Revolutionary Vigilance in the Age of Technology

Introduction

Technological domination is the air of modern life. It hums in our pockets, glows on our desks, and wraps itself in the language of progress. Activists who seek systemic change often face a hard truth: the infrastructures of control are no longer only parliaments, police, and property laws. They are also servers, patents, data centers, research labs, and the aura of expertise that shields them.

Many revolutionaries have concluded that because technology is entangled with capital and state power, it must be destroyed root and branch. Yet history offers a sobering lesson. Systems of domination are protean. They adapt. Tear down one apparatus and another can emerge wearing the mask of liberation. The tragedy of many uprisings is not only repression from above but reconstitution from within.

The real strategic question is deeper than demolition. How do you prevent the reappearance of control through the very knowledge and tools that promised freedom? How do you cultivate a culture that questions and dissolves domination without exhausting itself into cynicism?

The thesis is simple but demanding: revolutionary movements must treat technology not as neutral equipment nor as a singular enemy, but as a living battlefield of sovereignty. Only by embedding critical inquiry, convivial redesign, and psychological resilience into daily life can you prevent technological systems from regenerating as new hierarchies.

Technology as a System of Power, Not Just Tools

If you misdiagnose the problem, you will fight shadows.

Technology is not merely a collection of devices. It is a network of supply chains, labor relations, intellectual property regimes, military research pipelines, and cultural myths. It encodes power. To believe you can keep the tools while discarding the power relations is often naive. Yet to believe you can simply abolish tools without transforming social relations is equally naive.

Movements that fail to see technology as a system repeat a ritual of outrage without strategic gain.

The Myth of Neutral Science

Throughout modern history, scientific authority has presented itself as above politics. The laboratory is portrayed as a sanctuary of truth. But research funding flows through military budgets and corporate grants. Patents turn discovery into monopoly. Data becomes currency.

Consider the Manhattan Project. It mobilized brilliant minds under the banner of scientific advancement. Its outcome was not neutral knowledge but a weapon that reshaped geopolitics. Or reflect on the rise of surveillance capitalism. Platforms framed themselves as connecting the world, while quietly constructing behavioral prediction markets.

The lesson is not that knowledge is evil. The lesson is that knowledge without sovereignty becomes an instrument of those who finance and deploy it.

Reformism and the Trap of Partial Destruction

Movements often target visible harms: a pipeline, a data center, a facial recognition program. Even when they win reforms, the underlying logic of extraction and control remains intact. The system mutates.

The global anti Iraq War marches of 15 February 2003 mobilized millions in over 600 cities. It was a breathtaking display of world opinion. Yet the invasion proceeded. Why? Because the action targeted policy, not the structural engines that made perpetual war profitable and politically viable.

Similarly, campaigns to regulate technology frequently aim for better oversight rather than deeper redesign of sovereignty. Regulation can slow abuses. It rarely alters who holds ultimate authority.

If you want to dismantle domination, you must examine where sovereignty resides. Who can decide? Who can veto? Who can build without permission?

This shifts the focus from smashing machines to redesigning power.

From Destruction to Sovereignty Redesign

Destruction without redesign invites repetition. History shows that revolutions which topple regimes but fail to institutionalize new forms of self rule often reproduce the old hierarchies under new banners.

The French Revolution abolished monarchy but struggled to stabilize sovereignty. The Russian Revolution dismantled tsarism yet centralized authority in a new party state. In both cases, technological and bureaucratic apparatuses were reabsorbed into fresh pyramids of control.

The strategic horizon must therefore move beyond negation.

Counting Sovereignty, Not Spectacle

Modern activism still clings to a voluntarist myth: if enough bodies gather in the street, power will yield. The Women’s March in 2017 mobilized around 1.5 percent of the United States population in a single day. The spectacle was historic. Yet spectacle did not translate automatically into structural change.

Mass size alone is obsolete as a metric of victory.

Instead, measure sovereignty gained. After an action, ask:

• Did communities gain durable decision making authority?
• Did dependency on distant systems decrease?
• Did participants acquire skills to self govern?

This reframes the technological question. Rather than asking whether a device exists, you ask who governs its design, maintenance, and evolution.

Convivial Criteria for Tools

A movement serious about preventing domination can adopt clear criteria for technological use:

• Can this tool be built, repaired, and understood locally?
• Does it require proprietary knowledge or distant gatekeepers?
• Does it centralize power or distribute it?

These are not technical questions. They are sovereignty tests.

The concept of convivial tools, popularized by Ivan Illich, offers a starting point. Tools should expand autonomy, not dependency. A bicycle enhances mobility without requiring a global surveillance network. A proprietary algorithm that decides creditworthiness does the opposite.

But criteria alone are insufficient. Culture must reinforce them.

Embedding Critical Inquiry Into Daily Life

Revolutionary vigilance cannot be an occasional conference or manifesto. It must become a habit.

The danger is burnout. Constant suspicion corrodes trust. Endless critique can curdle into nihilism. Movements that live in permanent emergency exhaust themselves.

The art is to normalize questioning without weaponizing paranoia.

Ritualized Inquiry

Protest is not only a tactic. It is a ritual engine that reshapes perception. The Québec casseroles of 2012 turned nightly pot and pan banging into a communal heartbeat. Sound itself became a form of participation.

Imagine similar rituals of inquiry. Weekly gatherings where neighbors trace the life cycle of a common object, mapping its materials, labor, and ownership. Not to induce guilt, but to illuminate hidden supply lines.

By ritualizing inquiry, you prevent it from becoming a private obsession. It becomes shared culture.

The key is cadence. Cycle in moons. Hold bursts of intense focus followed by periods of rest. Bureaucracies react slowly. Movements that crest and vanish within a month can exploit this speed gap while preserving energy.

Rotating Stewardship and Collective Memory

Hero leaders burn out or become bottlenecks. Rotate facilitation. Share research tasks. Archive findings in accessible language. Translate technical jargon into stories that children can understand.

When knowledge is demystified, the priesthood dissolves.

Consider Ida B. Wells. She transformed data on lynching into accessible journalism that galvanized international outrage. She did not hoard expertise. She weaponized clarity.

Movements must do the same with technological knowledge. Break it open. Teach it. Refuse mystification.

Joy as Strategic Infrastructure

A culture of permanent denunciation cannot sustain itself. The psyche needs oxygen.

Psychological safety is strategic. After viral peaks, hold decompression rituals. Shared meals. Music. Silence. Walks without devices.

Joy is not indulgence. It is proof that life beyond domination is possible. Without lived alternatives, critique becomes abstract.

The future of protest is not bigger crowds but new sovereignties bootstrapped out of failure. Those sovereignties must feel alive.

Avoiding the Reconstitution of Control

Even with vigilance, systems of domination attempt to reassemble.

Capital and state are adaptive. They monitor dissent. They incorporate its language. They rebrand.

How do you prevent the reconstitution of control through knowledge and tools?

Transparency Against Entryism

Movements are vulnerable to internal capture. Experts can quietly steer decisions. Funders can impose priorities. Transparency is the antidote.

Publish budgets. Open decision logs. Record votes. Make process visible.

Counter entryism through radical clarity rather than charismatic gatekeeping. When everyone understands how decisions are made, fewer shadows remain for power to coagulate.

Hybrid Strategy Across Lenses

Many movements default to voluntarism. They escalate actions and hope willpower moves mountains. When numbers dwindle, despair follows.

Broaden your lens.

Structuralism reminds you to monitor crisis thresholds. Economic shocks, climate disasters, and legitimacy collapses create openings. Timing matters.

Subjectivism teaches that shifts in collective consciousness can precede institutional change. Memes, art, and symbols reshape what people believe is possible.

Theurgism, in secular terms, highlights ritual alignment. Moments of collective awe can catalyze courage beyond rational calculation.

A resilient movement fuses lenses. It pairs structural analysis with cultural work. It blends action with reflection. This diversity reduces the risk that any single tactic ossifies into dogma.

Planned Obsolescence of Tactics

Every tactic has a half life. Once power understands it, suppression becomes efficient.

Occupy Wall Street spread to 951 cities, reframing inequality. Yet once authorities coordinated evictions, encampments decayed. The meme had outrun its novelty.

The lesson is not that occupation was futile. It is that repetition breeds predictability.

Retire tactics before they fossilize. Innovate or evaporate.

Apply this to technological resistance. If your critique becomes a script that institutions anticipate, it will be neutralized. Perpetual creativity is not aesthetic indulgence. It is survival.

Sustaining the Revolutionary Mindset Without Burnout

Here lies the paradox. To prevent domination from re emerging, you need constant vigilance. Yet constant vigilance can become exhausting.

The solution is rhythm.

Micro Practices of Questioning

Embed small acts of inquiry into daily life. Ask one question each morning about an object you use. Who made it? Under what conditions? Where does the data go?

Do not spiral into total analysis. Curiosity fasts prevent doom fatigue. Leave some questions unanswered until communal discussion.

Habits shape consciousness more effectively than grand gestures.

Shared Sabbaths From the Grid

Design regular device free intervals. Not as moral purity tests, but as collective experiments in autonomy.

Walk at night without screens. Tell stories. Repair tools by hand. Experience your own capacity.

These intervals metabolize anxiety into competence.

Celebrate Partial Sovereignty

Do not wait for total liberation to celebrate. Each skill learned, each local repair, each transparent decision is a fragment of sovereignty.

Count sovereignty in smiles as well as policy shifts.

Movements that recognize incremental gains avoid the dissonance reduction trap where participants reconcile themselves to defeat because victory seems impossible.

By mapping believable paths to win, you inoculate against cynicism.

Putting Theory Into Practice

Translating these principles into action requires deliberate design. Here are five concrete steps to cultivate revolutionary vigilance without burnout:

• Establish a Monthly Technology Assembly
  Convene an open gathering where one common technology is examined through a sovereignty lens. Map its supply chain, ownership structure, and governance. Rotate facilitators and document findings in accessible language.

• Adopt Convivial Tool Criteria
  Draft community guidelines for technology use. Prioritize tools that are locally repairable, non proprietary, and transparent. Revisit criteria every six months to prevent dogma.

• Create Rhythms of Intensity and Rest
  Organize campaigns in lunar cycles. Launch a burst of focused action, then intentionally pause for reflection and celebration. Protect the psyche as you would any strategic asset.

• Build Skill Sharing Networks
  Host workshops that demystify technical knowledge. Coding, hardware repair, encryption, and research literacy should be collective capacities, not elite domains.

• Measure Sovereignty, Not Spectacle
  After each initiative, assess gains in decision making power, local autonomy, and shared knowledge. Publish a sovereignty report alongside any media coverage metrics.

These steps are modest. Their power lies in repetition and cultural embedding.

Conclusion

Technological systems rooted in capital and state power will not dissolve through outrage alone. Nor will they vanish through naive reform. Domination is adaptive. It hides behind expertise, convenience, and spectacle.

To prevent its reconstitution, you must redesign sovereignty while cultivating a culture of critical inquiry and joy. Destruction without redesign repeats history. Vigilance without rhythm breeds burnout. Reform without imagination strengthens the cage.

The path forward is neither technophilia nor technophobia. It is disciplined curiosity paired with collective self rule. It is the courage to retire tactics before they ossify. It is the humility to celebrate partial sovereignty while building toward deeper transformation.

Revolution begins the moment you stop asking permission. But it endures only when you learn how to govern yourselves, your knowledge, and your tools.

So here is the provocation: in your community, where does technological sovereignty actually reside today, and what is one concrete step you can take this month to relocate it into collective hands?