theconvivialsociety.substack.com
What Do Human Beings Need?: Rethinking Technology and the Good Society
Consider for a moment a more concrete and contemporary example. Why does anyone need a Ring camera? Or, better, whose interests are best served by a Ring camera? The most obvious answer is Amazon. If there is a problem that Ring is supposed to solve it is the problem of packages being stolen from people’s front porches, a problem that arises when our consumption is increasingly funneled through Amazon. But, of course, Ring presents itself as more than just the surveillance arm of a multibillion dollar corporation deployed to your front door. It hijacks the human need for security or safety and transmutes it into a need for Ring. It is chiefly the needs of Amazon that are being met, particularly given the way that Ring allows Amazon to also profit from partnerships with police departments. And as Illich would have readily predicted, this dependence on a corporate product comes at the additional cost of alienating neighbors, eroding social trust, and replacing mutual interdependence with a state of perpetual suspicion.