“Techno-Structure”: Seminal Notions for Construing Modern Societies as (Horrifying) Mechanized Anthills

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to sketch a description of the power structure in a hyper-modern setting. To make sense of contemporary social phenomena, entomological analogies and metaphors could constitute a conceptual and methodological toolkit worthy of replacing “social science” approaches of these days. To accomplish this, a vast, pioneering, and enthralling research labor of scrutiny awaits to be done. Meantime, it will be expedient to lay the groundwork by positing our shared living space as a semi-automated “nest” based on artificial intelligence called the “Techno-Structure”.The results of using an ento-economic approach show that this Techno-Structure appears to be not the concretization of a collective nightmare spawned by the sick psyche of the West (as proclaimed by “postmodernists”), but rather some sort of singular, unannounced, and “revolutionary” reconfiguration of social symbiosis.This economic reconfiguration has been loosely labelled “modernity,” and in several substantial aspects, it is indeed alien to what preceded it. What remains roughly unchanged, though —  and this is the key conclusion —  is the basic stratification of the collectivity into a massive, globalized underclass (increasingly cannibalized by the automation), topped by a thinned out, industrious middle-stratum thoroughly indentured to an ever more powerful and exclusivist leadership group, who holds the keys to the Structure’s computerized central.