[Ex Machina]

Great questions.I think Marx and Engels efforts to develop a science of social change may contain some insights which will prove useful in approaching this topic. Then, as now, differing ideas were floating around about what new society should entail and how to bring it about. "Scientific socialism" was their effort to ground such inquiries in really existing, concrete conditions ( as opposed to "utopian" visions).One insight which I think has enourmous implications for where we find ourselves today is the proposition that social revolution begins when the forces of production develop to the point that they come in conflict with the relations of production.This is certainly an accurate anaylsis how how bourgeois society conquered feudal society, and may have bearing today as we see new technologies like artificial intelligence, robots, and three-dimensional printing ( to name a few) threatening traditional employment.It is important to note that Marx wrote that the conflict arises because the old familiar relations of production resist (act as a "fetter" upon) the new, more efficient and powerful productive forces. The old relations must eventually be swept away or progress will be thwarted.We can already see evidence of this conflict emerging. But here's the bad news…Despite Marx's optimism about the inevitability of the proletariat to achieve class-conscienceness and achieve the "end of human prehistory" we can see today the danger of a very different outcome.In the past (sticking to the schema of historical materialism) when a ruling class has been overthrown it has been replaced by a new technology-bearing class. Today we have such a new techology-bearing class threatening the bourgeois order and stealthily accreating power. Silicon Valley (for lack of a better all-encompasing designation) is changing the rules of capitalist property rights, the legal foundation of capitalist society.The new technology-bearing class, for the gifts they bear, assume acess to all your private data, your photos, you emails, your texts. They assert the right to track you, online and in real life 24/7. They listen to your conversations in the privacy of your own home and have even been caught turning on your cameras without your knowledge. The content you produce online and the data you produce as you live your life are theirs to profit from. Examples of a new order of property rights abound. In the future, when you buy a self-driving car you will not actually own a self-driving car because you will not own the operating system. The tablet my wife bought me for Christmas has a camera which I've never used because I refuse to agree to Microsoft's terms that they should have access to my photos. (Imagine a camera manufacturer making such a demand in the predigital age.)This is how power is accreted. Property rights are the legal expression of the relations of production, the undermining of these reveals the transfer of power to a new class. This is not the long-anticipated victory of the proletatiat.The goal of development of technology is to give Man greater mastery over nature; to deliver us from necessity to freedom; to emancipate us, to allow a fuller development of human potential. We are on the threshold of finally developing the technologies which can usher in the "end of human prehistory," but tragically we face the possibility of becoming enslaved by these tecnhologies, or, more accurately, by the new class bearing them.

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