We are living a datafied world . How are we to deal with the data harvesters that rob our privacy ? Story of data extraction is told in terms of four big US corporations: GAFA—Google, Amazon, Facebook ( Meta) and Apple . Some others use the acronym GAFAM where M stands for Microsoft. China has a parallel empire of data extraction BATX-Baido, Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi . These Chinese companies mainly operate in Asia but the rise of TikTok by ByteDance point to the growing competition between US and China. Google’s counterpart is Chinese Baido and Facebook closest counterpart is Tencent and Apple has a counterpart in Xiaomi . The Influence of Chinese Big Tech is on rise. There is certainly human side to this data extraction and it’s marketization. Everyone seems to celebrate a future that belongs to the data scientists. One who controls data controls the lives of the people. This vision of control through data has come to stay. Michel Foucault has taught us that knowledge is power and thus one who has data control will have power. We are moving closer to what may be called a data state where Government depend on data for governance and security. China already has a social credit system that seems to reward good behavior and punish bad behavior. Foucault’s notion of Governmentality as a mechanism of control of huge groups can illumine how and why the use of data analytics has become important tool of governance. Data analytics can enable real time intervention and might prevent crimes and even accidents.
The propagandist rhetoric of Big Tech normalizes and naturalizes data extraction and its use. It produces what Archibald Quijano called coloniality of power or Antonio Gramci termed hegemony. It makes us think that Big Tech is innocent and has no biting teeth. It exists only for our benefit. We have to guard against and be critically alert to manner in which we are sanitized to embrace Big Tech as harbinger of good life. This does not mean that we have to reject data all together. This rejection is also not possible. What we have is the challenge to humanizing it. To do this we have to embrace critical thinking that will contest the rhetoric that sanitizes data control by hiding its reality. We, therefore, have the imperative to humanize data practices by working to make them inclusive. We have the challenge to open the closed view of data analytics that is only build on profit maximization. Hence, Big Data, digital platforms and Artificial Intelligence can be used for good and evil. The ethical imperative is to create conditions for goodness to flow through and from them. We, therefore, have the challenge to instill moral language in the discourse of Big Tech, Big Data and Big Business. What is good cannot be simply measured by the market. Market determinism is very difficult to overcome in our capital saturated world but we have to resist the same all the same.
We cannot allow Big Business to become instrument of social control managed by market mechanisms as well as Governments. Hence, we have to resists what Achille Mbembe calls ‘becoming-artificial of humanity’. This means we have to consciously embrace nature rather than the next best thing. Talking on the phone is the next best thing while visiting and taking time to personally meet a person is the best thing. Unfortunately, the next best thing is presented to us as the best thing. Otherwise, nothing seems to save us from a future that is dark. Inspired by Mbembe we may say that the future is black. The future will make us unpaid slaves much like the black were treated by the colonizers. This means we have the challenge to be an Anti-Oculus who will refuse to enjoy the social media platforms that trigger temptation of visibilizing ourselves. This will require that we do not link ourselves to the assemblage of Big Tech, Big Data and Big business. We have the challenge to become a disassemblage. The moment we switch our device on, we are already part of the data extraction world. Hence, we do cannot escape but use the platforms judiciously and rebelliously by becoming unpredictable in our choices that leave data in the digital world. we have to choose life face to face at least some of the time, if not all the time. This would mean we have to be ready to reject what comes in the name of smart cities, smart cars and smart welfare systems. Socratic idiocy is the way ahead. Our smartness is not in the use of the smart phone. It is in the refusal that we become smart activists resisting against the Big Tech. it would require us to persuade people to disengage the Big Tech and reengage with nature.
Big Tech assemblage is actively creating an unequal world and we have \the challenge to work for a more inclusive world. This would mean that we have the challenge to contest inequalities, hierarchies and monopolies created by Big Tech, Big Data and Big Business combine. Our effort would be not enough. It may be a small drop in the ocean. It is each such drop that goes to form the ocean. Besides us, data scientists and philosophers have the challenge to reimagine the use of data. This would require us to reject extractivist driven profit-oriented data use. We have the challenge to reimagine resistance. Maybe we have to think of data as belonging to the commons. As belonging to the commons, they cannot be thought to be a private property. They being public property cannot be simply sold for profit not used to manipulate us. Thus, we do not have to reject data. What we have to do is redefine it and reimagine it’s use.
