Patterns

This weekend, my mind should be on air shows.

It’s air show season in Alberta, and I never seem to outgrow the excitement of watching precision flying teams and aerobatic pilots. They make the impossible look effortless, and even after all these years, I still get the same thrill when I see our Snowbirds fly over or the F-18 do a sneak pass.

Instead, one of those short internet history videos sent me down a rabbit hole. As always, I started checking the facts because history deserves better than social media summaries. The facts held up. And once they did, I couldn’t stop thinking about what they might be trying to tell us.

I found myself reading about the British East India Company, the Dutch East India Company, and later the United Fruit Company. Different centuries, different continents and different industries. But one common thread. These weren’t simply businesses. At various points, they exercised levels of power that rivalled, and sometimes influenced, the governments around them. They controlled trade, shaped economies, and in some cases determined the futures of millions of people.

History doesn’t repeat itself as neatly as social media likes to suggest. But it certainly rhymes. The rhyme isn’t found in armies or colonies. It’s found in the timeless relationship between concentrated wealth and concentrated power.

I was born into what was, in historical terms, an unusually fortunate chapter. The decades following the Second World War were far from perfect. There were wars, discrimination, political scandals, corruption, and no shortage of injustice. I’m not romanticizing the past.

But for much of the Western world, there was also something remarkable. We grew up believing that institutions mattered. That governments, however imperfect, ultimately answered to citizens. That monopolies could be challenged. That laws mattered. That facts mattered. That journalism had a responsibility to question power rather than serve it. None of those things were ever perfect, but they were aspirations worth defending, and for much of my lifetime they felt as though they were gradually becoming stronger rather than weaker.

Perhaps I simply lived through an unusually stable period without fully appreciating how unusual it really was. Now I’m not so sure.

Today’s corporations are not the East India Company. They don’t collect taxes, govern provinces, or maintain private armies. But they do possess something history has never quite seen before: extraordinary influence over the flow of information itself. They shape public discourse, influence elections, determine what gains visibility and what quietly disappears, and increasingly provide the digital infrastructure upon which governments, businesses, and citizens all depend.

That should make all of us who value democratic institutions, regardless of where we sit on the political spectrum, at least a little uncomfortable.

This isn’t an argument against technology. I use it every day. It isn’t an argument against artificial intelligence, either. AI has the potential to improve our lives in extraordinary ways, from medicine to education to scientific discovery.

It is, however, an argument against complacency.

History reminds us that concentrated power rarely announces itself with flashing lights. More often, it arrives one convenience at a time. One acquisition. One platform. One dependency. One decision that seems entirely reasonable on its own until, years later, we look up and realize that institutions we assumed were permanent have quietly become secondary to interests that answer primarily to shareholders rather than citizens.

And while much of my concern today is prompted by what I’m watching unfold in the United States, I’d be making a mistake if I pretended Canada is somehow immune. We aren’t. The technologies are the same. The economic pressures are the same. The temptation to trade a little public oversight for a little more convenience exists here too. History has never respected national borders quite as much as we’d like to believe.

Maybe I’m wrong. I sincerely hope I am. I hope that down the road I reread these words and smile at how unnecessarily worried I was. I hope our democratic institutions prove every bit as resilient as we believe they are. I hope technology strengthens freedom more than it concentrates power.

But history has also taught me that healthy democracies don’t take care of themselves. They depend on citizens who pay attention before the warning lights begin flashing.

And perhaps that’s why my thoughts kept drifting back to air shows. Those pilots aren’t taught to wait until an emergency develops before they start paying attention. They’re taught to recognize patterns, to notice subtle changes, and to understand that small deviations have a way of becoming much bigger problems if they’re ignored.

Maybe citizens should be taught to think that way too.

I’m not predicting the future. I’m simply wondering whether history is offering us one more lesson, and whether we’re paying enough attention to hear it.