After Snow Crash: The Internet - An Alternative View

by Jack Meeks

Tech companies today see themselves as being something to be emulated and view any attempts at any sort of regulation as being the worst thing on Earth to do.

Along the lines of having tech be seen as the "cool" guys is that now Microsoft has opened an office at the U.N. in New York.  They wish to be looked at as an "equal" in some way to a government.  In a sense, they realize that their power and influence go way beyond the influence that many countries in the world now have.  They want their seat at the table now and have goals of being more than just the outsider.  Also, the influence of Microsoft lives on even more so after people leave the organization.  Bill Gates has advocated nuclear energy as a solution to climate change in his nonprofit role.  Now Microsoft itself is in the forefront of promoting the idea of reopening Three Mile Island again.  They will use this energy to primarily run their data centers.  They threaten our neighborhoods with their nuclear power plants, which have been known to be of an unsound design and build.

Furthermore, it is not just Microsoft that is wreaking havoc, but Amazon as well.  Whole Foods used to be run by someone whose philosophy of Conscious Capitalism was looked at by some as a kind of viable alternative.  Granted, it was yet another attempt to put on a new face of a system that has failed time after time.  Having said that, when Amazon took over the Whole Foods chain, they began turning it into some kind of a place with a "jack in the box" mentality.  They have also introduced palm-scaling biometrics in some of the self check-out kiosks and have begun implementing automated robot-run mini-warehouses.  Before and after the takeover, Whole Foods was strongly anti-union, and yet today we have one of their flagship stores beginning to organize.  Silicon Valley itself was founded on anti-union sentiment from the very start.

Especially important to note here is that the very concept/idea of technology in the first place came from the enlightenment era where technology was created as a mythology that allowed and promoted the extraction of the Earth's natural resources.  Today we're about to be taken over by the so-called mantra of the progress of technology and have super exploitation in much of the world as a result of this.  And yet at the same time, we are in a desperate pursuit of knowledge of what is really going on around us.

In addition, tech companies now facilitate more financial transactions than some banks, as their users are going to Apple Pay, Samsung Pay, etc., and other digital banking services.  This, along with the $172 billion in credit processing fees that were paid by merchants in 2023, is now increasingly making cash transactions a thing of the past, which definitely hurts and creates hardship for marginalized and low income communities, as they often do not have access to these credit card services.  These credit processing fees are definitely one of the root causes of many of the faults of our current economic arrangements, as much of the population now is so used to paying via cards online or in one form or another.  Perhaps instead of the one to four percent going to the tech and credit card companies, maybe have that percentage go to a fund for cleaning up the environment or to a world peace movement.

Equally important is that the tech now relies on a new type of exploitation that is quite different from the existing labor market.  It exists completely outside the traditional wage labor scenario and uses data harvesting as a substitute for work performed by the hour and/or salaries.  Profit and wealth accumulation then relies increasingly on this new strategy rather than the traditional wage labor market.  Thus the incredible demand for energy to run data centers.  Tech is now going to be, if it isn't already, a major source of emissions and a contributor to climate change.

Moreover, there is also something to be said about the role of the Internet in social movement activism.  It did play a huge role in the (((Arab Spring))) and the women's uprising in Iran in 2022.  It took 13 years for the Syrian people to (((remove))) the existing government in power, and it is surprising to many of us to see the type of new regime that has taken over.  (Community Note:  Syria is now run by an ex-Al-Qaeda guy.  Really...)  Whatever it is, it is certainly not the original "cool" vibe of the 2011 Arab Spring movement.  Another aspect of the Arab Spring period is that in Egypt when the new government took power, it sentenced a dissident to a long term prison term simply for a blog in social media.

One can say that there always seems to be some sort of a "friendly" relationship between the governments and the companies that produce the social media applications, such as when the Israel government asked Facebook (Meta) to block the social movement Students for Justice in Palestine from using Instagram.  Meanwhile, the Palestinians see their only hope or way out is to use social media tools to get their message to the world.  They are, however, dealing with a great deal of suppression and censorship in these attempts.  When there are uprisings coming out of any of these types of situations, one of the first thing the governments do is pull the plug on Internet connectivity!

During the time period when I was riding on work shuttles going to Silicon Valley, my fellow commuters were talking about how their work was part of some kind of "revolution" going on.  Yeah, the counter-revolution.  Many new tech people are now more than willing to work on so-called "defense" projects with the venture firms putting up the funding money to back them.  A few years back, tech workers were speaking out in public against doing defense tech work.  Now, more than one third of tech industry workers say they are more likely than a year ago to work on "defense" projects.  This is due to (((war in Ukraine))), as it has definitely changed the view of the tech world towards technology and military-related projects.  Over the last five years, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have earned billions of dollars from DoD contracts and the U.S. government is the largest buyer of IT products in the world.

Critically important to add here is what happens when Internet access is not available for one reason or the other.  When there were cable connection issues in Africa recently, much of the population was in such a state of chaos that many acted like it was close to an end-of-the world scenario.  This goes to show how much of an unhealthy reliance on the Internet there is for people living in both developed and developing countries.  For some of those who are alive today on the planet, social media, connectivity, etc. is all that they have ever known.  For the lucky ones who knew life before, we will have to be like spiritual guides to help lead those who may choose to have another lifestyle - perhaps a happier one!

At the same time, I am not one of those who hates the Internet, as it does perform some useful purposes for people who isolate too much and for others who for one reason or another cannot leave their dwellings.  Also, it is good to remember that, in the beginning of the Web, there was Berkeley UNIX (BSD) and The WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) which was an early online community movement forum.  Then there was the cyberpunk movement and the novel Snow Crash.  Now, in modern day times, many university teachers will often no longer assign students novels to read.  The Internet has had that much affect on them, as even the best students cannot bring themselves to actually finish a book.

Amazing where the Internet has taken us.  What started out as a tool for possible liberation has turned out to be something that contributes to less freedom for most and more power for private corporations.  The tech companies also now have effectively taken over some functions of the state, such as meddling in foreign wars.

In conclusion, the personal responsibility of tech workers ought not to be placed so much on the individual, but rather on the corporate end.  However, there is also the issue of complicity.  The workers could reject the tech world and consider no longer being employed in that industry, as one does if they no longer believe in its cause.

For those who choose to continue working in tech, perhaps brainstorming and possibly creating an alternative to the existing Internet might be a possible path to work towards.  One has to remember that before the advent of the Internet there was Minitel in France, which was a free online service before it was crushed by (((American cultural and technological imperialism))).

Snow Crash, not the dot-com crash!