It’s about that time. We’ve reached the end of the quarter, and everybody (myself included) is dreading the arrival of finals just a few days away. In my past couple of blog posts, I’ve been tracing technology and its effects on empire, relating my major to the theme of Humanities Core this year. This post will wrap up my thoughts for the quarter, tying in novels we’ve read with the overarching themes for this blog and the course.
I’m aware that my past blog post (and this one) are extremely critical of tech in today’s world, and I don’t want my past posts to seem like I’m some crusader against technology, a conspiracy nut who believes Big Brother is listening to everything we’re saying and that we all need to move to the desert and revolt against the government. I’m quite the opposite: I couldn’t go a day without my phone, computer, or other tech devices. I’ve just made it a point to inform and comment on issues related to tech that come up, and currently, those issues revolve around privacy in tech.
The United States of America is the most powerful and influential country on Earth. It is undoubtedly an empire, possessing vast amounts of wealth and military strength and exporting its cultural influence across the world. With this power comes technological strength: putting a man on the moon 50 years ago, inventing cell phones, self-driving cars, and other impeccable feats. On a sinister note, however, the government’s technology has been getting stronger. I’ll talk more about that later, but I’d like to expand off my previous blog post relating to Borderlands by the Chicana author Anzaldua, and her message about the villainization of undocumented migrants.
We can see the targeting of certain groups in our society. Right-wing groups have targeted undocumented immigrants, riling up anti-immigrant fervor within their support bases. You can see it at Conservative-leaning events throughout the country: crowds chanting “Build the wall!” in support of President Trump’s proposed wall on the Mexican border. Just as equal fervor can be found against Middle-Eastern and Muslim peoples, with the President passing legislation banning entry to the United States by people of five Muslim-majority countries (New York Times). The official title of the ban is “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” with a concerted effort to have Americans connect those nations with terrorism, and nothing else.
I couldn’t help but notice a connection between the immigration ban and President Trump’s rhetoric surrounding it and J.M. Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians. Throughout the novel, the empire that the magistrate works for makes many attempts to villainize the barbarians that live in the area. Their attempts to paint the barbarians as a vicious enemy eventually end up succeeding. It is said among the people that “All night…the barbarians prowl about bent on murder and rapine” (Coetzee 163). When a girl is raped, people “claim a barbarian did it” (164). By Chapter 6, the people in the magistrate’s outpost are fully convinced of the barbarians as an enemy, and the novel ends with the magistrate standing at his “window watching the snow fall” (208), quite literally waiting for the barbarians to arrive. What the empire wants to accomplish is unknown to the reader, but with the barbarians established as an enemy, the empire can do whatever it wants without any interference. This happens in the real world: government, through propaganda or other means, distracts the public by directing their attention one way, and accomplishing their goals under the radar.
While President Trump hasn’t succeeded to the extent that the empire in Waiting for the Barbarians did, some of his predecessors have used distractions to enact laws that have harmed Americans. Most notable is the PATRIOT Act, passed after the 9/11 attacks. It authorized a plethora of national security programs, with the chief offender being the program that authorized the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect intelligence on phone calls of Americans without the need of a warrant. While this program was ended once it was discovered, similar programs continue to exist. Even as these programs are in effect, they do not collect nearly as much data as is collected by private sector companies. In a huge scandal, British company Cambridge Analytica collected data on 87 million users, and used that data to help Trump win the 2016 Presidential election (CNET).
Technology improves everyone’s lives. It can save those who previously would not have survived otherwise. It can save people time, money, and hassle. At the same time, it comes with dangers. The takeaway at the end of the day is that people need to be smarter about their privacy, and be careful what they do with their data. Companies like Facebook are building a virtual empire with your data, and that is data that you willingly give to them by using their service. Leaders like Apple CEO Tim Cook have called for comprehensive privacy laws to be enacted (The Verge), and more people need to follow their lead and push for change. So while technology helps our lives, we have to be vigilant to make sure it can’t hurt us and our rights.
Works Cited:
Coetzee, John Maxwell. Waiting for the Barbarians. Secker and Warburg, 1983.
Gladstone, Rick, and Satoshi Sugiyama. “Trump’s Travel Ban: How It Works and Who Is Affected.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 July 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/world/americas/travel-ban-trump-how-it-works.html.
Vincent, James. “Tim Cook Warns of ‘Data-Industrial Complex’ in Call for Comprehensive US Privacy Laws.” The Verge, The Verge, 24 Oct. 2018, http://www.theverge.com/2018/10/24/18017842/tim-cook-data-privacy-laws-us-speech-brussels.
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