Una storia triste davvero. Il finale di oggi è che il dominio tecnologico è ciò che comanda nel mondo. 50 anni fa non si poteva immaginare che il digitale avrebbe impresso un’accelerazione ai processi con la legge di Moore e la velocità di diffusione nella rete, che ha reso i processi determinati da leggi di potenza (Zipf’s law, preferential attachment, aka rich get richer) tali da essere irresistibili: non servono gli eserciti come al tempo di Pinochet per imporli. Se non sei tra i primi dieci al mondo, verrai spazzato via. Non ci sono antidoti alla legge di Zipf, nemmeno le norme antitrust sono efficaci. Solo in campo digitale, l’Europa ha perso le sfide dei PC (Olivetti), Internet (operatori telefonici nazionali), smartphone (Nokia), cloud computing (assente) ed oggi dell’AI. Nel mondo digitale si può competere solo a scala mondiale, se l’Europa non investe nella creazione di campioni europei (come fece con l’Airbus), diventerà sempre più una colonia. — Beppe
On 11 Sep 2023, at 10:37, nexa-request@server-nexa.polito.it wrote:
From: Daniela Tafani <daniela.tafani@unipi.it <mailto:daniela.tafani@unipi.it>> To: "nexa@server-nexa.polito.it <mailto:nexa@server-nexa.polito.it>" <nexa@server-nexa.polito.it <mailto:nexa@server-nexa.polito.it>> Subject: [nexa] The lessons of Chile’s struggle against Big Tech Message-ID: <c4deab927ef44c54a751fac42f585f7e@unipi.it <mailto:c4deab927ef44c54a751fac42f585f7e@unipi.it>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
The lessons of Chile’s struggle against Big Tech
Salvador Allende’s greatest legacy is his attempt to democratise technology
By Evgeny Morozov<https://www.newstatesman.com/author/evgeny-morozov>
<https://www.newstatesman.com/author/evgeny-morozov>
On 1 August 1973, a seemingly mundane diplomatic summit took place in Lima, Peru. But there was nothing remotely mundane about the summit’s revolutionary agenda. The attendees – mostly high-ranking diplomats from Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru – aspired to create a more just technological world order. A world order that may have prevented the rise of Silicon Valley – and of Big Tech along with it.
A good first step, they thought, was to join forces and explore ways to curb the growing influence of multinational corporations. This was particularly pressing in the realm of advanced technologies, the majority of which originated from the US and western Europe.
These technologies often had to be imported to Latin America at exceedingly high costs. One study found that between 1962 and 1968 Chile alone saw its payments for tech services doubled, with the country’s companies paying for many expired or non-existent patents.
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Instead, the problems that affected Chile in the pre-Allende period became the problems of the whole world – or, at least, the world outside Silicon Valley. What the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano – a friend of Allende and part of the broader Santiago School universe – wrote of his region in his classic Open Veins of Latin America (1971) still rings true: “Latin America is condemned to suffer the technology of the powerful, which attacks and removes natural raw materials, and is incapable of creating its own technology to sustain and defend its own development.” Only today, his insight applies to the whole planet.
What we got instead was a world run by half a dozen ITTs – all legitimised through the notion that innovation is a matter of ideas and ideals, not of sheer power relations and military strength. For all his shortcomings, Allende, who won the Chilean elections despite opposition from both ITT and the CIA, knew that innovation in the real world was not at all like this. And that’s why, for all his contributions to democratic socialism, his greatest legacy may be in mobilising the Santiago School, showing the world a path towards democratic technology.
https://www.newstatesman.com/the-weekend-essay/2023/09/salvador-allende-figh...