“This article asks questions about the futures of power in the network era. Two critical emerging issues are at work with uncertain outcomes. The first is the emergence of the collaborative economy, while the second is the emergence of surveillance capabilities from both civic, state and commercial sources. While both of these emerging issues are expected by many to play an important role in the future development of our societies, it is still unclear whose values and whose purposes will be furthered. This article argues that the futures of these emerging issues depend on contests for power. As such, four scenarios are developed for the futures of power in the network era using the double variable scenario approach.”
We are serializing here a important futures essay by Jose Ramos, which distinguishes four possible futures for a p2p-driven world.
Today, we publish the second part of the essay with his analysis of the current situation.
* Article: The Futures of Power in the Network Era. By Jose Ramos. Journal of Futures Studies, June 2013, 17(4): 71-92
* The Emergence of the Network Form
“The emerging network society creates new forms of network-based organizations, not possible in a pre-network world. As Castells (1996) argued, network organizations may have a ‘telos’, values and ideological direction. As such ‘networks’ are not only value free systems of pragmatic exchange (e.g. eBay), but as well normatively constituted. In similar fashion, Kellener (2005) coined the term ‘techo-politics’ to express the emerging political nature of network actors. Earlier, Arguilla and Rondfeldt (1999) used the term ‘noo-politik’ to describe a new type of power dynamic in the age of networks . ‘Noo’ is drawn from the idea of a noosphere, the domain of a global conversation, or more hyperbolically ‘global consciousness’, thus implying a political struggle for popular global consciousness.
While networks are normatively charged inter-spaces, pre-network forms (e.g. Tribes, Institutions, Markets) are persistent structural features of human organization. As such, they too will partake in the network form, but very much on their own terms (Ronfeldt 1996). Tribal forms use the network form to strengthen traditional identities in the face of globalized hybridity. Institutions use the network form to maintain their cultural hegemonies of governance and power. Markets use the network form to de-territorialize and open global market opportunities, production and consumption. Yet while, as Rondfeldt argues, Tribes, Institutions, and Markets will use the network form to their advantage, the network form is also fundamentally disruptive in respect these previous forms.
A counter movement associated with network actors can therefore also be discerned. First, rather than simply strengthening existing tribal identities, p2p potentialities create new transnational tribal identities, satisfying critical existential needs of affiliation, but in conditions of globalized hybridity. Secondly, rather than simply strengthening the legitimacy of institutional forms, action networks reconfigure institutional legitimacy toward openness, transparency and public conversation. Thirdly, rather than simply strengthening market actors via trans-territorial opportunities and investment, p2p enterprises may displace or make obsolete some market actors, in particular those extracting value through the imposition of artificial immaterial scarcities.
One supposition here is thus: in the early development of the network era, persistent human structures (Tribes, Institutions, Markets) will co-opt network potentials and win out. Examples include Al-Qaeda’s early successes, China’s lockdown of political organization on the internet, Nike’s global factory. As the network era matures, incumbents fight ever more pitched battles, protecting pharmaceutical’s IP, buying out and destroying rival social networking platforms, jailing cyber activists. Early modes of co-optation are ‘vectoralist’ in nature, as the corporate-state power structure imposes the idea of property and control on immaterial intellectual resources (processes, designs, genetics, pharmaceuticals, art, etc.), which are in themselves not scarce, but extensively reproducible (Wark 2004). This creates a division between the owners (vectoralists) and producers (hackers) in a class hierarchy based on artificially created scarcities. More recent modes of co-optation, following Bauwens’ argument, see a shift from vectoralist capital to what he terms ‘netarchical capital’, what amounts to deriving surplus value from participatory platforms – via the commodification of everyday relationships. As he writes:
“Netarchical capitalism is a hypothesis about the emergence of a new segment of the capitalist class (the owners of financial or other capital), which is no longer dependent on the ownership of intellectual property rights (hypothesis of cognitive capitalism), nor on the control of the media vectors (hypothesis of MacKenzie Wark in his book The Hacker’s Manifesto), but rather on the development and control of participatory platforms.”
Yet as the network era continues to evolve, developments empower civil society as the realm capable of mobilizing network potentials with greatest efficacy. Identities take a post-institutional turn. Political institutions are tamed by ‘sousveillance’ (the broad social network surveils the organization) from citizen networks; production and exchange of everyday needs shifts toward p2p enterprises. To rephrase Marx, the question now becomes, in our futures, who controls the means of relationality?
To more deeply understand transformations in the network era, some context via political economy is developed. Two major crises are at the heart of shifts in the network era, a crisis of capitalism and the state.
Capitalism Contradiction 1 Ecological Externalities Contradiction 2 Wealth and Power Stratification Contradiction 3 Cosmo-localization
State Contradiction 1 Ultimate Authority Contradiction 2 Legitimate Governance Contradiction 3 Management of the Commons
* The Crisis of Capitalism
The three contradiction within capitalism include 1) ecological externalities, 2) wealth and power stratification and 3) cosmo-localization. The first two contradictions are drawn from neo-Marxist theory, (Galtung 1971; Wallerstein 1983, 2002; Robinson 2004; Sklair 2005). The third draws from Peer to Peer theory through Bauwens et al (2012) and cosmo-localization via Ramos (2010).
The first contradiction is of an ecological nature. Capital accumulation through various stages of the capitalist historical process has been partly based on the capacity to externalize ecological costs. As ecological problems deepen, there are both louder and stronger calls and demands to internalize ecological cost and to apply ecological governance to capital enterprises. Likewise, as ‘nature’ as a source of endless bounty becomes less and less a reality, and resources become more scare, extraction shifts focus from extraction from ‘nature’ to extraction from industrial (close loop) metabolisms. This works in tandem with the re-internalization of ecological costs.
The second contradiction is of a social nature. In a neo-liberal world that privileges highly mobile capital investors or venture capitalist, a transnational capitalist class (TCC) is able to influence political processes, where the end result is increasing social stratification between the policy empowered and policy disempowered, hence between the have’s and have-nots. In classic Marxist terms this can be considered part of the crisis of oversupply, a deflationary processes, accompanied by a superstructure that legitimizes capitalist led policy. In both cases stratification as a phenomenon owes its existence to a plutocratic (government by the wealthy) policy process.
The third contradiction draws from the work of Bauwens et al (2012), who argues we are shifting from a world typified by material abundance and immaterial scarcity; to a world increasingly typified by material scarcities yet immaterial abundance. The advent of a global digital knowledge commons and p2p infrastructure has a profound and destabilizing effect on typical forms of capital enterprise. A process that can be termed ‘cosmo-localization’ arises, where emerging localized enterprises draw on freely available global digital resources, and can peer finance and produce goods (Ramos 2010). This subverts the established industrial capital means by which citizens and communities satisfy their needs, allowing them to sidestep reliance on large-scale capital enterprises in favor of local Maker communities and enterprises.
* Implications for network economics
From these contradictions we can look at key locales of struggle or tension between the values in capitalist vs. p2p enterprises. For example, a typical struggle is between vectoralist (film and music co.) attempts to criminalize file / torrent sharing, while on the opposing extreme Pirate Party advocacy for a world of non-proprietary digital content. More moderate but significant are advocates like Lessig (2002) for Creative Commons and the creation of mashable / remixable digital content. While Wikipedia crowdsources content from the public under a general public license, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is at the razors edge of neoliberal outsourcing, with over 100,000 workers in over 100 countries doing basic intelligence tasks. This stark difference reflects the very diverse and contrary nature of crowdsourcing generally. Peer banking is emerging as an alternative to traditional institutional banking. In small scale manufacturing prosumer 3D printing is significant, where a printer costs approx. US $2000.00 and allows a user to draw from a global pool of open source / shareable designs to make tens of thousands of things. Sharing and peer procurement systems / services allow for ride sharing, house / room sharing, tool sharing, etc, with the potential to disrupt incumbent businesses (such as taxi companies and hotels).
One critical argument made by advocates for sharing / p2p economies is that the first two contradictions discussed (ecological and social) provide a mandate for the third (cosmo-localization). Within conditions of ecological crisis, resource costs increase, which then necessitates a more intelligent use of existing resources drawing on a wealth of models, and via network enabled sharing platforms and peer communities. Conditions of social crisis are typified by what Mike Douglass terms a ‘new normal’, described as:
“repeated economic crisis that result in chronically high levels of unemployment, precarious employment, no long-term careers, no home ownership, no pensions, and declining welfare for the majority of people on the planet.”
Because people must increasingly create social life outside of ‘typical’ economic support systems, cosmo-localization empowers local actors / peer producers with global knowledge resources and network enterprise capabilities, be this in manufacturing, art, or science, etc. Cosmo-localization allows for a more efficient use of resources and empowers creativity in discrete locales. But this is at odds with the dominant industrial-innovation systems wedded to existing intellectual property regimes. One example of cosmo-localization is the Handmakers Factory, which has developed a pool of globally crowd sourced designs in clothing, that facilitate people’s capacity to physically produce them in their locales.
Fundamentally different principles, held by different groups, are at work in creating the futures of the network economy. The open source and digital commons movement aim to create global knowledge commons that allow for free localized instantiation of value, with open and common use. Relationships, networks and interaction are seen as sources of shared enrichment and value, not commodifiable. Large scale platforms, operated through netarchical capital, see human relationships and interactions as sources of economic rent. Netarchical enterprises provide stability and integration across multiple platforms, but see user interactions as commodifiable and exploitable. They seek to either buy out or destroy alternative platforms – incorporating any useful elements into the existing system of shareholder driven investment and interest, driven by the logic of accumulation within the global political economy of capitalism.
* The Crisis of the State
The crisis of the State also includes 3 major contradictions: 1) ultimate authority, 2) legitimate governance and 3) the management of the commons. The first two contradictions are well established in cosmopolitan theory (Falk 2004; Chandler and Baker 2005; Keane 2005; Kriegman, Amalric, and Wood, 2006) while the third relates to a resurgent area of research pioneered by the Commons Strategy Group (see: Bollier and Helfrich 2012).
The first contradiction concerns ultimate authority. Over the last century the nation state has assigned to itself the status of ultimate authority. Today the nation state is in crisis in part because it neither has the capacity to address many global / interstate challenges, but importantly its design often prevents it from acting outside of national interests. Meanwhile, a variety of citizens group, some local and others transnational have assumed moral stances that are transnational / global in character. This process is seeing the transfer of ultimate authority from the state to transnational citizen groups.
Historically, the development of the state after the treatise of Westphalia saw the gradual erosion of all competing forms of ultimate authority, (the church or other groups). Empires had accommodated overlapping systems of authority, in particular the ultimate moral authority of religious elites. Through the 19th and 20th centuries, as the state developed, alternative or competing systems of ultimate cultural authority were sidelined or dissolved. Nationalism as ideology represented a marriage of cultural authority / allegiance with the states instrumental power. Today we inherit a system where the state assumes itself as the ultimate moral authority along side its status as the primary holder of instrumental political power.
This emerging contradiction concerns how transnational civic organizations challenge and attempt to displace the state as the ultimate moral authority, as these citizens take a planetary view inclusive of many or all nations, e.g. in the area of climate mitigation, human rights, transparency, etc. To be clear, however, the challenge to state authority is not a general challenge to its authority – the majority of its law making process. The general authority of states is vast. This change merely displaces the state as the ultimate authority, a status it had accrued over the past century. The key gap then is between the transnational citizen organizations’ status as new ultimate moral authorities and their lack of instrumental capacities to enact change. While the state increasingly loses its status as ultimate authority, it retains vast instrumental political capabilities.
The second contradiction concerns the crisis in the democratic process or legitimate governance. Notwithstanding the increasingly plutocratic mode of policy making in the West through neo-liberalization (USA + Eurozone), access to information, the capacity for citizen group to engage with the complexities of the policy making process, renders existing systems of democratic representations antiquated (Dator 2007). Increasing citizen engagement and desire for devolved localized governance or direct / participatory democracy runs counter to the increasing closure of the political process.
The third contradiction relates to the State’s limitations in the governance and management of shared Commons. The State’s role in protecting ecological commons (oceans, rivers, beaches, ground water, etc.) and building social commons (roads, services, libraries, etc.) is perpetually constrained by virtue of the need to satisfy powerful State-producing interests (industries, investors, military, voters, media, etc.). The outcome of this power brokering process creates winners and losers, as the State ‘closes ranks’ with these interests, rather than producing policy geared toward common interests. This is especially acute today, where transnational capital dictates much national policy, whose investors are abstracted from those concretely affected by such policies (as per the second contradiction of capitalism). Communities are forced to develop parallel systems of governance outside the state system which can achieve adequate levels of social and intergenerational enfranchisement (Bollier and Helfrich 2012).
* Implications for network politics
Networked civil society organizations have become confident political actors with ultimate moral authority on their side. Despite limitations in instrumental power, they express a new socio-political reality, what Arquilla and Ronfeldt (1999) articulated as ‘noo-politik’:
“Noopolitik is an approach to statecraft, to be undertaken as much by nonstate as by state actors, that emphasizes the role of soft power in expressing ideas, values, norms, and ethics through all manner of media. This makes it distinct from Realpolitik, which stresses the hard, material dimensions of power and treats states as the determinants of world order.” (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1999, p29)
In the case of Wikileaks, for example, ‘they’ (a plural network of actors) do not consider the state an ultimate authority, but rather their own cause to expose state secrets as a superior moral position. To instrumentalize their cause members engage in new ‘techno-political’ strategies (Kellner 2005), and yet their leader remains holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy (at time of writing) for fear of being extradited to a US grand jury and being tried in a kangaroo court. The gap between instrumental power and soft power is stark. The US’ attack on Wikileaks is a response in the context of soft power – as soft power works by strengthening or weakening the legitimacy of actors, whether they be economic, state, or non-state. As Arquilla and Rondfeldt presciently argued, where Realpolitik is used to repress the noetic sphere of information and culture, it amounts to a failure in information strategy (Arquilla and Ronfeldt, 1999, p.41)
In networked environments where populations with smart phones have extensive sensing (sound, video, air composition, radio activity, etc.) capabilities, citizens can surveil each other as well as police and businesses, police can surveil government and citizens, government can surveil citizens, commerce etc. The video recording of the Rodney King beating, which led to the Los Angeles riots, provided an early example of these new potentials. The widespread diffusion of mobile computing makes the possibility of ubiquitous ambient sensing common place (via visual, audio, text, etc), as seen in the recent uprising in 2007 in Burma, 2008 in Iran, the recent Arab Spring and Occupy movements. The shift toward mobile and ubiquitous networking will increasingly extend the capacity for people to document and transmit an environment.
The internet pioneer, Josh Harris, a dot-com entrepreneur who founded Jupiter Research and Pseudo.com, pioneered extreme experiments in the eradication of privacy, was behind the bizarre avant guarde project “Quiet: We Live in Public”, predating the show “Big Brother.” Of course the idea was well developed in George Orwell’s 1984, and it could be argued this practice has existed for as long as repressive political regimes have found ways to spy on their populace in comprehensive ways. One recent example includes Nokia’s assistance to Iran’s regime in tracking political dissidents.
Netarchical conglomerates, such as Google and Facebook, have added a new dimension to this, as part of the movement toward Big Data. Passive data collection has become an internet era norm in a new service model in which data mining algorithms learn to know us better than we know ourselves. Drawing on this trend, US defense firm Raytheon has developed predictive software called Rapid Information Overlay Technology (RIOT) aimed at neutralizing ‘security threats’ based on such public data. RIOT follows the development of other systems such as Palantir. Since the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the US, and ambiguous legal language in the Patriot Act opened the door to government surveillance of citizens, security agencies such as the NSA have revived large-scale communications surveillance. Despite the defeat and discarding of the controversial Total Information Awareness (TIA) program, the NSA has continued to develop surveillance infrastructure through programs like TrapWire, which provides all encompassing surveillance capabilities, now well established through US communications infrastructure.
Segments of civil society, businesses and governments are engaged in both reactive and proactive activities to guard and extend their powers within the new field of network politics. The vanguard for techno-political global civil society, WikiLeaks, is just the first in a series of social innovations that will attempt to break through the veil of government and corporate secrecy (Greenberg 2012). Reciprocally, governments have already (China) or are in the process (USA) of developing large-scale comprehensive surveillance systems designed for ensuring social control and neutralize dissent. Meanwhile, the network conglomerates already have the most comprehensive platforms for peering into the world of people, aided by the very same consumers that use them.”