The article itself is pretty good, but “techno-authoritarian” is pretty meaningless. For most, I tend to describe it as techno-feudalism. Authoritarianism is a vague term that just means a certain group has authority. Totalitarianism means the group has total authority. Techno-feudalism is a reemergence of owners of private capital existing as the state. Because that’s mostly their goal. It was super obvious with Zuckerberg’s metaverse plans
I’m still not really sure how it’s a coherent ideology. Techno-optimism is, but as far as I know most big tech people don’t actually adhere to it, or even think it makes sense any more than we do.
As far as I read, its more an opinioned essay about the political influence of some silicon vally cooperations. I think, these “companies will be more important than states”-thing is over. We all has become witnesses for the importance of policies on a state level in the last decade. It’s not over for them, like it or not.
Now that we have entered a new period of political tension at the global level, I think the role of states will be even more important. An interesting side note: the institution of the European Union has failed to create a strategy to respond to the current war in Ukraine. So, the idea of super-national institutions like the EU or whatever, seems unlikely to be a solution to the problem of global coordination and cooperation as humanity. Again, like it or dislike it. I’m pretty sure many international observers has already note this and drawt their conclusions.
I had first heard about the origins of Technocracy within the past years or so on a few podcasts. I’m glad the article doesn’t shy away from its fascist origins; emphasis mine:
Technocracy first blossomed as a political ideology after World War I, among a small group of scientists and engineers in New York City who wanted a new social structure to replace representative democracy, putting the technological elite in charge. Though their movement floundered politically—people ended up liking President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal better—it had more success intellectually, entering the zeitgeist alongside modernism in art and literature, which shared some of its values. The American poet Ezra Pound’s modernist slogan “Make it new” easily could have doubled as a mantra for the technocrats. A parallel movement was that of the Italian futurists, led by figures such as the poet F. T. Marinetti, who used maxims like “March, don’t molder” and “Creation, not contemplation.”
The ethos for technocrats and futurists alike was action for its own sake. “We are not satisfied to roam in a garden closed in by dark cypresses, bending over ruins and mossy antiques,” Marinetti said in a 1929 speech. “We believe that Italy’s only worthy tradition is never to have had a tradition.” Prominent futurists took their zeal for technology, action, and speed and eventually transformed it into fascism. Marinetti followed his Manifesto of Futurism (1909) with his Fascist Manifesto (1919). His friend Pound was infatuated with Benito Mussolini and collaborated with his regime to host a radio show in which the poet promoted fascism, gushed over Mein Kampf, and praised both Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. The evolution of futurism into fascism wasn’t inevitable—many of Pound’s friends grew to fear him, or thought he had lost his mind—but it does show how, during a time of social unrest, a cultural movement based on the radical rejection of tradition and history, and tinged with aggrievement, can become a political ideology.
