Why politics and technology are such bitter enemies

It’s mind-boggling if you pause to think about it. Science and technology have done wonders in virtually every other field. Medicine. Archaeology. Astronomy. History. Education. Engineering. Art. Mass communications. Agriculture. We know what the dinosaurs did. We can see a box of matches from outer space. We can see in the dark. We can see through walls. We know precisely how long it would take for a passenger jet to circle the biggest star known to man. Yet for all our knowledge, capability and technological advances, we can’t make the world a better place politically.

The Internet will be a hundred times faster in the next few years. Machines are already “talking” to one another in order to furnish humans with the best comfort, safety and security. The much-vaunted Internet of Things is not just about snap-of-the-fingers movie or music downloads; it’s a God-like network revolutionising daily life. A radio host the other day gave the following example: A man collapses in a public place. A close-circuit camera catches his face. The image is flashed to other “machines” and one recognises his history of heart disease. Another machine calls an ambulance. He’s taken to the nearest hospital where yet another machine provides the doctors with all the necessary information about his illness.

So, why can’t we detect murky transactions or suspicious military contacts as they happen? Can’t we design anti-corruption software or applications and use them on those who matter? How hard would that be? Thailand is wasting its time trying to write a “new” Constitution, when it should be working on software instead.

The Thai charter should have just one or two articles, simply stating that politicians will be subject to strict monitoring by anti-corruption software that will scrutinise all transactions, assets and privileges in the greatest detail. To deal with the military, we can have “anti-coup” software that beeps every time a tank’s engine is fired up unnecessarily or when an unusually large number of automatic weapons are grabbed without proper reason.

The idea might seem farfetched, but the alternative is to lapse into despair over the machinations of our so-called political reformers.

Astronomers are probing the universe with increasingly powerful lenses. Students are utilising technology to expand their minds. Scientists are planning how to mobilise billions of “nanobots” in a human body so as to prevent or cure cancer. Automakers are fine-tuning driverless vehicles. Media firms are having robots write their financial summaries. Yet when it comes to politics, Thailand and many other parts of the world are stuck debating which is worse: government by appointees or by elected representatives. Why is politics afforded such privilege?

Public officials cry foul every time they are threatened with stricter controls. They miss the point that if you spend public money you must be subject to public scrutiny. Generals cite the imperative of national security against demands for transparency. Again, they miss the point: their reasons for wanting submarines might be a matter of “national security”, but how much they pay for the military hardware and to whom is anything but.

So, why is it that the people most prone to corruption are given the best immunity against scrutiny? In Thailand, fear of disruptive mudslinging is always invoked to protect members of Parliament and the government whereas the blanket “national security” claim has prevented curious minds from snooping around military contracts.

We have spent too much time debating the “form” while avoiding the “substance”. The truth is that how an election is held is not as important as how elected representatives can be kept in line. And technology can help us here. Granted, technology won’t remedy an individual’s faulty morality, but the fear of getting caught can be the most effective pill.  

You may argue that the crooks will figure out a way to beat the tech. I doubt that. Who can calculate faster than even a basic calculator bought at a flea market? There. I rest my case. 

The question is how we can make technology an acceptable clean-up tool in politics. That technology has reached into almost every realm except politics is partly because it’s the powers-that-be who decide how it should be utilised. They use it to track everybody except themselves, and expose everything except what they do.

Come to think of it, that’s the real “freedom” issue, folks. Who gets to use technology and how, is perhaps the biggest question for a democracy. The rest, as they say, is just a smokescreen.