Devices, derivatives and the distraction of the nation
“I feel like I’m involved in a secret eye contact conspiracy when I connect with people in public who are not on their devices, it’s like a club of the awake amongst the tech zombies”
So said futurist Douglas Rushkoff, author of ‘Team Human’, in his address to the House of Beautiful Business yesterday. “Just three breaths of connection activates the mirror neurons and I’m present again. Our online world is making democracy dangerous as we slide towards authoritarian facism” he warned.
“It’s hard for Zuckerberg to defend Facebook, because he’s not a charming person” noted Rushkoff, echoing the words of Anand Giridharadas two days previously. “Facebook should be a public utility” continued Rushkoff “no longer driven by surveillance capitalism. They should stop selling data, even by possibly keeping the ads. Don’t promise to ‘give back 90% of the money you’ve made, just stop taking 90% of it in the first place by doing egregious things to humanity”.
“I used to fear the United States would end up a ‘Berlusconi country’ (like noughties Italy) but now it is so much worse” he mourned. “Government is a far better way than corporatism for regulating power. We’re in the final days of the ‘market society’. We’re ending it…or it is ending us. Even hedge-funders agree, moving money from their instruments of financialisation into ‘reality’ — real assets of land and food production. Derivatives will die because capitalism has become recklessly abstractive”
“We have basically moved from a real world economy, through stocks that represent that real world capital, through derivatives and ever increasing abstraction to ‘nothing’!” Reality simply cannot keep up with the needs of the abstractive system. This fragility is a wobbling house of cards”
“We can use capitalism and economic growth for developing essential needs like irrigation. But we have replaced the three basic elements of production: Land, Labour and Capital, with a digital economy that focuses only on capital, and excludes land and labour. Which is why the ‘externalities’ of African kids mining rare earth metals are not factored in”
“National identity has been seen as a ‘stabiliser’. Which is fine as long as you don’t actually believe the idea of the nation is true!” he observed citing the creation of Italy as one of those contrived moments of crowbarring a national identity from a diverse mix of regions and principalities. “The nation state is a social construct. Even ‘my people’, the twelve tribes of Israel, is a founding myth from one family”
“If you think of the nation as more than a soccer team you get into trouble! The nation is a useful building block practically” he added, “but what we need is a new renaissance where we retrieve the entities repressed the last time around — i.e. the city state. London, New York, Lisbon…you can argue that the city state is more human, nimble, diverse and inclusive entity”
And on business “By definition your business is more human if owned by its employees. Every business (especially digital) should become a platform co-op not a platform monopoly. Everyone cares when made a part-owner or stakeholder. They will fight harder against pollution or inequality created by their organisation because it’s happening in their communities. That’s what beautiful business means”
Amen to that!
Ed Gillespie is the author of ‘Only Planet’
