‘The latest advances in networked technology hold the promise of lifting millions of people out of poverty. Take 5G. It is hyper-fast and, as everyone knows, time is money. Who doesn’t look to save both?
Hang on, though, 5G comes with a catch – or two. You could be assimilated by the global digital matrix, microchipped like domesticated cattle, and transformed into a docile sexless cyborg. The growing opposition to 5G cannot really come as a surprise. As it turns out, human beings still enjoy sex, reproducing, and roaming free.
As scholars of contemporary propaganda, we are acutely aware of the power of mass communication to cow the “bewildered herd” – as Walter Lippmann once blithely insulted the masses. Yet, we suspect that even the slick PR campaigns trying to engineer public consent for 5G have failed to persuade millions of concerned citizens that this technology is sufficiently safe.
More generally speaking we suspect that, despite persistent exposure to decades of mainstream news prodding and cultural cues urging people to welcome whatever new technology arises, most people retain fond memories of a simpler, more humane past: when monetary transactions with hard currency were also key moments of human interaction between buyer and seller, un-surveilled by the all-seeing eye of surveillance capitalists.
Below we explain the growing fear of 5G by pointing to recent history and to the growing number of commentators and scholars who, uncorrupted by corporate research grants, express serious concerns about the latest “wonderful” technology. Unsurprisingly, no one in power appears ready to fully address these concerns. Are they willfully blind or hopelessly distracted?
We find that corporate media unjustly frame reasonable people who take pains to investigate the truth about 5G’s apparent dangers as paranoid conspiracy theorists. In other words, don’t mind what you read in your mainstream newspaper. The 5G doubters are a far cry from naïve luddites who reflexively reject all forms of technological innovation.’
Read more: Telecom Jackboot: A 5G Kick to the Groin
