How could so many of us doubt that Donald Trump was going to win the elections if he had Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel and so many other Silicon Valley technology leaders at his side. Apart from their ideological and personal preferences, and their economic desires, they have raw material at their disposal to a much higher degree than those of the demographic companies: When they chose the side, they told us what was going to happen. The rest of us were blind kittens.
It has already been explained exhaustively, although the model had not been applied to electoral processes. Every time we use the Internet—now, to send this article—we unconsciously give up part of our personal sovereignty to an opaque power without limits or borders. Some of them have already predicted that Facebook or TikTok will come to know all the movies, all the books, all the songs that you have ever consumed in your life, long or short. The information available to Silicon Valley companies will be used to deduce which bar you will go to when you arrive in a strange city, a bar where the bartender will have your favorite drink prepared. Or which Airbnb it will settle on.
You don’t need to type anything: we know where you are, we know where you may have been, we know more or less what you are thinking and, most significantly, what you are going to vote for. This is what sociologist Shoshana Zuboff has described as: the unilateral claim by a group of companies belonging to Silicon Valley of private human experience as raw material to translate into data. This data is computed and packaged (like the famous crazy mortgages, origin of the ) as prediction products and sold in the futures markets of people’s behaviors. For example, for Trump’s election campaign. The services online free, the app that are priceless are just bait, not a gift from magnanimous companies created by young entrepreneurs in torn jeans and loud t-shirts, fun and friendly, so different from the distant and constipated tie-wearing tycoons of the past who posed smoking a cigar. These young companies accumulate data through behaviors: how we dress, what movies we watch, what food we order, the books we read, the sports we play, whether we are young or old…, and who we vote for.
In this context, Donald Trump has won the presidential elections, and instead of generating a futuristic atmosphere, the analyzes remember the past. The writer Siegmund Ginzberg speaks of “1933 syndrome” (1933 syndromeGatopardo essay): a kind of permanent electoral campaign, parties that are neither left nor right, but “people’s parties”, polarization and hate speech, politicians accused of treason, demagogic and irresponsible governments, “let them all go “, etc. Symptoms that, in a disturbing already seenthey emerge again and threaten to . This book explains how the Nazis were able to conquer power thanks to the collaboration (perhaps naive or unconscious, but in any case essential) of the supposed guarantors of democracy: state institutions, politicians, the media and the rest of civil society.
The Silicon Valley tycoons who have opted for Trump; Before, that technological area of California was a place of Democratic tradition, especially with Barack Obama) they will also have taken into account his program, his promises of tax reductions, less regulation (in the face of States that want to limit their monopolistic power), an immigration system that analyzes the training of people who want to enter the United States and, above all, protectionism: limiting competition from companies that come from abroad, which cause so many problems.
