Hyperconnectivity and Its Discontents PDF
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Hyperconnectivity and Its Discontents ROGERS BRUBAKER Hyperconnectivity and Its Discontents in memory of my mother Elizabeth Brubaker Hyperconnectivity and Its Discontents Rogers Brubaker polity Copyright © Rogers Brubaker 2023 The right of Rogers Brubaker to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published in 2023 by Polity Press Polity Press 65 Bridge Street Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK Polity Press 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5452-2 ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5453-9(pb) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Control Number: 2022938892 Typeset in 11.5 on 14 Adobe Garamond by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL Printed and bound in the UK by TJ International Limited The publisher has used its best endeavors to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate. Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition. For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com Contents Preface · vi Acknowledgments · x Introduction · 1 1. Selves · 20 2. Interactions · 49 3. Culture · 77 4. Economics · 99 5. Politics · 126 Conclusion · 154 Notes · 172 References · 212 Index · 253 v Preface “The fox,” wrote the ancient Greek poet Archilochus, “knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” In the figurative sense popularized by the philosopher and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin, this dictum distinguishes writers who “relate everything to a single central vision” or “organizing principle” (the hedgehogs) from those who embrace “a vast variety of experiences and objects” without “seeking to fit them into … [a] unitary inner vision” (the foxes).1 This is the book of a fox. It has no overarching thesis to defend, no single conceptual prism to promote. It aims rather to provide a synoptic account of the sprawling, unruly, many-sided sociotechnical phenomenon I call digital hyperconnectivity, without squeezing it into the conceptual mold of a single big hedgehog-worthy idea. It aims to show how hyperconnectivity has transformed all aspects and spheres of social life, private and public, from the precincts of the self to the architecture of the economy and polity, and how these transformations, which have opened up so many new and exciting possibilities, are in other respects inimical to human freedom and flourishing. The book grew out of an undergraduate seminar I had been teaching for a number of years in UCLA’s Honors Collegium. The seminar invited students to think critically about the increasingly pervasive digital mediation of their everyday social experience and about the broader cultural, economic, and political transformations that had been set in motion, or accelerated, by digital hyperconnectivity. As I designed and redesigned the course for successive offerings, looking for appropriate readings, I did not find an integrated, encompassing account of digital hyperconnectivity that addressed both everyday experience and under- lying structural transformations in a manner at once challenging and accessible. I hope that this is that book. I began work on the book a year before the novel coronavirus brought normal life on the planet to a standstill. But the pandemic has vi PREFACE made the project more opportune than ever. Its confinements, disrup- tions, and restrictions have sharply accelerated the digitalization of all spheres of life. They occasioned a sudden and massive shift to remote work, education, shopping, medicine, therapy, culture, entertainment, sociability, and more. None of these shifts will be anywhere near fully reversed. In all of these spheres, this abrupt and radical reorganization of social life was possible only because of preexisting digital infrastruc- tures. Hyperconnectivity thus prepared us for the pandemic. Yet the pandemic, in turn, has prepared us for an even more fully digitally mediated future. Before the pandemic, the immense and unaccountable power of Big Tech and the degradation of the digital public sphere had prompted heightened critical scrutiny. Much of the energy of this incipient “techlash” dissipated temporarily in the face of Covid-19. Big Tech was no longer an urgent problem; it was a keenly appreciated solution, allowing social life to continue online when it was suspended in the flesh. The pandemic was therefore a godsend for the tech giants. It offered a unique opportunity to open up new markets, experiment on a planetary scale, and remake the social world. It also offered an oppor- tunity for redemption: tech firms could present themselves as working for the public good by partnering with governments and public health authorities. Mounting concerns about misinformation, to be sure, have kept platforms under pressure. The tech giants still face a series of antitrust and regulatory initiatives, some with a degree of bipartisan support. But whatever the fate of these initiatives, the power of Big Tech – cultural and political as well as economic – is likely only to increase further. And the “solutionist” ideology of Silicon Valley that Evgeny Morozov so brilliantly skewered a decade ago – the habit of thinking that all social and political problems have technological solutions – seems more firmly entrenched than ever.2 The book’s broad scope and modest length oblige me to be ruthlessly selective as well as brutally concise, and they condemn me in advance to neglecting or at best merely scratching the surface of many important topics. The particular path I have charted through the vast territory I stake out is no doubt informed by my intellectual, moral, and political sensibilities. My account is therefore in some respects a personal and idiosyncratic one. But it is not only or primarily that: it is an effort to vii PREFACE grasp the complexity of digital hyperconnectivity as a “total social fact” that powerfully structures the world in which we live.3 A book as wide-ranging as this one is obviously not based on primary research. It is a “quaternary” work, as Abram de Swaan memorably characterized a book of his own; it relies not only on a large body of more or less specialized secondary studies but also on synthetic “tertiary” works.4 The literature on the various aspects of my subject – spanning the social sciences, media and communication studies, and science and technology studies – has become unsurveyably vast. I cannot of course pretend to have read, or even to be aware of, all of the relevant work. But the reader wishing to explore particular topics in greater depth will find abundant pointers to the literature (as well as amplifications and qualifications of the argument) in the endnotes. Digital hyperconnectivity is a planetary-scale phenomenon, but it is configured very differently in different world regions and among different groups of users. Attentive readers may therefore wonder about my frequent use of first person plural pronouns. Who is this “we,” they may ask, that is so casually invoked? The authorial “we” is a stylistic convenience, but a sociological fiction. “Our” relation to hypercon- nectivity is a highly differentiated one, and “we” experience it in many different ways. Generational differences loom especially large, but differ- ences of country, class, education, gender, religion, and race and ethnicity matter as well. It is not my aim to map out these differences, though they will come up from time to time in my discussion. Yet I would offer a qualified defense of the authorial “we.” Digital hyperconnectivity affects us in different ways, but it increasingly affects all of us. Even the relatively unconnected are drawn ineluctably into its orbit, as anytime-anywhere connectivity – minimally, the possession of a smartphone – becomes, in effect, a requirement of full citizenship. And the still more digitally mediated future that is being constructed by the great tech platforms is one that we will all inhabit. While users can remake platforms in unanticipated ways, increasingly powerful platforms also design, construct, and discipline their users. In certain respects, they can make the sociological fiction into a sociological fact. Some parts of my argument, especially in parts of the politics chapter, address the American context specifically. But this is not a book about the US. The argument applies, for the most part, throughout the viii PREFACE developed West, notwithstanding significant legal and institutional differences between Europe and the US, notably a much more robust data protection framework in Europe. And much of the argument applies beyond the West. I have not, however, been able to give the distinctive configuration of digital hyperconnectivity in China – the central role of the state, the specific characteristics of the giant Chinese tech platforms, and the even greater degree of digital mediation of everyday life – the attention it deserves. In the geopolitics of hyperconnectivity, China represents a major counterweight to the hegemony of the American tech giants elsewhere.5 A broadly critical account of digital hyperconnectivity by a sixty-five- year-old first-world university professor risks caricature as a “declinist” screed that frets dyspeptically about “kids these days,” naïvely idealizes digitally unmediated face-to-face relations, and bathes the pre-digital public sphere in the warm but distorting glow of nostalgia. I hope that nothing in this book warrants such a reading. I readily acknowledge the many ways in which my own life – and the lives of billions of others worldwide – has been enriched by digital connectivity. My stance is indeed critical, but it is not uncritically critical: I have no interest in writing a jeremiad or a disconnectionist manifesto, and I underscore throughout the ambivalence of hyperconnectivity. For better or worse – for better and worse – we live in a world that is shaped and structured on every level and in every sphere of life by hyperconnectivity. The way forward is anything but clear. But there is no turning back. ix
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