We're All Data Now
2025's Bad Omens
Technology is being used to deny us organic collective experiences. We are not only divided and conquered, but repeatedly subdivided into easily conquered market segments. There is no lowest common denominator now, nor any real need for mass appeal. Instead, technology micro-targets the individual's needs and desires ... and it feeds our peccadilloes. Technology doesn't care why you are here or what you want. It just wants to profit from delivering it to you ... and then profit from what it learned about you while delivering it.
We are just data now ... and we've become fungible fodder for their experiments in manmade consciousness, which they expect to surpass us. It's the ultimate expression of a Neoliberal economic experiment that began in 1981.
The supply side has won. They control the capital, the wealth and the direction of the economy. Lingering reminders of demand side capitalism remind us of an alternative, but it is repackaged by technology into nostalgia and longing and as a generational experience that divorces young from old. It will remain contained and commoditized as long as we keep using our phones as a filtered portal to reality. We see everything through their lenses. We travel through their tollbooths. And we meet in their herding pens. Their technology is denying us the kind of organic collective experiences that once catalyzed mass movements. And this nation is nothing if not a parade of organic collective movements that have altered its course and expanded its polity.
That was back when our eyes scanned the faces around us instead of staring down at our palms. When radio, television and film went out "to the masses" in real-time and we "all tuned in" ... together. And that was when the sales pitches responded to the spending power of wage earners. Demand side economics means consumers control enough wealth and capital to make demands on the supply side. Supply side wanted investors and owners to determine the economy's trajectory. That’s what the 1980 election was all about.
Technology is completing a fifty year-long process. Supply side is reaching its apotheosis with the coming of A.I. It may have already gotten there because of the pandemic. That's when we all depended upon our devices to serve as the portal between us in our homes and the world outside. It intoxicates us with illusions of choice and control, but they manage our choices and direct our directions. But it is still not enough. That’s why A.I. agents are coming. They will be our 24/7 minders. In some cases they already are.
A lot is said and written about China's "vision of the future" and the example often given is its "Social Credit" system. It uses public shame and turns rights into acquired privileges. Are the systems being developed by Palantir really that different? It's being used to round-up immigrants and tested on travelers and college students from other countries. But make no mistake, our every move is being turned into a score ... a demographic datapoint ... and an operator's manual. Just wait until our agents know us better than any human or even ourselves.
Technology is getting there … and they want to get there before people get too squeamish about it. That’s why they lined-up behind Trump. It paid off, too. His Presidency put hyperscaling into hyperdrive. They can poach water and power and expect the public to pick up the bill. He’s also been a matchmaker between Silicon Valley and the Gulf, between A.I. and oil. And he’s got many ways to accept payment for services rendered.
All of this is happening without discussion or debate. And that's the saddest part of all. The deeper we get into their technology, the harder it is to have the collective organic experiences that create social, cultural and political movements. Our social media "feeds" are filled like troughs with the suet that suits our individual tastes When our noses are buried in the trough, we can't see what's on either side of us. Frankly, we can barely see what right in front of our faces.
None of that is lost on Peter Thiel. The former mentor to Vice President J.D. Vance and current End Times prophet once said:
We could never win an election on getting certain things because we were in such a small minority, but maybe you could unilaterally change the world without having to constantly convince people and beg people and plead with people who are never going to agree with you through technological means, and this is where I think technology is this incredible alternative to politics.
Doesn’t that describe where this nation is at here at the quarter-century mark? Technology is an alternative to politics. It is also offering an alternative to culture and society. And if we don’t put down our phones soon, it will soon offer the supply side an alternative to us. - jp