Who Wants to Be a Slave? The Technocratic Convergence of Humans and Data

Daniel Broudy,Makoto Arakaki

doi:10.3389/fcomm.2020.00037

Abstract

Marshall McLuhan observed in the 1960s that humans are toolmakers whose tools eventually reshape them. Fifty years hence, we suggest that the aphorism should include ‘rewire’ humans as the present age of the internet serves as the global nervous system for humankind. This article explores how, in this present period of the Information Age, media manipulate public opinion about and consent for new digital tools and techniques threatening human agency and sovereignty. This essay introduces the concept of convergence as developed by Henry Jenkins and explores how the practice has expanded in the current global pandemic milieu wherein the interests of a technocratic elite converge to cultivate a general acceptance of the digital tools of a new socioeconomic order. Alongside this analysis stands the historical development of computing tools and the development of data as tools of social control. In a world where the manufactured need for ever-increasing speed and efficiency have largely co-opted human reason, we analyze how digital tools threaten to merge with humans. Enlisted in the effort to examine the integration propaganda are historical accounts of this emerging order as elaborated by key public servants and intellectuals of the 20th century. The primary aim is to situate the top-down attempt to acquire control over the masses in a larger historical context when sophisticated computing tools began serving the need to track and control populations. The essay is an effort to grapple with the complex historical attempt to wield control over people through public relations and technologies.

Highlights

Reviewed by: Stephen Harper, University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom Rasha El-Ibiary, Future University in Egypt, Egypt
We suggest that the aphorism should include “rewire” humans as the present age of the internet serves as the global nervous system for humankind
“We shape our tools and, thereafter, our tools shape us.”. This aphorism, attributed often to media scholar Marshall McLuhan, comes from John Culkin, a friend of McLuhan’s who reflects on the theorist’s ideas and how they might serve the classroom teacher contending with the demands and distractions characteristic of the so-called “new electronic environment” (Culkin, 1967, p. 53)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

“We shape our tools and, thereafter, our tools shape us.” This aphorism, attributed often to media scholar Marshall McLuhan, comes from John Culkin, a friend of McLuhan’s who reflects on the theorist’s ideas and how they might serve the classroom teacher contending with the demands and distractions characteristic of the so-called “new electronic environment” (Culkin, 1967, p. 53). “We shape our tools and, thereafter, our tools shape us.” This aphorism, attributed often to media scholar Marshall McLuhan, comes from John Culkin, a friend of McLuhan’s who reflects on the theorist’s ideas and how they might serve the classroom teacher contending with the demands and distractions characteristic of the so-called “new electronic environment” 32) and shape perception about the degradation of human sovereignty, agency, and privacy In light of these powerful tools of information processing and dissemination, our central purpose is to critically examine how certain media tools and content normalize the dispossession of basic human and civil rights and work to prepare people mentally for unquestioning service as cogs in the global capitalist machinery. We analyze the persuasive communications that serve this emerging order of the market working to integrate human beings into the forthcoming Internet of Things (IoT) where all organic and inorganic objects are prepared for sale and purchase

A BRIEF HISTORY OF CONVERGENCE

CONCLUSION

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT