The Dialectic of Big Tech

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By LUIZ MARQUES*

In data-centric capitalism, the criterion of cognitive validity is entrepreneurial profit from prosaic aspects of everyday existence, which embody profitable assets.

At Donald Trump's inauguration, multibillionaires Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Facebook, WhatsApp), Jeff Bezos (Amazon), Sundar Pichai (Google), Tim Cook (Apple ) and Elon Musk (Xuiter, Tesla). Better late than never, Bill Gates (Microsoft) was associated with adventure; “it can generate good things”. The ceremony with pomp and circumstance put an end to the promise of emancipation, a remnant of the beginnings of cyberculture. The question was who, beyond the theater and all the performances, in fact assumed power: the head of the Executive or the technocratic monopolies?

Once elected, the president pardoned those who invaded the Capitol and withdrew the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, the United States, from the Paris Agreement. As if that weren't enough, the pandemic denier broke with the World Health Organization (WHO). The cloud of investors in the Republican's campaign also agreed with the lack of appreciation for democracy, nature, and multilateral organizations due to the predatory business model. The fascist salute came as no surprise.

Added to this was the platforms' decision to release the fake news, which fray the social fabric under the sign of “post-truth”. The paradigm of truthfulness for conflict mediation melts into thin air. It matters little whether the messages are true or false. The essential thing is that they go viral, generate clicks, likes and inflate bubbles with feelings of hate and resentment to guarantee stratospheric dividends. In data-centric capitalism, the criterion of cognitive validity is corporate profit from prosaic aspects of daily existence, which embody profitable assets. Financialization is necessary; cannibalization is a consequence. In this case, the ends justify the methods. The cycle is closed.

Whether Silicon Valley is a cause or a product of the dissolution of sociability is unknown. What is known is that the original movement to safeguard privacy (Chaos Computer Club, in Germany) gave in to the techies, adapted to the cumulative order. To conceal, the Uber caresses consumers by lowering urban transport fares; and the airbnb It is presented as a utility for property owners during the recession. Thus, the precariousness of work and the monetization of social real estate are masked.

“We ended up in a feudal domain, shared between technology companies and intelligence services,” denounces Evgeny Morozov, in the book Big Tech: The Rise of Data and the Death of Politics. From the American counterculture, only individualism and consumerism remained; from the “global village” of the 1960s, nostalgia; and from the accusation against established institutions, laissez-faire.

End of privacy

In advertising, the teacher's work is exchangeable for the provision of services by a robot and a smartphone. Surveillance cameras and the routes of the Waze of the city's routes, every hour, are more effective than the city guard or the transport department. Algorithms ignore ideologies when creating the shared economy, with the fetishistic fascination of digitalization. They favor not abstract users; rather, the extreme right and neoliberalism in the scenario of crisis of the welfare state and the principle of hope. bullshitter, shit talker, never tires of telling stories.

We must be suspicious of what shines in the marketing. Contrary to popular belief, those entrepreneurs from the Valley consider themselves to be a supportive and collaborative vanguard, with an empathy that political parties and NGOs do not have. Silicon Valley if you imagine an alternative to Wall Street; when they are Siamese twins. What drives their gears is not informational inclusion, but rather the money from habits accounted for without authorization. The Orwellian dystopia takes on contours close to an imminent tragedy.

Artificial intelligence is the essence of the process for which privacy is a hindrance. Protecting citizens from excessive corporate intrusion is in direct contradiction with the mentality of widespread appropriation that is characteristic of contemporary times. In the interpretation of the executive of Global Commission on Internet Governance (Global Commission on Internet Governance), “barriers to the free flow of data are, strictly speaking, barriers to trade.” Soon, protecting one’s privacy will be an offense to market dynamics. Totalitarianism spreads its wings over private life. The mining of reality has no limits in the capitalist jungle.

Elon Musk in the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency deepens the power of Big Tech by strategically installing itself in the neural center of the imperialist Leviathan. What business can be done with its confidential data? Entryism empowers the hegemonic sectors in the flow of capital, with revenues greater than more than a hundred countries. The passive revolution of Artificial Intelligence is in full swing. The processing of the mass of indicators founds digital rationality, and algorithmic regulation, the technocratic utopia in apolitical politics for analog issues.

Control devices increase efficiency. Traceability allows better design, better improvement, better governance. But Evgeny Morozov asks: “Better than what?” If in Facebook Thousands of secret experiments are carried out every day, to optimize specific results or long-term deliberations: “it’s better to worry about the experiments we don’t talk about.”

Disruption, efficiency

Real problems cannot be solved with infrastructure to provide information alone; they require addressing human needs. It is difficult to maintain values ​​such as solidarity in a technological environment that thrives on personalization and unique experiences. “Where are the apps to combat poverty or racial discrimination?” echoes the Belarusian critic.

From the perspective of Big Tech there is only room for companies. With a greater IT density in Europe, revenue would grow by 500 billion euros annually. Perhaps we should let our guard down for the Google and IBM evolve without obstacles. It is up to the advisor of the W intelligentize and quantify state attributions and activities, pushing laws into the box spam, together with the worn-out democratic rule of law and the dream of another world, cherished in the Social Forum.

The exaltation of disruption and efficiency, in pursuit of performance, is the password for the public service bureaucracy to correct systemic distortions, with the panacea of startups. Planning and conditioning, protocols and statistics reinforce the many anti-popular administrative actions, while fiscal adjustments inhibit constitutional mechanisms and throw the people back into the minority. Credit rating agencies and bond markets – not voters – call the shots and play hand in the present. “It is time for brown curtains / Of neutral skies”, ponders the poet from Itabira.

In the cybersphere, everything is solved by an app that is about to be invented. Health, education and security will benefit from the intersection of data and portable sensors. Byung-Chul Han identifies this as “the era of infocracy”. However, imperialism is not dead; despite the DeepSeek Chinese, downloaded from App Store da Apple , having surpassed competitors like the ChatGPT. With chips suspended by the US blockade, lower production costs and open source (free), the phenomenon causes panic on the Stock Exchanges. Geopolitical multipolarity is grateful for the coup de grace in arrogance.

The superpower suffers from the arrogance that prevents it from admitting, loud and clear: “My name is the United States and I am addicted to data.” Donald Trump hides the obvious and doubles down on the paranoid bet; he cancels the moment of antithesis in the dialectic of Big Tech and distorts the America First. The threat to individual and collective freedom makes digital networks more toxic. This has nothing to do with technophobia. It is about the struggle for sovereignty in a democracy with the political predicates of classical liberalism (tolerance, pluralism) and the emphasis of participatory socialism on social issues (equality, common goods).

* Luiz Marques is a professor of political science at UFRGS. He was Rio Grande do Sul's state secretary of culture in the Olívio Dutra government.


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