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Declaration of Independence for Cyberspace
... Superada essa perspectiva, compreende-se que a gestão e governança da Internet envolve atores diversos e o diálogo entre esses atores proporciona um ambiente adequado para o desenvolvimento das sociedades. Não existe mais o discurso que impunha a Internet como terra sem lei (BARLOW, 1996) 2 , visto que não há terra e há regras internacionais análogas às leis, que devem ser seguidas independentemente do padrão de regulação adotado na localidade da pessoa usuária. Embora não exista um secretariado exclusivo vinculado à Organização das Nações Unidas (ONU) que atue no contexto de desenvolvimento de regras supranacionais aplicáveis à Internet, há iniciativas que incluem satisfatoriamente sua regulação pela ONU, como é o caso do desenvolvimento de normas internacionais (acordos e tratados) que visam regulamentar a Internet de forma uníssona. ...
... Conforme ressaltado no capítulo anterior, o contexto da cibercriminalidade tem sido formatado e regulamentado tanto internacional como nacionalmente, tornando as práticas que outrora foram conhecidas como integrantes de uma ambiente independente, em que regras nacionais não poderiam ser aplicáveis indiscriminadamente (BARLOW, 1996), passassem a ser compreendidas como um espaço que também necessita de regulamentação. Logo é uma responsabilidade do Estado promo-ver meios para que a sociedade consiga acessar, se manter e ter segurança no ambiente cibernético, independentemente de seu gênero, sexualidade, raça, religiosidade ou quaisquer outros meios que possam influenciar a segregação. ...
Resumo: Crimes cibernéticos têm se tornado comuns na sociedade, carecendo de regulamentação direta por tratados e políticas públicas. Durante a pandemia da COVID-19, houve um aumento nas denúncias de invasões em lives que abordavam questões LGBTQIAPN+ e sociais ou raciais, expondo conteúdo pornográfico. Agências globais buscam fomentar o debate e promover a educação sobre direitos e cidadania digital para construir uma web mais justa. Este artigo analisa os principais crimes cibernéticos, destacando a violação de critérios de gênero, sexualidade e raça, que, embora careçam de regras internacionais, causam danos significativos. Abordamos casos de reconhecimento facial incorreto, revelando vieses racistas em algoritmos, especialmente prejudicando a população negra no Brasil. Destacamos a necessidade de garantir a identidade em aplicativos como o Grindr, enfatizando o papel das plataformas na validação da identidade e no apoio à segurança pública. Ressaltamos a importância de atualizar os padrões de análise de dados, utilizando o atlas da segurança pública. Parcerias entre hotspots e organizações civis indicam um aumento alarmante de denúncias, como 8.136 de LGBTQIAPN+fobia e 9.259 de racismo em 2022. Instamos os agentes de segurança pública a agirem na prevenção de crimes cibernéticos, especialmente os de ódio relacionados a vieses de raça, gênero e sexualidade, atendendo à crescente demanda social ignorada pela segurança pública nacional.
PALAVRAS-CHAVE: CIBERNÉTICA, SEGURANÇA PÚBLICA, LGBTQIAPN+, RAÇA.
... The global political and economic landscape is undergoing a profound transformation, driven in large part by the decentralized principles of Web3 technologies. Central to this shift is Silicon Valley's distinctive (crypto-)libertarian culture, which promotes individual autonomy, minimal government intervention, and the decentralization of power [18,[20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]. These principles directly challenge traditional models of governance and sovereignty, marking a fundamental departure from the centralized control inherent to the Westphalian nation-state system. ...
... The roots of this libertarian Web3 ideology can be traced to John Perry Barlow's A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace [20]. In this manifesto, Barlow advocated for a cyberspace free from governmental control, where individuals could operate independently, guided by the principles of self-regulation and autonomy. ...
This article explores how decentralized Web3 is reshaping Internet governance by enabling the emergence of new forms of nation-statehood and redefining traditional concepts of state sovereignty. Based on fieldwork conducted in Silicon Valley since August 2022, this article systematically addresses the following research question: How is decentralized Web3 reshaping Internet governance and influencing the rise in new nation-statehood paradigms? It compares three emerging paradigms around Web3: (i) Network States (Srinivasan), envisioning digital entities rooted in crypto-libertarian principles; (ii) Network Sovereignties (De Filippi), emphasizing communal governance aligned with digital commons; and (iii) Algorithmic Nations (Calzada), drawing on Arendtian thought and demonstrating how communities—such as indigenous and stateless groups, as well as e-diasporas—can attain self-determination through data sovereignty. This article contributes a unique conceptual analysis of these paradigms based on fieldwork action research in Silicon Valley, responding to evolving technologies and their potential to reshape Internet governance. This article argues that decentralized Web3 provides a transformative vision for Internet governance but requires careful evaluation to ensure that it promotes inclusivity and equity. It advocates for a hybrid approach that balances global and local dynamics, emphasizing the need for solidarity, digital justice, and an internationalist perspective in shaping future Internet governance protocols.
... " 7 In one of the earliest and most influential formulations, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, John Perry Barlow, one of EFF's cofounders, articulated the utopian, libertarian ideal of the internet as a self-governing community in which "anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity. " 8 The bar was set unattainably high. Like the "marketplace of ideas, " the romantic vision of "cyberspace" as a world open to equal participation by all and governed from the bottom up has not lived up to its idealized formulation. ...
... Rural broadband would fix the left-behind areas in Europe and the United States; telemedicine would dramatically improve health outcomes and efficiency; distance education and massive online courses would equalize educational attainment, while not having to pay those expensive teachers and college professors; inter-vehicle communication would dramatically reduce accidents and congestion; blogs and social media would turn everyone into an influencer; social media would enable civic society to overthrow tyranny; writing apps would provide secure jobs to millions. Peter Barlow declared the independence of cyberspace from nation states [13]. All of these statements have a kernel of truth -clearly, if you want millenials to stay in rural areas, offering decent broadband is as necessary as having running water and electricity [14]. ...
Networking is no longer a new area of computer science and engineering -- it has matured as a discipline and the major infrastructure it supports, the Internet, is long past being primarily a research artifact. I believe that we should consider ourselves as the civil engineers of the Internet, primarily helping to understand and improve a vast and critical infrastructure. This implies that implementing changes takes decades, not conference cycles, and that implementation is largely driven by compatibility with existing infrastructure and considerations of cost effectiveness, where resources that research focuses on, such as bandwidth and compute cycles, often play a much smaller role than limited organizational capacity for change. Telecommunications carriers, in particular, have become akin to airlines, largely operating equipment designed by others, with emphasis on marketing, not innovation. Even more than in other engineering disciplines, standards matter, whether set by standards bodies or dominant players. Given the multi-year time frames of standards and the limited willingness of national funding bodies to support standardization work, this makes research impact harder, as does the increasing complexity of cellular networks and barriers to entry that shut out most researchers from contributing to large parts of commercial mobile networks.
... […] We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. (Barlow, 1996) This idea is remarkably resilient, despite the abundant evidence about how race is played out through online spaces (Daniels, 2013(Daniels, , 2015. ...
How should we think about the ways search engines can go wrong? Following the publication of Safiya Noble's Algorithms of Oppression (Noble, 2018), a view has emerged that racist, sexist, and other problematic results should be thought of as indicative of algorithmic bias. In this paper, I offer an alternative angle on these results, building on Noble's suggestion that search engines are complicit in a racial contract (Mills, 1997). I argue that racist and sexist results should be thought of as part of the workings of the social system of white ignorance. Along the way, I will argue that we should think about search engines not as sources of testimony, but as information-classification systems, and make a preliminary case for the importance of the social epistemology of technology.
... Beide Seiten wurden bereits in den 1990er Jahren diskutiert. Für die euphorische Sicht steht vor allem die »Unabhängigkeitserklärung für das Cyberspace« von John Perry Barlow (1996), der »in dem Transparenzversprechen der neuen Informations-und Kommunikationstechnologien ein Universalmittel gegen nahezu alles« sah, was aus seiner Sicht falsch lief: »Machtmissbrauch, Ungerechtigkeit, Monopole und geistiges Eigentum sollten bald der Vergangenheit angehören, wenn nur alle Informationen endlich befreit und jedermann zugänglich wären.« (Schaar 2015: 248) Dabei war schon damals klar, dass das Internet kein herrschaftsfreier Raum ist, Forderungen nach gläsernen Menschen, Organisationen und Prozessen mindestens ambivalent sind und die Omnipräsenz von IT in unserem Leben umfassende Überwachung, Steuerung und Kontrolle mit sich bringen könnte. ...
... Simultaneously, some authors who emphasize the descriptive meaning of sovereignty explicitly question the possibility of recognising its normative value.¹³ 7 SS Wimbledon (Government of his Britannic Majesty v German Empire), PCIJ Series A, No. 1, para 25. 8 Besson, "Sovereinty", para 3 and 86. 9 Crawford, Creation of States, 89. 10 Kwiecień 13 Crawford, "Sovereignty as a Legal Value", 122. ...
The article analyses the views of states on application of sovereignty in cyberspace taking into account rising number of states’ individual and collective positions in this respect. It identifies three major models of sovereignty: sovereignty as an international authority, sovereignty as only a principle and sovereignty as not only a principle. Against this background it aims at explaining the rule-principle dichotomy and consequences of its application. Finally it distinguish converging components concerning the application of sovereignty in cyberspace. Such an exercise allows for delimiting the scope of application sovereignty as a rule in cyberspace vis-à-vis other norms of general international law
... Contrasting Google Marxism with the digital utopianism of 1990s makes this clear. In "A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace," [25] John Perry Barlow, anarchist, civil libertarian, and songwriter for the Grateful Dead, described cyberspace as a new promised land, a prelapsarian digital Eden. Cyberspace was supposed to be a digital commons that the individual could explore at will, enjoying freedom from the constraints of property, government, the body, the differential treatment of persons based on identity and class markers, and the obstacles of space and time. ...
“Big Digital” consists of an array of business, political, and social interests, an ensemble of technology companies and Internet services, including but not limited to the Big Four: Alphabet (Google, YouTube, etc.) Amazon, Apple, and Facebook. Big Digital wields enormous economic and political power, presiding over Big Data, and serving as the chief arbiter of expression, with the power to effect the digital deletion of “dangerous” persons from its various platforms, as the gulag was the means to physically disappear dissidents and other thought criminals from “normal” life in the Soviet Union.[1]
In my new book, Google Archipelago, I recall the gulag archipelago of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s literary masterpiece, while referring to a singular system of interconnected digital producers or “islands.” In suggesting a comparison between Google and the Gulag, each with its own set of archipelagos, I don’t mean to suggest that Google, an emblem for the digital giants of Big Data, and the Gulag, a massive prison system of the Soviet Union, can be understood as equally punitive or horrific. One was a vast network of arbitrary, brutal, elaborate, and tortuous penal camps “and special settlements…turned into an organized system of terror and exploitation of forced labor.”[2] The other is a vast constellation of digital giants with enormous economic and governmental power, but no physical torture, incarceration, forced labor, or immediate prospects of facing a firing squad.
Yet, I certainly do mean to draw an analogy. As the Gulag Archipelago had once represented the most developed set of technological apparatuses for disciplinary and governmental power and control in the world, so the Google Archipelago represents the contemporary equivalent of these capacities, only considerably less corporeal in character to date, yet immeasurably magnified, diversified, and extended in scope.
The principals of what I call Big Digital—the purveyors of mega-data services, media, cable, and internet services, social media platforms, Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents, apps, and the developing Internet of Things (or Things of the Internet, as I describe the relation in what follows) are not only monopolies or would-be monopolies but also will either continue to be incorporated by the state, or become elements of a new corporate state power.
Even if only augmentations of existing state power, the apparatuses of Big Digital combine to produce the Google Archipelago, which stands to effect such an enormous sea change in governmental and economic power—inclusive of greatly enhanced and extended capabilities for supervision, surveillance, recording, tracking, facial-recognition, robot-swarming, monitoring, corralling, social-scoring, trammeling, punishing, ostracizing, un-personing or otherwise controlling populations to such an extent—that the non-corporal-punishment aspect of the Google Archipelago will come to be recognized as much less significant than its total political impact.
... The EFF is a non-profit organization based in the U.S. that champions civil liberties and digital rights in the realm of technology. In the Declaration, John asserts that the governments have no sovereignty over cyberspace, which he called "the new home of Mind, " and "the global social space people are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies the government seek to impose on" (John Barlow 1996). However, the above does not mean that the U.S. has given up its right to claim sovereignty in cyberspace. ...
The explosive growth of digital technologies is creating a virtual and borderless environment, which is so-called “cyberspace”. In addition to serving as a platform that allows digital communication, information sharing, and online activities to take place, cyberspace carries various risks and vulnerabilities that can pose significant challenges to individuals, organizations, and even the nation. Throughout history, international law has built the concept of state sovereignty based on material aspects. However, digital globalization has significantly changed social relations, challenging important legal concepts that underlie international relations, including the concept of national sovereignty. Therefore, the issue of national sovereignty in cyberspace needs to be studied more carefully, thereby seeking appropriate solutions to protect national sovereignty in cyberspace.
... In the 1990s and well into the 2000s, more than one observer took the internet as a boon for empowering citizens (Cardon 2010;Yang 2009). National governments' attempts to regulate cyberspace were widely taken as blasphemy against freedom (Barlow 1996). Facing the alliances between citizens and platforms, regulators could difficultly adopt the measures that fundamentally adjust platforms' behavior. ...
China, the European Union, and the United States are the three largest digital economies in the world. This article compares the antitrust regulation of the digital economy in the three regions after the 2000s. It argues that over time, the antitrust regulation of the digital economy in the three regions tends to converge along three dimensions: growing separation of the antitrust regulation of the digital economy from that of the other economic sectors, convergence of regulatory objectives, and convergence of regulatory methods. In combination with the geopoliticization of the platform economy, this article argues that four factors have contributed to shape such convergence: (1) historical factors, (2) globalization of the digital economy, (3) increasing policy imitation and policy competition among the major digital powers of the world, (4) support from the civil society.
... The Estonian e-Residency, as a global digital identification system (hereinafter Digi-ID), exemplifies the evidence where the cross-border data flows are necessary to enable the practices of the e-residency through online transactions, on the one hand, and to trace and control these activities to ensure the security of the program, on the other hand. As such, the Estonian e-residency case enables us to introduce and explain the pattern in which multiple individuals desire freedom of mobility and location-independent work (Barlow, 1996) invariably conflicts with the restrictive datafied control. This pattern is especially visible in digital identification systems spread globally, where cross-border data flows are not always operationally and technically possible and not practised due to the restrictions and regulations of data exchange not directly stemming from the E-residency program but global regulations and trends. ...
This article contributes to the discussions on the datafied control, selection, and (re)construction of digital borders globally. We examine the reasons for the prevailing datafied inclusion and exclusion patterns revealed by the Estonian e-residency program. This government-supported digital identity program gives non-residents remote access to Estonian e-services and business environments. Relying on the in-depth interviews conducted among the experts responsible for planning and implementing the e-residency program (n=8) and e-residents (n=25), we examined the understandings and practices on the datafied control of the e-residency applicants and the active e-residents. The findings reveal that despite the program's global spread, the applicants' datafied control and selection may legitimise and reproduce global inequalities through (re)constructed digital borders. However, data connect individuals striving for a placeless lifestyle through their digital transactions resulting in an emerging regime that this article coins as 'citizenship by connection'. Thus, datafied control constructs not only reality and borders as connected with one's territory but also creates digital borders through new practices of such 'citizenship by connection' emerging regime. • The globally spread E-residency program reconstructs the state-individual relationship. • Data connects individuals with a placeless lifestyle through their digital transactions. • The desire for placeless work conflicts with the datafied digital migration control. • The datafied selection of E-residents may legitimise the global digital borders. • Data does not create national borders but global 'citizenship by connection'.
To cite this article:
Masso, A., Kasapoglu, T., Tammpuu, P. & Calzada, I. (2024) Datafied Control and Selection of Digital Identity: Estonian e-Residency as ‘Citizenship by Connection’. DOI: https://zenodo.org/doi/10.5281/zenodo.12666718.
https://zenodo.org/records/12666719
... The influence of technology giants and their data-driven ecosystems has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, reshaping societies and economies with unprecedented force. As we navigate this complex landscape, it becomes increasingly evident that the promises of a utopian digital future, once proclaimed by visionary thinkers like John Perry Barlow (1996), have encountered substantial turbulence on their journey to realization. The interplay between data, sustainability, democracy, and emancipatory strategies stands at the forefront of our contemporary discourse, demanding urgent attention and collective action. ...
... The influence of technology giants and their data-driven ecosystems has infiltrated every aspect of our lives, reshaping societies and economies with unprecedented force. As we navigate this complex landscape, it becomes increasingly evident that the promises of a utopian digital future, once proclaimed by visionary thinkers like John Perry Barlow (1996), have encountered substantial turbulence on their journey to realization. The interplay between data, sustainability, democracy, and emancipatory strategies stands at the forefront of our contemporary discourse, demanding urgent attention and collective action. ...
In today's rapidly digitalizing world, cybersecurity requires the protection of information and communication technologies as well as the infrastructure of countries. In this framework, some countries consider cyber sovereignty to be connected with cybersecurity as an approach that discloses the control and authority of states over their digital infrastructures. This study analyzes the cybersecurity policies and understanding of cyber sovereignty in China. In doing so, the possibility of theorizing dominance in cyberspace is discussed. In this context, the main purpose of this study is to examine the theoretical dimensions of cybersecurity and cyber sovereignty concepts and to analyze China's cybersecurity policies and cyber sovereignty approach. Cyberspace represents a new field of dominance in international relations. Rather than providing a definitive answer to whether cyber sovereignty is possible under international law, the focus should be on how cyber sovereignty can play a role in international power struggles and shape cybersecurity policies. In this context, the study's methodology consists of a brief introduction to cybersecurity, followed by an analysis of the research question of whether cyberspace dominance is possible and the concept of cyber sovereignty. Within the scope of the theoretical framework, a literature review of the relevant concepts was conducted, and China's cybersecurity policies and cyber sovereignty approach were analyzed as a case study. The documents, sources, and data discussed throughout the study demonstrate China's understanding of cyber sovereignty and how it is shaped on international platforms. The study concludes that if China sees cyberspace sovereignty as the key to becoming a global power in the international system, it must integrate all factors, including military, political, and economic factors, besides cybersecurity.
Trauma studies and posthuman studies are two paradigms that became popular in the late twentieth century and have been used to define the culture of our time. Both fields deal with subjectivity, agency, embodiment and the relation with ‘the other’, viewing subjectivity and the self as shattered and fragmented. However, while trauma studies focuses on the process of acting out and working through to return to a sealed, complete conception of the self, posthuman studies explores the fluidity and interconnectedness that results from the decentralization of human subjectivity in our technological, boundary-blurring reality. This article introduces the concept of the posthuman trauma novel, which delves into the shared sense of vulnerability between trauma and posthumanism and the complex identity dynamics emerging from these paradigms. Formally, these novels favour complex timelines, non-linear narratives, interconnected plotlines, emotional detachment, machine-like narrators and thematic fragmentation, among other strategies. Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking about This (2021) is a representative example of the posthuman trauma novel that navigates virtual and real worlds. Through fragmentation, intrusive images and non-linearity, the novel represents the disintegration of the mind caused by the internet and social media in which the sense of self is engulfed by a collective consciousness emerging from the never-ending scrolling and the juxtapositions between the important and the shallow. It is a real-world trauma that pulls the protagonist out of the virtual world of disembodiment and detachment. While acknowledging the importance of social media and digital technologies, the novel also sees the blurring of digital and physical spaces as a wound of modern subjectivity, a suffering that needs to be worked through to achieve an embodied and embedded conceptualization of the self.
Im Beitrag werden utopische Potenziale Sozialer Virtueller Realität untersucht. Beispielhaft wird die Plattform VRChat gewählt, um bestehende Soziale VR-Gemeinschaften zu charakterisieren. Im Abgleich mit Cyberpunk-Literatur und Ethnografien des frühen Internets wird deutlich, dass virtuelle Gemeinschaften besonders dann mit utopischen Formen demokratischer bis anarchischer Selbstorganisation experimentieren, wenn sie virtuelle Räume frei gestalten können und diese als genuine Lokalität erfahren.
يعد المجال العام واحدًا من أهم المفاهيم المفتاحية التي يُعتمَدُ عليها في قراءة العلاقة بين السلطة والمجتمع في المجال السياسي الحديث ومضمونه. هذا الكتاب محاولة للتفكير في مكونات المجال العام المصري، وثقافته، وخصائصه الاتصالية على المستويين الواقعي والرقمي.
Contemporary military strategy exhibits a growing dependence on operations conducted within the domain of cyberspace. These operations are increasingly capable of inflicting tangible harm in the physical world, degrading essential infrastructure, and inducing widespread disruption. Nevertheless, a debate persists regarding the applicability of established international legal frameworks governing armed conflict to cyberwarfare. The Tallinn Manual, a non-binding academic study exploring the intersection of international law and cyberwarfare, plays a pivotal role in disentangling this complex debate by bridging international law, professional military ethics, and technical disciplines. In addition to being an indispensable guide to the legality of cyberwarfare operations, this paper argues that the Tallinn Manual represents a successful example of interdisciplinary collaboration and international cooperation, which may serve as a model for addressing a myriad of challenging legal and moral realities.
Electronic dance music (EDM) events have gained widespread global popularity for over 40+ years. Throughout this period, they have been assigned various meanings from illicit dance parties to spiritual experiences, and its participants organically shaped the EDM culture. EDM’s industrialization over the past decades has resulted in a commercialized club culture, and an industry worth ~$7.2 billion by the beginning of 2020. However, most of the physical EDM events since then have been either canceled or postponed worldwide until further notice due to the pandemic. Consequently, the industry downsized by more than a half within a year, and virtual events have become the primary source of income in the Covid-19 era.
Before the pandemic, the EDM industry used various control mechanisms that aim at profit maximization, which created EDM minorities that systematically discriminated from most of the events. As the industry mainly designed the system for physical events, virtuality created the possibility for EDM minorities to obtain safer spaces. Recent studies indicated that discriminated EDM communities continue their safe spaces virtually in the early pandemic period. Moreover, new technologies such as virtual reality (VR) have challenged the meaning of space and provided the possibility of anonymous events with enhanced interactivity, resulting in the formation new diverse communities. In other words, VR events can create joint safe spaces through anonymity, which may reduce discrimination against EDM minorities by allowing diverse communities to co-exist.
Previous studies have mainly focused on pre-pandemic conditions considering EDM’s cultural dynamics. In contrast, today, pandemic-driven digitalization, and new technologies such as VR have altered the EDM experience and provide an opportunity for re-thinking today’s commercial club culture. Correspondingly, this study focuses on the recent changes to EDM events during the Covid-19 crisis and discusses the possible impacts of VR for the EDM scene and industry regarding diversity and equality issues through participant observation, virtual fieldwork, and interviews.
Drawing on empirical material (e.g., web content, text and video documents,
press reports) and social science research, this article begins with a problem-
centered reconstruction (Héritier; Mayntz) of the discourse of technology-driven
decentralization—from the Californian do-it-yourself subculture of the 1960s, the
computer counterculture of the 1970s and 1980s, and debates on cyberspace and
Web 2.0 in the 1990s and 2000s to present-day ideas of decentralized economic systems. Subsequently, I will elucidate the shared patterns of complexity reduction
of technology-centered promises of decentralization, which are a primary reason
for their popularity despite repeated empirical disappointments. In light of their
unambiguous formulation, these visions serve as easily recognizable landmarks
in public debates and social science discourses, contributing to the channeling
of public awareness and offering a basis for legitimacy in individual, collective,
and corporate decision-making processes. They open up new fields of collective
agency and make it possible to depict the societal status quo as both conditional
and contingent and, therefore, open to criticism. Yet most visionary publications
inherently give little consideration to the possibility of an expansion, conversion,
or layering of existing socio-economic structures and instead focus on their radical
displacement.
Today, American tech actors express optimistic ideas about how to fix the Earth and halt climate change. Such “green” initiatives have in common that they capture the world in systems and propose large systemic, and mostly technological, solutions. Because of their reliance on techno-fixes, representatives of Silicon Valley express an ideology of ecomodernism, which believes that human progress can be “decoupled” from environmental decline. In this article, I show how “whole-systems thinking” has become a key discursive element in today’s ecomodernist discourses. This discourse has developed from the 1960s onwards – inspired by cybernetic, ecological and computational theories – within the tech culture of California. This paper discusses three key periods in this development, highlighting key publications: the Whole Earth Catalog of the 1960s, the Limits to Growth report in 1972 and the cyberspace manifestoes of the mid 1990s. These periods are key to understand how techno-fixes became a popular answer to the climate crisis, eventually leading to a vision of the world as an ecosystem that can be easily controlled and manipulated, and of technological innovation as harmless and beneficial. I argue that “whole-systems” thinking offers a naive and misleading narrative about the development of the climate crisis, that offers a hopeful yet unrealistic perspective for a future threatened by climate change, built on a misconception of Earth as a datafied planet.
This article examines the role of space and place in understanding digitalisation of society, drawing from debates in the anglophone social science discipline of human geography. It provides an indication of how approaches to the geographical dimensions of digitalisation have changed over time, beginning by setting out a central opposition that existed in earlier accounts of the spatial form of digital technologies. It then develops some of the present-day implications for understanding space and place through a focus on work and workplaces, before turning to some possible future directions of research.
Media zijn onmisbaar in een democratische samenleving. Zij zorgen voor betrouwbare informatie over maatschappelijk relevante vraagstukken, faciliteren de controle van de macht en bieden een forum voor verschillende perspectieven. De afgelopen decennia is het medialandschap als gevolg van digitalisering ingrijpend veranderd: er is overvloedig aanbod, platformbedrijven domineren de online distributie van informatie, het publiek debat is naar online verschoven en het verdienmodel van vooral de lokale en regionale journalistiek hapert. In dit rapport onderzoekt de WRR de kenmerken en werking van het nieuwe mediasysteem en wat de impact ervan is op de democratie. We concluderen dat de drie democratische functies van media onder druk staan en dat nieuw beleid noodzakelijk is, dat aansluit op de nieuwe realiteit. Daartoe doet de WRR vier aanbevelingen:
1. Maak maximaal gebruik van wet- en regelgeving om een betrouwbare en veilige informatieomgeving te realiseren.
2. Maak voor de democratie belangrijke informatie prominent zichtbaar en goed vindbaar.
3. Versterk de lokale en regionale journalistiek.
4. Stimuleer dat gebruikers verantwoordelijkheid nemen voor hun rol en positie in het nieuwe mediasysteem.
Trust is a key resource in financial transactions. Traditional financial institutions, and novel blockchain‐based decentralized financial (DeFi) services rely on fundamentally different sources of trust and confidence. The former relies on heavy regulation, trusted intermediaries, clear rules (and restrictions) on market competition, and long‐standing informal expectations on what banks and other financial intermediaries are supposed to do or not to do. The latter rely on blockchain technology to provide confidence in the outcome of rules encoded in protocols and smart contracts. Their main promise is to create confidence in the way the blockchain architecture enforces rules, rather than to trust banks, regulators, and markets. In this article, we compare the trust architectures surrounding these two financial systems. We provide a deeper analysis of how proposed regulation in the blockchain space affects the code‐ and confidence‐based architectures which so far have underwrote DeFi. We argue that despite the solid safeguards and guarantees which code can offer, the confidence in DeFi is still very much dependent on more traditional trust‐enhancing mechanisms, such as code governance, and antifraud regulation to address some of the issues which currently plague this domain, and which have no immediate, purely software‐based solutions. What is more, given the risks of bugs or scams in the DeFi space, regulation and trusted intermediaries may need to play a more active role, in order for DeFi to gain the trust of the next generation of users.
Since the early 2000s, the multistakeholder governance approach has been the reference model for transnational internet governance, reaching far beyond the original field of technical coordination and standard‐setting. But over the last decade many countries, including democracies supportive of multistakeholderism, have adopted measures to strengthen their digital sovereignty. Thereby, they have been advancing discourses and practices that reinforce state power with regard to the digital and are often at odds with the multistakeholder model. This paper analyzes the emerging dialectic between multistakeholder internet governance and digital sovereignty by seeking to understand how the pursuit of digital sovereignty is increasingly challenging the hegemony of the multistakeholder discourse in internet governance. To this purpose, it reassesses the historical development of power struggles over the internet through the analytical lenses of the discourse coalition framework. After reconstructing how the multistakeholder discourse has emerged and institutionalized in the internet governance arena, the paper retraces the expansion of the digital sovereignty discourse, regarding both the actors promoting it and the narratives attached to it. It also identifies key motivations behind this discourse. Finally, the paper discusses whether the digital sovereignty discourse is emerging as a new discursive order in the internet governance field and draws attention to conditions that could either support or weaken its emergence.
This article focuses on how MMO-gamers’ strategies of dealing with new technologies as early adopters have (re-)emerged in other online endeavors. Giving some examples from real life and online communities entering and settling “new” spaces, it also offers some insights from an ongoing research project on how the digital ecosystem might be shaped through these interactions presently. While a variety of games will be mentioned, the focus will be on the space sandbox MMO Eve Online.
Religious adult education, characterized as non-formal religious education (RE) that has often been established over many decades, is frequently marked by patterns of institutional separation, local conditions and denominational divisions. This is also the case in Switzerland, where in each canton various church academies and RE organizations generally offer their respective programs along both denominational and cantonal lines. The increasing digitalization of society, and consequently of education, alters the original situation for these actors, both on an individual and organizational level. This article discusses the challenges of religious adult education in navigating the post-digital pivot. It addresses the issues of changing forms of teaching and learning, dealing with shifts in authority, and the growing need for collaboration and shared strategies among RE organizations in post-digital society. A participatory research project involving nearly 60 Swiss RE organizations investigated how these organizations are dealing with digitalization, analyzing the perspectives of the organizational leaders, the teachers, and learners through mixed methods. The findings provide insights into factors influencing the intent to offer or use digital RE courses, as well as factors contributing to the readiness to cooperate in the digital educational field.
"By examining the political discourse and social interactions that occur within six different political communities in Malaysia, this volume sheds light on how theories of political communication and social media play out on a granular level. Malaysia, with its interesting amalgam of democratic politics and intractable racial and religious divides, is ripe for a study of how online communication within different political and social groups actually works. With chapters on Malay, Islamic, Chinese, Indian, and Christian online communities, along with those of Sabah and Sarawak, this volume will be of interest to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of how political interaction and digital discourse function on the ground in this important country in Southeast Asia."
-- Janet Steele, Professor of Media and Public Affairs and International Affairs, George Washington University
This chapter will explore a design paradigm for networked learning (NL) that emphasises experience in tracing different levels and patterns of its infrastructure. Technical features of infrastructure will be foregrounded to facilitate the phenomenological, hermeneutic receptive work of following the passage of the “mark” of exteriorized memory even where it is hidden by code. This facilitates creative disclosures of the world that the machine learning technologies of the Anthropocene short-circuit and mimic. It also facilitates learning where they are re-presenced and generate other marks that are possible and even improbable. Human-centric infrastructure design moves beyond criticism of the increasing mining and automatization of human knowledge by the machine learning technologies used in hermeneutically closed systems. Rather, phenomenological network infrastructure, by way of being an open response for life, is not just an assemblage of artefacts, systems, and services but is also a process and method for ongoing interpretations of novel togetherness of individual subjects, social groups, and technological tools.
This essay reflects on three constants in Chinese internet research over the past 30 years, namely, statism, cacophony, and liminal movements. Reflecting on these three constants shall help us better appreciate the variations and dynamism of Chinese internet research from the past into the future.
Қазіргі заманның ерекшелігі – ақпараттық технологиялардың қарқынды дамуы және олардың адам өміріне етене енуі. Сәйкесінше, қоғамда қалыптасқан ережелерге қайшы келетін әрекеттер орын алуы мүмкіндігі ұлғайды. Заңға қайшы әрекеттер орын алған жағдайда, соттық юрисдикцияны орнату мәселесі қандай? Тіпті, интернет және жалпы киберкеңістік бұл тұрғыда «қараңғылықты» тудырады. Қарқынды дамып жатқан ақпараттық технологияларға қолданыстағы заңнамалардың ілеспеуі мәселе тудырады. Мысалы, киберкеңістікпен байланысты дауларға қатысты соттық юрисдикцияны орнату мәселесі. Киберкеңістік және оның айналасына қатысты тақырыптар бойынша көптеген зерттеу жұмыстары болғанымен де, өкінішке орай отандық доктриналар үнсіз. Сонымен қатар, цифрлық дәуірде сот юрисдикциясын құру да күрделене түсетінін атап өткен жөн. Мысалы, интернеттің шексіз сипаты, пайдаланушылардың анонимділігі және т.б. Сондықтан осы тақырып бойынша зерттеулер жүргізу өзекті. Айтылып өткендей, отандық доктринада киберкеңістік және соттық юрисдикция тақырыбына қатысты қандай да бір зерттеу жұмыстары жоқ. Сондықтан, зерттеу жұмысын жүргізу барысында шетел заңнамалары, сот істері және осы тақырып бойынша беделді деген авторлардың жұмыстары қарастырылды. Нәтижесінде, соттық юрисдикцияны орнату барысында киберкеңістіктің ерекшелігін ескеру қажеттілігі анықталды. Яғни, қазіргі таңда бұл ерекше ортаны елемей кетуіміз мүмкін емес. Сонымен қатар, киберкеңістіктің «бір мезетте барлық жерде бола тұра, бір жерде болмау» ерекшелігі forum non conveniens принципінің одан әрі қатаң қолданылуына жол ашты.
This article explores the confluence of two subject areas that are at the forefront of technological change and the evolution of the democratic process. Internetization and digital democracy have emerged as game changers in the 21st century. Internetization has redefined global outreach and electronic connectivity. Digitalization has empowered democracy to explore new frontiers. Both have enhanced the scope and substance of electronic connectivity and digital democracy. Each is carving a large legacy footprint and discovering new operational horizons. Both have the capacity to lead transformational change in two core areas of human engagement.
Online disinformation, having disruptive impacts on democracy and fundamental rights and freedoms, is one of the most important problems to be tackled in today's information ecosystem. However, it is highly possible that the regulatory responses to be given to tackle it will result in unlawful interference with the freedom of expression. The study maps out how online disinformation can be tackled without such interference. In doing so, it primarily interprets Article 10 of the ECHR and the case law of the ECtHR on the subject. The regulatory responses of the UN, EU, national regulations, and social media platforms are also referred to the extent required by the research. Tackling online disinformation should prioritize resolving the structural problems of the information ecosystem and building a secure one. In the case of legal regulations limiting freedom of expression, it should be ensured that these regulations are prescribed by law, pursue a legitimate aim, and are necessary in a democratic society.
Citizenship emerges from the arduous battles waged by working people against various manifestations of oppression, including feudalism, capitalism, colonialism and imperialism. Throughout history, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements have played crucial roles in advancing democracy and expanding citizenship rights, even within colonial nations in Europe. Today, the landscape of citizenship is evolving rapidly alongside the technological revolution and the widespread digitalisation of society. These developments are integral to the democratisation of both societies and states, granting citizens unprecedented access to information and empowering them to hold those in power accountable. However, this era also witnesses the ascent of the surveillance state and governments increasingly resembling techno-feudal entities accelerated by the platform companies. In this age, technology, including AI, poses a grave threat to the very foundations of democratisation and the deepening of citizenship rights. The pervasiveness of surveillance and the consolidation of power through technological means undermine the principles of accountability and freedom that are essential for a truly participatory democratic society and digital citizenship.
This article situates ongoing debates about the governance policies of Archive of Our Own (AO3) in the context of the ideological tradition of technoliberalism, which links internet technologies with liberal ideals such as freedom of speech and individual choice. While often seen as a movement of the mid-2000s which swiftly gave way to straightforward corporatism, technoliberalism survives as a popular discourse in the AO3 debates, where popular rhetoric incorporates liberal defences of free speech and individual choice. Modern technoliberal arguments have developed in response to their critics, emphasizing individualistic content controls as an opportunity for self-expression and as protection from a historical tradition of censorship in fandom spaces.
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