Exponential: Order and Chaos in an Age of Accelerating Technology

by Azeem Azhar

This is a phenomenon with three key features. The first, best exemplified by Facebook’s arbitrary controls of conversation as discussed above, is the emergence of new, private rule-makers – whose growing power amounts to the privatisation of the ‘public sphere’. This term, first coined by the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas, refers to the arena in which private individuals come together to discuss the needs of society and the laws that govern it. As the name suggests, this is supposed to take place in public. We have long thought that laws should be made by accountable, elected officials; and they should be scrutinised transparently and collectively. Today, however, a handful of private organisations increasingly dominate that public sphere. They, rather than elected parliaments, make the laws that govern our lives. And our public conversation is conducted on a small number of private platforms, rather than in a wide array of newspapers and broadcasters, think tanks and coffee shops. The second is the encroachment of markets into our private lives. The private sector and our private lives were once very different. We bought and sold our houses, our food, our labour. But there were parts of our lives that we wouldn’t sell. The conversations between lovers or within families. Essential, personal information about our health, or our relationships, or our sex lives. Increasingly, private companies monitor – and lay some kind of claim to – all of these. As our conversations ...