IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2015 - 12

makes this plain in his panegyric
to Trajan, xxxi.1. In more recent
times the Nazi theater with all of its
pomp and ceremony is a prime and
monstrous example. Hitler knew
too well the stupor a good show
could produce, and so did Stalin
who was directing his own militaristic and political shows in the Soviet
Union. "Only the mob and the elite"
wrote Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), "can
be attracted by the momentum of
totalitarianism itself. The masses
have to be won by propaganda"
[8]. It is not only the "bright lights"
that can disengage us from deeper reflection but non-stop noise as
well, something that Arthur Schopenhauer reflected upon more than
a century ago.
Turning the notion of resistance
is futile on its head gives us the
confirmatory message that "this is
inevitable", whatever the "this" happens to be. It says that no matter
what I say to you, no matter the red
flags that I identify, and no matter
the harms I have revealed through
my investigations, that "this"
(whatever this might be in a given
context) is inevitable. I become
powerless to choose and I am told
what will happen before it happens.
Who holds this iron fist control over
the future? This has nothing to do
with prophecy, religious or not, for
when seers foretell they will typically point to an alternative path. But
in this instance we are in fact dealing with the macroeconomic doctrine of the Chicago school which
advanced the idea that profit values
are the absolute and market decisions are unerringly right.
Media moguls or media maestros as they are every so often
referred to, want us to believe that
our stance is normally contradictory to the majority; that our position is not only unimportant but
warped. They try to convince us

that the vocal minority will soon
stop speaking out because they
simply don't have the resources to
keep going. This proselytization is
shameful trickery. Those conscientious members of large corporations who have glimpsed behind
the veil have been the first to admit
that the future they are selling is
a potentially terrible one and that
they will be glad to not be a part of
it [9]. Bill Joy the former chief technologist at Sun Microsystems was
severely criticized for being narrowsighted, even a fundamentalist of
sorts, after publishing his brave
paper in Wired (2000), but all he
did was dare to ask the questions:
"Do we know what we are doing?
Has anyone really carefully thought
about it?" He wrote:

sumer advocates who have at heart
the representation of consumers,
and the everyday people. We need
to have a balance that verbalizes
"because you can, it doesn't mean
it is the right thing to do." We need
people marching on the streets if
they do not agree with what is happening in their local, national, and
international community of interest. And we need engineers to take
upon themselves an increasing and
commensurate responsibility, both
at the building and ethical levels of
their own work.
The paradox more often than
not, is that the "resistance is futile"
reprise comes from the very few
who allegedly represent the many.
These are the multinationals and
corporates acting as a single entity.
They are not the everyday consumer, the school teachers, the elderly, or the disabled. But we have
swallowed the adage to believe
in the reprise and its inevitability. This is reminiscent of DreamRift's side-scrolling platform game
Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion.
But life is not a game, though we
are increasingly led to believe that
almost everything is now become
a game or possessed at least of
some entertainment value.
In this world nothing can be said
to be "inevitable." The only thing that
we can say for now that is inevitable belongs ironically to another cliché: death and taxes. The question
remains, why do researchers who
believe that trajectories mapped out
by marketeers and engineers given
the principle of exponential growth
will invariably be realized (uberveillance or human-machine meshing
for example), continue to spend
time and resources on the subject?
The answer need not be intricate.
It is because a large group of these
researchers believe that ultimately
whatever the cost, individuals will
still possess the freedom to decide

"We are being propelled
into this new century with no
plan, no control, no brakes.
Have we already gone too
far down the path to alter
course? I don't believe so, but
we aren't trying yet, and the
last chance to assert control -
the fail-safe point - is rapidly
approaching" [10].
Machinery and technology are
to be used for the betterment of
humankind and not for its subservience. The essential difference
between technique "then and now"
is that it used to be complimentary to our endeavors and we were
in partnership with the engineering. We have gradually moved away
from this healthy synergy where
we are not only becoming faceless
numbers but are deconstructing the
basic building blocks of our very
being. The catchphrase with which
this editorial started has snuck
into every pocket of life. It is our
responsibility as researchers and
investigators to speak out and point
to the alternatives. We need con-

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