Technophobia or Xenophobia?
Let’s explore which illness is worse
We’re living a historic moment. A decade from now we’ll look back on 2024–25 and see clearly that this was the moment we realized the tribal division in our society was no longer between red and blue, MAGA vs Occupy Democrats, but between optimists and pessimists. We’re experiencing a widening wealth gap, and the people above the line have realized they can no longer support the democrats’ manifesto, because it became the pessimist manifesto while MAGA was becoming the optimist one.
Let’s think about the profound changes we have unwittingly undergone in the past 10–15 years. The democrats were the hope and change bunch. Obama was the great believer in ladders, a hand up, the possibilities, and a better future. Trump showed up from left field, dividing us with politics of hate and envy and fear and loathing. That was a long time ago now. Then during Biden’s term we somehow seesawed and the democrats became the pessimists, attacking the privileged groups and telling each other it’s wrong to benefit from unearned privilege. (What??). Meanwhile, MAGA1.0 was quietly becoming MAGA2.0 and shedding its planet of the apes skin, slithering into its shiny new golden age costume. Nobody noticed. MAGA1.0 people were furious and felt betrayed after Nov 5 victory. Then the Jan-6 knuckle draggers were pardoned — a genius move by Trump to assuage without making a policy U turn. Don’t be fooled: the planet of the apes people have been abandoned. Elon and the tech bros are on the bridge beside the ship’s captain. Viking hat guy from Jan-6 is not.
Technophobia
A significant chunk of the populace has been left behind. It’s caused by a combination of low education levels, stagnant career growth —or stalled careers in many cases — and a generalized narrative that says technology is bad. Both red and blue tents have camps that hate tech billionaires and tech bro engineers. We’re also frequently encouraged to criticize innovation. Self driving vehicles, plain old EVs, robot checkouts at markets, AI assistants in call centers, platforms that aggregate services and retail experiences, etc. Let’s huddle together and commiserate the rise of the robots, say the people who fear progress. The main culprit in the campaign to demonize technology and innovation has been, surprisingly, the democrats’ camp. Biden himself and many loud voices in the democrats camp have steadily amplified their distrust of technology founders, VCs and the engineering community. They describe a techno industrial complex that will grow so powerful it will be above the law. They describe tech billionaires as greedy demigods who accumulate more wealth than any one person should ever have, and who destroy industries and livelihoods with irresponsible experimental technologies that hurt people without their CEOs being held accountable.
Xenophobia
No need to define it or describe it. Medium is a platform occupied by more left-leaning and socially conscious folk, therefore the word is well known and frequently used to describe the MAGA crowd. We failed to predict the power of people’s fear of undocumented illegal — or in some cases, legal — immigration. The border issue was seen by democrats as a non-issue, while the republicans worked it as one of three major, critical issues. They were right. Democrats grieving the election carnage of November 2024 can easily tell themselves most Americans are dumb, uneducated and uninformed, therefore much less smart than they, the smart, educated ones on the blue side. Nice try, but no. The working people on the red side are economically stronger than their blue tent counterparts. Builders, construction workers, dirt movers and tradesmen are making more money than teachers, administrators, accountants and nonprofit managers. They’re not dumb. We failed to see that a porous border and a failed immigration control system is a demotivator and has a profound effect on morale in blue collar and working-poor communities. Or, we knew it and forgot.
The effects
Widespread xenophobia can be detrimental and even destructive. It can fuel the rise of a dictator (duh). It can give oxygen to unhealthy rabble rousing groups that normally wouldn’t get much airplay. Moderate xenophobia can be a healthy noise in a diverse community and can help balance out ideologies without fueling hate campaigns. Tightening border controls and clamping down on undocumented border crossings may in fact drive improvements in accelerating the legal immigration process. A healthy first world country benefits enormously by attracting dreamers to immigrate. Mild xenophobia helps us keep tabs on the inflow and protect citizens against unfair competition from immigrants willing to work for dirt cheap wages.
Widespread technophobia can lead to activism against our homegrown geniuses and innovators. We can find ourselves disliking and distrusting the creators of global platforms and products simply because a few wealthy people have more money than the poorest 40% of the country. This is often used as a psych tool to infuriate us and turn us against the moguls. The Biden administration took many actions to hobble, sabotage, obstruct or dismantle the tech giants. Several crypto startups were debanked, causing them to struggle for survival even though no actual charges were brought against them. Elon Musk was deprived of his shareholder-approved stock benefits package by Delaware Judge Kathleen McCormick, at Biden’s behest. Lina Khan drove the FTC to campaign for the breakup of Alphabet (Google) among others. Had we been successful in these and other endeavors we would have injured our own tech companies and opened the door to China to step in with some of its copycat and inferior offerings.
More importantly, the societal impact of our fear of innovation is to leave millions of people poorly served as new products and services become available to us. We may block self driving cars from picking up our disabled elderly. We may forbid a chip implant for a stroke survivor who has lost the power of speech and could have regained some of it with a breakthrough tech. We may insist on keeping that front desk person answering the phone and repeatedly making mistakes, when an AI could handle 90% of what she does, handing over to the right human as needed. We might block sales of a home robot due to fears of accidents, preventing families benefiting from amazing advantages. We also may drive innovators away because they feel too many headwinds and are willing to try getting started somewhere else.
Technophobia is also blending with generalized hatred of rich people. Want to look up a name for it? Plutophobia. It can become a mental illness. Both politicians and media benefit greatly from our phobias. They win, we lose. It’s important to remember that every phobia I allow to dominate my consciousness will inevitably hurt me instead of helping me. If I hate rich people I will hurt me, not them. The tech industry has created many overnight billionaires, causing society to feel frustrated as we work hard yet struggle to make ends meet, while another seemingly privileged Stanford grad gets funding for a silly idea that in two years is valued in the billions. Maddening? Yes! Stop: this person hasn’t stolen anything from you or from the taxpayers or from society at large. They haven’t broken any laws. They are just very fortunate. There is no logic that dictates they should share their wealth with us. Except our emotions, which have been severely bruised as we sweat our mundane lives in relative poverty while someone else leaps into staggering wealth. It may feel wrong but it’s not wrong.
America has many problems, but somehow her brave, imaginative and innovative heart keeps on beating, creating a fertile environment that Europe and Asia can’t match. China is able to match our tech innovation, but fails miserably on all other fronts: China can’t create a warm, welcoming, fun country that people want to immigrate to. Instead, it’s an anthill, a heartless mass-produced culture that doesn’t care about the individual or their dreams. America has both the heart and the brains. We must not remain divided. And we must innovate.
