without having to provide the workers with reallife foundations such as job security, old-age security, and so forth?
The Internet and the computer are products of the Cold War. The tech industry – or what is commonly known as ‘Silicon Valley’ – benefited more than almost any other industry from massive public subsidies and contracts with the Pentagon and What’s important for these platforms, for the time other state institutions. Tech companies want to be being, is not the content of a post or a tweet—the seen as subversive, and they emphasize innovation, main thing is that it generates a buzz and thus independence and self-initiative. In their technocontributes to increasing activity on their digital networks. Whether it’s scandals, fake news, trolling or utopian manifestos, they stylize themselves as antidotes to authoritarian, bureaucratic governments “Facebook revolutions,” what’s crucial is the data it and praise their digital platforms as a liberating force generates. for the individual. However, this rhetoric should not Networked life is capitalized on in various ways: users blind us to the fact that companies such as Google, Twitter and Amazon benefit massively from state are only one of the new categories that increasingly institutions and public amenities, even while they replace employees in the traditional sense. For simultaneously undermine and even try to replace example, I am thinking of the Airbnb “hosts,” the them. “fast rabbits” who work for “Task Rabbit,” the “independent contractors” who work for Uber, and Examples include tax deals negotiated with cities so on. They call it “sharing,” but what it does is in return for setting up company headquarters exacerbate the precarization of workers who work or fulfillment centers, or how the negative without social benefits, without contracts, by using their own car, at their own risk, or even without pay. effects of digital platforms and related working conditions are being externalized to society at large (think unemployment, depression and anxiety, Companies like Uber profit from the increasing environmental pollution). This creates a paradoxical precarization that they co-produce, to a certain situation: on the one hand, states like to schmooze degree, by disrupting unionized sectors and with Big Tech, but at the same time companies are undermining public transport—or in the case of often a few steps ahead of democratically elected Airbnb, by driving up rents and exacerbating the housing crisis. Then they offer their own services as governments when it comes to exploiting legal loopholes or simply establishing new socio-political “solutions.” Those who can no longer afford their rent can become a “host” and drive for Uber in their realities. Today, more than ever, we can see that those who have the data – and know how to make use of “free” time. These activities, in turn, produce data it – have the power. that is analyzed and strategically exploited by these companies, whether it’s to monitor their workers or In this sense, states are also dependent on tech to beat out competitors in the run for market share. companies when it comes to upgrading their own repressive police forces and border regimes. During the ‘corona crisis,’ networked life has Companies such as Amazon, Microsoft, or Palantir, taken on a particular significance. “Social for example, collaborate with the US immigration distancing” is considered crucial, and “social media” is being hyped up even more. Now even authorities and promote their surveillance tools – such as Amazon’s video Doorbell Ring – to other law the heads of governments advise us to make enforcement agencies. use of them. Certainly, the Internet can also be seen as a tool that can be helpful in a crisis Eerily empty streets in metropolises like Rome, situation. But under the present conditions, Berlin and New York. Occasionally you see it fuels capitalist exploitation like nothing parcel and food deliverers with neon vests. This else. Is it a bitter irony that states that have image may seem characteristic of the COVID-19 repeatedly appeared as opponents of Big Tech pandemic—but doesn’t it tell us more about (for example in the area of data sovereignty) are now promoting Big Tech? Or does it instead the present than merely about this particular moment of crisis? reveal something that would otherwise remain underexposed: the complicity between states and Big Tech? 15