I can't help feeling that we're missing a key movement in our society today. Just about all of our interaction with society and the political sphere is now mediated by digital technologies. The impact of that - and the manipulation of those technologies by vested interests - is profound, and I think, largely unacknowledged.
I want to see a political party with the bravery and commitment to its values to say something like:
"We exist in a broken system. We must transition to the better - non-corporate - digital ecosystem that exists. To make that transition, which cannot be instantaneous, we must use some of those technologies to 'keep the lights on' as we actively learn about the alternatives. We must express our distaste and dissatisfaction with the status quo of technology, and our commitment to leave it behind as opportunities we help to bring about achieve viability."
Some might argue that technology is neutral. But technology always has a creator and a manager (who might not be the creator) and many of those, today, are demonstrably not neutral. Many of them are evil.
In the current global system, I'm mostly referring to corporations, whose entire purpose is to transfer capital from the market to its shareholders. They are the engines of inequity, and are the front line of unfettered capitalism, actively shaping the 'system' around their very particular interest. Many of them, given their single fiduciary responsibility and nation-scale market capitalisations, end up becoming laws unto themselves, and more than a few psychologists, when observing their publicly visible behaviour, label them 'psychopaths'. And yet, the technologies these corporations have made us all dependent on, mediate the majority of social information we take in today.
This anti-social presence is pervasive. It controls our governments, who have allowed themselves to become completely dependent on specific technologies, and have even been tasked by corporate lobbyists with finding new ways to become dependent on emerging technologies.
I believe there is a dawning awareness of this problem - this fundamental power imbalance - that create a latent demand and emerging opportunity for a political movement that rejects the corporate actors that have turned these technologies into malevolent forces in our societies, that are also relentlessly undermining our democracies.
Luckily, we have an alternative, quietly building strength at the edges: communities, local 'geek networks' made up of people who know how things work because knowing that stuff is what brings them satisfaction. They are creating decentralised, amazing technologies, for the love of it, and because they need to exist. Many of the existing 'Big Tech' system started this way, but most of them weren't protected from being subsumed into the broken system. We have ways now to prevent that.
All we need now is the commitment to announce that the current system is unacceptable and work to transition to the new, better system, that is consistent with our social cohesive, sustainable, democratic, considerate, and benevolent values.