The con­ver­sa­tion about the impact of tech­nol­o­gy tends to be bina­ry: Either it will save us, or it will destroy us. The Inter­net is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for rev­o­lu­tion; our old soci­ety is being ​“dis­rupt­ed”; tech-savvy col­lege dropouts are ren­der­ing the staid elite obso­lete. Or else our jobs are being lost to automa­tion and com­put­ers; drones wipe out fam­i­lies on their wed­ding day; new­ly mint­ed mil­lion­aires flush with tech dol­lars are gen­tri­fy­ing San Fran­cis­co at light­ning speed.

It really challenges the notion that we're all on these social media platforms purely by choice, because there's a real obligatory dimension to so much of this.

Nei­ther sto­ry is com­plete­ly true, of course. In her new book, The Peo­ple’s Plat­form: Tak­ing Back Pow­er and Cul­ture in the Dig­i­tal Age, out now from Met­ro­pol­i­tan Books, Astra Tay­lor takes on both the tech­no-utopi­ans and the tech­no-skep­tics, remind­ing us that the Inter­net was cre­at­ed by the soci­ety we live in and thus is more like­ly to reflect its prob­lems than tran­scend them. She delves into ques­tions of labor, cul­ture and, espe­cial­ly, mon­ey, remind­ing us who prof­its from our sup­pos­ed­ly free prod­ucts. She builds a strong case that in order to under­stand the prob­lems and poten­tials of tech­nol­o­gy, we have to look crit­i­cal­ly at the mar­ket-based soci­ety that pro­duced it.

Old pow­er dynam­ics don’t just fade away, she points out — they have to be destroyed. That will require polit­i­cal action, strug­gle, and a vision of how we want the Inter­net (and the rest of our soci­ety) to be. I spoke with Tay­lor about cul­ture, cre­ativ­i­ty, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of nation­al­iz­ing Face­book and more.

Many peo­ple know you as a film­mak­er or as an activist with Occu­py and Strike Debt. How do you see this book fit­ting in with the oth­er work you’ve done?

Ini­tial­ly I saw it as a real depar­ture, and now that it’s done, I rec­og­nize the con­ti­nu­ity. I felt that the voic­es of cul­ture mak­ers were left out of the debate about the con­se­quences of Inter­net tech­nol­o­gy. There are lots of grandiose state­ments being made about social change and orga­niz­ing and about how social media tools are going to make it even eas­i­er for us to aggre­gate and trans­form the world. I felt there was a role I could play root­ed in my expe­ri­ences of being a cul­ture mak­er and an activist. It was impor­tant for some­body ground­ed in those areas to make a sus­tained effort to be part of the con­ver­sa­tion. I was real­ly trou­bled that peo­ple on all sides of the polit­i­cal spec­trum were using Sil­i­con Val­ley rhetoric to describe our new media land­scape. Using terms like ​“open” and ​“trans­par­ent” and say­ing things were ​“democ­ra­tiz­ing” with­out real­ly ana­lyz­ing those terms. A big part of the book was just try­ing to think through the lan­guage we’re using and to look at the ide­ol­o­gy under­pin­ning the ter­mi­nol­o­gy that’s now so commonplace.

You make the point in the book that the Inter­net and the offline world aren’t two sep­a­rate worlds. Can you talk about that a bit more?

It’s amaz­ing that these argu­ments even need to be made. That you need to point out that these tech­nolo­gies can­not just mag­i­cal­ly over­come the struc­tures and mate­r­i­al con­di­tions that shape reg­u­lar life.

It harkens back to pre­vi­ous waves of tech­no­log­i­cal opti­mism. Peo­ple have always invest­ed a lot of hope in their tools. I talk about the way that we often imbue our machines with the pow­er to lib­er­ate us. There was lots of hope that machines would be doing all of our labor and that we would have, as a soci­ety, much more free time, and that we would have this econ­o­my of abun­dance because machines would be so dra­mat­i­cal­ly improved over time. The rea­sons that those pre­dic­tions nev­er came to pass is because machines are embed­ded in a social con­text and the rewards are siphoned off by the elite.

The rise of the Inter­net real­ly fits that pat­tern. We can see that there is this mas­sive shift­ing of wealth [to cor­po­ra­tions]. These gigan­tic dig­i­tal com­pa­nies are emerg­ing that can track and prof­it from not just our online inter­ac­tions, but increas­ing­ly things that we’re doing away from the key­board. As we move towards the ​“Inter­net-of-things,” more and more of the devices around us are going to have IP address­es and be leak­ing data. These are avenues for these com­pa­nies that are gar­ner­ing enor­mous pow­er to increase their wealth.

The rhetoric a few years ago was that these com­pa­nies are going to van­quish the old media dinosaurs. If you read the tech books from a few years ago, it’s just like ​“Dis­ney and these com­pa­nies are so hor­ri­ble. Google is going to over­throw them and cre­ate a par­tic­i­pa­to­ry cul­ture.” But Google is going to be way more inva­sive than Mick­ey Mouse ever was.

Google’s buy­ing drone com­pa­nies.

Google’s in your car, Google’s in your ther­mo­stat, it’s in your email box. But then there’s the psy­cho­log­i­cal ele­ment. There was this hope that you could be any­one you want­ed to be online. That you could pick an avatar and be total­ly lib­er­at­ed from your offline self. That was a real ani­mat­ing fan­ta­sy. That, too, was real­ly mis­lead­ing. Minor­i­ty groups and women are often forced back into their real bod­ies, so to speak. They’re not giv­en equal access to the sup­pos­ed­ly open space of the Internet.

This is one of the con­ver­sa­tions that I think your book is incred­i­bly rel­e­vant to right now. Even sup­pos­ed­ly pro­gres­sive spaces are still dom­i­nat­ed by white peo­ple, most­ly men, and there’s a real push­back against women and peo­ple of col­or who are using social media.

It’s been amaz­ing how much out­rage can get heaped on one per­son who’s mak­ing crit­i­cal obser­va­tions about an insti­tu­tion with such dis­pro­por­tion­ate pow­er and reach.

The new media elites end up look­ing a whole lot like the old ones. The oth­er con­ver­sa­tions about race and gen­der and the Inter­net recent­ly has been about these new media web­sites that are launched with a lot of fan­fare, that have been fund­ed in many cas­es by Sil­i­con Val­ley ven­ture cap­i­tal, that are sell­ing them­selves as new and rebel­lious and excit­ing and a chal­lenge to the old media — the faces of them are still white men.

The eco­nom­ic rewards flow through the usu­al sus­pects. Lar­ry Lessig has done a lot of inter­est­ing work around copy­right. But he wrote basi­cal­ly that we need to cheer on the Face­books of the world because they’re new and not the old media dinosaurs. He has this line about ​“Stan­ford is van­quish­ing Har­vard.” We need some­thing so much more pro­found than that.

This is why I real­ly take on the con­cept of ​“open­ness.” Because open is not equal. In open sys­tems, dis­crim­i­na­tion and bar­ri­ers can become invis­i­bi­lized. It’s hard­er to get your mind around how inequitable things actu­al­ly are. I myself fol­low a diverse group of peo­ple and feel like Twit­ter is full of peo­ple of col­or or rad­i­cals. But that’s because I’m get­ting a very dis­tort­ed view of the over­all picture.

I think it’s help­ful to look at the hand­ful of exam­ples of these sup­pos­ed­ly open sys­tems in action. Like Wikipedia, which every­one can con­tribute to. Nonethe­less, only like 15 per­cent of the edi­tors are women. Even the orga­ni­za­tions that are held up as exem­plars of dig­i­tal democ­ra­cy, there’s still such struc­tur­al inequal­i­ty. By the time you get to the lev­el of these new media ven­tures that you’re talk­ing about, it’s com­plete­ly predictable.

We real­ly need to think through these issues on a social lev­el. I tried to steer the debate away from our addic­tion to our devices or to crap­py con­tent on the Inter­net, and real­ly take a struc­tur­al view. It’s chal­leng­ing because ulti­mate­ly it comes down to mon­ey and pow­er and who has it and how do you wrest it away and how do you fun­nel some of it to build struc­tures that will sup­port oth­er types of voic­es. That’s far more dif­fi­cult than wait­ing around for some new tech­nol­o­gy to come around and do it for you.

You write about this ten­sion between pro­fes­sion­al work from the ama­teurs who are work­ing for free and the way the idea of doing work for the love of it has crept in every­where. Except peo­ple are work­ing longer hours than ever and they’re mak­ing less mon­ey than ever, and who has time to come home at the end of your two min­i­mum wage jobs and make art?

It would be nice to come out and say fol­low your heart, do every­thing for the love of it, and things’ll work out. Artists are told not to think about mon­ey. They’re active­ly encour­aged to deny the eco­nom­ic sphere. What that does though is it obscures the way priv­i­lege oper­ates — the way that hav­ing a trust fund can sure be handy if you want to be a full time sculp­tor or dig­i­tal video maker.

I think it’s impor­tant that we tack­le these issues. That’s where I look at these beau­ti­ful pre­dic­tions about the way these labor-sav­ing devices would free us all and the idea that the fruits of tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ment would be even­ly shared. It’s real­ly inter­est­ing how today’s lead­ing tech pun­dits don’t pre­tend that [the shar­ing is] going to be even at all. Our social imag­i­na­tion is so diminished.

There’s some­thing real­ly off about cel­e­brat­ing ama­teurism in an econ­o­my where peo­ple are un- and under-employed, and where young peo­ple are grad­u­at­ing with an aver­age of $30,000 of stu­dent debt. It does­n’t acknowl­edge the way that this fig­ure of the artist — [as] the per­son who loves their work so much that they’ll do it for noth­ing — is increas­ing­ly cen­tral to this pre­car­i­ous labor force.

I quote this exam­ple of peo­ple at an Apple store ask­ing for a raise and the response was ​“When you’re work­ing for Apple, mon­ey should­n’t be a con­sid­er­a­tion.” You’re sup­posed to just love your work so much you’ll exploit your­self. That’s what intern­ing is. That’s what writ­ing for free is when you’re hop­ing to get a foot in the door as a jour­nal­ist. There are major social impli­ca­tions if that’s the road we go down. It exac­er­bates inequal­i­ty, because who can afford to do this kind of work?

Of course, unpaid intern­ships are real­ly preva­lent in cre­ative fields.

Ulti­mate­ly, it’s a cor­po­rate sub­sidy. Peo­ple are some­times not just work­ing for free but then also going into debt for col­lege cred­it to do it. In a way, all of the unpaid labor online is also a cor­po­rate sub­sidy. I agree that call­ing our par­tic­i­pa­tion online ​“labor” is prob­lem­at­ic because it’s not clear exact­ly how we’re being exploit­ed, but the point is the val­ue being extract­ed. We need to talk about that val­ue extrac­tion and the way that peo­ple’s free par­tic­i­pa­tion feeds into it.

Of course we enjoy so much of what we do online. Peo­ple enjoy cre­at­ing art and cul­ture and doing jour­nal­ism too. The idea that work should only be well-com­pen­sat­ed and secure if it makes you mis­er­able ulti­mate­ly leads to a world where the peo­ple who feel like they should make a lot of mon­ey are the guys on Wall Street work­ing 80 hours a week. It’s a bleak, bleak view.

In many ways the prob­lem with social media is it does break down this bar­ri­er between home and work. You point this out in the book – it’s every­where, you can’t avoid it, espe­cial­ly if you are an inde­pen­dent cre­ative per­son where you have to con­stant­ly pro­mote your own work, or it is part of your job. There’s now the Wages for Face­book con­ver­sa­tion — peo­ple are start­ing to talk about the way we are cre­at­ing val­ue for these companies.

It real­ly chal­lenges the notion that we’re all on these social media plat­forms pure­ly by choice, because there’s a real oblig­a­tory dimen­sion to so much of this. Look also at the way we talk to young peo­ple. ​“Do you want a col­lege recruiter to see that on your Face­book pro­file?” What we’re real­ly demand­ing is that they cre­ate a Face­book pro­file that appeals to col­lege recruiters, that they man­age a self that will help them get ahead.

I was at a recent talk about automa­tion and the ​“end of jobs,” and one researcher said that the jobs that would be hard­est to auto­mate away would be ones that required cre­ativ­i­ty or social intel­li­gence — skills that have been incred­i­bly deval­ued in today’s econ­o­my, only in part because of technology.

Those skills are being pushed out of the econ­o­my because they’re sup­posed to be things you just choose to do because they’re plea­sur­able. There is a para­dox there. Cer­tain types of jobs will be auto­mat­ed away, that can be not just deskilled but done bet­ter by machines, and mean­while all the cre­ative jobs that can’t be auto­mat­ed away are actu­al­ly con­sid­ered almost super­flu­ous to the economy.

The thing about the jobs con­ver­sa­tion is that it’s a polit­i­cal ques­tion and a pol­i­cy ques­tion as well as a tech­no­log­i­cal ques­tion. There can be lots of dif­fer­ent types of jobs in the world if we invest in them. This ques­tion of what kind of jobs we’re going to have in the future. So much of it is actu­al­ly comes down to these social deci­sions that we’re mak­ing. The tech­no­log­i­cal aspect has always been overhyped.

You do bring up ideas like a basic income and short­er work­ing hours as ways to allow peo­ple to have time and mon­ey for cul­ture creation.

The ques­tion is, how do you get there? You’d have to have a polit­i­cal move­ment, you’d have to chal­lenge pow­er. They’re not just going to throw the poor peo­ple who’ve had their jobs auto­mat­ed away a bone and sud­den­ly pro­vide a basic income. Peo­ple would real­ly have to orga­nize and fight for it. It’s that fight, that ele­ment of antag­o­nism and strug­gle that isn’t faced when we just think tools are evolv­ing rapid­ly and we’ll catch up with them.

The more roman­tic pre­dic­tions about ris­ing pros­per­i­ty and the inevitable increase in free time were made against the back­drop of the post-war con­sen­sus of the 1940s, ​‘50s and ​‘60s. There was a social safe­ty net, there were struc­tures in place that redis­trib­uted wealth, and so peo­ple made pre­dic­tions col­ored by that social fab­ric, that if there were advance­ments in our tools that they would be shared by peo­ple. It just shows the way that the polit­i­cal real­i­ty shapes what we can col­lec­tive­ly imagine.

Final­ly, you make the case for state-sub­si­dized media as well as reg­u­la­tions — for ensur­ing that peo­ple have the abil­i­ty to make cul­ture as well as con­sume it. You note that major web com­pa­nies like Google and Face­book oper­ate like pub­lic util­i­ties, and that nation­al­iz­ing them would be a real­ly hard sell, and yet if these things are being found­ed with gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies and our work, they are in a sense already ours.

The invis­i­ble sub­sidy is the thing that we real­ly have to keep in mind. Peo­ple say, ​“Where’s the mon­ey going to come from?” We’re already spend­ing it. So much inno­va­tion is the con­se­quence of state invest­ment. Touch­screens, the microchip, the Inter­net itself, GPS, all of these things would not exist if the gov­ern­ment had not invest­ed in them, and the good thing about state invest­ment is it takes a much longer view than short-term pri­vate-mar­ket invest­ment. It can have tremen­dous, social­ly valu­able break­throughs. But all the cred­it for these inno­va­tions and the finan­cial rewards is going to pri­vate com­pa­nies, not back to us, the peo­ple, whose tax dol­lars actu­al­ly paid for them.

You raise a moral ques­tion: If we’re pay­ing for these things already, then should­n’t they in some sense be ours? I think the answer is yes. There are some lever­age points in the sense that these com­pa­nies like to talk about them­selves as though they actu­al­ly are pub­lic util­i­ties. There’s this pub­lic-spirit­ed­ness in their rhetoric but it does­n’t go deep enough — it does­n’t go into the way they’re actu­al­ly run. That’s the gap we need to bridge. Despite Sil­i­con Val­ley’s hos­til­i­ty to the gov­ern­ment and the state, and the idea that the Inter­net is sort of this mag­ic place where reg­u­la­tion should not touch, the gov­ern­men­t’s already there. We just need it to be ben­e­fit­ing peo­ple, not pri­vate corporations.