New Marxism: Desire is the precondition for the development of new technologies – not the other way around.
Whole libraries could be filled with books about the impact of the internet on our lives, our ideas, and our way of living together. Countless talks have been given on the topic of digital change, and countless articles have been written that attempt to trace technological changes and make sense of their social consequences. TV shows purport to enlighten us about new possibilities and new dangers, and give advice how to protect ourselves from the darker side of the internet, how to avoid the traps of the online world, and how to make good use of the chances it offers.
Critics and apostles are usually united in their representation of the internet as something that happenend to us, something that is becoming increasingly powerful and will change our lives regardless of whether we want or not. The implicit conclusion: We must change because the internet changes our world.
But is that really true? Of course, it doesn’t make much sense to refuse to recognize the impact of new technologies and to insist, for example, that it’s possible to shop for books around the corner instead of buying them online, or to attempt to live without email and twitter. Sooner or later, every human will use the internet and will learn to use it well. For most people, this will mean accessing digitally stored information from a mobile device.
No: The question I hope to raise is more fundamental. It’s not the internet that changes our thinking and our actions. The opposite is true: Long before the invention of network protocols and computational architecture, our thinking changed - and thus paved the way for the emergence of the internet. Networked reason - to borrow from Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” - isn’t the result of networked computers. Because our reason became networked, it created the desire for networked technologies to supplement, perfect, secure and accelerate our thinking.
The idea that the internet changes our thinking is a delayed echo of the dialectic of base and superstructure and of productive forces and relations of production. It’s the view that our consciousness is determined by our being - a philosophy that emerged 150 years ago from the works of Karl Marx, who claimed to flip Hegel’s dialectic on its head.
According to Marx, productive forces are almost like natural forces: They develop independently of human doing and wishes in a rather deterministic fashion. The only choice available to us is adapt to this evolutionary process, to recognize and understand it, and maybe to steer it a little bit into one direction or another, to use its chances and learn to live with its risks.
If we apply the logic of Marx’s historical materialism, modern communication technologies and computer technology are only one further step in this process - and our thinking must adapt accordingly. Deep down, those who want to explain changes in our thinking with the rise of the internet harbor Marxist convictions.
But we also know that not every technological development spreads naturally, even if it is effective, useful and admirable. Many great machines don’t thrive in the market. Many great online enterprises fail. If technological advancement followed the rules of natural laws, the dot-com bubble wouldn’t have burst.