Tech vs Trump: the great battle of our time has begun
Social media helped Donald Trump take the White House.
In Christian theology and in "One Nation Under God" gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins.
Every segment of the media - including social networks owned by Facebook and Twitter - is an enabler of this abuser of the powers of the Office of The Presidency.
Here's Ferguson in his Trump vs Trump post
Off we go with this start:
"In the 1962 Japanese sci-fi classic King Kong vs Godzilla, the two giant monsters fight to a stalemate atop Mount Fuji. I have been wondering for some time when the two giants of American social media would square up for what promises to be a comparably brutal battle. Finally, it began last month — and where else but on Twitter? "
Off we go with this start:
"In the 1962 Japanese sci-fi classic King Kong vs Godzilla, the two giant monsters fight to a stalemate atop Mount Fuji. I have been wondering for some time when the two giants of American social media would square up for what promises to be a comparably brutal battle. Finally, it began last month — and where else but on Twitter? "
Follow along in Ferguson's thinking if you can:
. . . the world has belatedly woken up to realities about social networks that were already obvious to anyone familiar with history and network science. For most of history, it is true, hierarchies have tended to dominate distributed networks. However, there are historical precedents for technological change leading to enhanced connectedness that empowers social networks and weakens hierarchies.
Now, as then, the networks have acted as a transmission mechanism for all kinds of manias and panics as well as truth and beauty. And now, as then, the networks have eroded territorial sovereignty, weakening the established structures of political authority.
The US government sought to harness the power of social networks when the National Security Agency co-opted the big technology companies into its PRISM programme of mass domestic and foreign surveillance. But the new networks did not easily integrate into old power structures. Globally disseminated leaks, courtesy of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, exposed PRISM, while a new kind of populist politics flourished on social media.A defining feature of social networks (as in the Reformation) is their tendency to divide rather than unite.
Silicon Valley insists it is home to neutral network platforms. This is no longer credible. Facebook alone has, without quite meaning to, evolved into the most powerful publisher in the history of the world.
In many ways, what we are about to witness will be a classic struggle between new networks and established hierarchies. Like King Kong’s epic slugfest with Godzilla, however, it’s far from easy to predict which side will prevail — or how much collateral damage they will both inflict on American democracy. In the old Godzilla movies, after all, the one predictable thing is that Tokyo always gets destroyed.
Niall Ferguson’s new book, The Square and the Tower: Networks, Hierarchies and the Struggle for Global Power, has just been published by Allen Lane.
Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson
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