Modern Tyranny

Interesting essay about modern tyranny. The observation about writing and its ability to manipulate is one of the many nuggets of wisdom in this piece 

"Paul Valéry was not immune to the metaphors of his time. For much of his life he conceived of writing as a sort of machine, consciously manipulating the reader’s emotions."

There there is this one about mobile-apps

"Mobile applications, whatever their purpose, are little bureaucrats with a checklist or a punch card in our pockets. Whether they are centralized or distributed, deployed by the government or peddled by a small startup, the applications have the same effect: an increasing perfection of the totalitarian vision of nineteenth-century administration."

And finally on the democratization of tyranny

"Its first manifestations in the so-called gig economy can seem almost harmless, and are at most the object of mild social critique: hailing a ride without raising an arm or counting change, ordering a meal without speaking a word or touching a dollar bill. There is, however, a philosophical difference between adjusting the thermostat with a smartphone and summoning a car with it, between purely technological conveniences and the conjuring of services, whether or not we compare their human and ecological costs. The latter, after all, are not only material devices providing a degree of material convenience but means of exercising power over others, organizing labor, imposing order on society, from positions of pure passivity. We conceive an idea, and by a purely abstract mental process, minus a few thumb swipes, it becomes reality. "