This is Not Normal

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William Davies. This is Not Normal

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This Is Not

The Collapse ofLiberal Britain

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The underlying logic of a platform is the same. Facebook, YouTube and Uber take forms of mutual dependence that already exist in society, and find a way of extracting a revenue from them. These companies didn’t invent friendship, cultural creation or municipal transport, but found a way to intervene in existing networks of these things in pursuit of profit. As with mortgage securitisation, they take two-way relations and insert themselves as an unnecessary third party. Along the way, they introduce scoring and ranking systems, quantifying the quality of social activity in terms of ‘likes’, ‘shares’ and stars out of five. A relationship based around trust is disrupted, and turned into one of instrumentality, strategy and self-interest.

The effect of these technologies is to drive a wedge between the ‘front stage’ and the ‘back stage’ of social and public life. The view of the world available to the general public becomes separated from that available to elites of one kind or another, breeding a disconnect between the rules, rituals and culture of everyday life and the mentality of financiers and digital technocrats. In place of the ‘social contract’ that was liberalism’s founding article of faith, there is surveillance. The descent of the public into cynicism, mistrust and conspiracy theory, in a political system that does not make the logic and purpose of power visible, is inevitable.

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