This raises still further questions as to our dependence on them, as Evgeny Morozov writes:
‘the issue of whether we want a company like Google that already has access to an enormous reservoir of personal information to continue its expansion and become the default provider of infrastructure—in health, education and everything else—for the twenty-first century’322
At the very least, democratic societies need to explore the dangers of such dependence. If a service collapses or becomes unavailable, do we do without it until the market comes up with an alternative? If certain organisations offer their services in exchange for personal information, are we comfortable that it is a fair exchange?
Should our public sphere become increasingly atomized and disconnected, should we try to create new, shared digital public spaces? Are we concerned about the privatisation of public goods?
‘In our dependence,’ Rebecca MacKinnon writes, ‘we have a problem: we understand how power works in the physical world, but we do not yet have a clear understanding of how power works in the digital realm.’323
In his landmark book The Master Switch, Tim Wu shows how various information and communication empires have gone through a series of cycles in their history. From an open, highly inventive and slightly chaotic phase towards a more closed phase characterized by industry consolidation, often with the support of government. This is then followed by a third, disruptive phase driven by technological change or by government led break-up (for example in the form of antitrust).324
On this basis, with respect to the internet, we appear to be moving into the second phase, in which a small number of large corporations dominate, and where governments seek ways with which to contain, direct or collaborate with those corporations. Organisations cannot reach this scale and size, and accumulate this much power without provoking a response - from national and regional governments, from other industries, and from the public.
Indeed governments have already responded, and found ways in which to
collaborate with these companies, as we learnt from the materials leaked by Edward Snowden in 2013. Yet this type of collaboration, of democratic states working closely with corporations that have such detailed knowledge of the minutiae of our political and social lives, raises a rather frightening prospect that neither George Orwell or Aldous Huxley fully imagined. A world in which governments have access to all our digital information and communication, and therefore almost complete knowledge of who we are, who we communicate with, and how we engage with politics – not only via their own systems but via those run by the information intermediaries. In addition to which, by outsourcing its means of surveillance and control there are few
responsibility for them? Should they be investing in news? How should their governance make them more accountable for their civic roles? How can they make themselves more responsible to those who rely on their services? Right now the public has little say in how they use their power, or adapt it, or evolve it; nor are the public aware of the values to which they ascribe. This would be of less importance if these organisations were not so dominant in the digital world.
Partly, this comes down to a question of trust. These organisations would like people and governments to trust them. ‘Google depends for its continued success on users and governments that trust it will not abuse this knowledge.’325 President of Alphabet, Sergey Brin, agrees: ‘We wouldn’t survive if people didn’t trust us’ he told the audience at the Code Conference 2014.326 Much of this trust derives from the individuals that lead the organisations – from Sergey and Larry, from Mark and Jeff.
Eric Schmidt, executive Chairman of Alphabet reinforced this when he told a reporter – “Evil is what Sergey [Brin] says is evil.”327
Yet placing such a degree of trust in an individual, Shoshana Zuboff writes, may be seen as ‘the quintessence of absolutism.’328 It is also highly precarious. Google’s 2014 capitalization Annual Report acknowledged this explicitly by noting that ‘The loss of key personnel could seriously harm our business’, in particular ‘Larry Page and Sergey Brin are critical to the overall management of Google and the development of our technology’. Neither is it helped by the opaqueness of most of these firms. The academic and journalist John Naughton has noted how Google and Facebook are
‘pathologically secretive about their long-term aspirations and strategies’ and likens reporting on them to Kremlinology during the Cold War.329
Our trust has also taken a knock in recent years. The files released by Edward Snowden in 2013 appeared to show that many of the tech giants had been collaborating – willingly or unwillingly – with the US government. The firms themselves denied such collaboration.
Eventually, inevitably, trust in these organisations will not be enough. Trust will erode and dissipate. As commercial companies these organisations will seek to maintain profits and shareholder returns. This will lead them to do some things that citizens do not like or are uncomfortable with – particularly as regards civic role and responsibilities. In order to increase revenues, for example, they are likely to seek to gain more financially from their knowledge about individuals. They will make decisions about what should command public attention about which people will disagree. They may share information with governments, political parties or authorities that is then used in a repressive or exploitative way. Their dominance will mean some of these actions have significant implications, but there will be little that citizens can do about them. Once trust erodes, or is undermined, what next?