Several weeks ago, during a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum, the CEO of the largest advertising agency in the world announced that, according to his latest statistics, the two major concerns of the population regarding the digital economy were, first, data privacy, and secondly the future of employment. As for the first issue, the advertiser seriously warned Alphabet’s CEO to publicly acknowledge once and for all that Google was a media company, not a technology firm. As for the second, he said, it was all due to a raising wave of “populism” in Western politics.
While it is completely understandable that Sir Martin Sorrell’s biggest concern is Google’s (still) unofficial plan to lead the advertising business at a planetary scale, jeopardising the supremacy of WPP, it seems frankly unfair to resolve that the rest of the world’s doubts about the future of work are just a matter of demagogy.
The fact that “a generation from now, a quarter of middle-aged men could be out of work”, if the automation trend continues (according to the former Treasure Secretary of the United States in an article for the Wall Street Journal), makes Mr Sorrells’s words not only unfortunate, but also a rather misinformed opinion.
Meanwhile, far away from Davos, a senior researcher at the RAND Corporation, another decisive strategic center worried about the control of information technologies, published around the same time an article at the company’s blog on how opportune would be for the US to initiate “information warfare activities” given the ambiguity of the current international law. The analyst wasn’t talking about cyberattacks and its countermeasures (or not only), but particularly about all those activities that “fall short of international definitions of aggression” such as psychological and cyber influence operations using the social media networks.
Both cases illustrate quite well the current battle taking place at the most influential and strategical institutions, not only in an intent to centralize and control both technology and the Internet for economic purposes, but even to weaponize them against the population.
Yet, “populism” or “luddism” still seem to constitute the two main arguments against any possible political interrogation about what’s broadly defined as the Technology debate. A debate, on the other hand, that was never as present, mediatic and persistent as it has been for the last two years.
We pretend to go beyond that political denial proposing a civic debate among academics, professionals and other key agents of the industry, during a one-day series of open discussions around the political impact of Technology and the Internet.
With their expert contribution, we hope to peek through the armoured glass walls of “political neutrality” and “unregulated & neoliberal” truisms that seem to protect Technology and the Internet from a critical civic examination.