To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfield, when it comes to explaining a nation’s techno-economic performance, culture gets no respect. It can’t be easily quantified, so economists tend to ignore it. It concerns the nation rather than the enterprise, so business scholars largely ignore it as well. And it’s removed from day-to-day politics, so political scientists often ignore it too. But despite this, culture plays a critical role in a nation’s techno-economic success.
I don’t mean culture in the narrow sense of just books, movies, and music. I mean the overarching narratives and shared views held by society, and especially by what Michael Lind calls the managerial overclass—”the university-credentialed elite that clusters in high-income hubs and dominates government, the economy, and the culture.” It’s the scribblings and pronouncements of these folks that shape the beliefs most Americans have on many issues, including digitalization and now AI.
Unfortunately, this knowledge elite in America, as well as in Commonwealth nations and Europe, now forms a stiff collective headwind against digitalization—both against the competitive success of digital firms and against the overall process of digital transformation (i.e., the deep digitalization of most sectors of the economy and society, including through AI).
It’s hard to say when American culture turned from supportive to oppositional, but perhaps 2011, the year Steve Jobs died, is as good a demarcation point as any. Since then, the elite class narrative has transformed from one generally supportive of digital progress, or at worst neutral, to one of critique, disdain, and mockery.
Before 2011, if you wanted to be one of the “cool kids,” you waxed poetic about digital transformation, how it would spur growth and democratize information. Now, anyone seeking cocktail party acceptance or a TED Talk speaking slot must obligatorily offer one or more critiques of not just tech, but BIG TECH. If before you marveled at Moore’s Law, 3G, and Web 2.0, now you bemoan how tech is destroying democracy, eroding privacy, and killing jobs. And others nod their heads and murmur in affirmation.
The list of complaints seems endless, providing the cool kid skeptics with a panoply of causes and talking points. Indeed, elites now compete fiercely to produce the most aggressive takedown. Anti-establishment, anti-intellectual property “activist” Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification.” Very clever, Cory. But what about broken brains? That’s even better. Right wing commentator Matt Walsh says AI has declared “war on humanity.” Better still, we’re entering a “digital dark age.” Why not just be done with it and declare “digital: the spawn of Satan”? Kind of hard to top that one.
