who controls the future of technology?

responsible tech operates in an entirely different headspace from Big Tech, and we are the future of technology. I am not certain of this, but it’s a wish worth fighting for.

Watercolor painting of asunflower from the book "Blumenbuch" created by Magdalena Rosina Funck in 1692 (Wikimedia Commons)

I want to present you, dear reader, with a big question because we here at Making Meaning From Feelings are big thinkers. Who controls the future of technology, and how does that shape patriarchy? Maybe, like me, you are a woman and you see man after man rolled out onto stage to opine on the future of technology in which, not once, do they mention the people who will also be in the future. I listened to Bezos, Altman, Pichai, Andreessen, Wang, and Huang share their vision for how technology will evolve but nowhere did I hear a contemplation on how all the different parts of our society will enmesh. Technology is one part, but none managed to imagine what the future holds at a social, cultural, environmental, or spiritual level.

They spoke to the capabilities of technology, the goals of nations, and the flow of capital, and possibly these are the limits of their expertise, but the transformative power and influence of technology makes it incumbent on all these leaders to be multidisciplinary thinkers, not to mention ethically compelled decision-makers.

But this is also what I, and you, are here for. The lovers of art, philosophy, literature, and culture, and I believe we must respond, with haste, to the call. In this essay I will explore the question of who controls the future of technology and illuminate the agency we each have in proposing alternatives.

do you know what patriarchy is?

“Whether you know it or not, Jensen Huang’s decisions are shaping the future”, says journalist Cleo Abram. She opens the conversation with “how can we actually use technology to make the future better”?

To answer her, Huang talks about the insights NVIDIA had early on, their core scientific beliefs, and the bets they placed on the future of technology: “I believed in NVIDIA for the last thirty years and there is no fundamental reason for me to change my beliefs.”

Huang reminds us that he, and his company, are in the business of predicting the future. Computing technology predicts, he explains to Abram. For example, it can predict weather patterns or how human development will impact an area of land.

“This is time travel,” he says.

With regards to how humans will relate to technology, he envisions an increasingly parasocial future.

“Everything that moves around us will be robotic… and I’m just excited about having my own R2-D2… R2 is with me all the time… in my glasses, my phone, my laptop, and at home waiting for me… and so I think the idea that we’ll have our own R2-D2 for our entire life, and it grows up with us. That’s a certainty now.”

While this does not answer Abrams’ original question of how will technology actually make life better, Huang’s idea for a personal R2-D2 is a compelling discussion topic for ethicists, historians, sociologists, legal experts, political economists, and artists. The assumption that Huang alone has the answers is simply not true. The assumption that Huang, or those like him, have all the answers is indicative of our society’s patriarchal values.

Patriarchy is a social system in which power, authority, and resources are disproportionately controlled by men, often to the exclusion or subordination of women and marginalized genders.

A patriarchal society is one in which mostly men hold positions of power in politics, business, and finance. It is a society where domestic labor or traditionally female professions are undervalued and underpaid. In a patriarchal society, media, literature, and history prioritizes the perspectives of men, eschewing the contributions and experiences of women and other marginal genders.

A patriarchal society has laws that are restrictive to women, such as the right to an abortion. It is where institutions, such as our educational, legal, or medical systems, reflect or reinforce gender hierarchies.

Combine all of these characteristics and you have a painfully obvious picture of modern America. But this is not a call to lose hope. My dear, sweet, curious reader — you and I are living, breathing, undying beings! We cannot help but keep questioning, writing, protesting, subverting, re-directing, and re-building. All writers, women, men, genderqueer alike, can describe reality for what it is, demonstrate the corrupting influence of power, and write a different future. It is our collective choice; it does not belong to a singular person.

My dear, sweet, curious reader — you and I are living, breathing, undying hope!

the future is… male?

The irony should not escape us that the same behemoth which once used “Lean In” faux-feminism to market itself has now re-branded to “masculine energy”. This is what happens when you try feminism on like a faux-fur coat, it is just as easy to shed when the seat gets hot, and it was never real any way.

Wikimedia Commons, edited in Canva

As we know, “Lean In” was the originator of the more vague “girl boss” movement, all of which dilutes the radical roots of feminism to create a kind of faux-feminism, as coined by bell hooks.

While Sandberg brought to light the personal issues professional women encounter, such as imposter syndrome and fear of negotiation, her faux-feminism, or corporate-feminism, lacked criticism of patriarchy or capitalism, and instead fixated on the decisions and behavior of individual women. “Lean In” was a defense mechanism, a coping strategy, and, let’s be honest, a marketing tool more than a contribution to feminist theory. Moving forward it is necessary that we, the feminist writers, remain critical and weary of faux-feminism, be that a trend set by a corporate superstar or Hollywood.

I for one am not so sure the conditions for white-collar working women in America, and especially white-collar working mothers, has improved much at all. I hear more, not fewer, stories of strain, fatigue, and the anxiety of keeping pace. I hear about male colleagues who neither understand nor care about the burdens placed on young mothers.

I cannot help but be aflame with rage that the same men who are concerned about plummeting birth rates are calling for more “masculine energy” in the workplace. If we want more women to choose motherhood, then motherhood should be made more appealing. Rather than discussing how to fix the gender-pay gap or alleviate the strain of childcare, Mark Zuckerberg chose to use the internet’s biggest platform to lament being “neutered”. Let that sink in.

Wikimedia Commons, edited in Canva

I did not expect Zuckerberg, the man who hoodwinked more than half the world into forgoing their fundamental rights, to be a spokesperson for modern feminism, but his blatant misogyny at worst, and dog whistle at best, was an ugly shock.

Silicon Valley today has no faux-feminist she-ro, and this is for the best. Whether that’s Mira Murati formerly at OpenAI or Daniela Amodei of Anthropic, the powerful women of tech seem temporarily disinterested in incorporating feminism into their personal brand. We can wait and see how this evolves.

power concentrates but our movement blooms

Power in the technology sector is concentrated, but it has been so for a long time. Look no further than Malcolm Harris’ Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World to understand the Bay Area through the lens of Silicon Valley, the military-industrial complex, the exploitation of labor, and throughlines that tie the ethos of the PayPal Mafia to the politics of Elon today.

So who exists as a foil to the Valley bosses? My friend Val calls us democracy tech, ethical tech, movement tech, and community-driven tech. I think of us as grassroots tech and responsible tech. Those of us interested in socially responsible innovation, as opposed to innovation at all costs.

And everyday I am discovering new pockets of our movement.

Today I found Sovereign Tech Agency and New Public, both offering alternatives to centralized, privatized technology platforms. The other day I attended a book event at City Lights for the release of The Mechanic and The Luddite by Jathan Sadowski. One can find hope in places like the Wikimedia community, All Tech is Human, and academic efforts at Berkman Klein.

Rudy Fraser, a fellow at BKC, is building Blacksky, a decentralized social media framework that provides users with tools for community-driven safety, data ownership, and interoperability.

Val Elefante is creating Reliabl, which provides platforms with community centric data management solutions and custom, high-performance algorithms.

Divya Siddarth is founder of The Collective Intelligence Project, an incubator designing new governance models for transformative technology.

Journalist Carl-Johan Karlsson writes about AI regulation in Knowable Magazine, a “thoroughly researched, reported, edited, copy-edited and fact-checked” publication seeking to make knowledge accessible to all.

These people are operating in an entirely different headspace from Big Tech leaders, and they are the longer-term future of technology. I am not certain of this, but it’s a wish worth fighting for.

cultural leadership comes from us

I won’t bore you with sap about how there are well-intentioned people in Big Tech. Possibly ethics will fall back into fashion among business leaders, but it is neither prudent nor praiseworthy to wait.

The tech-bro culture of 2010s liberalized during Obama, culminating in industry-wide commitments to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in 2020. Now, with several tech companies walking back on DEI commitments, one might say they are showing their so-called true colors. But I think this moment is teaching us a lesson we might have guessed all along — for-profit corporations are neither culture makers nor are they instruments of justice.

They mimic culture to survive.

Whatever risks they take are calculated, but being on the side of morality, the just, the right is a risk that must be taken without calculation. It is a faith-based choice, spurred by an internal compulsion and, I would say, a spiritual motivation. It is the true meaning of sacrifice.

Cultural leadership must, instead, come from us. The writers, artists, filmmakers, musicians, poets, designers, choreographers, composers, and actors. In a time where mass media is mass entertainment, we are saddled with the responsibility to create more art and literature.

But I think this moment is teaching us a lesson we might have guessed all along — that for-profit corporations are not culture makers nor are they instruments of justice.

Now is a time where right-wing media personalities have captured ideas of morality, ethics, conscience, and law, turning what could be a liberatory conversation into an oppressive one. It plays out in the media ecosystem, from the rightward shift of X/Twitter to the wild success of media personalities like Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, Steve Bannon, and Megyn Kelly. Our literacy rates are not so low that Rogan has to be the largest podcast in the country.

my forever inspiration, Ms. Toni Morrison! (Wikimedia Commons)

To paraphrase Toni Morrison, “people look to the screen for signs of their collective identity as a national society and as citizens of the world... In this fashion the news is validated as a system of authority, as a national institution with a privileged role as purveyor of the national identity and taker of its pulse.”

I firmly believe there is a voracious appetite brewing among all of us for healthy, honest, compassionate, and thoughtful public discourse, where legitimate perspectives are weighed and considered. There is a pluralism we can reinvigorate, and I think art and writing owes that to Americans and all citizens of the world.

Now is a time for independent scholarship so that we can remain open-minded and curious about the nature of all that is around us. Not only curious of contemporary politics and struggles for justice, but truly of all around us. About the natural world, languages, how families relate to each other and how migration changes families. About architecture and fashion as moving architecture. Curious about stories, theater, and folk heroes. About mathematical theorems, elegant proofs, and unsolved problems.

Cultural leadership starts with us. With the questions we ask our roommates, friends, and family members, our pickleball buddies, colleagues, fellow mosque attendees or church goers, maybe even the barista we see everyday, our next-door neighbor, or physical therapist. All this is to say, I hope this reading experience culminates in a social experience.