Truthfully - this is not a blog post 'about' technology. Without busting open the dictionary, as a marxist, I might say something like 'technology is a social process.' While those weeds are enticing, far more enticing than your average America lawn, let's instead adventure into another topic beyond defining technology any further: 'technology' is not 'democratically' controlled.

Even some of global history's least revolutionary subjects, Americans, have Elon Musk afraid to show his hideous figure in public without a human shield. On some level, a great many people now realize this capital directed form of 'technology' inflicted on the planet is 'bad.' It's an observable phenomenon in most aspects of daily life These Days from microtransactions to workplace surveillance.

At last here we come to what I actually what to talk about, thank god: Immanuel Wallerstein. Reader, I have been reading his collection of essays 'After Liberalism.'

To get to the point, in an essay "The End of What Modernity," Wallerstein highlights two key aspects of liberalism: liberation and technology. More or less, these are the two yardsticks by which liberal 'progress' is supposed to be measured. Historically, the pedophiles (my word) organizing society have played a bit of a shell game here by pretending to offer rights while advancing technology as they see fit, conflating the two under the category of 'progress.'

Wallerstein specifically argues 'the dominant ideology proclaimed technological progress and liberatory progress identical.'

More or less, we're all supposed to see these technological advancements as a universal good, but by the mid 20th century this bit of propaganda was coming under fire (see something like Harry Braverman if you're curious. I think the Monthly Review did a retrospective on him a few years ago if you're looking for something less than book to start with).

If you're a marxist, I'm sure you're screaming 'class struggle' right now. And yeah sure, that's what we're talking with 'shell game.' Wallerstein's argument, though, is that up to the midcentury, 1968 specifically in his formulation, technological progress was adopted even by the left, the USSR, as a KPI. As the century progressed, technology began to fall out of favor generally.

"The modernity of technology is a deceptive trap" as Wallerstein puts it. Trust the process. (Look where that got Philadelphia.)

We've now reached an era where many in Silicon Valley, the appointed 'thoughtleaders' of tech by pedophile decree, are saying technology is not going to be good for most people. AI is the most explicit series of threats yet from these genocidal manifestations of capital yearning for the guillotine.

Obviously, taking these snake oil salesmen at their word is the job of the stenographers in 'tech journalism,' but AI (not real btw) is a 'threat' due to its consummation of the relationships between tech (pedophiles), finance (pedophiles), energy (pedophiles), and the military industrial complex (pedophiles). This unholy matrimony does not include, you know, most people.

Worse, this 'technological progress' is responsible for the squeeze on the middle classes in the global north, explaining why America's middle managers and HR counterrevolutionaries are feeling a bit uneasy. Profits! There's a particularly prescient quote from Wallerstein that goes viral every so often about the middle class if you're interested in a treasure hunt... I promised an adventure!

To return to Harry Braverman briefly, even if AI is fake, its stated uses and goals are in line with the technological advancements capital historically prioritizes: deskilling and routinizing labor with the goal of affording workers less control over their working conditions while also making each worker more interchangeable, replaceable.

This is the 'technology' that should be hated; it is why seizing control of the means of production is the only solution. The process of so called technological advancement is a load bearing component of capitalism, and interruptions to this process do initiate crises for capital: The data centers cannot be built. Technology is not a neutral process, and its outcomes are not preordained.

There is another word for this post-68 mentality by the way. Should I say it? A lot of people don't like it! It's not a very popular word!! I'll say it: stay tuned.