Klaus switches gears and tells us about how in the 4th Industrial Revolution he said that technology and digitization will revolutionize everything.
I don’t have an issue with that statement, we’ve already seen situations where technology has revolutionized our way of doing this, etc. I’m just curious how this “technological reset” will work when Klaus told us that by 2050 we need to reach net zero.
This, by even the most liberal of view points has to admit this is incompatible with net zero by 2050.
But we will gloss over that for the time being.
Klaus loves technology he tells us
“the speed and breadth of the Fourth Industrial Revolution have been and continue to be remarkable.”(152)
Luckily for us he tells us the purpose of this chapter.
“This chapter argues that the pandemic will accelerate innovation even more catalyzing technological changes already underway…”(152)
More importantly to me anyway he tells us this advancement in technology
“… will accentuate one of the greatest societal and individual challenges posed by tech: privacy.”(153)
I can’t stress this enough. The more pervasive technology is allowed to be in our lives, even the simplest level of privacy will be compromised.
Klaus even tells us
“we will see how contact tracing has an unequaled capacity and a quasi-essential place in the armory needed to combat COVID-19, while at the same time being positioned to become and enabler of mass surveillance.”(153)
I don’t know if Klaus thinks that is a bad thing.
The way in which its worded I get the impression that mass surveillance is considered good.
Mass surveillance although I am sure many would welcome such and invasion with the comment
“I’m not doing anything illegal so I don’t care.”
I am on the opposite side of the spectrum.
To me there really is no reason for mass surveillance because of the same reason — I’m not doing anything illegal.
Contact tracing, at least in my eyes, came about because every pandemic plan that every government had was discarded, and instead of isolating the sick, we isolated everyone while simultaneously allowing society to function as much as possible.
The thing about contact tracing which everyone seems to have been missed is the entire process falls down if someone choses to not follow the process.
For example, someone fills out contact tracing information at various locations throughout the city.
At point X they get tested and are positive for COVID, now what? Go home and say nothing?
So much for notifying everyone.
What if I contact the places I went and let them know that I’m now positive? Is the expectation people will now be contacted?
How does anyone know it was ever done?
Is an hourly waged employee tasked with calling everyone?
What about the manager? I’m pretty sure if you’re job is jeopardized by a potential shutdown due to something like this, what do you think the possibility is that the process will be followed exactly?
Electronic tracing is the same thing, what if you’re sick but you don’t get tested?
Who would know, yet you’re effectively a new version of Typhoid Mary or so everyone would like you to think.
What about getting pinged that you were in contact with someone who tested positive and you decide to do nothing?
The entire point of it falls down.
I supposed some of the issues regarding a manual process is mitigated with the electronic one but it still doesn’t stop the process from not being followed, and it also creates issues related to surveillance which shouldn’t be dismissed outright.
We seem to forget that the word surveillance means:
“watch or guard kept over a person, etc., esp. over a suspected person, a prisoner, or the like; often, spying, supervision; less commonly, supervision for the purpose of direction or control, superintendence.” That’s from the Oxford English Dictionary
So the implication is that you, the surveilled, are a suspect in some form or fashion, or more ominously a prisoner.
There is no probable cause to warrant you to be surveilled, which I think would be illegal, but I guess if you do it to everyone and you aren’t specifically implicated in anything illegal or sinister then the government gets a free pass?
I suppose the reasoning behind thinking this would be a good thing would have to be known before it can be definitively understood as bad but I’m willing to bet the rationale isn’t that strong.
According to Klaus the pandemic is the catalyst for the digital transformation we’ve been waiting years for (153) which in turn will create more than likely digital permanent solutions.
Klaus seems to think this will force a
“… more profound changes in how companies operate…”(153)
Sounds like he’s softening us up for ESG but we’ll see shortly.
Klaus observed that the pandemic accelerated development and implementation of digital technologies, which I am willing to concede.
It was heaven sent to finally work from home, if you worked in an office and had a job that could allow you to do that. The technology and infrastructure for that has been around for decades.
It only became possible because the pandemic forced businesses to realize working like we did for the last 100 years isn’t necessary anymore — the pandemic proved that point.
The pandemic also showed that technology has matured to the point where almost everything is a click away, all from the comfort of your own home.
The level of convenience is higher than any point in our history we all know it and love it, sure there are negatives to such convenience but, like everything else it’s a personal or corporate choice, to provide or use such technology.
Klaus doesn’t really say much from pages 152 -158.
He basically tells us technology makes things better and faster.
Sure I buy that. He tells us about a study in 2016 that:
“up to 86% of jobs in restaurants, 75% of jobs in retail and 59% of jobs in entertainment could be automated by 2035.”(157)
We’ve heard similar things before, so much for part-time work I guess.
The larger issue is what are these people going to do?
In the article Klaus cites
The Future of Employment: How susceptible are jobs to computerisation?
the authors state:
“Our model predicts a truncation in the current trend towards labour market polarisation, with computerisation being principally confined to low-skill and low-wage occupations. Our findings thus imply that as technology races ahead, low-skill workers will reallocate to tasks that are non-susceptible to computerisation – i.e., tasks requiring creative and social intelligence. For workers to win the race, however, they will have to acquire creative and social skills.”
This is easier said that done, and I think there is a societal element that appears to be missed in this analysis.
It may be possible to computerize those jobs and terminate employment but does that mean we have to?
It reminds me of The Twilight Zone, Episode 154, The Brain Center and Whipple’s.
It’s efficiency for efficiency’s sake.
From an economic perspective, what are those people going to do now?
Needless to say the economy will collapse around the factory when there are no people around with money to spend on goods and services.
Agreed, new skills will be required, but that’s not to say jobs will be available.
I’m curious how a guaranteed income will be incorporated into the removal of these types of jobs.
Moving forward it seems that Klaus thinks
“from the onset of the lockdowns, it became apparent that robots and AI were a ‘natural’ alternative when human labour was not available.”(157)
I get the impression Klaus thinks there are robots sitting in a warehouse waiting to be deployed or AI just waiting to be paid for and implemented at a moments notice.
I don’t live in that world, nor does anyone I know so I think it’s a curious statement to suggest that these are legitimate alternatives to businesses and industries that don’t have a robotic presence or have a need for AI but I think it’s telling where he thinks things should go.
I do however think, companies and industries that did have a robotic presence perhaps relied more heavily on it to accommodate changing “norms” during the pandemic because as far as I know it doesn’t take five minutes to buy a robot and program it to do something without error.
This may have been the norm in industries and companies that have already invested heavily in this technology before the pandemic but to suggest that six months into a pandemic there is going to be widespread acceptance and implementation of a technologies that are complicated and expensive to be deployed in record time seems to me, fanciful at best.
Klaus even says as much when he says:
“Chinese e-commerce giants like Alibaba and jd.com are confident that, in the coming 12-18 months, autonomous delivery could become widespread in China — much earlier than anticipated by the pandemic.”(158)
Alibaba is a multi-billion dollar corporation so is jd.com so they have deep pockets and from the statement it shows it was something they were going to implement anyway, so I am sure a lot of prior research and work on implementing something like this was already done.
Other corporations were stuck doing what they were normally doing, with less resources, or were just shutdown in the name of the pandemic.
This is not to suggest that AI and computer technology in general is bad or unwarranted it has many uses like Klaus tell us like Robotic Process Automation which replaces a human actions regarding certain job functions or for use in industries where AI can operate better, longer, and faster than a human(158).
This sounds great but my overriding question is what are all of these people going to do?
There seems to be this push to automate everything but if an economy is based on people working jobs that pay money so they in turn can use it to pay for goods and services it doesn’t seem like the concept of full employment is going to be around much longer.
This is why I’ve mentioned the concept of a universal income so many times.
It appears to be something that will become completely necessary, and if you’re beholden to a handout from the government and coupled with a digital currency with rules, things start to take on a sinister bend.
Marx looked at medieval life with an idealist lens
Remember he said:
“The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,…”
So I don’t think it’s out of the question this is what the globalists want with a few enhancements based on technology.
It appears the globalists want a subservient population
One of those “enhancements” is surveillance.
Klaus states:
“successful contact tracing proved to be a key component of a successful strategy against COVID-19.”(159) Excluding of course the reason is was required which was an emergency management group that wasn’t allowed to emergency manage, as I’ve stated previously. The typical trope of lockdowns and vaccines are stated yet again as necessary to fight COVID-19 and along with it contact tracing.(159-160)
Curiously Klaus uses the example of:
“…thus limiting or containing the outbreak, particularly when it occurs in super spreading environments (like a community or family gathering)”(160)
Is this an opening salvo to the destruction of the family that Marx tells us in the Communist Manifesto?
Maybe that is a stretch, but we’ve already seen families argue regarding vaccinations.
So in my mind it forces either everyone to comply or not, make their line in the sand and instead of being apart of a family/community your circle is now reduced in some fashion, couple that with continual isolation it’s bound to affect everyone in a negative way like extreme points of view and/or one inability to be reasonable to someone’s personal choice.
This seems to be a very minor issue in the eyes of Klaus he only seems to devote a paragraph or so to it, his big issue is digital tracing.
He at least acknowledges that privacy is a huge issue that needs to have a solution in regards to tracing.
Initially he tells us that tracing went from retroactive to real-time which led to enforcement of quarantines or lockdowns.(161)
Klaus tells us that some nations like China, Hong Kong, and South Korea “implemented coercive and intrusive measure of digital tracing.
They took decisions to track individuals without their consent, through their mobile and credit card data, and even employed video surveillance(in South Korea)(161)
I might add it turns out other nations did the same thing although we only found out years later.
Klaus appears to spin these measures by telling us the TraceTogether app used by Singapore’s Ministry of Health was the most lauded app for tracing.(161)
Klaus tells us
“it seemed to offer the ‘ideal’ balance between efficiency and privacy concerns by keeping user data on the phone rather than on a server, and by assigning the login anonymously.”(161-162)
I guess Apple and Google ID’s don’t play a role in this, even though you can only download the app from an app store.
You’re telling me that Singapore’s Ministry of Health doesn’t have a way of knowing who has anonymous ID X? Sure
Not to mention, if an app is using Bluetooth, to determine if you’re within 2 meteres of someone using the same app, and if there is a potential infection the information is then sent to the Ministry(162)
It clearly sends all kinds of identifiable information, I highly doubt it doesn’t, not to mention what other data does it send?
Your contacts possibly? GPS information?
If the point is surveillance why wouldn’t it send that information to the Ministry and other departments?
Obviously, there are issues and Klaus mentions those, but Klaus quotes Margrethe Vestager, the EU Commissioner of Competition who says all of the population issues regarding privacy is a “false dilemma.”(162)
“I think it is essential that we show that we really mean it when we say that you should be able to trust technology when you use it, that this is not a start of a new era of surveillance. This is for virus tracking, and this can help us open our societies.
But the very next paragraph is: (This was the question posed to her)
You used the word “we,” but a lot of the companies that are getting involved in contract tracing, such as Apple and Google, are companies whose honesty you yourself have called into question previously. Is that a concern?
Her repsonse is below
Well, obviously, the giants will have to be involved, because the operating system’s basically their domain. Actually, I find it quite encouraging that Google, with Android, and Apple, with iOS, tend to think about a decentralized system. I think the important thing here is transparency, that third parties have access to the technology and can vouch for it.
So I would say thinking that your data is secure and not to be used in any other way other than the way everyone thinks it will be used is clearly an issue because
more than likely you don’t own the data
The owners of the app do and if that is the case they can do anything they want with it.
Just look at facebook as a perfect example of who owns “your data” The link is to facebook’s terms and conditions, this is the latest iteration, it’s toned down from previous versions but the relevant part is this:
“Specifically, when you share, post, or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights on or in connection with our Products, you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content.“
Gotta love that, create derivative works from your works, so even if you remove your account they can still use those “derivative works” because they own them, how awesome is that?
Apparently Covid is a “fast-moving and highly volatile situation.”(163) But don’t worry Apple and Google will collaborate
“to develop an app that health officials could use to reverse engineer the movements and connections of a person infected by the virus…”(163)
But I thought it was going to be anonymous?
Just a quick point, why would anything need to be reverse-engineered when Apple and Google already track your movements? Enough pointing out the obvious – back to the analysis.
Apparently you would have to voluntarily download the app and agree to share the data(163). But what other data is it sending and are the people you are in contact with, is their data being sent as well?
But don’t worry apparently this tech
“would not be provided by public-health agencies that do not abide by their privacy guideline.”(163)
Empty words as far as I am concerned since according to Klaus public-private partnerships are something that he advocates.
The data is getting to where it needs to one way or another.
Numerous reasons are given why apps like these can and can’t work.
Basically, it boils down to adoption and trust, which I don’t think is very high given techs transgressions with our data over the past several years yet I think it is telling when Klaus says
“Today, about 5.2 billion smartphones exist in the world … This unprecedented opportunity may explain why different surveys conducted in the US and Europe during their lockdowns indicated a growing number of citizens seemed to favour smartphone tracking from public authorities.”(165)
I wonder if the option to not be tracked was on that survey?
It is an opportunity that is too good to pass up, but the privacy questions around a solution like this are many that haven’t been sorted out yet.(165)
But it does appear, according to Klaus, there will be as the corporations move towards greater surveillance.
There already are many examples of a company keeping track of their employees via card access and computer logins so I don’t think this is a stretch to believe, the question is why is it necessary?
As Klaus tell us
“they will cite health and safety as justification for increased surveillance.”(166)
To me this is a problem.
We’ve worked for the last 100 or so years without these kinds of things and we’ve always seemed to be moving forward so why do those in power feel this is something that needs to continue?
I know some people like data, more the better, and others are micro-managers who feel they need to know in minute detail everything about an employee, but invariably all it does is create an environment that no one wants to work in.
Productivity goes down which creates more micro-managing techniques. It basically creates the situation it’s trying to solve.
I’m not alone in this
“an increasing number of analysts, policy-makers and security specialists fear the same will now happen with the tech solutions put into place to contain the pandemic. They foresee a dystopian world ahead of us.”(166)
I don’t think that’s far off the mark.
Klaus devotes only five pages to this dystopia, but he acknowledges that
“information and communication technologies permeate almost every aspect of our lives and forms of social participation, and digital experience that we haveacan be turned into a ‘product’ destines to monitor and anticipate our behaviour. The risk of possible dystopia stems from this observation.”(166-167)
No kidding.
Klaus believes that in the coming months and years there will be conversations regarding public health and privacy, or security vs liberty which I’ve already discussed here
Klaus covers a lot of ground that we’ve already covered else where, but he does tell us
“the pandemic will mark an important water-shed in the history of surveillance.”(167-168)
He then takes the next page and a half to quote the same article, an article written by his second in command Yuval Noah Harari where
“we’ll have a fundamental choice to make between totalitarian surveillance and citizen empowerment.”(168)
Curiously the next sentence is
“The second is between nationalist isolation and global solidarity.
I think this is important since it’s a continuation of the nationalism/globalism argument.
To me is really about liberty vs security.
I think Harari is going to find the justification to use “under the skin surveillance” doesn’t come close to the threshold for it to actually be something where a majority of people would be willing to do.
He states very clearly:
“In order to stop the epidemic, entire populations need to comply with certain guidelines. There are two main ways of achieving this. One method is for the government to monitor people, and punish those who break the rules. Today, for the first time in human history, technology makes it possible to monitor everyone all the time.” To me this clearly falls into the camp of just because you can doesn’t mean you should, but what purpose could this provide? Harari doesn’t make his argument very strong when he says “fifty years ago, the KGB couldn’t follow 240m Soviet citizens 24 hours a day, nor could the KGB hope to effectively process all the information gathered. The KGB relied on human agents and analysts, and it just couldn’t place a human agent to follow every citizen. But now governments can rely on ubiquitous sensors and powerful algorithms instead of flesh-and-blood spooks.”
How does improving on KGB tactics be a cause to celebrate and embrace?
Has the KGB, in the past, been used for wholesome and loving purposes where they actively participate in society to ensure the wants and needs of the population are taken card of, or was mentioning the very word KGB cause everyone’s blood to run cold?
I’m pretty sure it was the latter.
Harari uses China, a communist nation I might add, next as a bastion of a country that monitors its populations it seems with without their consent but I could be wrong, but when you
“by closely monitoring people’s smartphones, making use of hundreds of millions of face-recognising cameras, and obliging people to check and report their body temperature and medical condition, the Chinese authorities can not only quickly identify suspected coronavirus carriers, but also track their movements and identify anyone they came into contact with.”
Something like this can only happen in a country that isn’t free from a western democracy perspective, not that we haven’t moved towards this path in the last few years, but that is another story.
Another example which Harari uses which I think is suspect is when he says:
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel recently authorised the Israel Security Agency to deploy surveillance technology normally reserved for battling terrorists to track coronavirus patients.”
So someone has a temperature and the entire weight of the government is potentially on the neck of some unsuspecting sick person?
How does this sound like a good idea?
I’ve stated before, creeping incrementalism is the reason people like Harari feel this kind of invasion is justified and warranted is because we’ve already allowed similar versions of it in our daily lives already, what’s just another sensor?
Even if one is fine with this kind of invasion shouldn’t it give one a moment of pause when the KGB are used as an example of how inefficient they were, but if they had this technology they’d be able to follow everyone?
Harari goes on to tell us:
“Yet if we are not careful, the epidemic might nevertheless mark an important watershed in the history of surveillance. Not only because it might normalise the deployment of mass surveillance tools in countries that have so far rejected them, but even more so because it signifies a dramatic transition from “over the skin” to “under the skin” surveillance.”
How he comes to this conclusion I’m not sure but that is a leap from my perspective.
The tone of the article changes at this point where Harari, at least to me, feels in this an intrustion into someone life.
He makes a very good point “ … none of us know exactly how we are being surveilled, and what the coming years might bring.”
The insidious nature of surveillance means that data can be used for anything, or interpretted in a way that fits a narrative, rightly or wrongly.
Is this something we really need in our lives when we’ve lived this long without it and for the most part we’ve survived, and even thrived?
I guess those in power want to stay in power and now have a tell tale ways in which to keep it.
Harari says it’s about privacy and health, but it’s not.
It’s about liberty and security and the sooner everyone knows that the sooner they can start making decisions about their life in that light, because there seems to be a time in the very near future where those decisions will no longer be necessary because one has taken over the other.
Harari says:
“Centralised monitoring and harsh punishments aren’t the only way to make people comply with beneficial guidelines. When people are told the scientific facts, and when people trust public authorities to tell them these facts, citizens can do the right thing even without a Big Brother watching over their shoulders. A self-motivated and well-informed population is usually far more powerful and effective than a policed, ignorant population.”
Of course, if you as the government control the information provided to its citizens it’s easy for them to make the “right” choices, unfortunately, as we have seen, when you try and own the narrative the truth has this nasty habit of finding a way into the light.
Harari talks about trust, but I think it’s obvious that trust of the government is low.
Currently the Biden administration is at 20% That doesn’t give anyone the warm and fuzzies.
I think news outlets have a similar problem.
He goes on to say:
“First and foremost, in order to defeat the virus we need to share information globally.”
But he just finished telling us about trust.
There is nothing to defeat, even the “so called experts” said covid would come back like a yearly flu.
Do you see how he’s talking out both sides of his mouth?
He does make a point on how people in other countries can share their information to save others elsewhere, but this has happened far before covid ever existed
Cancer research anyone or how about measles, mumps, rubella, I think you get the point.
We already share information for all manner of things but Harari wants
“a co-ordinated global effort [that] could greatly accelerate production and make sure life-saving equipment is distributed more fairly.”
Distributed more fairly?
Is that another way of saying equality of outcome?
So are we to suppose a nation with the money and resources to have these technologies will have to give them away to less fortunate countries all in the name of fairness?
How is that fair? What is point of being industrious then?
This of course is all predicated on the information that has been disseminated and that is covid is humanity killer.
We have to come together because if we don’t humanity won’t stand a chance.
If you don’t buy the premise the information provided doesn’t hold up.
As I’ve said before, even if you remove all all the noise
COVID still only has a 1% fatality rate
which shouldn’t create more noise, lies and obfuscation of the facts.
I will say, I do believe there is value in a
“… global effort to pool medical personnel. Countries currently less affected could send medical staff to the worst-hit regions of the world, both in order to help them in their hour of need, and in order to gain valuable experience.”
As you can see this has nothing to do with altruism and everything to do with opportunity because why on earth would pooled medical personnel be available “to gain valuable experience”?
I thought the point was altruism, because isn’t that fair?
But you see, organizations like the WHO aren’t here for me and you and to make the world a better place, they are all about power because if they weren’t there would be WHO created certifications and exams and a standaridized suite of medical information a doctor would need to know, so doctor A could practice medicine in country B.
We’ve all heard stories of highly qualified medical personnel driving taxis in the West because their qualifications aren’t up to snuff.
If they really cared about humanity standardized qualifying exam(s) legitimate in all 195 countries should have been created decades ago.
If that happened, imagine what would happen to the medical schools in the West?
They would collapse because someone could go to some in need African nation, get a standardized education and have real life experience is some things most in the west aren’t exposed to, all for a tenth or less of the price.
Harari tells us that disunity will basically destroy us and the only way forward is via global solidarity.
I’m not sure a compelling argument has been made regarding this but at least you don’t need to read the article now.
Klaus observes that:
“the ultimate danger to our political systems and liberties is that the ‘successful’ example of tech monitoring and containing the pandemic will then ‘entrench’ the solutionist toolkit as the default option…”(170-171)
Klaus makes a good point when he says:
“After all, it is much easier to deploy solutionist tech to influence individual behaviour than it is to ask difficult political questions about the root cause of these crises.”(171)
I guess looking under the hood of a problem isn’t something anyone is interested in doing, instead let’s monitor it to our benefit.
Like I said it’s about liberty and security everything else is smoke and mirrors.
Klaus and others may tell us there may be a fine line to walk regarding technology and surveillance but it’s not.
Another thing it’s about is trust.
Do you trust those in power, and those who have your bio-metric data to do the honorable and noble thing?
History has shown us tech firms have a pretty poor track record, governments are just as bad so what makes anyone think this time is different?
Klaus knows there is no way to sugar coat the word surveillance, instead he says:
“dystopian scenarios are not a fatality. Is is true in the post-pandemic era, personal health and well-being will become a much greater priority for society, which is why the genie of tech surveillance will not be put back in the bottle. But it is for those who govern and each of us personally to control and harness the benefits of technology without sacrificing our individual and collective values and freedoms.”(171)
Notice how he makes it sound like its a minor issue and that you and the government will work together to determine what data of yours that can have.