Techno Privilege

Pervasive privilege powers today’s posse of pissed-off poseurs.

Serve me. Now. Servant.

Speaking words of command was once a royal privilege. Royals spoke like that, to their servants. Only royalty and demi-royalty had servants anyway. Everyone else did for themselves. Doing for yourself builds character and resilience. It used to be normal. To be served by servants used to be an extreme privilege. Today it’s techno privilege and it’s ubiquitous.

Close as your Apple Watch, techno privilege is everywhere all the time and has been since 2010, earlier in Palo Alto.

Techno privilege is most extreme among the smart and wealthy, but in a triumph of capitalism’s ability to create catnip products and then make them inexpensive, techno privilege is a mass market phenomena. 2.2 billion iPhones prove it.

Billions of people worldwide are techno privileged, including most Americans. Techno privileged people are dependent on their servants. Their words are their servants’ command.

1. “Hey Siri, remind me to register a complaint.”

2. “Alexa, I’m hungry.”

3. “Google, book me a massage.”

Techno privileged people are naturally intolerant of others who don’t serve them, especially those who challenge them. Hence, they often lose patience with humans. It’s not just that other people aren’t dependable, it’s that they don’t always, 100% of the time, have as their sole priority the techno privileged person’s wants, needs and desires.

Tucker Carlson asked on December 2 why the rich women on The View are angry all the time, and more generally, why so many rich people are angry today. Part of the answer is that they’re all insanely privileged, including being techno privileged out the wazoo. Extreme personal privilege like that, where the recipient lives a life of leisure as far as even minor chores are concerned, instills an expectation of ease, and with it, anger when that ease is challenged. Royals acted that way for ages.

Light switches are going the way of the pay phone. Putting the key in the ignition is pretty much unheard of now. Turning down the thermostat happens automagically. Following directions, never mind giving directions, is from a bygone era.

Advances all, they each also instill a privilege into a human whose evolutionary history was largely shaped by scarcity.

They also enable a cocooned life, an echo chamber where all TPPs ever hear is what they want to hear. Ear buds take care of that, as do the like minded people the TPP communes with online. This self-reinforcing loop massages the id like a G-spot.

Shakespeare wrote about privileged royals, many of whom went mad or were cruel or avaricious. Almost all were neurotic. What might he make of today’s techno privileged masses? Privilege on this scale would challenge even the Bard’s powers.