Cathedrals of Glass: Blinding Many with Reflected Hype

George Gilder sees humanity's moral redemption and an overthrow of the last vertical network that has prevented man from seeing information with no filters. He saw fiber optic networks as leveling the disparity between information rich and poor. Fulfillment of this kind technological determinism though so far has failed to endow the common man with capital historically wielded by robber barons. Instead in our digital age new names and faces of robber barons exist and still wield their power over us.

We see redemptive and apocryphal signs in new inventions. Such visions are often projections of what we covet or fear the most. Gilder in the early 1990s provided to the body of rhetoric seeing transformative power of microchips:

The cathedral of the 20th century is the microchip, a tiny computer inscribed on a small piece of semiconductor material. Like the medieval cathedrals, the microchip is wrought of the commonest elements in the earth, being earth itself. But seen through a microscope, that semiconductor shape emerges with the opalescent symmetry of a cathedral window. [1]

Gilder's description here suggests microchips which reach into a world called the "microcosm" offer more than bigger better mousetraps. Moreover, the implications will disrupt the established command structures, portending greater freedom of the masses whose previous efforts seeking liberation from command and control were limited by everyone's adherence to belief that wealth is found in material resources. Therefore, the embrace of microchips (and associated technology) offered revolutionary promise:

The gains of the quantum era could yet be destroyed by some thug offering a final horrible holocaust to the Moloch of matter. But the logic of the technology, the logic of the microcosm, which is becoming the logic of history, runs the other way. History has capsized every prophecy of triumphant bureaucracy. Rather than a New Industrial State, this era will disclose the new impotence of the state. Rather than the Revolt of the Masses under the leadership of demagogues, this era will see the revolt of the venturers against all forms of tyranny. Systems of national command and control will wither away. Systems of global emancipation will carry the day. The dismal science of the economics of aggregates— capital, labor, and land—will give way to a microeconomics of liberty. [2]

Forget that class struggle crap as a liberating force, the microcosm is where its at. The microcosm now brings forth the possibility imagined for centuries in mythologies of masses finding sufficient knowledge to demystify the false gods: 

The new technologies—themselves largely the creation of promethean individuals—completely transform the balance of power between the entrepreneur and the state. Inventive individuals have burst every link in the chain of constraints that once bound the entrepreneur and made him a servant of parliaments and kings. He is no longer entangled in territory, no longer manacled to land, capital, or nationality [3]  

The microcosm's liberating and democratizing power is bastardized by the spectacle of Americans fighting for their place in line in front of an Apple retail store anticipating the latest IPhone release. Other events weaken the claims that the microcosm enabled the masses to overthrow oppressive regimes. 

The hype generated by points and clicks making the collective knowledge available to all still influences our thinking about the internet's revolutionary potential. Twitter revolutions igniting the Arab Spring.

The media feeds to us the "Twitter Revolution" meme, first in Iran then it expanded into the transformative "Arab Spring"....Twitter provided the organizing forum and participatory stage whereon we can follow in real time. 

While Twitter empowered revolution it didn't seem to be a forum or Americans to comprehend and express dissent over the scale of the tragic consequences of its Iraq invasion.

With the morally mixed message on such mediums, I ask what of these "glass cathedrals?"

Currently microchips that helped establish the information revolution eventually showed it was equally vulnerable to being co-opted and controlled by elites. During 2011 when the Arab Revolution embodied many western thinkers' hopes for a post-Islamist enlightened Middle East, the Egyptian overthrow of Mubarak motivated the highest volume hashtag #egypt for that year. This example showed supposedly that social media provided valuable revolutionary tools. Except that reality showed the Arab Spring was just a slogan. The revolutionary promise vanishes while the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia shows social media's technology lacks the robustness to offer censor-free communications to the masses.

Glass cathedrals resonate as a feeble metaphor for the information age when Twitter is a virtual platform to wage revolutions then within five years Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal taps some of his petrodollars to become Twitter's second largest shareholder. [4]. Yes he is known for believing in "western values." But, somehow I don't believe that this westernized prince will facilitate Twitter reviving its platform of revolution to express solidarity with Yemenis being killed by Saudi bombings, or the increased human suffering resulting from Saudi bombing over 100 hospitals in Yemen.

Just as quickly as mass media declared Twitter revolutions they soon thereafter explained its failures. One critical appraisal of the failures of the "Twitter Revolution" cautions against the West seeing its values spreading and providing the rallying cry for many seeking liberation from antiquated power elites:

For one, there’s the West’s political narcissism, nourished in the post-Cold War period in which it really did seem that pluralist democracy was on the march. Such narcissism stripped us of the capacity to look critically at any actor whom we see inspired by our political model (bonus points if he or she writes political slogans in English). We assume that the imitation of Western practices and principles is a foolproof road to democratic success.

There has also been a dangerous so-called normative turn in American political science. It reduced our understanding of complex social and global problems to a series of correlations that reassure us that, among other things, democracies do not fight one another, that democracy makes countries richer and less corrupt, and that every country is on its way to becoming, well, a democracy. Liberal teleology came to replace the Marxist one. [5] 

In other words Fukuyama's proclamation "The End of History" is a dead horse that continues to be beaten. We just buried one dead ideology, only to introduce another one that is stillborn. 

Twitter's short history as being a virtual platform for coordinating revolution is less disappointing than many Americans long history of turning a blind eye to the tragedy its military actions inflict upon others. Americans who are sufficiently motivated could conduct enough research to identify the systematic propaganda projected daily. Also, what is equally troubling is the decline of investigative journalists in the age of information. The glass cathedrals left no space for investigative journalists whose vocation seems anti-climatic and obsolete in a world that was to become a vast integrated information flow equally accessible to all.

These glass cathedrals were encroached upon by corporate powers that obsess and specialize in liability mitigation, thereby subjecting users to Kafkaesque exercises in giving legal "consent" to absorb all consequences experienced while online. Big Data is a current concept and system of which we have become subjects:

Complicated consent procedures may constitute barriers for consent and consequently for the availability of large datasets. Many websites, such as social network sites like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, use quick and easy procedures for providing consent in order to generate Big Data. By asking their users for broad consent, they create opportunities to collect large datasets for all kinds of business opportunities. The business models are usually of the type in which users do not have to pay for their accounts. To keep the consent procedures quick and easy, usually consent is asked for when registering at the website. In most cases, consent can be provided by completing a checkbox or clicking on a button stating ‘I agree to the terms and conditions’ or something similar. Very rarely is the renewal of consent asked for. As a result, providing consent once often implies providing consent forever. [6] 

So the cathedral metaphor begins to make more sense. But, instead of entering a cathedral once daily for roughly an hour, today the virtual cathedral lies in the device constantly in our hands or by our sides.

The glass windows in the cathedrals add a focal point, directing the faithfuls' attention outward and upward to their God. The constant legal consents users give online forfeiting any rights to seek damages further demonstrates their commitment to their God. Yes in both cases we can argue their consent to their God is an act of free will, which suggests the size and shape of cathedrals change but our impulse to consent remains strongly in effect.       

1.Gilder, George. "The Law Of The Microcosm And The End Of Socialism." Cato Journal, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Fall 1991)
http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1991/11/cj11n2-10.pdf

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. "Meet Twitter's second biggest shareholder, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal." BBC Newsbeat. Oct 8, 2015. http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/34474798/meet-twitters-second-biggest-shareholder-saudi-prince-alwaleed-bin-talal

5. Krastev, Ivan. "Why Did the 'Twitter Revolutions' Fail?" The New York Times. Nov 11 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/opinion/why-did-the-twitter-revolutions-fail.html?_r=1

6. Custers, Bart. "Click here to consent forever: Expiry dates for informed consent." Sage Journals.  http://m.bds.sagepub.com/content/3/1/2053951715624935.full. Published January 10, 2016, doi: 10.1177/2053951715624935 Big Data & Society January-June 2016 vol. 3 no. 1 2053951715624935