TREND WATCH
Ever felt like tossing that overstuffed wallet in the trash? You’re in luck: Scientists have invented an embeddable microchip that can replace the entire contents of your wallet—driver’s license, credit cards, loyalty cards, and everything else. This isn’t some niche, far-flung idea—but rather a real device that more than 3,000 Swedish citizens have surgically implanted into their skin. This microchip is just the latest example of what we call “totalitarian technology” (or “total tech”), a term that describes devices and algorithms by which individuals forfeit their privacy and autonomy for the benefit of either themselves or some third party. Total tech in its many forms is quickly becoming an integral part of daily life in affluent societies around the world. And most of us wouldn’t have it any other way.
In the United States, total tech can be sorted into three different categories, or “spheres” of life: consumer services, the workplace, and government and politics.
Total tech is pervasive in the world of retail, where consumer data is a precious commodity that can bolster the bottom line. Many shopping apps tap into your phone’s GPS to access your location. With this information, an advertiser may offer you a discount on Urban Outfitters gear at precisely the moment you’re walking by the store. What’s more, thanks to personalized pricing, retailers now know the maximum amount you, personally, are willing to pay for a given product—and are able to charge you that price. (See: “A Special Price Just for You.”) Your personal data isn’t safe at home, either: Digital assistants like Amazon Alexa store your query history, meaning they know everything from your unique shopping history to your travel patterns to your music preferences.
Employers are also using total tech to track and monitor their workers. A growing number of companies use biometric time cards that scan an employee’s fingerprint, hand shape, retina, or iris. UPS outfits its trucks with sensors that track the opening and closing of doors, the engine of the vehicle, and the clicking of seat belts. Amazon is patenting an electronic wristband that would be used to track hand movements—making sure, for instance, that a warehouse worker stays busy moving boxes. Global freelancing platform Upwork runs a digital “Work Diary” program that counts keystrokes and takes screenshots of workers’ monitors. Proponents say that keystroke logging helps ensure the accuracy of billed hours. Critics say that, above being creepy, keystroke logging can demoralize employees by making them feel untrusted.
Uptake of total tech has been particularly striking in government and politics. The New Orleans Police Department runs a “predictive policing” program that uses Big Data to compile a heat list of potential criminal offenders. The TSA operates its own total tech program, called Quiet Skies, which monitors and flags travelers based on “suspicious” behavior patterns. Travelers can land themselves on the Quiet Skies list by changing their clothes in the restroom, being the last person to board their flight, or even inspecting their reflection in a terminal window. More nefariously, software developed at Stanford University enables anyone to manipulate video footage in real time. Now, anyone with a grudge could alter the facial expressions of a prominent politician making a speech, and then dub in new audio that completely changes the speech’s contents.
Why has total tech picked this moment to explode onto the scene? Conventional wisdom holds that it mostly has to do with the technological advances now coming online. As the tech got ever-more sophisticated, it was bound to be harnessed and put to its maximum totalitarian potential. In other words, technology is in the driver’s seat and the public is just along for the ride. But this narrative is backward. The application of technology is shaped by our wants and needs as a society.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, as the world moved broadly toward individualism, free-agency, smaller government, and globalism (free trade and “tearing down” walls), the tech breakthroughs of that era were mainly deemed supportive of such libertarian trends. Just after the Tiananmen Square massacre, Ronald Reagan declared that “the Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.” But in recent years, the world has been moving in a very different direction—toward community, populism, centralized control, and nationalism (trade wars and “building up” walls). Not coincidentally, today’s tech breakthroughs are again moving in tandem—toward empowering the group, not the individual.
Generational dynamics augment this shift toward group-minded total tech systems. While older generations feel that sacrificing their privacy is inherently risky, Millennials naturally see the safety-enhancing implications of total tech. They are also naturally optimistic about the potential of technology: According to a 2015 survey, 25% of 18- to 24-year-olds believe technology has a “mostly positive” impact on their privacy, the highest share of any age group. (The figure is just 12% for 60- to 64-year-olds.) What’s more, Millennials implicitly trust large institutions to safeguard their personal data. Some Millennials even view personal autonomy as a burden to be offloaded rather than a benefit to be protected. (See: “When Less is More.”)
In reality, most of the objections against total tech today are voiced by older consumers. A 2017 report by Pew Research Center finds that 60% of 50- to 64-year-olds and 56% of the 65+ say their data are less secure today than five years ago—compared to just 41% of the under-50 crowd. Older Americans are also far more likely to report varying their passwords across sites and keeping them secret from friends and family to avoid compromising their data. It’s no surprise, then, that less than one-quarter of smart home technology adopters are 55 years old or older; nearly half are between the ages of 18 and 34.
The future of total tech in America and elsewhere in the west will be a battle between the drive for efficiency and the preservation of privacy and autonomy. How will this battle shake out?
We can look to history for the answer. The last time we saw a mood shift toward national community assisted by promethean new technologies was the 1930s, when in the midst of the Great Depression, beleaguered citizens empowered FDR and his New Deal Democrats to make sweeping changes to society. It was an era in which the community trumped the individual.
Back then, government harnessed huge technological breakthroughs to arm the nation and vanquish the enemy (in this case, fascism)—from mass radio broadcasts to mass assembly lines, from radar and code-breaking computers to proximity fuses and atomic fission. New technology can hardly be called the author of this mobilization. Rather, national leaders backed by a resolute public used new technology to achieve a peaceful and democratic world in which dangerous regimes could be kept in check. Today, the players may be different—but the story could wind up the same.
TAKEAWAYS
Companies and governments worldwide have been rolling out advanced, AI-driven programs that use your personal data for everything from consumer services to law enforcement. This is a welcome development in the eyes of most consumers, who recognize the many upsides of total tech.
- Total tech systems must adhere to three main principles. In order to remain palatable to most consumers, total tech must: Provide opt-outs. Failing to do so violates our sense of fair play. Europe knows this: Its new data-protection regulations force companies to seek opt-in approval from consumers before collecting personal data. Total tech must also preserve pluralism. Where no competition exists, consumers feel trapped—which is one reason why Google Search data collection is such a hot-button issue. Finally, total tech must be transparent. Consumers don’t like finding out they’ve been under the microscope without their knowledge. This explains why most Americans disapprove of the NSA’s surveillance program.
- China has become the poster child for total tech that goes too far. When the above principles are violated, it moves us into the kind of overtly non-democratic world that Americans fear. In essence, it moves us closer to China: By 2020, China’s “social credit system” will monitor the behavior of each and every citizen, keeping tabs on everything from speeding tickets to social media posts critical of the state. Everyone will then be assigned their own unique “sincerity score”; a high score will be a requirement for anyone hoping to get the best housing, install the fastest Internet speeds, put their kids into the most prestigious schools, and land the most lucrative jobs.
- Total tech could be coming to a government near you. What would a broad-scale U.S. government total tech project look like? Here are two visions. A national identity card. A biometrics-enhanced national ID card would appeal to both sides of the aisle. It could assist in everything from cracking down on immigration control and voter fraud to bolstering gun control and social safety net programs. A national cryptocurrency. Central bankers would love a “cashless” system in which every transaction appears instantly on a public ledger. Financial industry writer J.P. Koning suggested in 2014 that the U.S. Federal Reserve could easily release its own cryptocurrency, a sort of “Fedcoin,” that would run parallel to (or even supplant) cash.
