Those who cannot self-regulate will seek intervention from the outside; destabilizing technologies indirectly produce mandates for state control, for the malignant growth of the state — for the evolving techno-state: this weird fusion of tech companies and the federal bureaucracy. Miserable, frightened, dis-regulated people will covet structure — any structure — that calms them down, makes them feel safe. Bezos owns The Washington Post for a reason; Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey just proved that the infrastructure they own can effectively censor the President of the United States. New forms of audio-visual technology breed new politics (newspaper, radio, TV between 1850–1990) — new power-hybrids. Human politics lurches towards algorithmic politics and away from forms of political self-determination. An automated society cannot be democratic — or a democratic republic. An automated society is primitive, atavistic, deeply irrational. Governments have learned that they don’t need to use (much) violence or physical force: it’s far easier to invisibly hack our nervous systems, use cognitive force to keep us under control. I don’t even mean this in a conspiratorial sense, in the sense that this is a Big Decision made by some Big Other: it’s just the net result of self-interest in the system; anyone with any amount of power naturally uses whatever means seem to increase that power. Political organisms seek staying power. We simply have built tools that decrease intellectual heterogeneity and increase conformity and homogeneity. We simply have built tools that reduce our interest in our five senses and…
