in response to Meadway, J: technology beyond connectivity
James Meadway is one of the few people in the orbit of Labour generally who seems to understand and track the evolution of technology… so it was good to read his piece here spelling out the importance of the 2019 free broadband pledge in the context of the pandemic.
I think his line on why the pledge failed to take off is broadly correct: the focus was too much on how to deliver the pledge, rather than why — and yes, it seemed to get swallowed by the technocratic-state emphasis of 2019. But I’d perhaps go a bit further in the following points:
- Copper can be enough, 4G can be enough
In terms of connection speed, copper wires can be sufficient, even for quite a large household with a number of devices. As James writes, the main problem is the cost attached to this. Perhaps — if the public is sceptical about the concept of “free” — putting a price ceiling of 10 pounds a month per household would basically address the issue of equalising access. In other words, these actions don’t have to wait for the installation of fibre cabling. It should also be said that, from an end-user standpoint, the difference between 4G and 5G is not especially significant, currently.
2. Tech consolidation
Related to the above, rather than a “Great Reset” — which seems designed to provoke deep anxiety amongst the many of us who are seeing lots of things swept away — I think we should be aiming for a consolidation, an approach leaning towards Polanyi, perhaps. Once costs of connectivity are evened out, the different speeds of connectivity aren’t especially significant.
There are really urgent infrastucture and platform questions. We need to figure out ways of of reducing the tendency to massive, power-guzzling (and Big Tech-owned) data centres. We need ideas how to do this, to make, for example, the BBC iPlayer, operate according to distributed, P2P principles, rather than central streaming servers. But more importantly, we need to move away from the question of IT provision, and a sober assessment of the costs and development requirements.
3. Education online
A very good example of moving towards a deeper consideration of technology is in the demand for One Laptop, One Child, to ensure every child can participate in the classes now being provided online. Of course, I support the initiative, but really it would be better to define what this online education should consist of first, before thinking about the logistics. The decision of the BBC to run curriculum-related programming for large chunks of the day, is perhaps far more significant, in terms of online learning. This would enable “flipped” learning — rather than existing lessons being turned into powerpoint bullet points, online meetings would then, in theory, be the launchpad/interactive practice for different project-based learning assignments.
The point here more generally is that online delivery may occur for 6 months or more this year, and the delivery of classes should reflect that students will be expected, potentially, to sit on their own and stare at a screen for 6 hours a day. This is a very obvious case where use of technology is necessary, but mitigation (eg forming study groups) is also necessary. And that mitigation, I believe, will be the de facto priority for future, shall we say, left-to-liberal coalition governments.
4. Security, privacy and integrity
Of course, there are very valid questions about the way that data entered by children on these big, corporate platforms should be handled. Is it OK to link a child’s opinions at school with a potentially indelible, and moreover, commodifiable user ID?
There’s been a lot of talk about the role of social media and disinformation, and yes — the left in the UK is justified in talking about how critical studies and media studies have been downplayed, and how the lack of critical tools have contributed to the rise of fringe right elements on social media.
At the same time, this is part of a wider conflagration, of how security, privacy and integrity of information are threatened. Approaches to improve all three should be crucial to an approach based on consolidation and extending the social control of technology.
