The dark side of tech

When technological change is destabilizing, radical political movements inevitably rise

A human marionette.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Cultura Creative (RF) / Alamy Stock Photo, YAY Media AS / Alamy Stock Photo, rico ploeg / Alamy Stock Photo, Wavebreakmedia Ltd DW1706_1 / Alamy Stock Photo)

If you want to understand how Donald Trump became president of the United States and why his fellow populists and nationalists are on the march across wide swaths of Europe, you could do worse than to glance at the smartphone you interact with about 500 times a day.

No, the incredibly powerful computer nearly all of us carry around in our pockets and purses didn't give us Trump. But this ubiquitous piece of technology is as much an avatar of our historical moment as the factory or sweat shop was for the age of the industrial revolution. That was the last time in our history when destabilizing technological change led to the rise of radical political movements of the anti-liberal right and left. Those who supported those movements did so in reaction to the sense that their lives were spinning out of control, with technological innovations and resulting economic trends seeming to master us rather than the other way around.

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Damon Linker

Damon Linker is a senior correspondent at TheWeek.com. He is also a former contributing editor at The New Republic and the author of The Theocons and The Religious Test.