Between 1921 and 1932, a strange man became a familiar face in Greenwich Village, New York City. Howard Scott lectured all who would listen on his vision for an anti-democratic state led by technicians and engineers. Businesspeople and politicians would be replaced, and a new society of abundance would be possible through science. He spread a gospel that preached “technology was the revolutionary agent of our period.” Scott believed liberal capitalism would eventually collapse and give way to a new system that he called “technocracy.”
Scott would form a movement known as Technocracy Incorporated, which by 1933, at the height of the Great Depression, boasted hundreds of thousands of members. Its followers took an oddly fascist look. Dressed in gray and hailing with Roman salutes, they saw themselves as a revolutionary organization whose creed was efficiency. The movement wished to see the entire North American continent unified under a single, centralized state, which they called “The Technate.” It would be organized on a system of “energy accounting” to allocate resources, and each citizen would receive an “energy distribution card” for purchases. A new calendar was also proposed to allow for uninterrupted, 24-7 production. At the top would be an elite committee of technological experts, overseeing every facet of life.
Technocracy found many admirers in its heyday, particularly among futuristic writers. Hugo Gernsback, who coined the term “science fiction,” published for the movement’s journal in 1933. Ray Bradbury similarly said that technocracy was “all the hopes and dreams of science fiction.” The public was introduced to this dream in Harold Loeb’s utopian novel Life in a Technocracy: What It Might Be Like (1933). Among scientists, prominent figures like Richard C. Tolman and M. King Hubbert were vocal supporters of the movement.
The case for technocracy was simple for Scott and his followers: “engineers and mechanics created this civilization, so they will eventually dominate it.”
A mass gathering of Technocrats at the Hollywood Bowl, California (1930s)
A group of technocrats with their signature gray cars and suits
Map of the “Technate of America” (July, 1940)
1933 issue of Technocrats Magazine. Technocrats were early advocates of universal basic income.
The technocracy movement reached its height in 1933 when Publishers Weekly called it the “most discussed topic in America.” As its popularity quickly rose, Scott began to sound more and more delusional in his belief that rule by technocracy was imminent. After a disaster of a radio appearance in New York City that year, the press began to criticize him for selling a cult-like fantasy. He was also exposed for lacking actual scientific credentials. The technocracy movement continued to persist throughout the 1940s with some minor influence, but nowhere close to its peak.
Technocracy Incorporated still exists as an organization, but it is insignificant and largely forgotten. It has been receiving some attention again recently since it became known that Elon Musk’s grandfather was a leading member of the Canadian technocracy movement. But what’s more interesting is how its core ideas have unconsciously found new life in the 21st century. Whereas Technocracy Incorporated tried to be a mass movement, today’s tech elite possess the capital and influence to pursue a similar philosophy through more covert means.
Predicting Social Life
One of the core tenets of the original technocracy movement was that social life could be measured and predicted. As a still from an educational video by Technocracy Incorporated reads:
Taken from a technocracy educational video narrated by member Arvid Pederson (1970s)
According to the administrative model for The Technate, the board of engineers would have an entire department dedicated to “social relations.” In the movement’s 1937 manifesto, the organization stated that technocracy was essentially the science of “social engineering.” Every single facet of daily life would be reduced to inputs and outputs: quantified, processed, and then optimized for efficiency.
Technocracy Incorporated viewed the management of people as necessary for their program. Every citizen would have a report on their consumption habits, along with any other details. The issue was, there was not enough data in the 1930s to predict social outcomes with any certainty. Computers were not developed enough at the movement’s peak, so the plan would have inevitably failed. Today, however, the situation is much different. The algorithms parsing through endless data from users give tech companies the ability to surveil, predict, and even influence society’s outcomes and preferences.
The dream of technocracy has taken on new life with these tools. As I documented in my essay Living in a Time of Psychopolitics, philosopher Byung-Chul Han views this as a situation where “free will itself is at stake.”
It is possible that Big Data can even read desires we do not know we harbor… rendering the collective unconscious accessible... in the position to take control of mass behavior on a level that escapes detection.
For today’s technocrats, there is no limit to quantifying and measuring social relations. Every social interaction is a potential place for data mining and monetization. In a recent interview, Mark Zuckerberg said that the average person today has 3 friends, but they desire at least 15. Naturally, Meta hopes to fill the gap as it invests an unprecedented amount into AI that can function as friends, workers, and personal assistants. And this is just one example of today’s tech elite pursuing social engineering.
Even with all this data, the results of measuring and predicting social life are mixed at best. From polling to economics, the predictions are often wrong. The state still views everyday people with unease, since it knows that public anger can unravel things quickly and erratically. Yet, one can see how predicting social outcomes would be the endgame for both the state and Big Tech, for profit and for maintaining political power.
Technology as a Revolutionary Agent
The unstoppable march of the machines (Illustrated by Robert Seymour, 1828)
In a time when nationalism and the working class were the harbingers of revolution, Howard Scott insisted that these were red herrings. In his mind, technology was the only real revolutionary agent. This became a quasi-religious belief for his followers. Those who controlled and ran technological progress (i.e., “the technicians”) would be like priests at the top of the hierarchy.
Today, this is more or less a mainstream view of venture capitalists and leaders in tech—from Marc Andreessen to Balaji Srinivasan to Peter Thiel—who take a millenarian view of technology. Like religious millenarianism awaiting the Second Coming, tech elites believe technology alone will usher in a total and complete transformation of society. This pitch has become standard in the tech world to procure record investment. Effectively, the goal is to push technological advancement to its limit, and sweeping social and political changes will come, consequences be damned. Andreessen has claimed that only jobs like his, as a venture capitalist, would be safe from the coming storm. At the same time, he somehow also views the chance of a catastrophic outcome from AI as 0%.
For the technocrat, the public is secondary, and technological progress must persist unimpeded as if it were destiny. Google’s co-founder Larry Page has privately said he desired to someday see a “digital God” and considered our preference for humans as outdated. As tech elites promise the next Garden of Eden, technology is again being proselytized as the only path to revolutionary change.
However, the overall track record for technology being revolutionary on its own is poor. For the last 20-some-odd years, technological progress has been reduced to maximizing attention in the form of gimmicks, addiction, and apps nobody needs. It’s hardly the sci-fi future many once wrote about. One of the most common questions asked nowadays of technology, especially AI, is “Who is this for?” And the public is left to deal with the fallout without any consideration for its interests.
No Democracy Needed
In recent emails that surfaced from the early days of OpenAI, one of the fears that created the company was over who would run the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) dictatorship. The industry leader then was DeepMind, led by Demis Hassabis. Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and others expressed worry that Hassabis would have unlimited power if left uncontested. Now, each camp accuses the other of wanting to control the future dictatorship, as if winking to each other that they themselves want to helm it.
The anti-democratic sentiment among today’s technocrats has been building for some time. As Peter Thiel wrote in a 2009 op-ed, “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” He argues that technology is in a “deadly race” with politics. The public and its political demands are viewed as an obstacle to the supposed freedom provided by technology, especially the freedom of its owners. Balaji Srinivasan has more recently argued that tech elites should “exit democracy” and establish new sovereign territories of their own. Increasingly, actual people are in the way of the technocrats.
The original technocracy movement viewed democracy as a self-interested and inferior system that limited potential. As a statement read in 1933:
Technocracy stands ready with a plan to salvage American civilization, if and when democracy, as now functioning, can no longer cope with the inherent disruptive forces.
A chapter of the Technocracy movement (1942)
Similar to today’s tech elite, the basis of their claim was elitism: those who would lead the technocracy were biologically predestined to do so. As one 1937 essay in Technocracy Digest put it, “upon biological fact, theories of democracy go to pieces.” The end-point of technocracy is a top crust of technician “geniuses” whose rule would be extremely centralized.
The Technique Behind Technocracy
A local Technocracy chapter with its yin-yang logo
The vision behind Technocracy Incorporated was practically impossible in the 1930s. Yet, since tech capital is now one of the most valued in the world, today’s technocrats have fewer limitations placed on them. They also have immense lobbying power. But it’s not even that technology itself is the issue with technocracy. The real blind spot for the technocrats is not understanding the technique by which they pursue their goals.
“Technique” is a term best explained by Jacques Ellul in The Technological Society (1954). It is the method, procedure, and skill needed to advance technology. The guiding principle for the technique behind technocracy is efficiency. Ellul likens technique to opening a Pandora’s box: once technological progress accelerates, the technique cannot be stopped from reaching its endpoint, regardless of social, political, or economic consequences.
Ellul fatalistically concludes that, because techniques cannot be halted once set in motion, society eventually loses the ability to make any choices about technology. It then has to adapt to these changes against its will. The drive for efficiency also undermines other values where it does not apply. Technology is allowed to advance at the expense of everything else, and any damage is corrected with more of the same technique. If mental illness is on the rise, then the obvious solution is on-demand therapists through an app; if friendships are in decline, Meta will invent virtual friends for you.
For many of today’s technocrats, giving up our autonomy to machines is a gamble worth taking. This is despite the fact that many tech elites themselves place the possibility of a catastrophic outcome (“p-doom”) at very significant levels. But the technique demands efficiency and progress: if we don’t pursue this, someone else will, so it must keep advancing.
Technocracy Incorporated was a dream that saw itself as a social movement made up of actual people. Although they were elitist, they still understood the need to keep up appearances for public consent. Today’s technocrats do not need to make concessions to society or pretend to be a “movement.” But with no democratic mandate, tech elites have to face the skeptical public who have soured on the fantasy they are selling. It’s a major tension point that will keep defining politics in the years and decades ahead.