I want to choose a different modernity

Modern life truly is rubbish, and it is a state of affairs none of us chose. It is time to believe that we can choose a different modernity, one that works for us.

Where to start, where to start? Falling satellites, broken dishwashers, Morthall, Bleeding Verse, fake sales agents, organ failure or depreciating data centres? Oh, who cares, here's the story and why I can't get any of it out of my mind.

Elon Musk's Starlink satellite network is supposed now to dominate the world, but it is only cheap because its satellites are in near earth orbit which means gravity still affects them which means currently about two of them are falling out of the sky every day. Apparently Musk can't get new ones up fast enough. If he stopped there would be none left in ten years.

Data centres? The rate of depreciation (how fast they are going out of date) is faster than the profit any of them are delivering. See that $3 trillion you must have heard they're spending? It's book value in five years may be zero, and it ain't going to make that much profit that fast.

Organ failure? It is now all but conclusive that the dominant source of calories in the west (Ultra Processed Food) harms every major human organ. Fake sales agents? Amazon is suing a company making an AI shopping helper because it cons users but not in the way Amazon cons users and so Amazon is unhappy and wants users conned only their way. Welcome to AI.

Well, unless you're Holding Absence, a Welsh rock band who's music was used to train a non-existent AI competitor 'band' called Bleeding Verse which has made more money on Spotify than the real flesh and bones band despite actually stating that it is trained on the real people.

But the real reason I'm writing this if I'm being honest is that our dishwasher has broken down again, meaning we'll have owned three in six years. This is a bit unlucky – we should have got five years out of it. We know if we spend twice as much we'll get 20 years out of it, but we don't really have twice as much.

And Morthall? A few years ago I was playing a computer game called Skyrim and when I arrived in Morthall I wanted to live there. It is a strange choice, even by Skyrim standards. It's a small town in the frozen north of this imaginary land where the only business is timber and a pub. But it seemed so, I don't know, peaceful. No pinging phones, no wall-to-wall advertising, no noise.

I feel myself drawn to the idea of a pre-modern era, and I'm not alone. It remains surprising to me that about half of teenagers wish they'd grown up without the internet. Neither me nor the kids are conservative fantasists who want to go back to subsistence living in a nostalgic, bucolic imagined past. It just seems, well, better than this. Better for us, for our mental health.

You take your pick; chatbots, AI slop, saturation online gambling, social media rage, surveillance capitalism, influencers, algorithm-driven TV, the enshitification of the internet, digital media you bought but don't own, end user license agreements, data-scraping, plastic pollution, dead high streets, crap jobs, out of touch political elites, sedentary children, melting icecaps, deteriorating democracy, unaffordable housing, nurses getting assaulted by angry patients, large proportions of the population on anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medication, readily available extreme pornography, black market weight loss drugs, doorbells you have to rent...

What exactly is good about the contemporary world? Which of these new features of our lives actually make our lives better? Who asked for any of this? Follow the genesis of any one of these phenomenon and it becomes like a thesis on the collapse of civilisation.

Take for example TV. In the 2000s we get the golden era of television where subscription cable channels can take much bigger risks with content and so hire auteurs and creative innovators to make high art. Then in the 2010s the networks want a piece and we get the silver age, mainly rehashing and remaking the golden era because that was what worked, but without the same creativity and innovation.

Then by the end of that decade we're into the shit era because now it is the tech bros and their streaming services making algorithmic copies of the silver age copies of the golden age innovation. Both more profitable and much, much worse.

This is not just a redistribution of wealth (though it very much is), this is the redistribution of our experience of the world. We get poorer and things get shitter at the same time, not independently but because of each other. If you're thinking about doing some shopping on Amazon this festive season, read this and think again. You think you're saving money. Wait until you find out your not...

The long and short of it is that, nostalgia and my progressing years aside, I hate modernity. And the truth is that almost everyone I talk to does as well. No conversation about our experience of modern life doesn't seem to be a moan. And there is very good reason to moan.

We are all presented on a daily basis with the idea that this is all some kind of 'law of nature', that this was all inevitable. It is like every time people say 'bond markets reacted badly' as if bond markets are a measure of anything other than what rich people want to happen. No-one asked for an algorithm to be placed between them and their friends.

No-one asked to go from buying music and owning it to buying music and not owning it. No-one voted for Ticketmaster or Elon Musk or chatbots or AI slop or any of it. We haven't even been given an option. It's not like we have other choices available. The whole point of modern capitalism is that it aims to make sure you have no choice, or as little choice as possible.

It is about 'walled gardens', because fundamentally it is about coercion and control. They are scared there is any part of your mind or your life they don't dictate. They want you trapped in an exclusive relationship with them. They fear that if you breathe the air you might not come back for more of their stale awfulness.

“People just need to believe that these chains we’re in are optional, that we can slip them off any time”

I've commissioned IT for years. I use the internet as an absolutely invaluable research resource. I couldn't be without it now. But because I was an early adopter (I believe I was the first journalist in Scotland to write about the internet in a mainstream Scottish newspaper – in the mid-1990s I had to explain what it was to my editor), I have a healthy scepticism of innovation.

It means I understand that what has been created could have been created differently. Social media works just fine without algorithms, it just isn't as profitable. The internet could have shortened the chain between consumer and producer and instead it has lengthened it. You're data could have been used to improve your life, not to make you easier to target by advertisers.

It really is now that the David Graeber point becomes our most important lesson; “The ultimate, hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently”. We have allowed all of our choices to be made by people who basically despise us and want to farm us like livestock and the politicians are petrified of them.

But let me let you into another secret; this entire world of coercion is much, much more fragile than you think. The systems of coercion we are controlled by are surprisingly easy to replace. Impossible to reform (don't bother trying, they're fundamentally toxic down to their source code) but much easier to walk away from than you'd think.

Common Weal has been looking at this a lot and we are going to kick of a number of projects which I think of as 'the escape plan'. Let me show you some of the key systems I think we need to rebuild and let me, for now, try just on a superficial level to explain it wouldn't be as hard as you think.

First, a sovereign nation which relies on US tech platforms is suicidal. There is almost no general US software platform which doesn't have an open source equivalent. There is an open source operating system (Linux), and while these aren't all user-friendly just now (open source is programmed by code geeks who are not known for their user-focussed aesthetic strengths), making them so would be a small step.

As well as the OpenOffice/LibreOffice option there is now a German government Microsoft Office replacement called OpenDesk. They have done what we should do – devise our own IT systems for the public good. I really can't emphasise enough how tenuous is the hold of the US tech behemoths over us. We can just say no.

Second, we need a different distribution system. From supermarkets to Amazon to sales platforms to booking apps, technology doesn’t make or do things, it just controls your access to them. The way it does this is by 'vertically integrating' distribution systems. You can't move goods around without them now and consumers can't get access.

Again, all you have to do is create a domestic alternative and you don't need Amazon any more. There is no Amazon in Denmark (Denmark wouldn't scrap trade union rules for them so they walked away) and Denmark is doing just fine. Public good distribution systems disempowers the lot of them.

We need a new media environment; this drift to 'all the news an oligarch will let you see' is killing us all. A proper alternative media environment is only a matter of will and the kind of public investment that just isn't difficult to find when democracy is at stake.

And we need a new financial system. Again, we are not compelled by law to borrow from bond markets, have retail banks tied up with highly-risky speculation or let private equity companies own everything. We can very straightforwardly build different systems.

Imagine if the boot was off our neck and the machines in our house, the apps on our phone and the systems in which we live were there to serve us rather than exploit us. It's an attractive idea is it not? So why is no-one telling you you can have this? Because you can. You don't have to give up on modernity, you can choose a different modernity.

Here's the thing; I think if people knew this was possible they'd be all over it. I think they'd adopt it enthusiastically. They just need to be told there is a choice. People just need to believe that these chains we're in are optional, that we can slip them off any time.

Scottish politics is dire just now. There was a total lack of ambition even before everyone started winding down in preparation for an upcoming election. There is little of value to do just now. So Common Weal is planning to take a little step back. We've still got domestic policy work we're doing, but we want to do some work to explore more radical alternatives.

Because this world of 2025 is really, really shit and I don't know anyone who is happy with it. I want a new modernity, one that I choose, one that we choose. And I sincerely believe it is possible. We hope we can show you over the course of the next year or two.