The Silicon Monopoly

In Mexico, the quarantine has already ended, even though the cases of Covid 19 have not decreased. This change of the quarantine ending has forced me to ask myself how an action as old as confinement, together with social distancing, have been the alternatives used to avoid the spread of the virus.

Technologically speaking, I believe that two particular facts lead us to question why and how we came to this. For the first question, I believe that there is a deficiency of the State to be unable to deal with such a lamentable situation. For the second point, I take particular interest in monotechnology, a term used by Yuk Hui.

As mentioned by de la Fuente (2002), the option of confinement and social distancing that we adopted as the most appropriate was a response to a mandate from a weakened State, which sees restrictions on freedom rather than investment in medical spending as the most viable option. This action, which seems to be common in Western countries, is opposed to recent events in the United States, whose protests had as an immediate action of the State the deployment of the army to the streets, similar to what happens in Mexico. Therefore, we are not talking about a weakened state, but one that is incapable of putting the welfare of its citizens before the interests of its leaders, the same particular fact that limits all technological capacity to the control of training and confinement of its citizens.

As a second point, I mention monotechnology, in which Yuk Hui (2020) refers to it as the one that has monopolized all relationship with the human and has assimilated the economic as an essential element; that is, digital technology. This relationship with digital technology has not allowed us to think of alternatives beyond those already used (confinement and social distancing) or those that threaten our privacy, such as the strategies used in China. However, although digital technologies are those that have been adopted by the state apparatus, it is from the people and the community that various strategies have been adopted. From the resurgence of the maker movement and the creation of respirators through 3d printing to the return of the community as a strategy for coexistence and social development. So it is clear how technology has impacted us cognitively and makes us ask what other forms of knowledge could have faced this pandemic.

Diseases, pandemics, and how we act against them have not changed in more than 5 centuries, and the technology we have has only allowed us to have information to spare without any particular use to deal with such a pandemic. In view of this, it is necessary to see other forms of knowledge and to develop different types of technologies, beyond silicon and plastic. Asking and establishing a genealogy of technology in relation to politics can give us clues to the impact that, along with economics, changes the way we go. It is, therefore, necessary to think of alternatives in how to think about technology from the general to the individual.

References

Hui, Y (2020). CIEN AÑOS DE CRISIS. SEGUNDA PARTE. Argentina: Caja Negra Editora. Recuperado de https://cajanegraeditora.com.ar/blog/cien-anos-de-crisis-segunda-parte/

De la Fuente, L., G. (2020). Pandemia. El problema del Estado y el problema nuestro. México: Reflexiones Marginales. Recuperado de https://revista.reflexionesmarginales.com/pandemia-el-problema-del-estado-y-el-problema-nuestro/