The Ideological Spectrum of the Digital Era

"The Ideological Spectrum of the Digital Era" is a chart that provides various clues. After collaging various theories, it is convenient for you to judge the appearance of digital society in various places. After using it for the past few months, it has been surprisingly useful. Especially when I meet new friends at home and abroad, I can silently label them in my heart.

This article will describe how to read this chart and try to label yourself and describe your place in the world.

The core proposition of this picture is that on the border of two major digital imperial powers, if we want to develop a community, are there any core values ​​that must be developed? If the intersection between the two circles is used to reveal the border, the shape is indeed very similar to the island of Taiwan.

So let’s explain the whole picture first.

The iron heel of power and progress

The spectrum is a horseshoe shape (a circle with missing corners), upward is centralization (concentration of resources), downward is decentralization (resources are dispersed); inward is accelerationism (scientific and technological progress), and outward is decelerationism (slowed growth) ); to the left is the socialist line (government planning), to the right is the capitalist line (market mechanism).

Since the industrial age, modern people seem to have built-in accelerationist tendencies, whether individuals or organizations, so the inner edge of the gray horseshoe in the center of the picture is called the "accelerationism ring." Groups that enter this area usually embark on the path of innovation and competition that leads to technological prosperity, and often suffer from the side effects of meritocracy.

Why is it the "ring" of accelerationism and not the "circle" of accelerationism? I call the innermost acceleration edge the "event horizon." Accelerationism has limits in terms of linear historical development. What is the end point of accelerationism? There are currently various ideological supports. The two extremes are Singularitarianism (such as Kurzweil) that transcends human wisdom. ("Near the Singularity") and the Degrowth Communism described by Saito Yukihei in "Capital in the Anthropocene".

For me, since both are too difficult to imagine and the specific execution path is unknown, I summarize both after the event horizon.

Regarding the horseshoe shape, I very much like the horseshoe theory of French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye, although it has been criticized by academic circles. In "Théorie du récit: introduction aux langages totalitaires" (Théorie du récit: introduction aux langages totalitaires), he argued that supporters of the extreme left and the extreme right are not two ends of the ideological spectrum, but similar to each other, so the spectrum should be distorted into " Horseshoe shape", the centrists are further away.

In the "Ideological Spectrum of the Digital Era", the horseshoe shape not only represents the left-right spectrum of politics, but also adds the concept of "core-periphery". In the figure, the missing corner of the horseshoe (top) is the core. The more resources are concentrated, the stronger the driving force. The arc edge of the horseshoe (bottom) is the border, where resources are dispersed and the driving force is relatively weak. The competition between great powers is the collision of the two arrows above. In the past, it was the "capital-communism" battle between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now it is "market-driven vs. government-driven" in the book "Digital Empire - The Battle for Global Technology Regulation". dispute. Only when resources are concentrated will the two arrows collide.

Spread the horseshoe, the wingspan of resources

Although the horseshoe-shaped two-dimensional spectrum is clear at a glance, most people are not used to using equidistant azimuth projections to interpret maps, so it is useful to expand the horseshoe shape and convert it into a left and right spectrum again. However, unlike Fey's horseshoe, the left and right poles are not only ideological Extreme, but they also have the tendency to concentrate resources.

The concentration of resources and the development of science and technology with clear directions have indeed solidified the tendency of accelerationism. For example, chips with increasingly powerful computing power and hard drives with better and better storage space. Describing the difference between cumulative technology and breakthrough technology, Christianson's "The Dilemma of Innovation" has a very detailed reasoning. The so-called "innovation comes from the border" concept also comes from this book. Generally speaking, how centralized resources absorb innovative products from border areas is an important issue of accelerationism, whether it is entrepreneurship or public investment (the first recommendation is to create Mazurka Trust's "Building an Entrepreneurial Nation").

I am definitely not the first to discuss the symbiotic development of technology and power. Esemeru's "Power and Progress" devotes an entire book to explaining how power and decision-making have changed the direction of technological development since the Industrial Revolution. , obviously this is about the issue between distribution and acceleration direction.

Therefore, after unfolding the horseshoe shape, the spectrum at the left and right extremes will actually be elongated, and the acceleration or deceleration will be greater, so the shape becomes the wingspan shape of a bat.

Effective acceleration and effective altruism are both extreme centralism

I combined the two extremes with two schools that were very popular in the technology circle a while ago, namely the acceleration method on the right—Effective Accelerationism (e/acc) and the acceleration method on the left—effective altruism. Effective Altruism, e/a. e/acc believes that proactive and rational resource allocation can accelerate technological progress to the greatest extent and benefit the world through trickle-down effects, such as the development of artificial intelligence; e/a believes that system configuration through a systematic approach can effectively Positively impact world problems, such as climate change or the risks of artificial intelligence.

The acceleration tendency of putting e/acc on the right side is consistent with common sense, but the acceleration tendency of putting e/a on the left side may be a bold move. No one has made this analogy in the past, but to me, resource allocation through "data-driven" (the official term is political governance) is a new type of left-wing thinking. To put it to the extreme, the CCP’s digital development proposition can be said to be a kind of effective altruism that is in line with the ideology of the CCP (a socialist harmonious society, “allowing those who keep their word to benefit everywhere, and those who break their promise to be unable to move forward”). This is probably a form of effective altruism.

Vitalik of Ethereum proposed the concept of "Decentralized Accelerationism" (d/acc) this year, paving the way for a third path between e/acc and e/a. He believes that vigorously developing decentralized technology (such as blockchain, peer-to-peer communication, privacy-enhancing technology) can avoid technological monopoly and enhance social welfare (d also represents concepts such as defense and democracy).

Personally, I only partially agreed with this statement. This is because the middle of the spectrum actually belongs to the border area of ​​resources. There is a mixture of left and right ideas, including anarchists, etc., making it difficult to concentrate resources, let alone "accelerate" the development of certain technologies that are a foregone conclusion. This is like Singularitarianism or Apostate Growth Communism outside the event horizon. The rainbow in the sky can be seen but not touched.

"Abandon" accelerates the spirit in the center

Therefore, I did not put d/acc into the map, but in my mind d/acc is still important. I chose to regard d of d/acc as a "decentering tendency", so it is an acceleration that changes the left and right vectors. Finally, it reaches the decentralized origin, so we might as well call d/acc "abandoning accelerationism".

In the current development of the international digital society, there are indeed three special cases that conform to the d/acc tendency, namely the European Union, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF, currently managed by the Internet Society, ISOC), and the Ethereum Foundation (Ethereum Foundation). Although these three are all large organizations, their development tendencies maintain a certain degree of decentralization.

The European Union is summarized in the book "Digital Empire" as a value-driven technology regulatory model, advocating personal privacy, digital human rights, etc., which can be regarded as the mainstream and institutional development of the CypherPunk movement. Economist Glen Weyl believes that compared with the Chinese model of electric totalitarianism or the American plutocratic chaos, the EU is a state of shared stagnation;

The RFC standards launched by the IETF have always had a strong decentralized flavor, and even have related documents (recommended RFC9518 Centralization, Decentralization, and Internet Standards), which have also created today's digital social infrastructure; In recent years, the Ethereum Foundation has subsidized the development of privacy-enhancing technology and cryptography on a large scale, which is a tendency to strengthen decentralization and autonomy. All three, to me, are d/acc products derived from the cryptopunk movement 30 years ago.

web3 has not yet arrived, and now it is only the "post-web2 era" at best.

Once the spectrum is displayed, we can easily rank the various claims of the digital age. In the center is the cryptopunk spirit revealed in the previous paragraph, which has gradually extended from the anarchist flavor of the past (the first being the "Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace" published by John Barlow in 1997) to both ends, whether it is penetrating into social democracy. Left-of-center policies, or moving to the right to blend into the crypto market of free interoperable transactions, the spirit of cryptopunk is seriously underestimated.

Now I have abandoned web3's view of the history of technological development. Many people think that web3 is cryptocurrency or blockchain, which is a fancy collective noun. Tang Feng believes that web3 is decentralized technology (the most personally recognized definition at present is biased towards this). Of course, some people think that AI is web3. In order not to cause confusion in the definition of the term, the most extreme decentralized concept on the digital ideological spectrum should be cryptopunk.

Today's digital society can only be called the "post-web2 era" at best. In the 1990s, because of the giant "government telecommunications complex", there was the "cypherpunk movement", which is the post-web1 era; from 2010 to 2020, because of the giant "cloud feudal system", there was The "crypto community" (cypto), this is the post-web2 era;

In the future that I don’t know when it will come, because of "???", the web3 era has emerged. The third path at this time is tentatively called "Crypto-Symbiotic Society" (English is a random translation) ), as for? ? ? What it is, it is obvious that it is a new round of digital totalitarian new order, or a brand-new digital feudal dynasty (see "Cloud Feudal Age").

Emerging digital ideologies of the centre-left and centre-right

Therefore, the digital ideologies of the extreme left and the extreme right are respectively digital totalitarianism and cloud feudalism. The indispensable tools to achieve their claims are "surveillance and algorithmic balance" and "technological capital complex". These two are not science fiction settings. , but the driving force with huge influence on the earth today. The former is headed by China's credit monitoring system, and the latter is headed by the FAGAM giant platform and the financial system behind it.

Of course, the two sides of the spectrum are not so distinct. Do you remember that the world unfolds in the shape of a horseshoe? Both sides can be strikingly similar. The founder of Oracle claimed in September this year that the AI ​​surveillance technology he developed was ready to serve the U.S. government. AI can create a better self-disciplined society for citizens. Even if the name was omitted, I thought it was a Chinese state-owned enterprise. I don’t need to go into details about the stories of the listings of Douyin, Tencent, etc., and the love-hate relationship with red capital.

However, there are also many niche but important ideas emerging in the technological development in the middle of the spectrum. I can roughly classify them into Digital Democracy, which is slightly left-leaning, and The Network State, which is slightly right-leaning.

In the development of digital democracy, there are several factions with the strongest initiatives, such as the Plurality system, Coordi-nation, Greenpill Network, MetaGov, etc. In the early stages of development, multiverseers called themselves Institutional Plurarism, which actually had the flavor of algorithmic balance and promotion of innovation. In the subsequent development and practice of concepts such as square voting and multi-identity, it was obvious that cryptopunk and society were mixed. The shadow of democracy. So positioning this group as resource dispersed is leftist. (See "Multiverse" by Tang Feng and Wei Gulun)

The Internet Nation was a concept created by Balaji, and it has rapidly developed into a liberal Internet movement. This group of people believes that emerging countries will be born in the online world, and will encroach on the territory of the real world, and even gain recognition of sovereignty. The first step is to establish a digital community based on the same ideology and implement decentralized autonomy. Through the development logic of capitalism, we can gradually gain sovereign strength. It would not be too surprising to regard the cyber-state movement as a new type of international pirate party movement led by capital. Of course, the Internet state also mixes the free will spirit of cryptopunks with the driving force of technological capital. (See Balaji's "Network Nation")

What about slowing down?

Judging from the preset tendencies of progress and acceleration in society, deceleration is often a second-round counterattack. For example, in the cloud feudal era, the new generation of Luddites as serfs; in the digital totalitarian society, as the digital proletariat, Ordinary, these are collateral damage after the concentration of resources. Whether there will be a Solidarity, Velvet Revolution or Occupy Wall Street in the 2020s in the future, it will be more difficult to fight, and the effect of subversion will be more terrifying. . These require weapons from decentralized communities, such as peer-to-peer communication equipment, secret communications, secret association tools, etc.

However, the deceleration of society is not just due to violent social movements. It is more common to see corruption in the resource allocation system, such as Patron-Client theory (Patron-Client) and Rent-Seeking & Lock-in, etc. Some degree of slowdown.

Information development pendulum

In Joichi Ito's paper "The Practice of Change," he described the development of the Internet as a process of continuous centralization, decentralization, and re-centralization. From the U.S. government to the telecommunications industry, , Internet governance community, all the way to the Internet platform. In the spectrum, it can be seen as a process of repeatedly oscillating on the right half.

China's Internet forums are not without a hundred flowers. Looking back at Jack Ma's history of Tencent's success, we can actually see the process of repeated swings in the stable left half.

Since the spectrum is flat, the perspectives of people with different ideologies are likely to cause many misunderstandings just like the novel "Flatland". For example, digital totalitarians may regard the cryptopunk movement as a "capitalist roader", but the cloud feudalists will brand the cryptopunks as a kind of communist fellow travelers for violating the "user terms". In the 1990s, it was a ban on the import and export of cryptography technology in the name of violating national security; in modern times, it is Anna's Archive that seriously infringes on intellectual property rights.

Those who believe in decentralization often spurn all institutional behaviors, and even spurn various forms of resource allocation methods, and then do not cooperate with the government or enterprises, which is a kind of "decentralization glue". This group of people is still the fundamental sect of anarchism, such as the Bitcoin community, the Monero community, etc. In the minds of these people, the Digital Empire is evil, regardless of left or right.

Digital conditions for independence—What about Taiwan?

I have always believed that cryptography is a "necessary condition" to strengthen sovereignty, including privacy-enhancing technology, secret communications, resilient international financial flows, tools to protect one's identity, etc., which will definitely come in handy in a state of emergency. This may be It is the final piece of the puzzle for "the defense resilience of the whole society."

In the borderland between the two major digital empires of the left and right, we have no European joint defense and coordination mechanism to rely on. This is not an era where we can make a big show of supporting China and the United States. Of course, the reverse is also true, nor is it an era suitable for rashly opposing China and the United States. era. But we can still make defensible arguments across the spectrum of digital ideologies.

Taiwan’s self-sovereignty (Taiwan as a Sovereign State) happens to highly overlap with Taiwanese Self-Sovereignty. Protecting citizen sovereignty means safeguarding national sovereignty. Perhaps we can absorb the new thinking of cryptopunks, digital democracy, and the Internet nation, and move towards a social vision of abundance (abandoning growth) on the decentralized border.

Even if there is no highly concentrated resources for effective acceleration, what needs to be addressed more is the risk of digital patronage and digital monopoly, which is an ongoing local crisis.

Perhaps the above propositions overlap with the crypto-symbiotic society that has yet to come. In this chaotic era, amidst the information war and electronic warfare that have already begun, Taiwanese people still enjoy healthy freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and freedom of secret communication. These are supposed to be "digital autonomy."

This is not that simple. For example, it is definitely not as simple as forcing everyone to learn to open a cryptocurrency wallet. It is to use digital tools to arouse the awareness of self-defense, and try to incorporate solidarity and mutual assistance into the priority of interests. Spirituality (see Schneider's book "Governable Spaces"). In the end, a consensus of consistent interests is formed on the pluralistic spectrum, and finally an independent and united community is formed.

A little conclusion to take courage

This "Ideological Spectrum of the Digital Era" took several months and went through dozens of revisions. It is the result of participating in online communities in various places over the past three years. In the process, I got to know people from Silicon Valley, Global South activists, diaspora Chinese, digital rights advocates, new generation Satoyama advocates, experienced technocrats, etc. The biggest lesson I learned is that by getting to know different people, I gradually get to know myself.

I thought the chart could be considered mature, so I mustered up the courage to publish it publicly and discuss it with everyone.

Reference links (in order of mention)

1. "Near the Singularity" Raymond Kurzweil

2. "Capital in the Anthropocene: The Fourth Way to Determine the Destiny of Humanity" Yukihei Saito

3. Théorie du récit: introduction aux langages totalitaires (tentative translation) Jean-Pierre Fay

4. "Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology" (tentative translation) Bradford, Anu

5. "The Dilemma of Innovation" by Clayton. Christiansen

6. "Building an Entrepreneurial Nation" Mariana. Mazzucato

7. "Power and Progress" Darren. aisemoru

8. My techno-optimism, Vitalik Buterin

9. IETF RFC9518 Centralization, Decentralization, and Internet Standards, Mark Nottingham

10. "The Feudal Age in the Cloud" Yannis. Varoufax

11. "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" John. Barlow

12. "The Multiverse: Collaborative Technology and the Future of Democracy" Wei Gulun, Tang Feng

13. The Network State: How To Start a New Country, Balaji Srinivasan

14. The Practice of Change, Joichi Ito

15. Governable Spaces, Nathan Schneider