- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 02/Sep 05:23

Digital Massas make colonial rulers look like small-time operators

NOVACK GEORGE Prof Deosaran's timely analysis of Dr Williams' "Massa Day done" speech (Sunday Newsday, August 31) focusses his provocative question about whether politicians have become "our new Massas." His observation that "the political elite rotates the 'monopoly of political power'" while the masses remain under psychological bondage strikes at something fundamental about our post-emancipation predicament. But we must extend this analysis beyond the familiar terrain of party politics. Williams' critique of Massa (the absentee exploiter who used political power for private gain while rationalising the dehumanisation of workers) now applies to far more sophisticated forms of domination that transcend traditional political categories. The original Massa system worked because it created psychological dependence: enslaved Africans and indentured Indians had to approach the plantation owner for every need. Today's equivalent is not just "Minister this, minister that," but something more insidious – our collective dependence on technological platforms controlled by global corporate elites who make the old plantation owners look like community organisers. Consider how digital platforms extract value from Caribbean labour and creativity while offering precarious gig work in return. Algorithmic attention merchants and digital intimacy brokers operate as absentee digital planters, extracting data and attention from our communities while concentrating unprecedented wealth and power in Silicon Valley boardrooms. Like Williams' Massa, they rationalise their exploitation through philosophical frameworks – "disruption," "efficiency," "connectivity" – that mask the reality of new forms of economic subjugation. The psychological implications Prof Deosaran identifies are now amplified by algorithmic systems that shape how we think, what we see, and how we understand ourselves. The old Massa had to convince workers they were "inferior beings" through crude ideological means. Today's digital Massas use sophisticated behavioural manipulation, feeding us content designed to maximise engagement while fragmenting our capacity for sustained attention and critical thinking. Williams recognised that Massa "had no sense of loyalty to the community which he decimated." Today's tech billionaires display the same detachment, building bunkers in New Zealand while their platforms facilitate the shredding of the social fabric of democracies worldwide. When their systems amplify disinformation that undermines electoral integrity, they shrug and point to "free speech." When their algorithms promote extremist content that fuels violence, they blame "user preferences." But the most troubling parallel is how contemporary power structures exploit the same psychological dependency that characterised plantation life. We check social media feeds with the same compulsive urgency that workers once brought their problems to Massa. We've traded the overseer's whip for the smartphone's notification ping, both designed to extract maximum productivity from human attention and energy. Prof Deosaran asks whether the "abuse of political power for personal ends" still exists, but we must also ask whether we've created new forms of power that operate beyond traditional political accountability. When a handful of tech executives can determine which voices get heard in public discourse, when algorithmic systems make decisions about employment and housing with built-in biases, when platform companies can destroy small businesses by changing their terms of service overnight, we face concentrated power that makes Williams' concerns about the DLP and Guardian seem quaint. The "anti-intellectual" tendency Deosaran identifies in the political class pales beside the systematic destruction of human attention spans and critical thinking capacity engineered by engagement-driven algorithms. Today's Massa doesn't just ignore intellectual discourse – he actively undermines our ability to engage in it by feeding us endless streams of fragmented, emotionally charged content designed to bypass rational analysis. Williams proclaimed that "to educate is to emancipate," but what happens when the primary educational force in young people's lives is designed by corporate algorithms optimised for profit rather than human development? When children spend more time with YouTube than with teachers, when their understanding of the world is shaped by recommendation systems trained on engagement metrics rather than truth, we face challenges to human agency that the PNM's free secondary education alone cannot address. This is not to diminish the importance of local political accountability and the rotating elite that Prof Deosaran describes certainly deserves scrutiny. But focusing only on traditional political corruption while ignoring the digital plantation systems that increasingly govern our daily lives is like debating which political party should manage the estate while missing that the plantation itself has gone global and automated. Williams' insight that Massa operated through "philosophical rationalization" is particularly relevant today. The tech industry's liberation rhetoric (connecting the world, democratising information, empowering individuals) serves the same function as earlier justifications for human bondage. It provides moral cover for systems designed to concentrate wealth and power while extracting maximum value from human labour and attention. True emancipation in the 21st century requires recognising these new forms of bondage and developing strategies to resist them. This means building local/ regional economic alternatives to platform dependence, creating educational systems that develop critical thinking about digital manipulation, and constructing political institutions capable of regulating global corporate power in service of human dignity. The question "Is Massa Day really done?" deserves a resounding "No" – not because Williams' political project failed, but because new forms of Massa have emerged that make the old plantation owners look like small-time operators. Our post-emancipation strategy must evolve to address 21st century threats to human agency, or we risk trading the overseer's whip for the algorithm's invisible chains. Novack George is a reader from Reform Village, Gasparillo The post Digital Massas make colonial rulers look like small-time operators appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.