Reconnected (Reconnected, Real Life Magazine)

Conventional wisdom about the network holds that the political nature of the network can be reduced to the degree of centralization of the network: a centralized network is designed for control, while a decentralized or distributed network The web is democratic. Early proponents of the internet believed that its structure made it decentralized, and that its decentralization would protect it from monopoly. In 1999, the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, wrote that the internet is "so huge that it is impossible for any single company to dominate it." ( the internet is so huge that there's no way any one company can dominate it )

From the outset, then, there was a clear misunderstanding of what the Internet was: its biggest proponents believed that while empowering individuals with new tools for sharing and producing information, it would be immune to corporate or state control. But this view has always been clouded by the idealism of free will. As Joanne McNeil wrote in Lurking , "the internet I once missed" - where people come together in chat rooms and forums to conduct conversations free from political, social division or economic pressure Discussion of Influence - " The internet I felt momentarily nostalgic for is an internet that never actually existed. "

While no single company technically dominates the internet today, cloud services, undersea cables and other infrastructure that powers it are increasingly concentrated in a small group of telecom groups and web-dominant platforms: Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Facebook . Looking back at the Internet in the 1990s, the power of private companies is already evident. Although the Internet's infrastructure was not fully privatized until 1995, online interactions were already affected by commercial pressures. In 1994, Carmen Hermosillo published an article on online communities (Pandora's Vox On Community In Cyberspace), arguing that "many cyber communities are businesses that depend on the commodification of human interaction" ( many cyber -communities are businesses that rely upon the commodification of human interaction ). Carmen Hermosillo explained that while "some people wrote about cyberspace as though it were a '60s utopia", early web services —America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, and even Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) — are businesses that turn users' actions into products, shaping user interactions through moderation and editing to serve businesses target, and maintain permanent records, making cyberspace "an increasingly efficient tool of surveillance". Carmen Hermosillo argues that, contrary to Wired proponents, the e-community benefits from "the dehumanizing trend in our society: it wants to commoditize human interaction, Enjoy the spectacle without considering the human cost." ( trend towards dehumanization in our society: It wants to commodify human interaction, enjoy the spectacle regardless of the human cost. )

Carmen Hermosillo is not the only voice against liberal framing of cyberspace. In 1996, technology historian Jennifer S. Light compared the talk of virtual communities by “cyberoptimists” with the early optimistic predictions of shopping malls by city planners. In the 1950s, as the automobile expanded in American cities, planners promised that malls would become enclosed public spaces in place of Main Streets. But as Jennifer S. Light has pointed out, the transition to suburban malls has introduced new inequalities and limited the function of spaces to serve only commercial interests. Likewise, in privately owned virtual communities, "these agora function only in their commercial sense; the sense of the market" ( these agora function only in their commercial sense; the sense of the market) space as site for civic life is subject to strict controls. ). The business "community" prioritizes business interests over promoting the participation of marginalized voices, promoting education and productive communication, and promoting democratic governance of the digital space.

Jennifer S. Light cites Prodigy, which she says is an "electronic panopticon" that monitors public posts, censors posts that are not suitable for families, and uses information collected from users Offer them "persistent advertising". Of course, these same issues still characterize commercial internet platforms. If anything, the post-dotcom commoditization of the Internet has made things worse. In 2005, Tim O'Reilly described "Web 2.0" as an effective web platform that encapsulates all forms of online interaction so that everything a user does can be captured and catalogued for Businesses bring benefits.

In less than 20 years, as Jennifer S. Light warns, a small group of companies have begun to oversee many of our online interactions and determine the form that serves their interests. As Twitter user @tveastman joked in 2018: "I'm old enough to remember a time when the internet wasn't made up of five websites - each consisting of screenshots of text from four others." ( I'm old enough to remember when the Internet wasn't a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four. )

In recent years, however, we have begun to see cracks in the model that has allowed these companies to dominate: Digital advertising, which has been key to subsidizing the sites, services and platforms that bring in users, is now under threat. That's partly because of increased efforts to thwart industry surveillance of users: Apple recently rolled out features to block ads targeting iOS devices, which Facebook in particular sees as a huge threat. The effectiveness of digital advertising in general has also been questioned. "Ad fraud," or the perverse lure of attention metrics (often through the use of bots), is thought to be rampant, with companies like Procter & Gamble and Uber cutting $100 million each in ad spending Growth had no noticeable effect.

The fragility of the digital advertising model presents an opportunity to imagine a different kind of network, rooted in a different political agenda; one that elevates societal interests above corporate profits. But this doesn't happen automatically. Without concerted action to build a better Internet, getting rid of digital advertising may only further monetize our online interactions. The so-called creator economy is re-emphasizing micropayments and subscription models, and major social media platforms are following suit, launching new monetization features like Twitter's superfan and Facebook's Bulletin. In addition to new applications and services, there are also efforts to graft profitable infrastructure into the internet itself: Web3, which Drew Austin describes as "a blockchain-based internet that A blockchain-based internet that works less like an open network circulating 'free information' and more like an expansive matrix of built-in ownership and payment infrastructure. )

On the creator side, these technologies offer false promises to those who don't yet have a large audience. For artists and performers, the creator economy is even more unequal, as platforms fuel the star economy and hollow out the "middle class" in the profession. A small group of people with large followings can use these new tools to generate more income, while a large number of people can only make money by going viral. At the same time, the features of monetization make the internet more unequal in general, linking access to an individual’s ability to pay, and making more general intrusive forms of personal commodification that we are all incentivized to turn into commodities.

But in some circles, people hope that Web3 will recapture the lost promise of decentralization of the early internet. Crypto enthusiasts and some activists in the digital rights space assert that cryptocurrencies, blockchain, smart contracts and related technologies will circumvent the state’s regulatory powers and allow people to avoid predatory intermediaries such as big banks. However, they underestimate how centralized these technologies have become, and do not explain how libertarian calls for decentralization will prevent the Internet from being dominated by similarly large corporations.

Web3 is a technical solution that does not contradict how power is distributed in the real world. Its goal is not to create a fairer means of social networking; rather, it seeks to pre-empt the political struggle that would actually be required to achieve that goal. Like other "decentralized" concepts, it is easy to incorporate. Silicon Valley billionaires have publicly praised cryptocurrencies as a right-wing technology, and Amazon recently launched its own "distributed" network made up of its own products. Bitcoin’s infrastructure is controlled by a few large corporations, and just as Google financialized the digital advertising market, Web3 seeks to extend the logic of financialization to more digital interactions.

Calls for decentralization often cannot compete with power structures that may control so-called emancipatory projects. In "Your Computer Is on Fire," Benjamin Peters argues that "networks are not what they are designed to be, but rather mimic the organizational collaboration that tries to build them. and vices." ( networks do not resemble their designs so much as they take after the organizational collaborations and vices that tried to build them. ) In other words, focusing only on network design misses the political ideals and institutional practices that Practice has nurtured them and has integrated into them. For example, while anyone can still connect their own servers to the internet, the infrastructure is increasingly controlled by tech giants that seal off our activities on the web and whose services we use to access the web. Not to mention, so-called decentralization has not stopped the NSA or companies like Google and Facebook from mass surveillance of almost everything we do online.

Decentralization itself is not a politics. But without a politics that explicitly seeks to serve the public while challenging corporate power, decentralization is not a practical strategy to decommodify our online interactions or repurpose our networks for other purposes.

Liberal promoters of the early web saw individual hackers as key to challenging state power and realizing the free potential of the internet, even as corporate giants took over the internet. Today, we’re hearing about individual creators taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the integrated internet to allow us to create profitable content for platform companies. But individual action will never produce liberating cyberspace. This requires action by the state to fund and build alternatives, driven by an organized public that demands technology to serve the people.

Besides obsessing over decentralization, there is another option. The history of state-driven communications projects in the 20th century provides examples of how the web has been handled in different ways and politically.

In general, the history of the Internet begins in 1969 with the first computer connected to the ARPANET. The ARPANET was an early packet-switched network funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, linking research centers across universities. But as Peters describes in How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet The first proposal to establish a national civilian computer network was proposed by the Soviet Union in 1959, when Soviet cybernetics pioneer Anatoly Kitov proposed an automated economic management system to help coordinate a planned economy. The network was originally designed in layers, but Kitov also gave workers the ability to provide feedback and criticism, giving them greater influence over the planning process. The project was stifled by the Soviet bureaucracy, but if Kitov's vision came to fruition, worker participation would lead to a very different start to the civilian cyber era, one that would revolve around economic planning rather than the dissemination of knowledge in academia.

Chile's Cybersyn project, developed under socialist president Salvador Allende , has a similar economic direction but takes a different approach. As Eden Medina explains in "Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende's Chile ", this is a A clear attempt to break free from the "techno-colonialism" of powers such as the United States, which "forces Chileans to use technology suited to the needs and resources of rich countries, while preventing alternative, local forms of knowledge and material life from flourishing. "( that forced Chileans to use technologies that suited the needs and resources of the wealthy nations while preventing alternative, local forms of knowledge and material life to flourish. ) its developers tried to keep factories autonomous by seeking feedback from workers, and Create a command center that can be used by people without technical skills, and imbue it with the politics of a left-wing government. The government hopes to use the network to coordinate production in the process of nationalizing key industries, but we'll never know how it will work in practice, since Allende was toppled in a CIA-backed coup in 1973. Medina asserts that the project proves that it is not the political process itself that can guide the design of the network that innovation can take place outside the confines of market competition.

Another option is the Minitel system, which was announced in 1974 by French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing "for France, the American domination of telecommunications and computers is independent of its threat", France developed the Minitel system. As Julien Mailland and Kevin Driscoll describe in detail in Minitel: Welcome to the Internet , The system, introduced in the 1980s, employs a "hybrid network design, part centralized and closed, part decentralized and open" ( hybrid network design, part centralized and closed, part decentralized and open ). While the National Telephone Company controls the center of the network, the edges of the network — the servers that store private services — are managed by private companies. It also has monetization in its design. When users connect to a service (users have access to news, games, sports updates, current affairs message boards, etc.), they pay for every minute of access, which creates a revenue stream for both the service provider and the phone company, the phone company Draw from it. This business model incentivizes companies to keep people using their services for as long as possible without having to resort to advertising or tracking. In fact, Minitel has some privacy; when a user receives a bill, it doesn't identify which services a user uses.

Julien Mailland and Kevin Driscoll compare Minitel to Apple's App Store, where a centralized authority manages the "platform" and maintains standards. But unlike Minitel, whose decisions "are subject to due process and can be appealed to the courts, Apple has absolute control over what happens on its platform. The public has no interest, no representation, and no way around it." Disputes." ( were subject to due process and could be appealed in a court of law, Apple exercises absolute control over the communication that takes place on its platform. The public has no interest, no representation, and no recourse to settle disputes. ) In other words, because Minitel is run by the national telephone company, there is public accountability through legislation that grants citizens these rights, as well as through a representative democracy.

These early cyber projects—especially the Cybersyn and Minitel projects—were a clear effort to stop technological imperialism. In the years that followed, the globalization of the Internet thwarted this desire. Most governments can only speculate about the different political networks, since their citizens already use global networks that appear to be beyond the scope of regulation in any country outside the United States.

The most notable exception is China, where the "Great Firewall" is at work. This array of technology and legislation is often simply designed to limit Chinese citizens' access to sensitive information or to communicate on controversial topics - which is undoubtedly a fact and a problem - but its economic impact may be more important. China's protectionist measures, combined with generous state funding, have allowed it to develop a domestic tech industry that rivals that of the United States — one that other countries are seeking to emulate.

Researcher Juan Ortiz Freuler argues that if developing countries around the world continue to be squeezed by U.S. companies for the value they create, they will be more open to the Chinese model. This has fueled fears of the internet unraveling along national borders - the so-called "splinternet" . But Juan Ortiz Freuler argues that the trend of fragmentation is not only nascent, but already happening - just along platforms and not necessarily national borders. In a closed online campaign, companies like Google and Facebook restrict the public transfer of data and the interoperability of services to cement their dominance. The response to "splinternet" is not to secure the Internet's dominance, but to explore alternatives -- and alternative politics to support them.

Technologies that serve the public interest will likely not emerge on either side of the U.S.-China tech cold war. During the Cold War of the 20th century, when 120 countries refused to choose between American capitalism or Soviet communism, Ortiz Freuler called for a digital non-aligned movement to build " Information systems geared toward solving the big challenges we face as humans on this planet , including the climate crisis and global inequality. Our social, environmental and technological redemption, he argues, will not be found in the developed world, whose culture is "intertwined with the rationality that gave birth to capitalism itself". The developing world, however, has the imagination to create different systems because it "sees its own culture destroyed by colonialism, only to see its fragments reassembled into a new narrative that benefits its new rulers." This is not to place the responsibility for solving the problems created by the developed world on those it oppresses, but they may well have a unique approach to ending the dominance of American technology — and rejecting Chinese technology as a substitute. We can extend Ortiz Freuler ’s call to include the oppressed people of the developed world—those who are monitored and controlled by technological systems that expand to cover more of their lives Many fields.

As the example of China shows, for alternatives to thrive, existing platforms will likely need to be castrated, either by blocking them or by adopting policies to dismantle their “walled gardens.” We should also recognize the importance of state control over infrastructure and how this control enables public entities to influence network outcomes. Such experimentation can take many forms, but an example of this can be found in Dan Hind 's proposal for the British Digital Cooperative , which includes a Socially beneficial forms of interaction, as well as community technology centers that educate locals and develop technology to meet their needs. But can we also imagine that Chile is setting out to revise its dictatorial-era constitution, and could it rekindle the anti-imperial tech ethos of "Project Cybersyn"? Or is Cuba learning from its biopharma success to reimagine how digital networks should serve a socialist society, rather than succumbing to the hegemony of American tech giants? Or even Brazil, again under Lula da Silva , to lead a coalition to build technology for developing countries?

After commenting on how we idealized the early web, McNeil wrote: "When I nostalgic about the Internet before social media integration, I was actually longing for a better Internet, one that had not yet been formed. Internet communities." ( when I think I feel nostalgic for the internet before social media consolidation, what I am actually experiencing is a longing for an internet that is better, for internet communities that haven't come into being yet. ) Obviously, this It’s not just a matter of decentralization; it’s about thinking about the outcomes we want to see and building institutions — and subsequently technology — to serve those political goals. Rather than wishing that a particular web design would be immune to corporate control, it would be better to build a better Internet by first building the necessary political power to make it a reality.

Compiled from: "Reconnected" by Real Life Magazine (2021, Paris Marx)