#cyber-utopianism

[krjpalmer]

People's Computers January-February 1978

The cyber-utopian poem on this issue's cover didn't promote an article inside, although there was a piece questioning "a computer revolution" in the simple sense of "a computer for every home" and coming up with the usual assortment of "home automation" applications. There were some looks at anticipations of videodisc technology (of varied type). Along with continued Commodore PET coverage, a sidebar mentioned the TRS-80 review had been written, but was "quite negative," so it would be held back until the next issue to give Radio Shack time to respond...

[tomorrowusa]

We should be moving into a new era of enlightenment and what do we find? It's conspiracy theories and cranks. We've moved into an age of irrationality. We are punch-drunk with it.

Novelist and former political journalist Robert Harris at New Statesman.

We’re now well into what people a decade or two ago were calling THE FUTURE. Things are not exactly going the way they expected them to go.

The “cyber-utopians” believed that the internet would, by its nature, inevitably lead to a proliferation of democracy and equality around the world. All we had to do was get a high speed connection and then upload all our personal information to Facebook and Google.

A few prescient skeptics warned us of the dangerous silliness of thinking that technology by itself would solve all our problems for us. The Belarusian-American academic Evgeny Morozov was way ahead of his time with his caveats.

Since 2016 the internet has been far better at creating a cyber-dystopia than a cyber-utopia. An average user is far more likely to run into fake news and conspiracy theories manufactured by foreign troll factories than tips on how to preserve and enhance democracy.

A significant portion of the population seriously believes the bizarre QAnon story that a Satanic ring of pedophiles in the “deep state” is kidnapping children to drink their blood. This craziness and a lot more have been spread almost exclusively online.

Technologies by themselves don’t determine our fate. It all depends how we use them. And starting about 15 years ago we permitted a handful of tech giants to monopolize vast stretches of the internet in such a way that created enormous profits for them while seriously harming the concept of objective reality for society as a whole.

[communicationmediacomic]

The net utopian ideal held that the Internet was an equalizing force that would empower the people through the free exchange of ideas and the formation of communities without borders. Codified in what is known as the Californian Ideology (so named for its proponents, hailing from Silicon Valley and other tech hubs in California), this was popular in the late 1990s as the Internet became more and more pervasive.

To say that it ended in disaster is a colossal understatement.

Today, Internet stands as a mixed bag, possibly well meaning and capable of accomplishing things with the right guidance, but is superficially unpleasant. Not unlike a teen, really. Puberty hit him hard.

On DeviantArt:

(Current) (Original)

[Content warning: Strong language]

[squirrelingbeaver]

The idea that unfettered access to the Internet will bring democracy suggests one of the worst fallacies of cyber–utopianism. Once they get online unsupervised, do we expect Chinese Internet users, many of them young, to rush to download the latest report from Amnesty International or read up on Falun Gong on Wikipedia? Or will they opt for The Sopranos or the newest James Bond flick? Why assume that they will suddenly demand more political rights, rather than the Friends or Sex in the City lifestyles they observe on the Internet? [...] Thus Western governments, caught up in the heady cyber–utopianism of the last two decades, face a dilemma. Without their investments in blogs, blog aggregators, and video blogs in far–away but geopolitically important places, the online voices of the West’s favorite secular and democratic forces would not carry much weight. Yet, investing in new media infrastructure might also embolden the conservatives, nationalists, and extremists, posing an even greater challenge to democratization. A brief look at the emerging cyber–nationalism in Russia and China provides a taste of things to come. The problem with building public spheres from above, online or offline, is much like that of building Frankenstein’s monsters: we may not like the end product. This does not mean we should give up on the Internet as a force for democratization, only that we should ditch the blinding ideology of technological determinism and focus on practical tasks. Figuring out how the Internet could benefit existing democratic forces and organizations—very few of which have exhibited much creativity on the Web—would not be a bad place to start.

[foratv]

Does the internet actually inhibit, not encourage democracy? In this RSA Animate adapted from a talk given in 2009, Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative take on 'cyber-utopianism' -- the seductive idea that the internet plays a largely emancipatory role in global politics.  

[gogodoesbulgaria]

On the Internet.

I've been thinking lately about Internet culture and how it can be thought of as an American cultural export (insofar as a great deal of what goes viral online is American-sourced and in the English language). At the very least, the internet is a Western influence. So what happens when this medium - whose most visible parts are arguably a reflection of young American culture (though I should further question this assumption) - becomes at the same time widely available around the world, to anyone with an Internet connection and a computer?

I tend to think of the Internet as having, by its nature, certain influences built into its use: democraticization, individualization, freedom of expression, free flow of information, etc. And in fact, many media theorists think of the Internet in this way, as an inherently revolutionary force - consider, as a telling example, the most popular narrative about the Arab Spring and the impact of social media in bringing it about. This model (cyber-utopianism) is easy and, I think, overly simplistic. (Plus, it's a little arrogant, and I can't help but associate it with Clay Shirky - one of its loudest proponents - who always sounds like he's talking down to a child no matter who his actual audience is.)

I've been trying to parse the many problems I have with cyber-utopianism, but here are two that crop up over and over again.

Are these values innate to the Internet as a medium, or are they just current Internet culture? That is, are they built into the medium itself in a way that can't be altered (McLuhan's argument that medium itself is the message), or are there ways for Internet use to be culturally different without changing structurally? What would have happened, for example, if the majority of early Internet users had been Eastern instead of Western? Will Internet culture change as accessibility expands? 

Is the perception of the Internet as a tool of the oppressed (against its oppressor) just symptomatic of a generation gap? Young people are always more adept at new technologies, and the Internet is still relatively young. Sure, hacktivism is easy-ish now and governments etc. can appear bumbling in their online dealings, but what happens when all the bureaucrats are digital natives as well?

The fact that I still roll these questions around in my mind like hard candy makes me think even more that I should go to graduate school - that I need to.

[jonathanjackholmes]

Evgeny Morozov's more cynical take on the internet's role in political emancipation. He picks apart the holes in "cyber-utopianism".

[snippetsandlinks]

Does the internet actually inhibit, not encourage democracy? In this new RSA Animate adapted from a talk given in 2009, Evgeny Morozov presents an alternative take on 'cyber-utopianism' - the seductive idea that the internet plays a largely emancipatory role in global politics.