Technology and Citizenship

In this chapter, we trace the evolution (or, perhaps, devolution) of citizenshipCitizenship in society under the deployment of increasingly sophisticated technology, examining how the material abundance offered by the Industrial RevolutionIndustrial revolution made greater demands on the population to fulfill their obligations as consumers and eventually “users,” a concept that reached an inflection point at the beginning of the cybernetic revolution in the 1960s, to sustain the industrial society. The interaction of the pragmatic order, now dictated by advanced technologies, with the civil order as codified on the statute books, is our primary theme. With the coming of post-industrial society, as traced by Daniel Bell in 1973, “human capitalHuman capital” eclipsed finance capital as the engine of prosperity, and “intellectual technology” came to the fore as the guiding force. Today, in the society dominated by technology, attention and “eyeballs” are the new circulation, and the algorithms of attention, whether on FacebookFacebook (Meta), TwitterTwitter (XXTwitter), Google (Alphabet), or Amazon, are now in the saddle. Social capitalSocial capital—the investments people have in their relationships, both actual and artificial—is now a major driver of the economy.