Technology Colonialism 81
jrepin sends an editorial from Anjuan Simmons on how tech companies are behaving more and more in a manner that evokes colonialism. Quoting:
Technology companies are increasingly being treated like sovereign nations. A nation with sovereignty has a right to conduct its internal affairs without interference from other nations. ... When technology companies are feted by foreign ministers and also refuse an invitation from the leader of their own country of origin, they exhibit the characteristics of a group that wants to be treated as a peer to heads of state. Technology companies understand the power they wield in the global economy. ... If Silicon Valley is allowed to become the central repository of information about people around the world, then there is a danger of setting up a form of imperialism based on personal data. Just as the royal powers of old reached far into the lives of distant colonized people, technology companies gain immense control with every terabyte of personal data they store and analyze.
Translation: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Translation: (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh wow, this article reads like a pravda piece might have during the height of the cold war. Lets do a sanity check. We have two 'trigger' words in this summary: 'colonialism' and 'imperialism', in newspeak contexts. Lets click on the link and see... Ah, the slogan is "Technology, culture and diversity media." We have another newspeak term: 'diversity', as any individual daring to identify as an individual or, worse, act in his own interest, is obviously a racist, sexist 'imperialist' pig dead set on world domination. Care to guess the politics of the submitter and/or the source?
However, despite being invited, Zuckerberg, Marissa Mayer, and Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, perhaps feeling their own imperial bona fides, decided to skip the president’s speech.
Like, how DARE they skip out on Dear Leader??! They need to check their privilege!
I'm all for protecting personal identity, rights, and liberty from predatory people and organizations (private AND public!), but this source is just a tad biased, folks. Too biased for its analysis to be much use. This article spends too much time bitching about the corp-rats, and no time dealing with the big elephants in the room, the ones issuing mandatory surveillance law and gag orders to silence criticism and dissent from those who would rather opt out. If the political culture in western countries still respected individual rights over groupthink knee jerking, we wouldn't have half the privacy concerns we do.
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We have another newspeak term: 'diversity', as any individual daring to identify as an individual or, worse, act in his own interest, is obviously a racist, sexist 'imperialist' pig dead set on world domination.
Gee, maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought 'diversity' strongly implied and endorsed individuality - especially given that one antonym of 'diversity' is 'conformity'.
If the political culture in western countries still respected individual rights over groupthink knee jerking, we wouldn't have half the privacy concerns we do.
Does the article really strike you as "groupthink knee jerking"? If so, then wouldn't you at least apply the same criticism to the corporate world, so much of which is the epitome of groupthink?
I agree that we need to restore a political culture that respects individual rights. But I don't think that the people who champion diversity, (and whom
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Gee, maybe I'm wrong, but I always thought 'diversity' strongly implied and endorsed individuality - especially given that one antonym of 'diversity' is 'conformity'.
Sure, except when it doesn't. Diversity is great until it's suggested that class-based affirmative action is hypocritical. In the case of this article, if you're techno-literate and run a successful business in the field, you're an oppressor, especially if you skip out on Dear Leader's speeches (among other accusations).
Does the article really strike you as "groupthink knee jerking"? If so, then wouldn't you at least apply the same criticism to the corporate world, so much of which is the epitome of groupthink?
Of course, and, yes, I would. Radical leftists like the author of this article are fine examples of dogmatic left wing knee jerkers. I called this guy a communist because he writes like one
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If anything, the focus of the article is too narrow. Data isn't even the half of it.
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They use a vocabulary that's quite larger than yours, without the heaping doses of fallacy and hysteria -- and you are calling that Newspeak? I've got some news for you: The Bush II era is over.
But, thanks for "translating" and trying to weed out all the unnecessary words from /. and for being an example of the kind of anti-intellectual you pretend to rail against.
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That's called fascism, folks.
No, it's not. It's also not called Colonialism.
When technology companies are feted by foreign ministers and also refuse an invitation from the leader of their own country of origin, they exhibit the characteristics of a group that wants to be treated as a peer to heads of state
So? Every Citizen in a Free Society ought to be treated as a Peer to Heads of State.
Corporations and Individuals should not have to "answer" to the Head of State, only to the Law. Quite the opposite in fact- it is the Heads of State who should be held accountable to the Citizens, and the Laws should hold only as much power as the Population grants them.
Re:Why invent a new word? (Score:4, Interesting)
Corporations and Individuals should not have to "answer" to the Head of State, only to the Law. Quite the opposite in fact- it is the Heads of State who should be held accountable to the Citizens, and the Laws should hold only as much power as the Population grants them.
I would agree with you if you didn't equate corporations with citizens. Perhaps corporations shouldn't have to answer to heads of state, but they bloody well ought to answer to government. The hierarchy should have citizens at the top, followed by the government in the middle, with corporations on the bottom. We've allowed that order to be reversed, and we're paying the price.
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I agree with pretty much everything you say.
The problem here is that they should answer to the Law, but increasingly are picking and choosing which laws they feel like answering to. If the best reason you can give for Uber to be allowed to ignore the law is "because I don't like that particular law", well... there there are a lot of laws that aren't liked by a lot of different people, and you're bound to find someone using the same justification to ignore a law that you like. I've met peopl
how does it apply to MS and Google? (Score:2)
Acting like != being (Score:5, Insightful)
Their are significant differences between corporations and countries.
Corporations care about money above all else - countries care about many things.
Corporations don't publicly arrest, imprison, or kill people, all countries do this, all the time, publicly, etc.
Corporations don't care about location, countries build it into their system
Some corporations agree to subordination, while all countries insist on superiority/equality (Countries always claim that they are in charge, not the corporations - even if in reality is the other way around).
I have seen no corporation coming anywhere close to claiming to have the powers of a country. It simply does not exist.
Re:Acting like != being (Score:5, Informative)
In Missouri, they do now! [mo.gov]
Re:Acting like != being (Score:5, Informative)
To make my previous post more clear: the letter I linked to was the governor explaining why he vetoed the bill that would give private security officers the same powers as commissioned police. As of two days ago, his veto was overridden and that bill is now law.
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Corporations routinely pay massive bribes in tax havens to politicians from all over the world, the main reason why politicians do not target those tax havens. They have grossly excessive power via those bribes.
Suck it up you privacy invasive freaks, the laws will crack down eventually and the digital anal probing will be over.
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Look, my 6 year old niece acts like a queen, that doesn't make her one.
No duh. At that age, she has to first pay her dues and settle for being princess for a while. Maybe even just a lady or duchess.
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Re:Acting like != being (Score:5, Informative)
Corporations care about money above all else - countries care about many things.
But most of those things boil down to money, either in cash or resources. Almost every war, even wars purportedly of religion, begin because someone has something someone else wants.
I have seen no corporation coming anywhere close to claiming to have the powers of a country. It simply does not exist.
The RIAA and the MPAA use to send out "swat" teams with their jackets emblazoned with their cartel acronym (in the style of the FBI or ATF) to shakedown street bootleggers. Orin Hatch suggested in a senate hearing on piracy that the RIAA should be allowed to remotely destroy computers hosting songs. The idea is not lunacy.
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The history of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency may also be a relevant line of research wrt corporate power.
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Re:Acting like != being (Score:5, Insightful)
I have seen no corporation coming anywhere close to claiming to have the powers of a country.
Dutch East India Company [wikipedia.org]
"It was a powerful company, possessing quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts,[5] negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies.[6]"
"By 1669, the VOC was the richest private company the world had ever seen, with over 150 merchant ships, 40 warships, 50,000 employees, a private army of 10,000 soldiers, and a dividend payment of 40% on the original investment.[28]"
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The Bundy Ranch now controls a piece of Nevada about the size of Connecticut, after having trained their guns on federal agents and turned them away.
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Individual corporations, perhaps not. But together corporations already own entire governments.
Facebook delenda est (Score:5, Insightful)
This illustrates why the Free Software movement is so incredibly important. But it isn't just Free "Software" that we need; it's Free Protocols, standards and systems. It is intolerable to allow the Internet to be carved into centralized, single-company-controlled silos like Facebook, Twitter, and Google's various services because they abuse that control for their own ends, and will only expand the degree of that abuse in the future. It is inevitable that they will eventually use their privileged position to unduly control world events [kieranhealy.org], if they aren't doing so already.
It is not enough to simply avoid using those things; they are already actively working to rape us of our privacy (through third parties) whether we participate or not. We have a moral imperative to both actively resist having anyone use them and to build decentralized, privacy-respecting replacements.
Of course, that's easy to say. With all the money and power vested in asserting totalitarian control over the world's information against us, how do we win?
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"build decentralized, privacy-respecting replacements" Nothing stopping you or anyone else from doing this now. And for the vast majority of people Facebook, Twitter, and Google has always been "free software" which is what made them popular in the first place. In today's world it is up to each person to guard their own privacy. Plenty of free tools for e-mail and messaging encryption and anonymous web browsing. Stop using any social media services. If you are really paranoid only use public Internet cafes
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Too bad doing so is literally impossible.
Awesome. Now tell me how to stop third parties (e.g. friends, family, utility companies, credit reporting agencies, anybody operating surveillance cameras, the governme
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Well the only solution to your complaints is to kill the Internet. And who is violating your 1st amendment rights? And your taking out "key" people scenario sort of makes you sound just a tad paranoid. On the other hand there are some "key" people whose timely exit to the afterlife would actually make things better.
Governments of the World! (Score:2)
Ghost Writer? (Score:2)
I initially assumed that this was written by Bennet Haselton. When I didn't see his name attached to it, I immediately wondered if he's testing Slashdot to see if his brilliant ideas invoke eye-rolls because they are associated with him, or well, they just are not that brilliant or insightful.
Is this a pseudonym for John Katz? (Score:3)
Sweet Jesus. Will you get on with THE POINT?
Voluntary colonialism (Score:5, Interesting)
If people give up their data willingly, that is not colonialism. Colonialism dealt with the forcible removal of people's rights. When it's voluntary, no one has any business complaining. It's not hard to understand.
Re:Voluntary colonialism (Score:4, Insightful)
American colonists famously bought Manhattan island from the natives for proverbial beads and trinkets. You may call that "voluntary," but it's still abusive.
Re:Voluntary colonialism (Score:5, Insightful)
Buying Manhattan by itself couldn't be called colonialism. The real problem with colonialism is the eventual suppression of human rights, murder etc. Without human rights violations, there would be no problem with colonialism.
Let me put in this way. I'm an Indian (as in India - the east. Not native American). The British were a problem only because there were human rights violations. Let's say the British instead had democratic elections and people freely chose a British national to govern instead of an Indian, I would have absolutely no problems with that. That would not be called colonialism.
As long as there are no human rights violations, there's no complaint. And tech companies are not engaging in that kind of thing.
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Completely agreed.
Just because a company/sovereignty is able to rationally appeal to a group (that they themselves have put into a subordinate position) into seeing the terms of they offered as beneficial to them, does not make it reasonable.
For instance, the West very often convinces resource-rich nations that their (cheap) offer to buy the nation's resources is beneficial. They argue that there is no infrastructure in the country to transport their vast resources to the market -- a condition the West has
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Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island from Native Americans who did not control the area. You may call that "fraud", but is still hilarious.
China in the NYT (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm guessing it's related to a report:
SHANGHAI (Reuters) - China is asking some U.S. technology firms to directly pledge their commitment to contentious policies that could require them to turn user data and intellectual property over to the government, The New York Times reported.
Citing unidentified sources, the report said Beijing had distributed a document to some U.S. firms earlier this summer asking them to promise they would not harm China’s national security and would store Chinese user data within the country.
The NYT report, which comes just ahead of President Xi Jinping's first state visit to the United States, did not identify which companies had been asked to make the pledge.
The document also asked the companies that their products be "secure and controllable", a phrase that industry groups said could be used to force companies to build so-called back doors that would allow third-party access to systems, it said.
Officials at the Cyberspace Administration of China did not respond to a faxed request seeking comment.
Sources told Reuters last month that China had resumed work on a set of banking cyber security regulations it suspended earlier this year.
The previous regulations - containing provisions that required Chinese banks to buy more domestic IT equipment and Western tech vendors to disclose secret source code if they sell to lenders - drew strong protests from foreign business lobbies, the U.S. and European governments.
China regulators suspended the plan in April, saying they would consider feedback from domestic banks. The suspension was seen as a diplomatic victory for the Obama administration, coming shortly after visits to Beijing by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.
In July, China's legislature adopted a sweeping national security law that said all key network infrastructure and information systems must be "secure and controllable".
commentsubjectsaredumb (Score:2)
As it is, their factories and contacts aren't quite equipped to assemble physical force. I'd be more nervous (like TFS wants) if they did.
If a company is doing something utterly out of line, the governments still have the power to demand compliance. If TFS is talking about "influence", control, laws passed, well I have a newsflash pal that shit has been in lobbyist pockets for ages. Industrial tobacco (which isn't very tobacco) burns the country what, bil
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Down with all the new East India Companies! (Score:2)
Summary (Score:3)
==> I hate tech and you should too.
Seriously, this is one of the worst editorial ever. Some real gems:
-- "It is unclear how much pressure these government bodies can impose on companies like Microsoft when they are so dependent on the company’s products." .... are not regulated either.
By this logic, Boeing, GE,
-- "In December, Lei Wu, the top internet minister in China, met with Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, and Jeff Bezos at their corporate offices."
Should Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg tell them not to meet them? What does the author expect here from tech CEOs?
-- "There is a clear desire by many technology companies to create products that consumers can use regardless of the type of platform they have chosen."
Is there a problem here?
-- "These emails showed that attempts to hire an employee away from another company in the collective would be a career-ending move by the person responsible." ... I can go on an on....
Are these illegal activities limited to tech companies only? What about the whole financial industry? Tech or no tech, almost all giants corporations have paid heavy fines. Just yesterday, GM accepted guilt for ignition switch and paid 900 million fine (this is in addition to billions paid for civil lawsuits).
The Sixteenth Century called... (Score:3)
This is not a feature of the technology industry. This is exactly the behaviour of every industry that becomes arrogant, such as the automotive industry in the twentieth century, the railroad industry before then, monopoly trading companies like the East India Company, and banking as far back as the Middle Ages if not earlier.
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I was reminded of the Dutch East India Company - which featured heavily in my childhood history lessons. Let me paste an excerpt summary from Wiki pedia
'The United East Indian Company (Dutch: Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie; VOC), referred to by the British as the Dutch East India Company,[2] was originally established as a chartered company in 1602, when the Dutch government granted it a 21-year monopoly on Dutch spice trade. It is often considered to have been the first multinational corporation i
Colonists must be taxed (Score:1)
Where you stand depends on where you sit ... (Score:3)
/. Monday: Microsoft [slashdot.org] and Apple [slashdot.org] are refusing to go along with government demands for data based on a court order. Conclusion: the government is repressive (or at least reactionary), those laws are unjust, and the companies resisting them are brave and noble. They have every right to challenge and resist those governments.
Make up your damned minds people.
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Mostly Good (Score:2)
Pretty good writeup of all the similarities... the one glaring flaw being that he got hugely distracted by "white male." Racism exists, but tech companies don't use it to justify their hegemony -- instead they use the idea that they are always trying to improve things for you. Their way is the best way (whether you consent to it or not) and not by coincidence, this "best way" always involves more technology. Their technology.
Every empire needs some principle by which it overtly justifies all the inevitabl