The NYTimes published a propaganda piece on behalf of surveillance capitalists. It’s titled “Your 5G Phone Won’t Hurt You. But Russia Wants You to Think Otherwise.”

For those who can’t access the article, it’s full of unhinged, slobbering praise for everything that the Big Tech does, including the spying. And people who aren’t ecstatic about it are positioned as poor idiots bamboozled by – who else? – evil Russians. They are probably Trump supporters and are all kinds of icky.

These ignorant evildoers are opposed to

a new world of interconnected, futuristic technologies that would reach into consumers’ homes, aid national security and spark innovative industries. Already, medical firms are linking up devices wirelessly to create new kinds of health treatments.

See how seamlessly the idea of reaching into your home is linked to national security and health? Want to be healthy and safe? Let us spy on you. Don’t want to? Ah, you are an evil Putinoid Trumpie!

I hate most analogies because people tend to make really forced ones but Zuboff uses them brilliantly to explain what surveillance capitalists are doing.

She talks about the discovery of the New World by Spanish conquerors. They would disembark, mumble the legal formula of the Requerimiento (which is the equivalent of those privacy notices nobody reads or understands), and then take everything while we sit there, incapable of comprehending what’s happening because it doesn’t fit anything in our understanding of the world.

Another analogy is that of turtles in the Galapagos Islands who were made to ingest trackers so that scientists could observe and eventually control their behavior.

What’s really interesting is that the engineers of this new reality actually use the language of fluidity to describe what they do.

“We want to liquefy the world,” one of these CEOs said. I don’t suspect him of being a reader of Zygmunt Bauman’s work, so the use of the terminology might be unwitting yet telling.

One of the most useful concepts Zuboff introduces is “the division of learning,” which is modeled on the foundational idea of capitalism: the division of labor.

The division of learning manifests when a robot is brought on to the factory floor, and workers have to unlearn making things and learn to operate the robot. Some can learn while the others are fucked.

The division of learning is when journalists mock these workers with “learn to code!”

The division of learning is in the fact that we have no idea what tech companies know about us and are unaware of how they purposefully modify our behavior using this knowledge.

The division of learning is that most of us are unaware that democracy is dying not because of some ridiculous Russia collusion or Barr’s testimony but because technology outpaces the slow and laborious march of the democratic institutions and makes them irrelevant.

Zuboff doesn’t say it in the part I’ve read so far, but it’s also in the formation of the cognitive elite. There was always a cognitive elite but it was formed by nature and chance. Now, on top of the differences created by nature and luck, we have consciously engineered ones.

Imaginatively and intellectually, we live in the world that is long gone. We spend tons of time bickering over the things that mattered in that dead world as if they still mattered. The division of learning is also this. Some people are aware that things have changed but most aren’t. Those who figured it out are leaving those who can’t in the dust.

And the saddest part to me is that people intuit what’s happening. The reason we keep hearing that our democratic institutions are in danger is because they are. Just from a different threat. The reason we keep obsessing about open borders is because they are already open. They are open to capital and these new surveillance giants.

We know what’s going on but we can’t articulate it correctly precisely because the division of learning is the basis of this new world.

Folks, is the expression “wild capitalism” not used in English? I’m told to use “wild West capitalism” instead but that’s not at all what I’m trying to say. I know I’m using a calque from Russian but does it not exist in English?

I’m talking about the form of capitalism that exists in the post-Soviet space. It’s the primitive stage of accumulation. Would you use “wild capitalism” or something else?

Why, why did Europe come to dominate the world at the very time when competing civilizations (the Arabs and the Chinese, obviously) were more advanced, more aggressive, and more powerful?

Crespo gives the answer early in the book:

– individualism

– humanism

– a more powerful role for women than any other civilization.

Altogether, these things are called Christianity but Crespo can’t say it openly. Of course, what gave Christianity and consequently Europe this incredible strength in the past is precisely what is undermining it in the present. Individualism destroys religion, and humanism breeds guilt and self-effacement.

Europa‘s author is clearly a lot more Crespo than MacLennan, which is why he’s unapologetically proud of European achievements and of the immensity of Columbus’s discovery. Efforts to vilify Columbus and erase him from history are all about the Anglo hegemony, of course.

Crespo patiently takes apart the myths about evil Europeans who destroyed the pristine, paradisiacal existences of “noble savages” in discovered lands. The writing is so measured, calm, and well-informed that you immediately realize he’s not from this side of the Atlantic.

These opening chapters deal with the material I teach every year, and I loved Crespo’s delivery. Spain and Portugal are always marginalized in the discussions of Europe (for why see above), and it’s great to see an account not tainted by anti-Hispanic sentiments. Unfortunately, Crespo doesn’t have much knowledge of Eastern Europe, and it shows. But hey, you can’t be good at everything.

We all know I love trashy literature but this novel is pretty much the biggest, most obnoxious pile of garbage I ever read that’s too trashy even for me. It’s the perfect match for the “fashion of the future” I posted about earlier because it’s driven by the same mentality.

The message that the novel delivers with a pounding, aggressive intensity is that if you are traumatized by horrific abuse and have survived extremely painful things, you need to shop.

About sixty percent of the novel’s text is occupied by the descriptions of the female protagonist shopping. Problem is, she shops in the wrong places. She’s obsessed with Tesco, which does not reflect an appropriate degree of self-love. Finally, she realizes she needs to forget Tesco’s cheap wares and buy expensive clothes, boots, and handbags. And instead of buying a carry-out sandwich for lunch she needs to frequent a hipster cafe.

And that’s it! That’s how you emerge from loneliness, overcome trauma, make friends, and become happy. Buy gadgets, buy a ton of makeup, go to beauty salons, and happiness is yours!

Finally, the female protagonist meets a guy who convinces her that she “deserves to have nice things,” buys her fancy cat food for her cat… and true love is born. For real.

All that’s missing – but not for long I’m sure – is to have one-click links right in the text to buy the relentlessly listed consumer goods and services.

It’s not surprising that Reese Witherspoon – probably the dumbest person in the country – loves the book and is making a movie based on it.

I’m now going to go read something smart to recover from this horrible experience.

It took me forever to finish because the novel is 600 pages long, and it’s heavy stuff that I need time to process. But what a powerful book. It’s very autobiographical. Stegner writes about his extremely dysfunctional, abusive family that lived on the margins of society. How they managed to produce somebody who’d become a talented writer is one of the greatest mysteries of human existence. And it’s precisely what makes the novel so fascinating. His father was a murderer, for God’s sake.

Stegner was only 35 when he wrote The Big Rock, which is pretty incredible. It’s a male Bildungsroman of sorts but not of the stale, boring kind. I usually hate anything’s “based on a true story” but this true story is truly irresistible.

What an amazing writer. I’m thankful to my friend R who introduced me to him.