We Were Naive to Think Digital Media Would Be Democratic

Elites always snatch the power from the people

We were naive to think that digital technology would be intrinsically and inevitably more empowering than any medium that came before it. Yes, digital networks are more directionless and decentralized than their broadcast predecessors. They allow messages to flow from the bottom up, or the outside in. But, like all media, if they’re not consciously seized by the people seeking empowerment, they’ll be seized by someone or something else.

Whoever controls media controls society.

Each new media revolution appears to offer people a new opportunity to wrest that control from an elite few and reestablish the social bonds that media has compromised. But, so far anyway, the people — the masses — have always remained one entire media revolution behind those who would dominate them.

For instance, ancient Egypt was organized under the presumption that the pharaoh could directly hear the words of the gods, as if he were a god himself. The masses, on the other hand, could not hear the gods at all; they could only believe.

With the invention of text, we might have gotten a literate culture. But text was used merely to keep track of possessions and slaves. When writing was finally put in service of religion, only the priests could read the texts and understand the Hebrew or Greek in which they were composed. The masses could hear the Scriptures being read aloud, thus gaining the capability of the prior era — to hear the words of God. But the priests won the elite capability of literacy.

When the printing press emerged in the Renaissance, the people gained the ability to read, but only the king and his chosen allies had the power to produce texts. Likewise, radio and television were controlled by corporations or repressive states. People could only listen or watch.

With computers came the potential to program. Thanks to online networks, the masses gained the ability to write and publish their own blogs and videos — but this capability, writing, was the one enjoyed by the elites in the prior revolution. Now the elites had moved up another level, and were controlling the software through which all this happened.

Today, people are finally being encouraged to learn code, but programming is no longer the skill required to rule the media landscape. Developers can produce any app they want, but its operation and distribution are entirely dependent on access to the walled gardens, cloud servers, and closed devices under the absolute control of just three or four corporations. The apps themselves are merely camouflage for the real activity occurring on these networks: the hoarding of data about all of us by the companies that own the platforms.

Just as with writing and printing, we believe we have been liberated by the new medium into a boundless frontier, even though our newfound abilities are entirely circumscribed by the same old controlling powers. At best, we are settling the wilderness for those who will later monopolize our new world.

This is section 31 of the new book Team Human by Douglas Rushkoff, which is being serialized weekly on Medium. Read the previous section here and the following section here.