Get Smart – It’s the Age of Security
With the proliferation of computerized communication technology and the introduction of the World Wide Web in the early 1990s, we came to recognize that the Industrial Age was becoming history and was being rapidly replaced by something we’ve come to call the Information Age. From the simplest viewpoint – this was first as projection or the dissemination of information in a highly efficient manner; then as channeling with information flowing back as personalized data collection or what we’ve come to call Big Data; and finally as the utilization of this data to secure hierarchies of power and influence whether in marketing and business, culture and personal lives or even politically. Market forces inevitably pushed all the sciences, including the behavioral sciences, into the mix.
That’s how it works in the “free market” – the technology comes first driven by the market and only later will society interpret, judge and dissect its meaning, value and costs.
Now we need to step back away from this and take a big picture look at history – further back still and we see how the institutions of societies have, to the greatest degree, been in place to secure traditional hierarchies of power and wealth. From the simplest viewpoint, these structures are a dichotomy of master and slave. Indeed, the three estates of medieval Europe, were really better described as two estates – those of the powerful elite masters, nobles and clergy, who all came from the same families, bloodlines and power bases and on the other end the great masses called peasants and serfs.
These institutions of power are by nature conspiratorial and designed to ensure that existing systems of power either remain in place or are further strengthened through any innovations. Today is no different than the past in this respect. This may bear repeating – the powerful work to retain their hold on power and this is the same today as it has been for millennia.
Recently, we’ve heard of the efforts of the political right in the US to secure their positions of power despite the radical changes in information technology and the free exchange of ideas (and the potential for an enlightened slave). In her book, Democracy in Chains, historian Nancy Maclean argues that libertarians and the political right have conspired to sacrifice democracy for their purest forms of capitalism. In a real sense, what obscures the true agenda of the powerful is less their stealthy approach to their manifestoes, and more the distortions, historical revisionism, and the propagandizing of their efforts.
In her book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein makes this very clear. Democracy, real democracy or the rule by majority is truly incompatible with the type of capitalism practiced worldwide today – call it neoliberalism or neoconservatism. As the ignorant masses become more informed – an inevitability of the developed world in this Information Age – the power structures of capitalism and the division of wealth will become more and more apparent.
So what do the powerful do? First, simply bifurcate the economy further and push the supply-side agenda of the Chicago School personified through the political leadership of Reagan and Thatcher: privatize what is public; set the market forces free through deregulation; and reduce the burden of taxes by cutting social spending to the bone. Put simply – make the rich richer and decimate the middle-class. Go ahead and upset the old Keynesian balance – a working capitalism, in the sense of placating the masses, is no longer necessary.
The second step is get rid of democracy and prepare the world for modern demagoguery. What do we see today in the personification and indeed the culmination of these policies with Donald Trump’s presidency? Gerrymandering (including “gerrymandering” the supreme court), voter suppression; using “law and order” to criminalize race and criminalize poverty to further disenfranchise that segment of society; personifying corporate institutions; redefining freedom as an economic concept; stressing “individualism” over collectivism despite global corporatism; and most important using the tools of the modern security state especially its most potent tool: fear. All of this to be carried out along with the long-time strategies of deception, misinformation and use of evangelical and conservative social causes to retain hold of as many working class voters being left behind by this new economic reality as possible.
Naomi Klein must be given credit for also naming this sub-segment of the Information Age – she called it the Security Age and this is the age in which we now live.
For Naomi, this is the wealthiest and most powerful moving into their protected enclaves or “green zones” while the rest of us must flounder in the remnants she calls “red zones”. Indeed, security is to become a driving force in an economy that has no longer maintained its footing through grass roots consumer/working-class affluence, but through the shell game of credit and the need for security: personal armed forces; cyber and brick-and-mortar protection; surveillance equipment and software and other forms of “black operations” tools and services.
Look around you and open your eyes. You must first step back, take in the historical context and then come back to earth. What, after all, did the President of the United States use as the great symbolic promise of his campaign? That’s right – the big, beautiful Wall!
Fear has ever been a powerful force in politics and today is no different than in Weimar Germany or other times and places in world history. In America, race has always had an important sleight-of-hand function in bringing poorly educated white voters into the fold and keep them clear of the real issues – the real conflict – that of class. In July, in one of his campaign-style speeches in Youngstown Ohio, Trump took the message further. The enemy (immigrants or non-whites) weren’t just coming for your jobs, your perceived privilege and your way of life, but were coming to rape and kill your women. None of this is really that innovative from an unoriginal want-to-be tyrant working to establish his own cult of personality and personal power-base.See what’s going on and pay attention. The courts have set the stage with billions of dollars from rich donors and a Congress long-past beholden to their constituents. Civil rights era voter laws have been tossed out or left to erode; Fourth Amendment rights have been seriously compromised; and a sort of fascism called Corporatism has already seated the real power into our lost republic of America.
Things are happening too fast – combine the shock and awe tactics of modern power brokers including the Trump administration with the exponential trajectory of technology and you have nothing but disaster for freedom-loving Americans (even world-citizens).
In the last year: legislation allowing Internet Service Providers to share consumers’ online browsing history without permission; FBI warnings that smart toys can spy on your toddler; housekeeping robots mapping homes and sharing intelligence with other companies; spying TV sets; and most significantly, the revelation to many Americans of something that is called computational propaganda – one of the most powerful tools of this new Security State in the new Age in which we live.
Get it. The Security Age started on September 11, 2001 during the Bush presidency and the passage of this Patriot Act. America’s citizens gave up hard-won freedom for a security that only became necessary based on the irrational fears stoked by those exerting the most control. Snowden blew the whistle about the depths our government would sink.
This is a declaration – we live in the Age of Security and everything that entails. Certainly, this blog can’t even touch on it all – after all secrets, conspiracies, and nefarious operations are part and parcel in this age. Ask yourself if ours is a society mature enough (truly evolved enough) to really deal with what AI means. This Age relies on a new economy, re-secured politics, surveillance, and most importantly utilizes propaganda to reassert the masters’ power in ways our predecessors could never dream of. This Age is about Information and its Power. Make no mistake about that. It’s time to get smart and then to educate your brothers and sisters. Get it?
This post first appeared on the Reveille website on August 2, 2017 and is republished here with minor alterations.