Dissecting Tech Manifestos

<p>For this episode of the <em>Tech Policy Press</em> podcast,<strong> </strong>I had the chance to speak to <a href="https://www.cwanderson.org/about" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Chris Anderson</a>, Ph.D., a professor of sociology at the University of Milan who is leading a course on tech manifestos and their evolution, inviting his students to dissect the language for what it can tell us about politics and power. </p><p>Documents such as <a href="https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace</em></a> and <a href="https://monoskop.org/images/4/4c/Haraway_Donna_1985_A_Manifesto_for_Cyborgs_Science_Technology_and_Socialist_Feminism_in_the_1980s.pdf" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>A Manifesto for Cyborgs</em></a> have given way to more vacuous statements from billionaires, such as Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook manifesto, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-global-community/10154544292806634/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"><em>Building Global Community</em></a>. These days a lot of Silicon Valley’s leaders don’t have much in the way of ideas, but they do have a lot of money, so either way they can push whatever agenda they may have on the rest of us. From promises of abundance delivered by artificial intelligence, to a 'global community' convened on social media platforms, to reimagined economies or even a new world order built on the blockchain,&nbsp;tech manifestos remain important, since they often signify large amounts of capital are about to be deployed to try to manifest someone's new vision.</p>