Talal Asad in his book, Secular translation (1), has a chapter titled masks, security and language of numbers. To summarize his argument, human beings always wear masks suited to the condition. In his private state, he may don a different mask, as compared to a social gathering. Essentially this “mask” ensures his survival and thriving in human society at large. And further, in the context of the nation-state, the state is always obsessed with its citizens/Subjects. There has never been such infatuation with the census, collation of zillions of data points, ID’s, etc to tame/ discipline/ monitor the citizens. Thus the state is always ensuring that it is collecting maximum information of its citizens. Thus it could also decipher the whole security discourse around how the citizen has to surrender. The crux of his argument is that technology has the power to manipulate the mask or one step further; it decides which the citizen will wear. Think of the repercussions of this phenomenon and what is at stake.
Surveillance Capitalism:
Surveillance capitalism is the term coined by Shoshana Zuboff. (2) In this, private human experiences are mined as free raw material for translation into behavioral data. Thus computational products predict our behavior. Cambridge Analytica(specifically in the US election) later demonstrated that the same methods could be employed to shape political rather than commercial instrumentation power, which challenges democracy. Big brother knows everything while its operations remain hidden, eliminating our right to resist. This undermines human autonomy and self-determination, without which a humane society cannot survive. Yuval Noah Harari has identified dataism as the new religion driven by extreme empiricism, which has hacked human minds and is one of the existential threats humans face.
Civil Society as a new bastion of War:
Ajit Doval, national security advisor in his directives to the graduating batch of IPS said that civil society is the new frontier of War (3). This is the alarm bells on the already atmosphere of the authoritarian regime pushing down on dissent and criticism. In the present state of three pillars of democracy stifled and gagged, along with biased media, civil society has been the last bastion of hope. Thus the recent Pegasus project must be looked at from this lens. Then it becomes clear as daylight as to the magnitude of the crisis, we face. The IT intermediary 2021 also signals the further erosion of privacy and the onset of the surveillance state or one of its versions.
Jamie Susskind, in his book, ‘Future Politics’ says that force, perception control and scrutiny will be part of the handbook of the future coupled with digital power (4). The large-scale polarized society, IT Cells, growing echo chambers, fake propaganda depicts that it is already in play. The recent incidents in Tripura, where VHP goons blazed the Masjid and destroyed public property and when the incidents were called out on social media, the state vehemently turned the narrative and cracked down on the whistleblowers. Thus, this development is scary considering the impending elections in the coming days.
Food for thought:
The growing tentacles of surveillance and the subsequent erosion of privacy is a fundamental question that will shape the trajectory of our future society. The bogus security discourse of the state that we must be naked and surrender our data, should be challenged. One more point as we have discussed earlier is that this is not us being hiding, or suspect, but our fundamental right to safeguard our privacy and resist state’s obstruction in our private space or in the words of Talal Asad, resist the mask enforced on us. At a time, when the idea of coded citizenship, algocracy and imagification of truth is being debated, there is a need for candid deliberations and reflections.
The reality of hyper-normalization, behavioral changes, attitudinal shifts and loss of attention span are also visible physiological and psychological manifestations that demand serious studies and research too. The loss of spiritual center and moral inclination also calls for rethinking and reflection on what are the ethics and values to be kept intact in this elastic and fluid ecosystem.
Finally, there is no silver bullet or ten-point program to reclaim the space. The need of the hour is to have deliberations and discussions in and around this frontier. We need to be more diligent. We need to devise a privacy charter, gauge our online presence and arrive at a holistic understanding. We need to take warnings from Orwell and Huxley. More importantly from Anthony Burgess, and his clockwork orange that Human society is a free-willed society, and when man ceases to have choice, He ceases to be man.
Finally, I would leave the readers to ponder over a piece of wisdom from the prophet himself:
“Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”- Orwell
References:-
- Secular Translations: Nation-State, Modern Self, and Calculative Reason : Book by Talal Asad
- Zuboff, S., & Schwandt, K. (2019). The age of surveillance capitalism: the fight for a human future at the new frontier of power.
- https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/hyderabad/ajit-doval-nsa-warfare-civil-society-7619555/
- Future Politics: Living Together in a World Transformed by Tech September 2018 by Jamie Susskind
