When communism bit the dust, the world saw
the failure of an economic and political experimentation that germinated from
the thoughts of intellectuals such as Marx and Angels. While communism had its
own glorious moments, its fall is attributed to the indulgences of individual
autocrats it produced in various parts of the world who ran the governments.
From a bipolar world, in the nineties of the
last century, planet Earth turned into a unipolar one. The shift took away
the level of balance being maintained between the nations of the world. Capitalism
took control of the world and governmental/regulatory interferences
started coming down. Lack of regulatory control led to huge monopolistic growth
of corporations and they started spreading the tentacles over every
resource available on the planet; be it men, money or material. The result is
that of select few trusts/families and corporations controlling the wealth of
the world. These behemoths progressed every year higher than the growth of the
nations thus growing into extreme higher riches, going beyond the control
of the governments of the world.
Here ends the traditional Industrial
revolution. That was where we were at the turn of the century.
Enter technology....
Internet started impacting the world of
commerce and business in a big way. Thing started moving from brick and mortar
to the online 'click' world. With Web 2.0 arriving, the world moved into
social networking that completely changed the behavioural pattern of
humanity. Today an in individual is all alone physically but dwells in the
crowd of the cyberspace. Relationships and social orders are going thru massive
paradigm shift.
Add to that the online commerce. Something that
had started as a referral purchase from small online companies had come to
be established as big time ‘e-Commerce’ now. This Business is moving into
trillions of dollars. Online technology companies grew to become Industrial
behemoths. Google, Amazon, Alibaba, eBay there goes the endless list, multibillion
dollar businesses having huge market capitalisation.
As it is, at the time of the plateauing of traditional
industrial revolution, all major assets of planet Earth had come to be
owned by business conglomerates. With the online companies invading further, it
had completely become so. With scant respect for the governments around, these
industrial and online companies flourish with the laws made by themselves for
their own operations! It is almost like the thief keeping the keys. Has
anyone bothered to think of a future where humanity will be completely
controlled by the corporates? Time and again, these corporates come out with
technological innovations that would enslaven the masses and then
everything is simple. Just let them do a little arm twist; you are in their
hand, forever.....
It is not only wealth but it is the individual
liberties that we are compromising now. In the age of cyberspace that we are now, we
are at the mercy of technology which is acting as the regulator. Technology may
be considered neutral but the corporate that owns it is not. The intent of the
corporate owning the technology will be monetize the technology and amass
wealth, thru the regulation that it brings forth thru the technology. This regulator threatens liberty. Our
preoccupation with the idea that liberty means "freedom from
government" makes us not see the regulation in the new space.
This regulator is code, the software and firmware that
the cyberspace is made of. This code and the architecture; set the terms on
which life in cyberspace is experienced. Our privacy protection is determined
by the code. This code can censor speech. The code decides whether access to
information is general or specific in nature. It also decides who sees what and
what needs monitoring. It is a sort of
slow poisoning effect. We take our sweet
time to realize that we had compromised many of our liberties in order to use
the technology. In effect it is the technology and companies that own them that
is regulating us now.
This regulation will soon change the cyberspace from a
place that protects anonymity, free speech, and individual control; to a place
that makes anonymity difficult, speech less free, and the user at the mercy of technology
experts.
As mentioned already, for the technology and
software companies, code is the law and architecture, the policy. Both are made
by them. Amply protected by Intellectual regimes, the Internet corporations
march the monopolistic way in order to monetize the technology. The pattern is
similar to the mega corps of the industrial era in Pharma sector amassing huge
wealth through patented medicines. This is just an example. Human being will be restricted to the area
designed by the Internet mega corps, at the beat of the technology. For example
remember the attempt made by Facebook Corporation to take control of Indian
Internet space through the freebees (www.internet.org) in tandem with a leading
business conglomerate of India, with the National government abetting the
process. What will all these lead to? Liberty will be lost forever; you will be
the pawns at the hands of the mega corps.
What are the governments of the world doing
about it? Dictated by the mega corporates, these governments stand as mute
spectators with no teeth. Also, most of the governments of the rich nations are
headed by the rich guys from the corporate world and thus, crony
capitalism has come to stay here.
There
isn't much to govern, leave alone enacting regulations. Most of the governments
are part of the plunder. Planet Earth is now fast being annihilated.
Technology which we considered neutral has now
come to regulate us. It is time to wake
up and start thinking. Is this a world you and I have envisaged that technology
would help us reaching our aspirations? We are slowly moving from the devil of
Industrial Corporations to the deep sea of Internet Mega corps.
So the question is, what does future hold for you dear?
