies and organisations have also been persuaded that they can make further significant cost savings by ensuring that consumers and staff lower down the hierarchy do much of the work for themselves by, for example, filling in online forms and using chatbots as discussed above.  Digital tech is used to shift the balance of time spent on tasks to the consumers or users.  This insidious shift of emphasis is a classic expression of the digital oppression that is now increasing being felt by people across the world.
  • A second significant feature of capitalist enterprises is their need to create as uniform a market as possible so that they are then able sell as many of the same products or services as they can.  This emphasis on uniformity requires users to adjust their previously diverse human behaviours to conform to the uniform digital systems that are imposed on them.  It lowers overall costs, and enables markets rapidly to be expanded.  We experience this every time we have to choose which of a number of options we are given on a phone call, or fill in an online form, where what we are concerned about does not easily fit in to any of the options we are given.  Similarly, we encounter it every time someone wanting us to do something requires us to use their software package or app rather than our preferred one.  Again, we encounter a different form of digital oppression.
  • Third, the increasing emphasis and reliance on digital systems means that the human labour remaining in organisations and companies becomes increasingly overstretched.  Without adding to the amount of time that they work, staff having to use digital systems through which they are constantly bombarded with requests and actions become ever more oppressed. Furthermore, the difficulty of finding qualified and knowledgeable staff competent enough to give a good service to clients and customers, means that organisations are increasingly not capable of responding satisfactorily to those who don’t fit into the uniform-demanding digital systems that they now operate.  This is why some companies make it as difficult as possible for clients and customers actually to speak with a human being among their staff, and why the quality of service they provide can be so bad.  Some turn to call centres overseas, which often provide a dire service on poor quality phone lines staffed by people who cannot competently speak or understand the language of the customers.
  • Fourth, much of the software and systems that governments, organisations and companies are persuaded to buy by the tech sector is poorly designed, poorly constructed and poorly implemented.  As but one example, in 2015 the abandoned NHS patient record system in the UK had “so far cost the taxpayer nearly £10bn, with the final bill for what would have been the world’s largest civilian computer system likely to be several hundreds of millions of pounds higher, according a highly critical report from parliament’s public spending watchdog” (The Guardian, 2015).  The quality of design and programming in many apps, especially when outsourced to countries with very different cultures of coding, is often very low, and it is unsurprising that the functionality of many digital systems is so dire.  Despite much rhetoric about human-computer interaction and user-centred design, the reality is that much tech is still built by people with little real knowledge and expertise in what users really want and how best to make it happen.  All too often, they are themselves brought up within the culture of uniformity that limits real quality innovation.
  • Finally, the scientism (science’s belief in itself) that has come to dominate the tech sector and its role in human societies has largely served the interests of the rich and powerful, not least through the hope that aspirant digital scientists have to join that elite themselves.  Ultimately, this serves the interests of the few rather than the many.  Those on the peripheries or at the lower end of hierarchies have instead become increasingly oppressed and enslaved as a result of the propagation of digital tech across all aspects of human life (see my Freedom, enslavement and the digital barons: a thought experiment).  It is becoming ever more crucial to challenge scientism, and counter the belief that science in general, and digital tech in particular, has the ability to solve all of the world’s problems.

What’s to be done

None of these challenges and none of the reasons underlying them need to be as they are.  There is nothing sacrosanct or inevitable about the design, creation and use of digital tech.  We do not need it to be as it is.  It is only so because of the interests of the scientists who make it and the owners of the companies who pay them to do so.

There are numerous ways through which we can challenge the increasingly dominant hegemony of the digital tech sector in human society at both an individual and an institutional level.  I concentrate here on suggestions for individual actions that can help us regain our humanity, leaving the discussion of the important regulatory transformations that are essential at a structural level for a future post.  After all, it is only as individuals in our daily actions that we can ever regain any real power over the structures that oppress our “selves”.  Any actions that can help change the underlying structures and practices giving rise to the oppressions exemplified at the start of this post are of value, and they will vary according to our individual space-time conjuctures.  I offer the following as an initial step to what might be termed a revolutionary practice of digital freedom:

  • Create multiple identities for ourselves.  As individuals we are much more complex than the uniformity that digital systems wish to impose on us.  We are so much more than a single digital identity.  Hence, we must do all we can to create multiple identities for ourselves as individuals, and resist in every way possible attempts to control and surveil us through the imposition of such things as single digital identities.
  • We must resist being forced to use specific digital technologies.  We should always refuse to use digital tech when we can do something perfectly well without it.  We must likewise very strongly resist attempts by companies, governments and organisations to force us to use a single piece of tech (hardware or software) to do something, and always demand that they provide a solution through our individually preferred technologies.  At a banal level, for example, if you are happy with using Zoom and Apple’s Keynote, Mail, Numbers and Pages, you should never be forced by anyone to use Microsoft Teams or Google Workspace.  If people or organisations are not willing to adapt to your individual needs they are probably not worth working with (or for) anyway.  Many societies now require restaurants to provide details of all possible food preferences and allergies, so why should we accept being oppressed by digital tech companies who only wish us to conform to one uniform system?
  • We should never accept poor quality digital systems.  If you cannot do something you want to through an organisation’s digital systems, then it is always worth complaining about it.  Writing a letter of complaint, copied widely to relevant ombudsmen, is not only quicker than trying to use poor quality tech systems, but numerous complaints can cumulatively help to change organisations.
  • We must always challenge scientism, and emphasise the importance of the humanities in answering the questions that scientists cannot answer.  Our particular structure of science primarily serves the interests of scientists, who work in very particular ways.  This model of science is overwhelming dominant in the way in which digital tech is created.  Although scientists can produce impressive results, they are not the guardians of all knowledge, and they are by no means always right.  Almost every theory that has ever been constructed, for example, has at some later time been disproved.  We must therefore resist all efforts to make science (or STEM subjects) dominant in our education systems.  We must cherish the arts and humanities as being just as valuable for the future health of the societies of which we are parts.
  • We should identify and challenge the interests underlying a particular digital development.  All too often innovations in digital tech are seen as being inevitable and natural.  This is quite simply not the case.  All developments of new technology serve particular interests, almost always of the rich and powerful.  To create a fairer and more equal society this must change.  The scientists who have developed generative AI, for example, are completely responsible for its implications, and it is ridiculous that they should now be saying that it has gone too far and should somehow be controlled.  They did not have to create it as it is in the first place.
  • We need to implement our own digital systems to manage emails and social media. It is perfectly possible to reduce the amount of digital bombardment that we receive, but we need to manage this consciously and practically (see my Reflections on e-mails).  Simple ways to start doing this are: file all copy correspondence separately; always remove yourself from mailing lists unless you really want to receive messages (you can always rejoin later); limit your participation in social media (especially WhatsApp) group; and keep a record of the time you spend each day doing digital tasks (it will amaze you) and think of how you could use this time more productively!
  • Take time offline/offgrid to regain our humanity.  It is perfectly possible still to live life offline and offgrid. Many of the world’s poorest people have always done so.  The more we are offline, the more we realise that we do not need always to be connected digitally. Some time ago I created the hashtag #1in7offline, to encourage us to spend a day a week offline, or, if we cannot do that, an hour every seven hours offline.  Not only does this reduce our electricity consumption (and is thus better for the physical environment), but it also gives us time to regain our experience of nature, thereby regaining our humanity.  The physical world is still much better than the virtual world, despite the huge amount of pressure from digital tech companies for us to believe otherwise. Remember that if we don’t use physical objects such as banknotes and coins, or physical letters and postcards, we will lose them.  Think, for example, of the implications of this, not least in terms of the loss of the physical beauty of the graphics and design on banknotes or stamps, key expressions of our varying national identities (not again that digital leads to bland uniformity).  Remember too that every digital transaction that we make provides companies and governments with information about us that they then use to generate further profit or to surveil us ever more precisely.  Being offline and offgrid is being truly revolutionary.

3 Comments

Filed under digital technologies, ICT4D, inclusion, Inequality, Internet, revolution, slavery, social media, technology, Universities

Tagged as , , , , , ,