Justin Smith has an excellent article in Harpers, discussing how and why we are moving toward a surveillance state:
When I say the regime, I do not mean the French government or the U.S. government or any particular government or organization. I mean the global order that has emerged over the past, say, fifteen years, for which COVID-19 served more as the great leap forward than as the revolution itself. The new regime is as much a technological regime as it is a pandemic regime. It has as much to do with apps and trackers, and governmental and corporate interests in controlling them, as it does with viruses and aerosols and nasal swabs. Fluids and microbes combined with touchscreens and lithium batteries to form a vast apparatus of control, which will almost certainly survive beyond the end date of any epidemiological rationale for the state of exception that began in early 2020.
The last great regime change happened after September 11, 2001, when terrorism and the pretext of its prevention began to reshape the contours of our public life. Of course, terrorism really does happen, yet the complex system of shoe removal, carry-on liquid rules, and all the other practices of twenty-first-century air travel long ago took on a reality of its own, sustaining itself quite apart from its efficacy in deterring attacks in the form of a massive jobs program for TSA agents and a gold mine of new entrepreneurial opportunities for vendors of travel-size toothpaste and antacids. The new regime might appropriately be imagined as an echo of the state of emergency that became permanent after 9/11, but now extended to the entirety of our social lives, rather than simply airports and other targets of potential terrorist interest.
My wife recently told me a story about someone she knows who lives in China. This woman had a toothache and went to the pharmacy to buy a painkiller. A few hours later she got a call from a government official asking for the purpose of her visit. She explained the purpose, and the caller seemed satisfied. (Presumably the official was suspicious that she might be buying medication for Covid.)
To most Americans, this story sounds rather creepy. But how far behind China are we?
Even tyrants would be foolish to pass down an iron law when a low-key change of norms would lead to the same results. And there is no question that changes of norms in Western countries since the beginning of the pandemic have given rise to a form of life plainly convergent with the Chinese model. Again, it might take more time to get there, and when we arrive, we might find that a subset of people are still enjoying themselves in a way they take to be an expression of freedom. But all this is spin, and what is occurring in both cases, the liberal-democratic and the overtly authoritarian alike, is the same: a transition to digitally and algorithmically calculated social credit, and the demise of most forms of community life outside the lens of the state and its corporate subcontractors.
It’s a cliché to suggest that people “read the whole thing”, but in this case it’s true. Indeed Justin Smith’s relatively long piece in Harpers contains material that is even more interesting than the three paragraphs I cited. He is one of our most insightful intellectuals.
READER COMMENTS
Monte
Jul 15 2022 at 9:19pm
Fascinating piece. A very astute observation/articulation of our regression towards conformity en masse and a sad commentary on the state critical thinking today. We are slowly devolving into a class of subhumans similar to H. G. Well’s Eloi and Morlock.
Spencer Bradley Hall
Jul 17 2022 at 10:50am
The state? Your neighbor can spy on your through the flat screen tv in your bedroom.
Phil H
Jul 17 2022 at 11:11am
I have sometimes wondered if the enlightenment was an anomalous period of privacy. In agrarian times, you lived in a village, everyone knew you, and your business was the village’s business. In our hyper-networked times, through the medium of big data, everyone (but mostly companies) has the ability to know everyone else’s business. But there was this odd period of a couple of centuries in which we had anonymous lifestyles in cities, with the potential to do all sorts of weird things and have no one comment on them at all. Quite coincidentally, that couple of hundred years also saw the creation of scientific culture and the massive enrichment of industrial societies…
If true, it’s a depressing thought. I don’t think it is true, as there are still lots of ways to be anonymous. But the massive instant public nature of Twitter and Venmo are striking, I have to admit.
Incidentally, the phone call in China may not have been Covid-related. In the last couple of years, pharmacies here have become much stricter about the sale of painkillers, presumably to stop stockpiling of opiods or drug precursors.
Phil H
Jul 17 2022 at 1:55pm
But having read the article, I find that I disagree with significant parts of it.
“a significant portion of the decisions that, until recently, would have been considered subject to democratic procedure have instead been turned over to experts, or purported experts, who rely for the implementation of their decisions on private companies, particularly tech and pharmaceutical companies”
I don’t think this is true at all. The decision that we all have to get Covid jabs was a classic technocratic decision, not democratic. But these decisions were never democratic in the past. No one in Britain or the USA has ever voted on a vaccine regime. Smith is just mythologising the past here. What has actually happened is that technocratic procedures have been opened up, and exposed as not-nearly-as-scientific-as-you-thought. Smith assumes that these messy, nasty processes must have been better in the past, and his version of “better” is “more democratic.” But he is simply mistaken. The dirty secret is that the past was horrible, even more horrible than the present.
“What has seemed unprecedented is the eagerness with which self-styled progressives have rushed to the support of the new regime, and have sought to marginalize dissenting voices”
Again, no. He’s confusing a change in what we see for a change in what exists. What actually happened is this: publishing, one of the most fundamental cultural processes, was transformed. Publishing used to be a highly professionalised, massively gate-kept process accessible only to a chosen few. Editors would determine who could write books and newspaper articles. Then, about 20 years ago, publishing became completely unmediated. Every single person in the rich world could publish their thoughts for free, without any barriers. Unsurprisingly, this massive change has caused some ripples. But what we are seeing is a shift from pervasive, invisible gatekeeping to commonplace but highly visible gatekeeping. The gatekeeping isn’t new. It just happens online now, rather than in smoky back rooms.
Scott Sumner
Jul 18 2022 at 1:09pm
For me, the 1970s was and will always be the golden age for privacy.
Michael Rulle
Jul 18 2022 at 8:44am
I know you will disagree——and I admit I have not gone back and analyzed past posts etc., so take this comment merely as an instantaneous first take perception.
This Smith essay reminds me of what Trump was saying in 2016—-but that cannot be true—right? Except I think it is.
Scott Sumner
Jul 18 2022 at 1:08pm
“but that cannot be true—right?”
That’s right, it cannot be true. Smith doesn’t insist that NFL players be fired for expressing political opinions.
And he does use anti-woke rhetoric as cover for racist statements.
And he doesn’t advocate putting a million Uyghurs into concentration camps, or advocate imposing a Muslim travel ban.
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