Covid-19 a technoauthoritarian Dark Age

In stark contrast to the post war-settlement, which saw the beginning of a world of unprecedented egalitarianism, Covid-19 looks likely to mark the birth of a technoauthoritarian Dark Age - a new era of e-surveillance, racial segregation, digital ID certificates, immunity passports, jail sentences and coursework grades decided by corporate AI; a future in which, our every move, our every word, our every relationship is trackable, traceable, and data-mineable by unprecedented collaborations between government and tech giants." Or, the technological barbarism that we are currently living through is the cancellation from life of any experience of the senses as well as the loss of the gaze, permanently imprisoned in a spectral screen." Learning for learning's ake and art for art's sake will become quaint anachronisms.

Covid-19 provides the perfect pretext for the acceleration of this barbaric, neo-feudal technocapitalist order on the basis of the chilling proclamation that: “Humans are biohazards, machines are not.” The result will be a more extreme concentration of wealthy amongst hyper-affluent elites of managers, IT specialists and corporate technocrats. Much of the rest of the populations will struggle to survive, perhaps just about kept solvent by an e-wallet in which is paid a basic income.

At some point, we may wish to ask whether this relinquishment of centuries-old liberal norms, this abandonment of public arts and education, this segregationist biopolitics, this passing of such vast power to tech monopolies, this welcoming of digital control into every territory of our last lives, was really worth the 'safety' we gained in exchange.