Equality in the Digital Age
Giles Crouch | Digital Anthropologist
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5 min read
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3 days ago
Photo by Karen Pancho on Unsplash
The world right now is, well, a hot mess. Economic woes, growing class divides between the rich and increasingly poorer. Wars and conflicts higher than they have been. Populism and democracies becoming increasingly fragile. Human rights battles across a wide swathe of society. But perhaps this is a sign of something better coming along?
Much of this current turbulence is a result of our ability to communicate unlike ever before in our history thanks to digital technologies like the internet and mobile devices. Throughout history, as we evolved information technologies, civil unrest and significant social change has followed. Though such changes can be messy, often violent and tumultuous, societies have always come out better.
A growing narrative around the world today, across many societies, is the desire for greater equality. Economically, racially, sexuality, religiously, politically. We’ve been here before, we will likely be here again. It is cyclical, but it is not linear.
In the overarching history of humanity, we have preferred more egalitarian societies and as a species, we have progressed. There is no guarantee that we will progress this time, we may regress, but then progress, should we survive as a species.
Information technologies play the role of enabling us to tell stories. Telling stories is how we agree on and shape our varied realities. It does not mean that the stories told are necessarily true. Both the far-right and the far-left dally with mis/disinformation to shape a narrative that may start with a truth, but end with a fantasy. This does not make those stories any less harmful. Quite the opposite.
Social media, mobile devices and the internet have also enabled minority voices to be heard and social movements to gain momentum that would have been much harder and slower to grow at such speed. From #MeToo to Black Lives Matter. Such social movements are important to sociocultural progress.
Humans have long played with various forms of societies and ways of living. There is no single way of being human. The narrative that we evolved on some nice continuous linear path from foraging to agrarian to today is increasingly being debunked in anthropology and sociology. A seminal book on this is “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber…
