Sometimes it takes a crisis to reveal what’s really going on. Covid-19 ripped off whatever sticking plasters still just about covered our unequal health outcomes, paltry free school meals, underfunded care work and feeble sick pay. Less noticed, but equally dangerous, is our relationship with technology. Our smartphone addiction and digital dependency was already bad enough. But in 2020, technology’s metallic grip on our lives Zoomed ahead faster than the most ardent Silicon Valley accelerationist could have ever imagined. Is there any way back?
It seems like a different age, but before the pandemic there were signs of a necessary rebellion against the tech giants. A flurry of books warned of attention span deficits, digital overload and mega-monopolies. Opinion polls found growing numbers of people tightening privacy settings or deleting accounts. Negative opinions towards Facebook et al seemed to be the only thing US Republican and Democrat voters could agree on: in one survey a majority of both felt that social media firms did more to divide the country than unite it. People – ordinary people, I mean – were discussing an obscure data company called Cambridge Analytica and pondering the pros and cons of the EU’s “General Data Protection Regulation”. A meta-critique of Big Tech was brewing.
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