“Lo mal fabbro blames lo ferro”. Dante- banquet
Once revolutions were made by the poor who took to the streets and overturned the system. Now revolutions are made by the rich – those who are already well off and want to be better off. We could call it: The Revolution of the Satisfied.
It is a subtle but crucial distinction: what we are witnessing is not a revolution, but a revolt. We fix a piece of something using new technologies, but the system as a whole sees little of these local revolutions. Like a phantom traffic jam that forms without a real cause, we create changes that seem epochal but leave the architecture of power intact.
The St. Matthew Effect in the Digital Age
Matthew’s words are prophetic: “To him that hath, shall be given, and he shall have an abundance; but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away.” This effect – which social scientists call the ‘St Matthew effect’ – describes how success attracts more success, wealth more wealth, power more power. In the technological ecosystem, this mechanism has become an algorithm. It is no longer a social phenomenon, it is literally programmed into the code:
– Search engines reward those who are already popular
– Platforms amplify those who already have followers
– Investments go to those who are already successful
– AI learns from the data of those who already have access
Our digital Jiminy Cricket no longer whispers moral advice – he amplifies inequalities with mathematical precision.
The Technosphere of Haste
According to Jacques Ellul, we have fallen into the third age of humanity: after the age of Nature and the age of Society, we now live in the age of Technology. A Technosphere that pervades any activity, with the difference that it forces us to follow its infernal rhythms.
But beware: it is not the culture of acceleration, it is the culture of haste. The distinction is crucial. Acceleration is fluidity, haste is self-blocking. Acceleration brings efficiency, haste generates phantom traffic jams.
Technological innovations should, and probably do, give us more space. The issue is: what do we do with the time we gain when even relationships are increasingly fast and superficial? We simply fill it with other commitments, other projects, other activities. We fill our diaries trying not to leave any empty holes.
Warning to the next pandemic: I don’t have time for you, I already have a full agenda.
The Myth of Lifelong Learning
We read everywhere the same reassurance: “Don’t worry, we don’t know what jobs will be created in ten years’ time thanks to these innovations.” The truth is that they keep moving these ten years forward. It is always ten years from now that the jobs of the future will come, always ten years from now that everything will be OK.
Meanwhile, however, today’s jobs disappear now. But to keep us from worrying, they sell us Lifelong Learning as the solution. Honest translation: ‘modify or replace learning that is no longer adequate for new needs’. With the consequence that the ideal worker is nothing more than a reservoir of skills with an ever closer expiry date.
What we learned yesterday is already obsolete today. In a culture of acceleration (pardon me, haste), you have to ‘keep up’. You don’t have to put down demographic or cultural roots: there is no time. Everything is focused on moving forward. The basic idea is that ‘you can do anything’ – with the consequence that it is only your fault if you don’t achieve your goals.
The Technicalisation of Everything
As Ellul writes, the mechanism is always the same: “When faced with a social, political, human, economic problem, it must be analysed so that it becomes a technical problem, and from that moment on, technology becomes the most appropriate tool to find a solution.”
This is exactly what today’s ‘revolutionaries’ do. They do not change the system – they technicalise it. Poverty becomes a problem of ‘distributive inefficiency’ to be solved by algorithms.
Loneliness becomes a ‘matching’ problem to be solved with apps. Democracy becomes an ‘engagement’ problem to be solved with platforms.
Technology trains technicians, not conscious men. Those who are needed at the moment, in that instant. And all destined to become ‘number one’ – or if you can’t: learn to be your own leader.
The Support Network that Locks Alone
The support network – that complex system of physical, economic, social and cultural acceptance relationships that should support technology – instead sabotages it. Not out of malice, but out of systemic short-sightedness.
Because we can measure the impact of a technology, but not identify its trajectory. Social acceptance is unpredictable: who would have thought that we would accept being monitored 24 hours a day by our phones, but rebel against cookies on websites?
Every technology consists of hardware, software and brainware – three interdependent components. But we still think of them separately, as if we could isolate the ‘technical facts’ from the cultural context.
This is where our most sophisticated phantom traffic jams are born:
– We create ‘democratic’ platforms that concentrate power
– We design ‘neutral’ algorithms that replicate our biases
– We build ‘decentralised’ networks that create new monopolies
The Herod Experiment: The Economics of Default
Do this experiment: go to Google, search first for ‘Rich’ and then for ‘Poor’, select the images option. In the first case finding a black person is very rare. In the second case finding a white person is equally difficult.
But there is an even more disturbing experiment. In the UK, a company included a Herod clause in an online contract: those who signed automatically gave up their firstborn child to the company. Thousands of people signed without realising it. Not out of stupidity, but out of haste.
It is the economy of default: we accept everything to get to the goal quickly. We do not read the terms and conditions, we click ‘I agree’ compulsively, we sign contracts without reading. Haste turns us into consensual automatons.
For the network – and this is the data that is used in machine learning – wealth is synonymous with white skin, and consensus is synonymous with haste. But let us not worry: we have ‘defeated poverty’ thanks to technology, and we have ‘democratised access’ thanks to clicks.
It is the most perverse phantom traffic jam: we create systems that perpetuate inequalities while telling ourselves that they are eliminating them. And all the while, haste turns us into unwitting accomplices of the system we are supposed to change.
The Anarchy of Winners
This is not the anarchy we imagined – the spontaneous explosion of creativity from below, the decentralisation of power. It is the anarchy of the winners: those who have already won use the new technologies to win even more, easier, faster.
Cryptocurrencies were supposed to bypass central banks, they ended up replicating Wall Street. Blockchain was supposed to decentralise power, it created new oligopolies. Platforms were supposed to connect humanity, they fragmented it.
It is as if Pinocchio, after becoming a real boy, decided to turn all other children into puppets.
The Possible Adjacent of the True Revolution
Yet, in the adjacent possible, there is room for a real revolution. Not the one narrated in the presentations of tech companies, but the silent one that emerges when people use technologies in ways not envisaged by their creators.
When migrants use WhatsApp to coordinate. When activists use Signal to organise. When local communities bypass traditional media. When creatives use AI to break free from industrial logic.
These are not revolts of the satisfied – they are experiments in autonomy from below.
The Rediscovered Time
The real revolution will start when we stop compulsively filling our diaries and learn to manage empty holes. When we will distinguish speed from haste. When we understand that we don’t all have to become ‘number ones’ but can be different ways of being human.
Perhaps it would be worthwhile to do some unhurried thinking, with a bit of calm, no pills. It is the only way to really express our idea. Otherwise, Mark Twain was right: “If voting made any difference, they wouldn’t let us do it.”
Let us disprove Twain. And let us try to make a difference.
Next episode: How the mathematics of manufacturing concentration (Price’s Law) combines with automation to create ‘universal cost compression’. And why the 10% of machines doing 90% of the work could be as much a threat as an opportunity.
Welcome to the era of fast revolutions and slow revolutions.