2023-09-27 19:55:39
Accustomed as we are to consuming (mostly) what belongs to others, technology was and is not an exception that honors any government in gross terms. Although technological consumerism acquired very diverse modalities, in quantity and quality, the result is the same. We pay incalculable sums (and with them all its consequences) every minute that technological sovereignty is postponed, muzzled with occasional verbiage. Let us not confuse the seductive offer, and its ease of borrowing, with the true and concrete task of replacing imports of technologies in all areas. That the market presents itself as “seductive” with the offer of “technological wonders” in bulk, leaves on the table of our realities the very bitter impotence that assaults us in front of the showcases of the unattainable or the contradictory. Even if we make “sacrifices” to keep up.
The monopolistic concentration of technology is also a threat against democracies. And it seems that we have become accustomed, at incalculable costs, to meekly, plannedly and addictively consuming everything that is imposed on us by transnational technological consortia, often with headquarters in the war industry. The Internet will not leave us a mentor, for example. We transferred enormous sums to the military, banking and media business apparatus—without brakes and without audits. “Dependency” is understood here in its broad sense, which includes the most varied and most “new” addictions. We acquire technology without sovereignty; We do not consolidate our production forces, we do not create an internationalist current for an emancipated and emancipatory technology; We do not create semiotic power plants for emancipation and the rise of consciousness towards transformative praxis in the production of technologies and we do not create an ethical and moral bastion for the political control of discourse and spending. It is not that there is a lack of talent or experts, it is not that there is a lack of money or that there is a lack of needs with their scenarios. Once again, the crisis of transformative political leadership wreaked havoc. We talked a lot, we did little. Not even the MacBride Report (1980) we knew how to listen to and use, as it should.
We are under fire from (at least) three simultaneous wars: an Economic War unleashed to deliver another “turn of the screw” against the working class; a Territorial War to ensure control, meter by meter, against the social mobilizations and protests that are multiplying throughout the planet; and a Cognitive-Media War to anesthetize us and criminalize social struggles and their leaders. Three fires that operate in a combined manner from the global financial mafias, the war industry and the re-published “Communicational Plan Condor” determined to silence the people.
In particular, the cognitive-media war is an extension of the imperial economic war and is not content with putting its exploitative boot on the necks of the people, it also wants to; that we thank him; that we recognize that this is “good”, that it does us “good”; that we applaud him and that we inherit to our offspring the values of exploitation and humiliation as if it were a moral triumph of all humanity, as if it were a heritage worthy of being inherited. The financed discourse is a system of transnational strategic defense operated from imperial headquarters with vernacular aid. That is what a good part of the technology they impose on us and a good part of our addictions induced for the consumerism of their “irons” have served. A part of the economic-political power of the transnational technology-producing companies has its vernacular accomplice counterparts who operate in a way that is sometimes open and other times disguised by names of all kinds. It is a double articulation of dependency that surpasses national powers (many of them do not pay taxes, does not respect laws and does not respect identities) while offering support to local operations in which the balance of capital tilts against work.
Our technological dependence on communication is astonishing; we spend enormous sums on producing communication that is generally ephemeral and inefficient; Our theoretical bases are largely infiltrated by the bourgeois ideological currents that have taken over the academies and schools of communication; We do not have specialized cadre schools and we have not been able to develop semantic power plants capable of producing relevant and seductive content and forms in the task of adding awareness and transformative action. Except for the exceptions.
They have implemented banking-financial models of indebtedness and economic dependence inspired by the retraction of the role of the State to reduce and suspend the historical right to technological sovereignty. This is how we buy everything from medicines to instruments, from machinery to Philosophies of Technology. We buy phones, screens, transponders plus the cataract of replacements created by “planned obsolescence.” Our technological independence sleeps the sleep of “underdevelopment” anesthetized by juicy contracts that, in addition to subjecting us, “educate” us to be grateful and enthralled with the most surprising technological advances. Mostly unrelated.
This dependence is an ambush because even some attempts to deploy own manufacturing tend to be attached to the production and consumption models designed by business ideas and needs. As delicate as imitating content is imitating forms. Technological forms are not sexless or immaculate entities, and this does not mean that the terrain of forms cannot be expropriated (consciously and critically) to put them at the service of a cultural and communicational transformation; But it must be taken into account, what is really useful and why we are not able to devise better ways.
However, against all the difficulties and many pessimistic forecasts, the people fight from very diverse fronts and in asymmetrical conditions. With victorious experiences in more ways than one, a self-critical review of greater urgency is necessary. Intoxicated, even in what we can’t even imagine, we go about our “communication practices” repeating bourgeois manias and vices in bulk. The enormous barrage of illusionism, fetishism and commercialism with which the ideology of the ruling class shakes us daily has turned many of us into unconscious empiricist parrots capable of repeating hegemonic models thinking, even convinced, that we are very “revolutionary.” Let us immediately save the very few exceptions.
Taken from Telesur
Cover photo: Flickr outlet
#Culture #technological #dependency