IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2022 - 9

" white collar " jobs are also essentially pointless, then
techno-feudalism underpinned by universal basic
income in a world of ever-increasing automation and
artificial intelligence [21] simply turns the function
of the state to be the overseer of wealth transfer by
channeling money that it " prints " (or in the case of a
fiat currency, issues though a central bank) from the
people, through these pointless activities, and into the
accounts of the platform owners.
these seven examples all have one common feature:
there is an asymmetry of power in the Digital
Society which is replicating the same asymmetries in
digital rights as experienced in the analog world with
respect to land rights of indigenous peoples. Indeed,
the asymmetry is already so deep, entrenched, and
nearly irrevocable that it might be called out for
what it really is: modern indentured servitude. But
once we know something for what it is, perhaps
something else can be done about it.

 References
[1] L. Behrendt, Indigenous Australia for Dummies, 2nd
ed. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2021.
[2] F. Furedi, The Mau Mau War in Perspective. Oxford,
U.K.: James Currey Publishers, 1989.
[3] A. G. Hopkins, " 'Blundering and plundering': The
scramble for Africa relived, " J. African History, vol. 34,
no. 3, pp. 489-494, Nov. 1993.
[4] N. Stevens and J. Wernimont, " Seeing 21st century
data bleed through the 15th century wound man, " IEEE
Technol. Soc. Mag., vol. 37, no. 4, pp. 46-54, Dec. 2018.
[5] E. Stark et al., " Odorveillance and the ethics of robotic
olfaction [opinion], " IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag., vol. 37,
no. 4, pp. 16-19, Dec. 2018.
[6] P. Lewis, S. Marsh, and J. Pitt, " AI vs 'AI': Synthetic
minds or speech acts, " IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag.,
vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 6-13, Jun. 2018.
[7] R. Abbas, K. Michael, and M. Michael, " The regulatory
considerations and ethical dilemmas of location-based
services (LBS): A literature review, " Inf. Technol.
People, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 2-20, Feb. 2014.
[8] N. Srinicek, Platform Capitalism. Cambridge, U.K.:
Polity Press, 2016.
[9] M. Lofgren, " The revolt of the rich, " American
Conservative, Aug. 27, 2012. [Online]. Available:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/
articles/ revolt-of-the-rich/
[10] J. Pitt, K. Michael, and R. Abbas, " Public interest
technology, citizen assemblies, and performative
June 2022
governance, " IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag., vol. 40, no. 3,
pp. 6-9, Sep. 2021.
[11] S. Weil, The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration
of Duties Towards Mankind. Oxfordshire, U.K.:
Routledge, 2002.
[12] J. Pitt, " No more 'de-root and rule': The need for
digital roots, " IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag., vol. 39, no. 4,
pp. 5-10, Dec. 2020.
[13] R. Farthing et al., " Age appropriate digital services for
young people: Major reforms, " IEEE Consum. Electron.
Mag., vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 40-48, Jul. 2021.
[14] L. Wiederkehr et al., " Attention enhancing technology:
A new dimension in the design of effective
wellbeing apps, " IEEE Trans. Technol. Soc., vol. 2,
no. 3, pp. 157-166, Sep. 2021.
[15] N. D. Schüll, Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling
in Las Vegas. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton Univ.
Press, 2014.
[16] N. Eyal, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming
Products. New York, NY, USA: Penguin, 2019.
[17] N. Oreskes and E. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How
a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues
From Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. London,
U.K.: Bloomsbury, 2010.
[18] J. Pitt, " The BigTech-academia-parliamentary complex
and techno-feudalism [editorial], " IEEE Technol.
Soc. Mag., vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 5-8, Sep. 2020.
[19] B. Collier, G. Flynn, J. Stewart, and D. Thomas,
" Influence government: Exploring practices, ethics,
and power in the use of targeted advertising
by the UK state, " Big Data Soc., Jan. 2022,
doi:10.1177/20539517221078756.
[20] D. Graeber, Bullsh*t Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work
and What We Can Do About It. New York, NY, USA:
Penguin Random House, 2019.
[21] G. Zarkadakis, Cyber Republic: Reinventing
Democracy in the Age of Intelligent Machines.
Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2020.
Jeremy Pitt is a professor of intelligent and selforganizing
systems with the Department of Electrical
and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College
London, London, U.K. He is a Fellow of the British
Computer Society (BCS), the Institute for Engineering
and Technology (IET), and a member of IEEE. He is
currently the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Technology and
Society Magazine.
 Direct questions and comments about this article
to Jeremy Pitt, Department of Electrical & Electronic
Engineering,
Imperial College London, London SW7
2BT, U.K.; j.pitt@imperial.ac.uk.
9
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/revolt-of-the-rich/ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/revolt-of-the-rich/
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