A Portrait of Conspiracy

  We do not half live in odd times. There must have been other times like them, and yet… The problem is that so fast is the change in know how at all levels (computers, genetics, meteorology etc.) that it has clearly become almost impossible to define the social and economic models needed to house one particular type of technology. Old industries (the music industry) are dying, and new ones (the ‘i’ businesses) are being created. In particular one of the great joints of capitalism is clearly on the move. This joint had created a system with two basic forms of organization embedded within it. On the one hand, one had mass democratic style organizations (the voters, the consumers, the shareholders) and on the other large scale organizations, charged with delivering economies of scale, which provided many of the services (i.e. business but also the state). Each domain had then their respective duties and powers. Within then this picture technology had a certain role. It might be developed within the population as a whole (or a group of scientists), but once developed it was marketed and owned by large companies in one way or other. The choice was then between whether these organizations were owned by the population as a whole (nationalized), or only a group of them (shareholders).

  The result of this system was clear enough. Technology had its place, and was certainly important (big business could never exist without it), and yet it was firmly contained within the model. What destabilized the model was then never technology so much as politics - the struggle always being about who actually owned what, when and with what consequences. The problem was then, like the health care debate: was it better to have the economies of scale of a nationalised health care (with its attendant of allowing time wasters) or would it better to make people pay (and so leave many without salaries behind). Of course the combined end of the Cold War, and the first wave of microchip technological change, meant that the West thought it had solved this problem. The answer was capitalism within nation states. This model provided the maximum flexibility and the ability to arrange technologies within viable social and political units.

  Except of course that technology carried on changing and challenging this picture. It carried on developing, and as it did so it created endless new problems, but also powers for organizations. At the heart of these problems lies that old chestnut - ownership. In the capitalist model, the ownership of things (be they toothbrushes, houses, shares or human rights) is the critical feature. By our copyrighters we were known (and free to market ourselves to others). In such a system there was a real value in owning ideas over mere strength. Workers (who owned only their bodily strength, and needed to market that) were at a real disadvantage, whilst companies with enough resources to buy up copyrights and mass produce goods (and pay others to developed new ideas) were at an advantage. And yet this model does not translate very easily into the modern situation. The trouble is, that it is simply no longer clear what one is buying with technology - what one is owning, and what will follow from it. The effect is of course is that companies that buy the wrong technology (ITV buying 'Friend Reunited', when Facebook was on the way) get into real difficulty; while other companies suddenly are transformed by one or two technological innovations, and become absolute global giants, (Google, but also the apotheosis of Apple). Companies are then merely a click away from either bankrupting themselves or finding the secret to apparent untold wealth; whilst of course the wider population is never sure what new things it will be able to do year on year.

  What we are, and what we can do is then in a great state of flux. It is just at this moment that politics has collapsed into issue driven campaigns and personalities, led by individuals who are only partially able to grasp the situation. The result is of course that we are cocking up the political issues here. We appear as a nation not to have the necessary debate of ideas about who owns what or really to be aware of them. Even worse, I think it appears difficult in our current frame of mind at least, to even frame the right problems. Our politics (and the way in which we all understand it) remains then firmly wedded to nineteenth century models and traditions.  

  There might of course be a real reason for this. It might be genuinely very difficult (possibly impossible, I mean genuinely impossible) to work out what one can do about this spread of technology. Or more particularly how one can reform ideas of ownership and possession, ideas rooted in Western history, to include technologies which splice together human genes, brains and computers. I mean who really does own what? Can a company copyright a loop in my brain because they developed the technology to make that loop, and to make the genes linked to that loop behave differently, behave otherwise? Where, after all, is the difference between this right of owning, which we might well be troubled by, and the copyrighting of computers to start off with (which are similarly items of technology for expanding the brain). Where does one decide that this is too personal for a third party to own? It is a moral decision, and so one made regardless of effect? Or is the choice in the end utilitarian; we will allow companies copyrights (or contracted rights) so long as they are using them for the common good (and so making profits) and no further. That is we will allow them as long as the economies of scale and technology, that big companies incarnate, are being used effectively, and without undue greed. Which of course sounds very good in theory, and yet would always come down to exactly where one draws the boundaries defining common good or no.

  In fact the problem is even more confused than the above might suggest. Take the problem of the genetic modification of seeds: On the one hand this is certainly a great idea (given that it is unethical to insist that populations do not rise, once its traditional suppressors of war, famine, and oppression have been mitigated). Or perhaps rather than being a great idea, it is a better idea than the alternative – i.e. starvation. It is then better than blitzing the fields with chemicals. One might (in an ideal world) mutter about organics at this point. The problem of course is that if we really are going to carry on with population increase, then organic crops will simply not able to feed the world. They could not do it. Organics becomes then only a possible solution for the world, if it is looped into either global necessity (say some undefined global plague or collapse) or utter cultural imperialism (it would require us to require other populations not to expand as we did in the face of industrialization). If then we are not going to bully other peoples (culturally or I suppose militarily) into submission, the gene modification (which is natural enough - viruses do it to themselves all the time), is the only really effective tool we have (other then poisoning fields with chemicals).

  However at such a point, one hits a deep quandary. The companies who developed seeds are of course always vulnerable to people simply keeping their seeds year on year, and creating their own seed banks. Life has a habit of outdoing capitalism at this point. Capitalism’s great response for many years has been to ensure that seeds cannot be simply replanted. The greatest crop yielding seeds are then hybrids which will not simply grow from their own seeds; so that companies have in effect owned the exclusive rights to sell seed to farmers who (to get economies of scale and production), have had to buy them. This model works well enough in the West (and encourages innovation), but is always tricky in other poorer nations (where actually being able to sow the seeds you harvest is a premium). This situation is then made so much more complex with genetic modification. Seeds are now owned, and really owned, by seed companies - who have rights not only over the seeds, but also the very engines that makes those seed so different and so effective. They make the power of science then beholden to this company. And yet this system then has another advantage. The economies of scale actually limited something. They limited the ability of rogue seeds and genetically modified seeds to rip across the eco-system. If those seeds only last one year (and it is ensured that they do by companies and government) then the chances of the so-called Frankenstein hybrid and all the science-cum-fantasy-fiction written abut this, is rendered obsolete. It just would not work like that in practice. The very system then that makes companies so rich is also the system that makes us all safe from our fear that it could hold some nasty surprise for us, once we start fiddling around with genes - as if genes really were that important (which is another issue).

  At the core of this problem there lies then two interrelated factors. On the one hand the entire problem is defined in terms of problems of scale and its effects. Large populations are then the result of myriad actions by populations, actions which the state feels (almost certainly justly) that it cannot interfere with. States then are faced with big populations as a matter of course (and can only dream of the kind of cultural imperialism that could limit this population). What is then needed is to define a system of production, based again on minor actions (farmers and their seeds) which can scale up to match this population. One needs then one great agglomeration of action to mirror another. - The problem then being that how one gets this second mass phenomena is never easy or simple. Secondly there is a relatedness once the ‘en masse’ kicks in, to think that a problem is solved, and dealt with. Mass production in a sense is the answer we hear from every pundit and journalist. It is the solution to the problem. Once we define how to mass produce (and get those economies of scale) without sides effects, then we are all free. It is the great dogma of our times (governments then repeatedly use mass production, and the unrolling projects as proof that they are acting, and that they are doing something). We crave then simplicity - and our simplicity is always codified en masse.

  Or at least we do in theory. In practice it is a bit more complicated than this. For OTHERS we always crave simplicity, as that will solve THEIR problems. And yet for ourselves we want something of simplicity, we want its cheapness, and yet we do not want its depersonalization. We want then to be treated as complex in ourselves (and be valued as such) while still wanting things cheap. This double-think has of course always lain close to the heart of capitalism, which creates the wealthy individuals and everyone else as the mass; but then arranges a great ladder of being, with increasingly ‘exclusive’ products, by which individuals can partially buy their rights to individuality. The great example here is the car market, which arranges its product in a great ladder of being, from cheapest and most mass produced to highest status (the Fiesta to the Rolls Royce via the BMW). 

  It is also this double-think that technology upsets in many ways. Firstly there is the promise held out that we might be able to personalize cheaply: The great gene quest is defined by a promise that knowing genes could create personalized medicine. So that genes become an answer to that riddle – one might be an individual in a depersonalized world - one might be a mass-production human, but as one has one’s genes, one is also unique! But more than that, technologies also create new powers of individuals acting in accord. Computer hackers really can destroy an industry (as can pirates). Which is not necessarily a bad thing; Perhaps the music industry should never have existed as it did. And what is certain is that other products (i-stores) will emerge from the wreck of the old system. Or again the relative powers of government are now in flux. The result is, that while they might have the means to monitor one’s waste, they cannot be sure of the number of individuals in the country, or the rate of migration of people or even money. What was known is now unknown, and what was unknown is now knowable, in a way that is clearly very tricky for any would be ruler. They are simply never sure what they will be able to do (and what not), nor how they should respond to that change in their power (do they announce it, or hide it?).

  The government and big companies are then placed in a situation where they must always be, or look like they are, conspiring in some way. Either they actually are (that is they are hiding their new powers, or more realistically hiding the fact that they have lost power). Or else, the power of company and state has suddenly increased (or been devalued) meaning that they can do so much more suddenly, and in a way at odds with their rational role (and the checks and balances for that role). They look like then, as if they are forever scheming, and changing what they are as a result of this plotting. The effect of course is that individuals turn away from science and its verities and embrace all kind of gibber or reactionary nonsense, which at least offers a simple (and unchanging) world. Technology then becomes almost too difficult to handle or think about, and individuals end up yearning (and in part embracing) the quackery of yesterday (individuals died en masse, but at least it kept the population down…) or cod and reactionary attitudes about the past (when everything is thought to be better – and we safely ignore all the indicators that this simply was not the case). That is, in the West we live in a world that is clearly yearning for an alternative to the endless self-immolation of technology: We long not to gut ourselves. And yet the cynic adds, not enough to actually do anything about it – like want to discuss things sensibly. We long then, only to titillate ourselves into conspiracy theorems and delight ourselves with the defiance of the quackery of the past. The latter represent then merely yet another ‘lifestyle choice’, so as to not to have to face the very real storm that is already upon us. A fact that has endlessly perplexing consequences for those who are daft enough to want to organize us all in any meaningful way! - How to organize without being a conspirator - it is the great problem for our times!