Cyber-utopianism

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Cyber-utopianism, web-utopianism, digital utopianism, or utopian internet is a subcategory of technological utopianism and the belief that online communication helps bring about a more decentralized, democratic, and libertarian society. [1] [2] [3] [4] The desired values may also be privacy and anonymity, freedom of expression, access to culture and information or also socialist ideals leading to digital socialism. [5] [4]

Contents

Origins

The Californian Ideology is a set of beliefs combining bohemian and anti-authoritarian attitudes from the counterculture of the 1960s with techno-utopianism and support for neoliberal economic policies. [6] These beliefs are thought by some to have been characteristic of the culture of the IT industry in Silicon Valley and the West Coast of the United States during the dot-com boom of the 1990s. [7] Adam Curtis connects it to Ayn Rand's Objectivist philosophy in the film All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (TV series). Such an ideology of digital utopianism fueled the first generation of Internet pioneers. [8]

Examples

Political usage

One of the first initiatives associated with digital technologies and utopianism was the Chilean Project Cybersyn. [9] Project Cybersyn was an attempt of cybernetic governance for implementation of socialist planning under President Salvador Allende. The book Towards a New Socialism argues against the perception of digital socialism as a utopia. [10] Digital socialism can be categorized as a real utopian project. [11]

Cyber socialism is a name used for the practise of file sharing as a violation of intellectual property rights and whose legalisation was not expected - a utopia. [12] [13]

Cyber-utopianism serves as a base for cyber-populism. Electronic democracy as suggested and practised by Pirate Parties is being seen to be an idea motivated by cyber-utopianism. [14] In Italy, the Five Star Movement extensively uses cyber-utopian rhetoric, promising direct democracy and better environmental regulations through the Web. In this case, they used the wonder or digital sublime associated with digital technologies to develop their political vision. [1]

Cognate utopias

Cyber-utopianism has been considered a derivative of extropianism, [15] in which the ultimate goal is to upload human consciousness to the internet. Ray Kurzweil, especially in The Age of Spiritual Machines, writes about a form of cyber-utopianism known as the Singularity; wherein, technological advancement will be so rapid that life will become experientially different, incomprehensible, and advanced. [16]

Hospitality exchange services

Hospitality exchange services (HospEx) are social networking services where hosts offer homestays for free. They are a gift economy and are shaped by altruism and are examples of cyber-utopianism. [17] [18]

Criticism

The existence of this belief has been documented since the beginning of the internet. The bursting of the dot-com bubble diminished the majority-utopian views of cyberspace; however, modern day "cyber skeptics" continue to exist. They believe in the idea that internet censorship and cyber sovereignty allows repressive governments to adapt their tactics to respond to threats by using technology against dissenting movements. [19] Douglas Rushkoff notes that, "ideas, information, and applications now launching on Web sites around the world capitalise on the transparency, usability, and accessibility that the internet was born to deliver". [19] In 2011, Evgeny Morozov, in his 2011 book The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom, critiqued the role of cyber-utopianism in global politics; [20] stating that the belief is naïve and stubborn, enabling the opportunity for authoritarian control and monitoring. [21] Morozov notes that "former hippies", in the 1990s, are responsible for causing this misplaced utopian belief: "Cyber-utopians ambitiously set out to build a new and improved United Nations, only to end up with a digital Cirque du Soleil". [21]

Criticism in the past couple of decades has been made out against positivist readings of the internet. In 2010, Malcolm Gladwell, argued his doubts about the emancipatory and empowering qualities of social media in an article in The New Yorker . In the article, Gladwell criticises Clay Shirky for propagating and overestimating the revolutionary potential of social media: "Shirky considers this model of activism an upgrade. But it is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger." [22]

Cyber-utopianism has also been compared to a secular religion for the postmodern world. [23] In 2006, Andrew Keen wrote in The Weekly Standard that Web 2.0 is a "grand utopian movement" similar to "communist society" as described by Karl Marx. [24]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Technological utopianism</span> Any ideology based on the premise that advances in technology could bring a utopia

Technological utopianism is any ideology based on the premise that advances in science and technology could and should bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Clay Shirky</span> American technology writer

Clay Shirky is an American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies and journalism.

Post-capitalism is in part a hypothetical state in which the economic systems of the world can no longer be described as forms of capitalism. Various individuals and political ideologies have speculated on what would define such a world. According to classical Marxist and social evolutionary theories, post-capitalist societies may come about as a result of spontaneous evolution as capitalism becomes obsolete. Others propose models to intentionally replace capitalism, most notably socialism, communism, anarchism, nationalism and degrowth.

"The Californian Ideology" is a 1995 essay by English media theorists Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron of the University of Westminster. Barbrook describes it as a "critique of dotcom neoliberalism". In the essay, Barbrook and Cameron argue that the rise of networking technologies in Silicon Valley in the 1990s was linked to American neoliberalism and a paradoxical hybridization of beliefs from the political left and right in the form of hopeful technological determinism.

Peter Goodwin is a British academic who is a Principal Research Fellow of the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) at the University of Westminster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hospitality exchange service</span> Social networking services where hosts do not receive payments

Hospitality exchange services are social networking services used for accommodation of travellers, where hosts do not receive payments. The relationships on hospitality exchange services are shaped by altruism and are related to the cyber-utopianism on the Web in its beginnings and to utopia in general.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Evgeny Morozov</span> Belarusian writer and critic

Evgeny Morozov is a writer, researcher, and intellectual from Belarus who studies political and social implications of technology. He was named one of the 28 most influential Europeans by Politico in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Douglas Rushkoff</span> American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist and documentarian

Douglas Mark Rushkoff is an American media theorist, writer, columnist, lecturer, graphic novelist, and documentarian. He is best known for his association with the early cyberpunk culture and his advocacy of open-source solutions to social problems.

Social media intelligence comprises the collective tools and solutions that allow organizations to analyze conversations, respond to synchronize social signals, and synthesize social data points into meaningful trends and analysis, based on the user's needs. Social media intelligence allows one to utilize intelligence gathering from social media sites, using both intrusive or non-intrusive means, from open and closed social networks. This type of intelligence gathering is one element of OSINT.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Project Cybersyn</span> Chilean economic project

Project Cybersyn was a Chilean project from 1971 to 1973 during the presidency of Salvador Allende aimed at constructing a distributed decision support system to aid in the management of the national economy. The project consisted of four modules: an economic simulator, custom software to check factory performance, an operations room, and a national network of telex machines that were linked to one mainframe computer.

Scientific socialism is a term which was coined in 1840 by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in his book What is Property? to mean a society ruled by a scientific government, i.e., one whose sovereignty rests upon reason, rather than sheer will:

Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true government, — that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and must at last be lost in scientific socialism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christian Fuchs (sociologist)</span> Austrian social scientist

Christian Fuchs is an Austrian social scientist. From 2013 until 2022 he was Professor of Social Media and Professor of Media, Communication & Society at the University of Westminster, where he also was the Director of the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI). Since 2022, he is Professor of Media Systems and Media Organisation at Paderborn University in Germany. He also known for being the editor of the open access journal tripleC: Communications, Capitalism & Critique. The journal's website offers a wide range of critical studies within the debate of capitalism and communication. This academic open access journal publishes new articles, special issues, calls for papers, reviews, reflections, information on conferences and events, and other journal specific information. Fuchs is also the co-founder of the ICTs and Society-network which is a worldwide interdisciplinary network of researchers who study how society and digital media interact. He is the editor of the Open Access Book Series "Critical, Digital and Social Media Studies" published by the open access university publishing house University of Westminster Press that he helped establish in 2015.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Real utopian sociology</span> Study of feasible utopian models for society

Real utopian sociology is an emancipatory social science created and practiced by Erik Olin Wright, a utopian studies scholar. The apparent contradiction in its name is intentional: this sociology seeks to find existing utopian projects and evaluate their potential to replace systems of domination, particularly as an anti-capitalism strategy. Simply put, real utopian sociology is the study of feasible utopian models for society and pathways to achieve them.

Cosmopolitan localism or Cosmolocalism is a social innovation approach to community development that seeks to link local and global communities through resilient infrastructures that bring production and consumption closer together, building on distributed systems. The concept of cosmopolitan localism was pioneered by Wolfgang Sachs, a scholar in the field of environment, development, and globalization. Sachs is known as one of the many followers of Ivan Illich and his work has influenced the green and ecological movements. Contrary to glocalisation, cosmolocalism moves from locality to universality, acknowledging the local as the locus of social co-existence and emphasizing the potential of global networking beyond capitalist market rules.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital sublime</span> Philosophical concept

The digital sublime is the mythologization of the impact of computers and cyberspace on human experiences of time, space and power. It's also known as cyber sublime or algorithmic sublime. It is a philosophical conception of emotions that captivate the collective conscience with the emergence of these new technologies and the promises and predictions that emerge from them. These emotions are the awe, the astonishment, the rationality-subsuming glory, and the generally intense spiritual experience.

BreadTube or LeftTube is a loose and informal group of online content creators who create video content, including video essays and livestreams, from socialist, social democratic, communist, anarchist, and other left-wing perspectives. BreadTube creators generally post videos on YouTube that are discussed on other online platforms, such as Reddit.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shaun (YouTuber)</span> British YouTuber

Shaun is a British YouTuber. Video essays by Shaun have covered popular culture and politics, specifically to critique neoliberalism, anti-feminism, and the alt-right.

Grafton Tanner is an American author and academic. His work focuses on Big Tech, nostalgia, neoliberalism, and education.

"The stack" is a term used in science and technology studies, the philosophy of technology and media studies to describe the multiple interconnected layers that computation depends on at a planetary scale. The term was introduced by Benjamin H. Bratton in a 2014 essay and expanded upon in his 2016 book The Stack: On Software and Sovereignty, and has been adapted, critiqued and expanded upon by numerous other scholars.

Callum Cant is a British author, researcher and labour rights advocate known for his contributions regarding workers in the gig economy. He is a lecturer in management at Essex Business School.

References

  1. 1 2 Natale, Simone; Ballatore, Andrea (1 January 2014). "The web will kill them all: new media, digital utopia, and political struggle in the Italian 5-Star Movement". Media, Culture & Society. 36 (1): 105–121. doi:10.1177/0163443713511902. hdl: 2318/1768935 . ISSN   0163-4437. S2CID   73517559 . Retrieved 8 August 2021.
  2. ↑ Flichy, Patrice (2007). The Internet Imaginaire. The MIT Press. ISBN   9780262062619 . Retrieved 8 August 2021.
  3. ↑ Vaidhyanathan, Siva (2012). The Googlization of Everything. ucpress. ISBN   9780520272897 . Retrieved 8 August 2021.
  4. 1 2 Fuchs, Christian (13 January 2020). "The Utopian Internet, Computing, Communication, and Concrete Utopias: Reading William Morris, Peter Kropotkin, Ursula K. Le Guin, and P.M. in the Light of Digital Socialism". TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. 18 (1): 146–186. doi: 10.31269/triplec.v18i1.1143 . ISSN   1726-670X. S2CID   212845309 . Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  5. ↑ Burkart, Patrick (2014). Pirate Politics. The MIT Press. ISBN   9780262026949. JSTOR   j.ctt9qf640 . Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  6. ↑ Turner, Fred (2008-05-15). From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago, Ill.: University Of Chicago Press. ISBN   9780226817422.
  7. ↑ Barbrook, Richard; Cameron, Andy. "The Californian Ideology". Imaginary Futures. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
  8. ↑ J.M Reagle jr, Good Faith Collaboration (2010) p. 162
  9. ↑ Staun, Harald. "Post-kapitalistische Ökonomie: Wann kommt der digitale Sozialismus?". FAZ.NET (in German). Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  10. ↑ "Towards a New Socialism". ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu. Archived from the original on 2020-02-09. Retrieved 2020-07-13.
  11. ↑ Cox, Christopher M. (13 January 2020). "Rising With the Robots: Towards a Human-Machine Autonomy for Digital Socialism". TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. 18 (1): 67–83. doi: 10.31269/triplec.v18i1.1139 . ISSN   1726-670X. S2CID   210969553 . Retrieved 28 December 2021.
  12. ↑ Filby, Michael (2011). "Regulating File Sharing: Open Regulations for an Open Internet". Journal of International Commercial Law and Technology. 6: 207. Retrieved 28 December 2021.
  13. ↑ Filby, Michael (1 January 2008). "Together in electric dreams: cyber socialism, utopia and the creative commons". International Journal of Private Law. 1 (1–2): 94–109. doi:10.1504/IJPL.2008.019435. ISSN   1753-6235 . Retrieved 28 December 2021.
  14. ↑ Khutkyy, Dmytro (July 2019). "Pirate Parties : The Social Movements of Electronic Democracy". Journal of Comparative Politics. ISSN   1337-7477 . Retrieved 22 August 2021.
  15. ↑ "Cyber-utopianism - CrowdSociety". crowdsociety.org. Retrieved 2020-11-06.
  16. ↑ Kurzweil, R 1999, The age of spiritual machines : when computers exceed human intelligence, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, N.S.W.
  17. ↑ Schöpf, Simon (2015-01-25). "The Commodification of the Couch: A Dialectical Analysis of Hospitality Exchange Platforms". TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. 13 (1): 11–34–11–34. doi: 10.31269/triplec.v13i1.480 . ISSN   1726-670X . Retrieved 26 June 2021.
  18. ↑ Latja, Piia (2010). "Creative Travel - Study of Tourism from a socio-cultural point of view - The Case of CouchSurfing" . Retrieved 26 June 2021.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  19. 1 2 Rushkoff, Douglas (2002). Renaissance Now! Media Ecology and the New Global Narrative. Hampton Press. pp. 26–28.
  20. ↑ R. Sassower, Digital Exposure: Postmodern Capitalism (2013) p. ix and p. 16
  21. 1 2 Morozov, Evgeny (2011). The Net Delusion. London: Penguin Group. ISBN   978-1-84614-353-3.
  22. ↑ Gladwell, Malcolm (October 4, 2010). "Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on January 10, 2011. Retrieved May 1, 2024.
  23. ↑ B. Neilson, Free Trade in the Bermuda Triangle (2004) p. 181
  24. ↑ Keen, Andrew (15 February 2006). "Web 2.0; The second generation of the Internet has arrived. It's worse than you think". The Weekly Standard . Archived from the original on 25 February 2006.

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