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And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again? Archilochus

Tuesday, May 14, 2019

Britain's 5G Future

-Slavoj Zizek, "We are already controlled by the digital giants, but Huawei’s expansion will usher in China-style surveillance"
Chinese citizens are monitored to such a degree that they can be barred from buying plane and train tickets for unpaid taxes and fines. Slowly but surely, this is the future we are moving towards

The media bombards us with news about the threats to our security: will China invade Taiwan as a punishment for the US trade war? Will the US attack Iran? Will the EU descend into chaos after the Brexit mess? But I think there is one topic which – in the long view, at least – dwarfs all others: the effort of the US to contain the expansion of Huawei. Why?

Today’s digital network controls and regulates our lives: most of our activities (and passivities) are now registered in some digital cloud that also permanently evaluates us, tracing not only our acts but also our emotional states. When we experience ourselves as free to the utmost (surfing in the web where everything is available), we are totally “externalised” and subtly manipulated. The digital network gives new meaning to the old slogan “the personal is political”.

And it’s not only the control of our intimate lives that is at stake: everything today is regulated by some digital network, from transport to health, from electricity to water. That’s why, today, the web is our most important “commons” (the term Marx used to describe the shared social space which constitutes the base of our interaction), and the struggle for its control is the most important struggle today. The enemy is the combination of privatised and state-controlled commons, corporations (Google, Facebook) and state security agencies (NSA).

This fact alone renders insufficient the traditional liberal notion of representative power: citizens transfer part of their power to the state, but on precise terms (this power is constrained by law, limited to very precise conditions in the way it is exercised, since the people remain the ultimate source of sovereignty and can repeal power if they decide so). In short, the state with its power is the minor partner in a contract that the major partner (the people) can at any point repeal or change, basically in the same way each of us can change the supermarket where we buy our provisions.

The digital network that regulates the functioning of our societies as well as their control mechanisms is the ultimate figure of the technical grid that sustains power today. Shoshana Zuboff baptised this new phase of capitalism “surveillance capitalism”: “Knowledge, authority and power rest with surveillance capital, for which we are merely ‘human natural resources’. We are the native peoples now whose tacit claims to self-determination have vanished from the maps of our own experience.”

We are not just material, we are also exploited, involved in an unequal exchange, which is why the term “behavioural surplus” (playing the role of surplus-value) is fully justified here: when we are surfing, buying, watching TV etc, we get what we want, but we give more – we lay ourselves bare, we make the details of our life and its habits transparent to the digital “big Other”.

The paradox is, of course, that we experience this unequal exchange, the activity which effectively enslaves us, as our highest exercise of freedom – what is more free than freely surfing on the web? Just by exerting this freedom of ours, we generate the “surplus” appropriated by the digital big Other which collects data.

And this brings us to Huawei: the battle around Huawei is the battle for who will control the mechanism which controls our lives. It’s maybe the crucial power struggle that is going on. Huawei is not just a private corporation, it is totally blended with Chinese state security, and we should bear in mind that its rise was largely financed and directed by the state. We already see how digitalised state control works in today’s China. This is from an Associated Press news report from February:
“Would-be air travellers were blocked from buying tickets 17.5 million times last year for ‘social credit’ offences including unpaid taxes and fines under a controversial system the ruling Communist Party says will improve public behaviour. Others were barred 5.5 million times from buying train tickets, according to the National Public Credit Information Centre. In an annual report, it said 128 people were blocked from leaving China due to unpaid taxes. The ruling party says ‘social credit’ penalties and rewards will improve order in a fast-changing society after three decades of economic reform have shaken up social structures. The system is part of efforts by President Xi Jinping’s government to use technology ranging from data processing to genetic sequencing and facial recognition to tighten control.”
This is the political reality of Huawei expansion. So yes, the accusations that Huawei poses a security threat to all of us are true – however, what we should bear in mind is that the Chinese authorities are just doing more openly what our “democratic” authorities do in a more subtle way, hidden from the public view. From the new law in Russia that limits access to the internet to the latest EU regulations of the web, we are witnessing the same effort to limit and control our access to the digital commons.

The digital network is arguably today’s main figure of the commons. The battle for freedom is ultimately the battle for the control of the commons, and today, this means: the battle for who will control the digital space that regulates our lives. There is one name that symbolises this struggle for the commons: Assange. We should thus avoid all easy China bashing and those who don’t want to defend Julian Assange should also keep silent about the Chinese abuses of the digital control.

12 comments:

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

I for one welcome our inherently obsolete overlords

Franco Aragosta said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Franco Aragosta said...

The BATTLE for FREEDOM lies NOT in the "COMMONS" but in the SELF.

Franco Aragosta said...


If Globalization Meant China Could Turn off Your Fridge, Would You Still Like It?

PJ Media

by Richard Fernandez

The pill many people take in the morning may have come a long way to the breakfast table, from the other side of the world, in fact. "America needs generic drugs. They make up 90 percent of the American drug supply. Without them, every large-scale government health program — the Affordable Care Act, Medicare Part D, the Veterans Health Administration, charitable programs for the developing world — would be unaffordable." In the fall of 2012, an FDA employee tasked with "inspecting the Indian manufacturing plants that make many of America’s low-cost generic drugs" discovered that its reputation as "the world . . .

Franco Aragosta said...

There's a difference between AUTONOMY snd AUTOCRACY.

Do you know what it is?

One's good, the other's not.

Which is which?

Franco Aragosta said...

As for Technology it's just like Industrialization and every other "advance" we've mde since human life as such began.

If there's a way to pervert it, abuse it, and do harm with it, WE will FIND it.

The Law of Unintended Consequences is Always at Work.

As sad above Conquering SELF is the ONLY way we as indivduals, could hope to find Salvation.

It doesn't really matter what the world does to US, it is only the way we CHOSE to RESPOND to "the Slings and Arrows of Outrageus Fortune" that make the difference.

Gert said...

Slavoj Zizek is right here.

Scares about Chinese 5C are just that: scares. Like Russia, China is made to play the part of the Big Boogadoo. The nonsense about 5C will be peddled by the same mafia that gave us gems like Saddam's WMD, 'Hillary will win the 2016 election' and of course RussiagGate. It seems they're now also pushing presidential hopeful Joe Biden.

Franco Aragosta said...

Does anyone here think Britain will ever be able to extricate herself from the DEATHGRIP of the BRUSSELS INTERNATIONAL BUREACRATIC "DICTOCRACY?"

Internationalists are BOUND and DETERMINED to destroy even the MEMORY of the DREAM of Self-Determination for ANYONE.

Once that diabolical ambition its fulfilled, God forbid!, Earth will, indeed, become "OCEANA" and the nightmare vision of both Orwell and Alex Jones (!) will be made manifest.

PRISON PLANET we will come to be, UNLESS . . .

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

The BREXIT Party will see to it, Franco. They're coming together now... as the "Conservative" Party has shown itself totally inept and unwilling to "cut the cord".

Hey, Tommy, Tommy. Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, Tommy Robinson!

-FJ the Dangerous and Extreme MAGA Jew said...

:)

Gert said...

Forget about Robinson, he's more popular in the US/Canada than over here. He's also aligned himself with UKIP, currently polling at about 3%. He's not 'respectable' enough for Farage...

The Brexit party will win the elections but ironically these are European parliament elections. The fate of Brexit is decided in Westminster, not by MEPs. The Brexit MEPs will make a nuisance of themselves in Brussels, as promised.

Once Brexit is finally completed the Brexit party will fall of the cliff, just like UKIP did after the referendum.

(((Thought Criminal))) said...

...but Brexit will be completed. If only single issue pols could learn to go away when their agenda is fulfilled over here...