The Consolidation of Power
Excerpted from The Media Addict’s Handbook — A Brief History of Digital, this passage describes one of three basic trends that marked the digital and media landscapes in the first decade of the 21st-century…
The first decade of the 21st century was one of immense mergers and acquisitions among already enormous media franchises, especially online. In addition, huge amounts of investment capital were put to work on commercial technologies that would a) rapidly expand and set the stage for broadband access and b) track, analyze and optimize consumer behavioral data online. Sure enough, broadband access soon became the de facto standard while the digital advertising and marketing industry – in response to legitimate consumer concerns about the volume and integrity of the behavioral data tracked, analyzed and optimized – solemnly promised on a stack of shrink-wrapped user manuals to regulate itself, and embarked on a mission to educate consumers not to worry so much about potential abuses of personal data. Your data, they promised, are safe, and the fact that we track, analyze, parse and sell them to anyone who asks is merely the price you pay for a far better and far more efficient online experience. “Trust us,” they said.
Of course, soon after 9/11 government security and intelligence agencies were granted broad powers by Congress and executive order to deploy the same basic digital tracking technologies in the war against terrorism with the same basic refrain: Your data are safe, and the fact that we track, analyze, parse and share them is the price you pay for a secure homeland. “Trust us,” they said. Meanwhile, the government directive to the commercial high-tech and media industries was likewise simple and to the point: “We now have the legal right and legitimate excuse to subpoena and examine your customer data pretty much whenever we want. So let’s do lunch and partner up.”Thus we were taught by industry and government agents alike not to worry about all of the digital tracking and spying technologies we couldn’t see at work behind the scenes. “Pay no attention” they told us, “to the man behind the curtain.”Meanwhile, those who stood the most to gain by selling digital technologies and media to everyone on the planet evangelized the liberating, lifestyle-enhancing and presumed democratizing effects of their products and services, and proclaimed the entire world on-demand and at our fingertips. True enough, perhaps, but behind the scenes the real byproducts of so much digital power in the hands of so many huge institutions were a) corporatist collusion of private and government interests on a massive scale, b) the equally massive expansion of immensely amplified institutional power along with c) the rise of unmanageable complexity and the virtual end of institutional accountability.
The medium was the message and the true message of digital media was buried far beneath the graphic user interfaces that whisked us like magic from one virtual reality to another. The medium was the message and the true message of digital media was far less about the democratization of media as advertised and far more about the consolidation, expansion and unaccountability of institutional power.
