Utopia Internet

Editor's Notes

• #4: Virtuelle Gemeinschaft in einer gelebten repräsentativen Demokratie“ Rheingold, Howard (1993)
• #5: Liberty, where it exists, is granted by the state and not a natural right of the individual. And this is a central contradiction to liberal democracies: Modern democracies are political systems agreed upon by free citizens while autocracies allow or ban liberty as they see fit. At this point, technology has once again become a tool of state control and not individual liberalization.
• #6: The technology itself is neutral, but it is the different interests that wrestle for its power that define its final use. In its early days, the printing press proved to be a force for scientific advancement as much as for religious fanatics. One of the most printed books in the sixteenth and seventeenth century were the twenty-nine editions of the Malleus maleficarum, a work that contributed substantially to the legitimization of witch-hunting, causing 12,000 to 48,000 people being killed – most of them women (Ferguson 2011, 62).
• #7: This historical episode mirrors contemporary worries in higher education that the possibility of online-courses could make the traditional university with its lecture halls and direct interaction obsolete. many political systems today see the internet as threat to their monopoly of power, so was the printing press that no longer allowed knowledge and information to be controlled by a selected few.
• #8: Malleus maleficarum, a work that contributed substantially to the legitimization of witch-hunting, causing 12,000 to 48,000 people being killed – most of them women (Ferguson 2011, 62).
• #10: The Ottoman Empire, for example, outright refused to make use of the printing press, for “scholar’s ink is holier than martyr’s blood” (Deen 2011, 4). This refusal was reinforced by the Islamic preference for calligraphy as a means to honor their religious beliefs that had an uneasy relationship with the figurative depiction of sacred texts (Lewis and Churchill 2008, 48–50). Not surprisingly in 1515 Sultan Selim I issued a death sentence to any person that would be found using a printing press, a policy that was more or less continued until the late eighteenth century (Acemoglu and Robinson 2012, 213–216).
• #11: the very same tools were used shortly thereafter by Robespierre to ensure his “Reign of Terror.” The French Revolution is a powerful reminder how the very forces that push for an imagined Utopia can be turned into a much more dystopian direction. Yet only shortly thereafter the spread of information became the most important element of the scientific revolution and the replacement of religious beliefs by rational thought became a leading development in Western societies „Minerva als Symbol der Toleranz“ von Daniel Chodowiecki - Alles begann mit Ansgar. Hamburgs Kirchen im Spiegel der Zeit (Hamburg: Pressestelle des Senats der Freien und Hansestadt Hamburg, 2006), p. 55.Scan: James Steakley. Lizenziert unter Gemeinfrei über Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Minerva_als_Symbol_der_Toleranz.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Minerva_als_Symbol_der_Toleranz.jpg
• #12: Information did not only increase in its availability, but so did the means to collect and storage information about citizens and their activities. Knowledge was not only emancipating the individual, it was also empowering the state. The Metternichean bureaucracy was a synonym for the collection and use of information to detect and suppress ideas that could threaten the state. The growing education of the population turned out the be a deadly threat for the political systems that were increasingly running out of non-violent answers to popular demands, a tension that culminated in the wave of revolutions across Europe in 1848. Although these uprisings were – often brutally – brought to an end, they brought the final realization that a government without or against the people was not feasible in an age of literacy and ever more widespread mass communication (Hobsbawm and Ranger 2012; Höhn 1963).
• #13: They openly admit that surveillance takes place, but argue that it is meant only for those elements that pose a threat to the political system of the state. It is, in their eyes, not a dictatorship but the provision of stability. The extraordinary precision of online surveillance even allows governments in Beijing or Singapore to distinguish between dangerous, systemic criticism and criticisms of specific policies, with the former being banned while the latter is often tolerated. China, for example, only interferes if it senses the danger of people organizing themselves, while Singapore allows almost any kind of criticism as long as it is not instigating tensions between the city state’s religious and ethnic factions (King, Pan, and Roberts 2013). Such systems are testing the limits of liberty a government can give its citizens but yet remain the final arbiter of things. While there can be no doubt that liberty is more widespread in China today than it was a few decades ago, one thing must not be forgotten: Liberty, where it exists, is granted by the state and not a natural right of the individual. And this is a central contradiction to liberal democracies: Modern democracies are political systems agreed upon by free citizens while autocracies allow or ban liberty as they see fit. At this point, technology has once again become a tool of state control and not individual liberalization. Mobile technology and big data have become a central element for autocracies like China. Modern autocracies like China and Singapore try to preserve their political system with a strong grip on the elements mentioned above, but at the same time they are modifying traditional autocracy with technology. Instead of an openly intrusive government, surveillance has become “softer” in nature. It is not so much state-agents that look over your shoulder while eating at a restaurant, but the observation of your activities on social networks like twitter and Facebook or, in the case of China, the provision of a state-authorized unique Chinese version of these platforms.
• #14: One of the most revealing pieces of information that emerged from the discovery of the NSA-surveillance program PRISM was the readiness of internet giants like Facebook to respond to information requests by government agencies (Ferguson 2014). This highlights the dilemma of the advances of communications technology since the middle ages. It has been reinforcing the power of the citizens as well as the power of the state. Facebook plays a central role in organizing protests on a global scale, but at the same time there is the possibility to track down every single person that participated, commented, or maybe just “liked” an organized protest.
• #15: One of the most revealing pieces of information that emerged from the discovery of the NSA-surveillance program PRISM was the readiness of internet giants like Facebook to respond to information requests by government agencies (Ferguson 2014). This highlights the dilemma of the advances of communications technology since the middle ages. It has been reinforcing the power of the citizens as well as the power of the state. Facebook plays a central role in organizing protests on a global scale, but at the same time there is the possibility to track down every single person that participated, commented, or maybe just “liked” an organized protest.
• #16: One of the most revealing pieces of information that emerged from the discovery of the NSA-surveillance program PRISM was the readiness of internet giants like Facebook to respond to information requests by government agencies (Ferguson 2014). This highlights the dilemma of the advances of communications technology since the middle ages. It has been reinforcing the power of the citizens as well as the power of the state. Facebook plays a central role in organizing protests on a global scale, but at the same time there is the possibility to track down every single person that participated, commented, or maybe just “liked” an organized protest.
• #18: http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2011/03/features/sharing-is-a-trap?page=1 Pic: http://www.floriophoto.com/gallery/large/_mg_0925-copy.jpg
• #19: The idea of privacy is becoming an almost contested concept, especially at those intersections where the willingness of individuals to share private information collides with the willingness of the state to collect that information. In connection with the desire for enhanced security after 9/11, the walls between privat and public have crumbled only further. Herbert Fiedler is correctly pointing out the dilemma of the Internet: Is it a lawless realm or should it be under stronger government control? More importantly, can the potential anarchy of the internet be countered by something like a code of ethics in use and surveillance? In the end, it is once again not the technology that defines the societal impact of the internet, but how the political players will use it (Fiedler 2002).
• #20: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2015/02/03/man-survives-7-storey-drop-then-is-stoned-to-death-by-isis-for-being-gay/
• #21: The idea of privacy is becoming an almost contested concept, especially at those intersections where the willingness of individuals to share private information collides with the willingness of the state to collect that information. In connection with the desire for enhanced security after 9/11, the walls between privat and public have crumbled only further. Herbert Fiedler is correctly pointing out the dilemma of the Internet: Is it a lawless realm or should it be under stronger government control? More importantly, can the potential anarchy of the internet be countered by something like a code of ethics in use and surveillance? In the end, it is once again not the technology that defines the societal impact of the internet, but how the political players will use it (Fiedler 2002).