Occupy Technology
ServiceSpace
--Tom Mahon
2 minute read
Jan 26, 2012

 

It’s time “we, the people” rethink our tools: how we use them and how they use us.
 
We have a rich portfolio of technology now at our disposal to fashion a just and civil society. Instead we fritter away so much intellectual, financial and moral capital on trivial “cool stuff,” with its heavy carbon footprint, and “smart weapons” that win neither hearts nor minds.
 
We have misdirected so much technology to build a society of waste - infinite consumption of finite resources.  And enormous financial interests lobby very hard now to keep this going, in spite of the overwhelming and evident damage to our physical, psychological and spiritual landscape.
 
Today there are significant movements afoot all over the world by people reminding institutional leaders that those institutions, and the tools they use, are legitimate only to the degree they serve the people they were set up to serve. 
 
To the extent that institutions turn a deaf ear to this cry, it’s time for “the people” to Occupy Technology.  
 
I wonder what Gandhi would've done.  Getting rid of a foreign occupier is hard enough. How do we non-violently wrest control of our tools, our livelihood and our physical, mental and spiritual well-being from institutions and leaders obsessed with greed, gain and self-aggrandizement?  
 
To start, it requires a whole new way to think about tools. 

  • Tools that create jobs, not technologies that automate people out of work;
  • Tools that build on the Internet model of a web; not technologies that enforce a wedge between the few with much, and the many with little;
  • “Content” that lets us appreciate the gift of existence, not ubiquitous CE devices that marinate us in images of violence and salaciousness til the ads come on to incite our greed and envy;
  • Tools that facilitate service to others (as ServiceSpace has done and continues to do so well), not technologies that cater to self-absorption and numb us into complacency.
 
I don't pretend to have the answers to these issues, but I think it's important now to start framing the right questions.

 

Posted by Tom Mahon on Jan 26, 2012