Weekend Gems 011
On milkshakes, lines and modems.
Last week, I was invited to write an essay on technology, prompted by a seemingly simple question: "Is it possible to reimagine technology outside of technocapitalism?" What started as a straightforward challenge quickly spiraled into an endless exploration of ideas, theories, and frameworks. This blog post captures a weekend-long spiraling—though it offers something far from any definite conclusion, and painfully big brushes of otherwise equally painfully intricate concepts.
My housemates and I had just purchased the optical fibers pack at a gazillion mbps, so fast we could probably upload the sum of human knowledge in an afternoon, when the modem started acting weird. Upon inspection, the AT&T technician notified us that our neighborhood did not support 100% of the promised speed and that, instead, we would get a mere 70% of the performance. When I asked him if this was a problem, he shrugged and said “If it bothers you that your downloads will take one more 1 milisecond to complete then I guess so” and left.
This relentless pursuit of maximum optimization isn’t exactly a modern phenomenon. From Aristotle’s “eudaimonia” and Epictetus’ obsession with tranquility in ancient Greece, to medieval Christian philosophy and Thomas Aquinas’ writings on optimizing moral behavior, it could be argued that a big chunk of western (but definitely not limited to) philosophy was fueled by the quest to optimize systems of thought and being.
History has plenty of such examples, the majority of which is bound by a teleological framework. There, optimization is directed toward an ideal goal alongside a reason shaping the ethical, moral, and theoretical principles that define and guide the process along the way. The desired final state is located at the end of a linear path of constant improvement, where all means towards this end must iterate and grow exponentially until one fine morning we wake up and all of our struggles are gone.
This started changing in the Renaissance with the advent of mercantilism which would later evolve into pure economic optimization, spearheaded by Adam Smith in the 18th century. For the first time, the goal of optimization became fundamentally open-ended—at least in relation to social concerns. Increase labor productivity by compressing time and minimizing total energy and resource expenditure, and do so ad infinitum or at least until you crash all competition. Take no prisoners and drink their fucking milkshakes, Zuck boy. The sky is the limit.
So is it possible to reimagine technologies without technocapitalism? Well, if one accepts that technology is a means to an end within a broader social system of operating (there are plenty of people who would gladly disagree with this statement), then to answer this question, we must first define what goal does the current capitalistic system have, and, by extend, what particular role does technology serve under its imperative. In other words, what does technology help capitalism achieve, really?
In a reality of prisoners and milkshakes, even the most seemingly benevolent technologies are ultimately deployed for competitive edge. Maybe Mira Murati’s dream for AI is to radically democratize education down the line, but so far the single most palpable impact it has had is pump up operating margins for tech companies by facilitating the projected and very cool number of 136,000 layoffs since January 2024.
However, competiton on its own is not necessary “a goal”. It is rather thought of as one of the most definitive driving forces of progress. Progress, however, begs for further definition as it has not always meant the same thing throughout history, and it is very much a product of its time. For example, in Renaissance, “progress” referred to movement through space—albeit a circular one—and it was only during the Enlightenment where philosophers like Voltaire and Rousseau built the belief that progress was a linear matter. Roughly.
Yet the most definite paradigm shift took place in the 19th century, when progress became interwined with technological and economic advancement, a break from its entire prior history of being exclusively linked to knowledge, society and morality. For the first time, this shift saw both the scientist and the enterpreneur as two equal and symbiotically linked contributors to the betterment of society. Indeed, today technology and capital seem to be bound together, usually by seeing the former as a byproduct of internal tensions within the latter. This correlation is so strong that we have ended up thinking that progress is something to be generated, quite akin to the way we speak about capital.
Let’s assume, for a moment, that we’ve definitively answered the question, “What is the ultimate social goal of capitalism?” and, in doing so, clearly defined the role of technology within that framework (not that I claim to have done so—this is, after all, just a blog for sharing weekend thoughts). Are we then ready to ask whether it’s possible to envision technology outside of the bounds of technocapitalism? Not at all. Because that leads to an even bigger question: “What is technology?” Cool.
To approach the first question, we’re brought back to the fundamental discussion on technology, which centers around the concept of tools. Specifically, the debate over whether technology creates tools or is itself a tool. For example Siva Vaidhyanathan argues that “tools are technologies that generate other technologies”, while W. Brian Arthur has extensively studied technology as a dynamic, evolving system that grows through combinatorial innovation. The debate then extends to whether tools are conceived as neutral agents, or they have embedded within their design specific uses and, by extend, political charge. The usage protocol of a knife, for example, changes drastically when given to a chef or a serial killer, but an AK-47 doesn’t leave much room for interpretation.
Let’s imagine, for a moment, that as enlightened beings, we’ve definitively answered all the big questions about technology. Welcome to the sixth gate, and prepare to dance:
Can technology exist outside of an antagonistic framework?
An antagonistic framework assumes technology functions within systems of conflict, shaped by power imbalances, exploitation, and contradictions. At first glance, history seems to affirm this: technologies like cybernetics, the internet, nuclear power, GPS, and even canned food were born in military contexts, developed to gain a competitive edge over adversaries. There is a reason why Kubric chose to show his ape use the bone as a weapon to assert control and gain resources, and not to build a totem for the tribe.
This idea carries over to the other side of the iconic montage. It is why we refer to it as the "Space Race" rather than "Space Collaboration." While it would be an exaggeration to claim that every tool created today has a direct military origin, the tools that are indirectly rooted in military development, especially in the post-9/11 era, are enough to entertain the idea. And the antagonistic framework extends beyond military operations. From a Marxist perspective, technology is also often seen as a tool for capital accumulation, linked to alientation and exploitation which fuels the antagonistic relationship between labor and capital.
If you’ve made it this far, first of all, wow—and second, I have some bad news:
this blog post won’t offer any clear answers.
Everything above is just a random sequence of weekend thoughts, and there’s still a lot more reading to be done. Dotcom neoliberalism, the Californian Ideology, technocapitalism, communicative capitalism, semio-capitalism—these are just a few of the frameworks that have emerged over the past few decades, and each one of them branches out to a myriad more orthodoxies.
While I don’t have a definitive answer, it’s clear that technology and capitalism are deeply intertwined beyond comprehension. The problem feels like a never-ending cycle, where even imagining a non-antagonistic technology, free from being absorbed into competitive or exploitative practices, seems nearly impossible. What's more troubling is that without a clear understanding of technology’s purpose, we risk being flooded with unnecessary services, products with no real purpose, and devices that create new needs and struggles, all to justify the continuous pursuit of a progress who serves something yet to be defined.
And in case you were wondering, our modem kept shutting down, so I ended up working from the café across the street.
It worked out just fine.
