Are we really living through a technology backlash?

Welcome to the jungle.

It’s been a quiet month here at Llama Towers because I have been writing an article on memorisation and I haven’t had the right mental space to blog, so this will be a bit of a short one.

I was recently listening to a BBC programme about data centres. Don’t worry, this is not going to be a blog post about data centres, I do not hate myself so much as to open that particular can of worms. One of the conversations between a person who builds data centres in the UK and one of the panellists really caught my attention. There was a bit of a back-and-forth as is common in these debate programmes, and one of the panellists said (and I paraphrase): “You keep saying that this technology is inevitable, I didn’t vote for it, nobody voted for this technology, we didn’t choose this future!” That really got me thinking. Wait, we do vote for technologies all the time, we vote with our feet!

There is a mantra often repeated regarding new technologies, particularly things like AI, that the technology is being pushed on an unsuspecting public that doesn’t want to use it. I have never subscribed to this, having been a vocal opponent of other technologies that were indeed being pushed on people, such as blockchains and the metaverse. The reality is that if there is no organic demand, no amount of PR and pushing for something will lead to adoption. So why has this meme spread far and wide in social media circles? Because people want to believe that it is true, that AI is a bubble and that it will collapse tomorrow, just like NFTs. Remember NFTs? Wasn’t 2021 wild? Woke 1 was craaazy after all.

But again, this is not a blog post about AI. Or data centres. Or any specific technology. It is about a very real anti-tech backlash that we are witnessing online, particularly in the West (are we still calling it the West? Am I going to get cancelled for using the wrong term? But I digress…) The rise of the anti-tech influencer is real, with some very visible and cited names making the podcast rounds, telling us about the evils of technology over and over again. There are people who have made a career of being the visible (and often very photogenic and approachable) face of anti-tech backlash who have been at it since ‘the social media is evil’ days. Erstwhile pro-techie science fiction authors have seen the light (or noticed the direction in which the wind is blowing) and have become vocal anti-tech proponents of varying degrees. Anti-tech content goes easily viral, former media darlings get cancelled by the mere hint of any AI use, and we get people on panels around the world spouting often wrong and easily debunkable garbage because the technology backlash is real. And popular. Angry people click more, and nothing angers people more right now than a good old technological villain.

And yet… most of these programs are taking advantage of media that could not exist before, prompted, promoted, and made viral by the very technology that is being decried. It often makes me smile in a wry way to notice that this barrage of content is being driven by the algorithms that the mob often demonises. But there is a reason why the anti-technology sentiment is popular, and it is because we have indeed fallen out of love with technology, or at least most of technology has lost some of its shine.

It is easy to see why. The most prominent example of technology is the digital world that we inhabit, and it would be trite to state that many of us feel betrayed by the Internet, its potential turned into a nightmare landscape filled with addicted doomscrolling zombies, with the algorithm feeding us a daily dose of nightmares and slop. The shiny city on the hill turned into a dark and damp dungeon filled with trolls. Tech giants led by evil oligarchs are destroying the world to sell us more gadgets to peddle disinformation. Global warming. A world of anxious children glued to their devices. A hellscape of machines that we never voted for.

And yet… we do keep voting for the machine. Social media has never been more popular. We spend more time online than 10 years ago. Roughly 25% of people in the UK and the US now identify as content creators (am I a content creator? perish the thought!). 54% of adults in the UK now use tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini or Copilot regularly, and usage reaches 79% among 16–24-year-olds. Needless to say, adoption is not always the same as approval. People may use technologies reluctantly, particularly when work and social life make opting-out increasingly difficult; if you want to have friends or hold a job in the year 2026 you need to be online. But the scale of voluntary adoption complicates the claim that these technologies have been imposed on an unsuspecting and unwilling public.

So there is a disconnect between the online backlash in some circles, and the reality. We are indeed voting with our feet, and the vote is an unwavering endorsement. I will not comment on whether the technology is good for us because that is another question. Even as an unashamed technophile, I will be the first to admit that there are many things about the modern online world that I despise, and I am grateful that I grew up in the analogue world. And yet… I spend most of the day on the computer working, answering emails, watching YouTube, listening to music, reading, browsing, etc. Most of my connection to the outside world is entirely online for various reasons, and I don’t think that is a good thing.

And yet… I have not been bitten by the anti-tech bug, I still keep the faith that for the most part technology makes our lives better and easier. But I also admit that it comes at a potentially great cost, which I also hope will be solved by technology.

So I can totally see why there is a backlash against technology in some circles, but I think that it is mostly a shallow one because for the most part those who are participating in the backlash are also using and adopting the very same platforms and technologies they despise.

Concluding

I’m not sure I have much of a point here, I’m just writing a few lines to take my mind off AI and copyright for a while. There is a clear backlash against technology in some circles, and while I think that it is justified, it can also be seen as shallow. And I also think that it is almost exclusively a Western construct. I have been watching with amusement videos of the Chinese Robot Olympics, and I have been fascinated by how far the field of robotics has come. A noteworthy thing is just how pro-technology China is, which is something I have also observed in my trips to Africa in the last year, where I have been met with an almost refreshing sense of tech enthusiasm that has been lost in the Global North.

And yet… I can’t help but feel a bit apprehensive about those robots. Somewhere in the multiverse, Sarah Connor is screaming at us from behind a fence.