Tech wasn’t a neutral bystander in the collapse of academia, media, and the arts. The same voices now clutching their pearls over what tech is enabling—what Trump is leveraging through tech—were the ones who helped build the system that made this possible. To pretend otherwise is pure naïveté.
Even as bloated, compromised, and gameable as they could be, media, the arts, and academia weren’t just passive victims. They were imperfect but essential checks on technological authoritarianism. By undermining these institutions, tech dismantled its own systemic counterweights—like ripping out the immune system while claiming to be providing healthcare.
There’s no such thing as neutral technology, only a deliberate mechanism of institutional erosion. The “neutral arbiter” pose is itself a strategic move—tech doesn’t just accelerate contradictions, it exploits and weaponizes them to expand its own power and control. 1 reply
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Authoritarianism isn’t a bug in tech’s system, but a feature—a fundamental genetic code driving its expansion and consolidation of power. And if anyone doubts that these institutions were ever effective checks, just remember the atomic bomb. The reason we didn’t stumble straight into World War III and global annihilation wasn’t because of tech—it was because of institutions in academia, media, and the arts pushing back, shaping narratives, and forcing a reckoning with power. Without them, what’s stopping the next catastrophe?
By systematically undermining these institutions’ credibility, funding models, and social legitimacy, tech created an environment where it could rewrite societal rules with minimal resistance. The “own goal” wasn’t an accident—it was a calculated strategy of institutional deconstruction. 1 reply
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