Trump just won the presidency — what do we do now?

Hey there,

Just before the election we had a drafted a normal newsletter about the impacts AI did or didn’t have on the election. But like many of the conversations about technology politics, it feels like we missed the forest for the trees.

🎧 Prathm and I sat down to reflect and discuss what this outcome might mean for the technology politics work we’re all doing. You can listen here.​

I also wanted to share my thinking at the personal, organisational, and field-level for those looking for reflections.

On a personal level, I now realise I had already done a fair amount of emotional processing for this outcome and am not as shattered as I expected. I have a deep sense of dread and a knot in my stomach that won’t budge. I’m worried for the impending structural violence. I’m worried what the Trump victory lap will feel like for people and communities. I worry for friends and family who will endure indignities, fear, and danger. Personally, I have reflected a lot about the tenuous progress for gay rights and the implications that has for my family and our freedoms. We have privilege and location flexibility but it is effecting to know that the places I should feel at home, I likely never will. In turn, this means my daughter will never connect to a large part of her heritage because I don’t want her to be subjected to the parts of it that have rejected me and people in my community. It’s been that way for some time, but this feels reinforcing in a way that’s hard to describe.

On an intellectual level, I feel like we’ve known instinctively how far to the right the US has moved, and how far right the structures and systems that underpin public consumption of political information have also moved. At some level I feel relief that we now know that the cat in the box is dead. The fascist has won. Now we have to grieve and figure out what to do about it. No more pretending.

The field of technology politics has often recognised the need to deal with power and huge forces, but rarely has it strategised to do so. Largely that’s a function of size. There just haven’t been that many people working on these issues. Not enough funding. Credit where it’s due, most of the diagnostic and prognostication work of the past 15 years has been correct.

Mainly that:

• Corporate power in technology will fuse with state power. Because power feeds power.
• Invasive infrastructure will always eventually be used against the people.
• What starts as a consumer product can always eventually turn into a tool of control and domination.
• Charismatic megalomaniacs with bottomless access to resources are a public, environmental, and political health emergency.
• Technology politics is more about politics than technology.
• Shortcuts make everything worse, and technology innovation is often a call for shortcuts.

From my vantage point, the field that emerged to work on these issues works in two major camps. The first is infused with activism and academia, and working to build the moral imagination for new worlds by truly understanding the world we are in. The second is more infused with practicality and compromise, working to incrementally improve the trajectory of emerging technologies and emerging institutions.

I fear both of these fields have responded to techno-determinism with an analytical determinism. We’ve presumed that if we can be accurate, smart, and communicate clearly - about the trends, harms, solutions - we can achieve change. I have learned a huge amount from people who work in this way. And it has almost certainly created progress. But the problem with incremental change is that it is often superficial. When dramatic events — like this election — happen, small wins get overwritten by substantial backslides. I think we always knew that these approaches have clear limitations. Especially given the enormity of the challenges.

I think we need to do more, at a bigger scale. Not (just) to write policy for people who hold tenuous power, or to do the work of aligning whatever formal power structures we can. We have to build new ones. And we can’t just make things — media, reports, articles, whatever — for each other. We also need to grapple with the realities of the media and technology system. Both to change it, and also to succeed within it. Otherwise, we will continue to be a band of earnest experts, commentating the rapid and terrifying merger between raw corporate power and state power to devastating results.

What does that mean for Computer Says Maybe? Right now I’m in deep reflection of how we can leverage our position to tackle some of these structural challenges. I still feel strongly that a media and narrative strategy is the right focus, but I am reflecting on what we can do that strikes more at the heart of the issue. Our small but mighty team will always be focused on impact, not making widgets, but the uncertainty before us means we need time to figure out what’s next.

What does that mean for my work more broadly? All of the organisations I work with, I will be encouraging to think bigger and more structurally. I have already been in conversations with friends about taking big swings. Some of that is coping, to feel in control of something…anything…at a time so complex and uncertain. Some of that will change and animate my personal theory of change and work moving forward.

Overall, I want to thank the collaborators I have worked with over the years. The knowledge, insights, passion, and moral clarity I have gotten working with you all has been nothing short of extraordinary. I feel incredibly hopeful about this moment largely because of you. Both for the strength in solidarity, and knowing that we have the people we need to change the world.

If you want to engage in a community conversation about the aftermath of the elections, you can join a community meet up on the 26th of November. I’d like for the conversation to be partly about solidarity and sharing how we’re feeling, but my hope is that we can also spur to action. That said, I’m open to that space being used for whatever folks would find helpful for the now.

Alix & CSM podcast team (Sarah, Prathm, & Georgia)

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