Living in a world ruled by apps
Our lives will be shaped more by Apple, Google and Facebook than by political parties
The pressure on Canadians to vote is high. Canada encourages voting in the media, both traditional and social, and in schools, it is pitched as our civic duty. It is universally acknowledged as a “good” and yet well over a third of Canadians don’t vote. As an immigrant, this disconnect between the social obsession with voting and the actual voter turnout fascinates me. Why do so many Canadians resist the schools, the government, the media, and peer pressure, and willingly remain disenfranchised?
The answer that I read in some academic discussions is well-meant but usually paternalistic. They claim that people feel powerless. They are downtrodden. They have been excluded by Canadian society and so are hopeless about the possibilities for change. Other answers carry with them the suspicion that non-voters are failing to take up their civic responsibility due to feckless indifference. In both answers “they” — the nonvoters — are either victims or morally inferior to “us” the informed, active, socially aware, morally superior, voters.
We fail to consider, however, that maybe the over one-third of Canadians who don’t vote are informed, practical, rational people, and we, in our proselytizing on behalf of our nations civic sacrament, are missing something.
Many of the people who don’t vote are part of bodies that are far more powerful, globally, than Canada. They are active on Facebook, Google, Apple, and Amazon. Can we really say that Canada has a bigger influence on their lives and their future than these bodies? They will shape how we think and what we believe. They will influence our happiness, our job prospects, and income. They will influence our relationships and sexual partners. They will form our choices and our health. Certainly, while the outcome of the federal election may tweak the health care system this way or that, how we live and what we eat — the lifestyle choices that will determine our health — will be shaped more by Apple, Google, and Facebook than by any political party.
In the past, we understood ourselves as citizens of a nation-state. We bought into the idea that we were collectively shaping our future, the politicians in Ottawa serving as the instruments of our collective hopes and dreams.
It may be, however, that this social experience is at odds with that lived by increasing numbers of the people living within the borders of a body called “Canada.” It may be that the world has changed. It may be that governments have wanted “progress” and in their faith in the brave new world of technology have acquiesced in the rise of Facebook, Apple, Google, and Amazon.
By so doing, however, they have acquiesced in the shaping of a world in which they, and the nation-states they lead, matter less than ever. Perhaps this is our new reality, and perhaps some non-voters, including victims of governmental blindness to social needs, simply have a better appreciation for this than the rest of us?