This essay was written by Tiziana Terranova and originally published in Euromade.info

Tiziana Terranova: This essay is the outcome of a research process which involves a series of Italian institutions of autoformazione of post-autonomist inspiration (‘free’ universities engaged in grassroots organization of public seminars, conferences, workshops etc) and anglophone social networks of scholars and researchers engaging with digital media theory and practice officially affiliated with universities, journals and research centres, but also artists, activists, precarious knowledge workers and such likes. It refers to a workshop which took place in London in January 2014, hosted by the Digital Culture Unit at the Centre for Cultural Studies (Goldsmiths’ College, University of London). The workshop was the outcome of a process of reflection and organization that started with the Italian free university collective Uninomade 2.0 in early 2013 and continued across mailing lists and websites such as Euronomade, Effimera, Commonware, I quaderni di San Precario, and others. More than a traditional essay, then, it aims to be a synthetic but hopefully also inventive document which plunges into a distributed ‘social research network’ articulating a series of problems, theses and concerns at the crossing between political theory and research into science, technology and capitalism.

What is at stake in the following is the relationship between ‘algorithms’ and ‘capital’—that is, the increasing centrality of algorithms ‘to organizational practices arising out of the centrality of information and communication technologies stretching all the way from production to circulation, from industrial logistics to financial speculation, from urban planning and design to social communication.¹ These apparently esoteric mathematical structures have also become part of the daily life of users of contemporary digital and networked media. Most users of the Internet daily interface or are subjected to the powers of algorithms such as Google’s Pagerank (which sorts the results of our search queries) or Facebook Edgerank (which automatically decides in which order we should get our news on our feed) not to talk about the many other less known algorithms (Appinions, Klout, Hummingbird, PKC, Perlin noise, Cinematch, KDP Select and many more) which modulate our relationship with data, digital devices and each other. This widespread presence of algorithms in the daily life of digital culture, however, is only one of the expressions of the pervasiveness of computational techniques as they become increasingly co-extensive with processes of production, consumption and distribution displayed in logistics, finance, architecture, medicine, urban planning, infographics, advertising, dating, gaming, publishing and all kinds of creative expressions (music, graphics, dance etc).

The staging of the encounter between ‘algorithms’ and ‘capital’ as a political problem invokes the possibility of breaking with the spell of ‘capitalist realism’—that is, the idea that capitalism constitutes the only possible economy while at the same time claiming that new ways of organizing the production and distribution of wealth need to seize on scientific and technological developments². Going beyond the opposition between state and market, public and private, the concept of the common is used here as a way to instigate the thought and practice of a possible post-capitalist mode of existence for networked digital media.

Algorithms, Capital and Automation

Looking at algorithms from a perspective that seeks the constitution of a new political rationality around the concept of the ‘common’ means engaging with the ways in which algorithms are deeply implicated in the changing nature of automation. Automation is described by Marx as a process of absorption into the machine of the ‘general productive forces of the social brain’ such as ‘knowledge and skills’³,which hence appear as an attribute of capital rather than as the product of social labour. Looking at the history of the implication of capital and technology, it is clear how automation has evolved away from the thermo-mechanical model of the early industrial assembly line toward the electro-computational dispersed networks of contemporary capitalism. Hence it is possible to read algorithms as part of a genealogical line that, as Marx put it in the ‘Fragment on Machines’, starting with the adoption of technology by capitalism as fixed capital, pushes the former through several metamorphoses ‘whose culmination is the machine, or rather, an automatic system of machinery…set in motion by an automaton, a moving power that moves itself’⁴.The industrial automaton was clearly thermodynamical, and gave rise to a system ‘consisting of numerous mechanical and intellectual organs so that workers themselves are cast merely as its conscious linkages’⁵. The digital automaton, however, is electro-computational, it puts ‘the soul to work’ and involves primarily the nervous system and the brain and comprises ‘possibilities of virtuality, simulation, abstraction, feedback and autonomous processes’⁶. The digital automaton unfolds in networks consisting of electronic and nervous connections so that users themselves are cast as quasi-automatic relays of a ceaseless information flow. It is in this wider assemblage, then, that algorithms need to be located when discussing the new modes of automation.

Quoting a textbook of computer science, Andrew Goffey describes algorithms as ‘the unifying concept for all the activities which computer scientists engage in…and the fundamental entity with which computer scientists operate’⁷. An algorithm can be provisionally defined as the ‘description of the method by which a task is to be accomplished’ by means of sequences of steps or instructions, sets of ordered steps that operate on data and computational structures. As such, an algorithm is an abstraction, ‘having an autonomous existence independent of what computer scientists like to refer to as “implementation details,” that is, its embodiment in a particular programming language for a particular machine architecture’⁸. It can vary in complexity from the most simple set of rules described in natural language (such as those used to generate coordinated patterns of movement in smart mobs) to the most complex mathematical formulas involving all kinds of variables (as in the famous Monte Carlo algorithm used to solve problems in nuclear physics and later also applied to stock markets and now to the study of non-linear technological diffusion processes). At the same time, in order to work, algorithms must exist as part of assemblages that include hardware, data, data structures (such as lists, databases, memory, etc.), and the behaviours and actions of bodies. For the algorithm to become social software, in fact, ‘it must gain its power as a social or cultural artifact and process by means of a better and better accommodation to behaviors and bodies which happen on its outside’.⁹

Furthermore, as contemporary algorithms become increasingly exposed to larger and larger data sets (and in general to a growing entropy in the flow of data also known as Big Data), they are, according to Luciana Parisi, becoming something more then mere sets of instructions to be performed: ‘infinite amounts of information interfere with and re-program algorithmic procedures…and data produce alien rules’¹⁰. It seems clear from this brief account, then, that algorithms are neither a homogeneous set of techniques, nor do they guarantee ‘the infallible execution of automated order and control¹¹.

From the point of view of capitalism, however, algorithms are mainly a form of ‘fixed capital’—that is, they are just means of production. They encode a certain quantity of social knowledge (abstracted from that elaborated by mathematicians, programmers, but also users’ activities), but they are not valuable per se. In the current economy, they are valuable only in as much as they allow for the conversion of such knowledge into exchange value (monetization) and its (exponentially increasing) accumulation (the titanic quasi-monopolies of the social Internet). In as much as they constitute fixed capital, algorithms such as Google’s Page Rank and Facebook’s Edgerank appear ‘as a presupposition against which the value-creating power of the individual labour capacity is an infinitesimal, vanishing magnitude’¹². And that is why calls for individual retributions to users for their ‘free labor’ are misplaced. It is clear that for Marx what needs to be compensated is not the individual work of the user, but the much larger powers of social cooperation thus unleashed, and that this compensation implies a profound transformation of the grip that the social relation that we call the capitalist economy has on society.

From the point of view of capital, then, algorithms are just fixed capital, means of production finalized to achieve an economic return. But that does not mean that, like all technologies and techniques, that is all that they are. Marx explicitly states that even as capital appropriates technology as the most effective form of the subsumption of labor, that does not mean that this is all that can be said about it. Its existence as machinery, he insists, is not ‘identical with its existence as capital… and therefore it does not follow that subsumption under the social relation of capital is the most appropriate and ultimate social relation of production for the application of machinery’.¹³ It is then essential to remember that the instrumental value that algorithms have for capital does not exhaust the ‘value’ of technology in general and algorithms in particular—that is, their capacity to express not just ‘use value’ as Marx put it, but also aesthetic, existential, social, and ethical values. Wasn’t it this clash between the necessity of capital to reduce software development to exchange value, thus marginalizing the aesthetic and ethical values of software creation, that pushed Richard Stallman and countless hackers and engineers towards the Free and Open Source Movement? Isn’t the enthusiasm that animates hack-meetings and hacker-spaces fueled by the energy liberated from the constraints of ‘working’ for a company in order to remain faithful to one’s own aesthetics and ethics of coding?

Contrary to some variants of Marxism which tend to identify technology completely with ‘dead labor’, ‘fixed capital’ or ‘instrumental rationality’, and hence with control and capture, it seems important to remember how, for Marx, the evolution of machinery also indexes a level of development of productive powers that are unleashed but never totally contained by the capitalist economy. What interested Marx (and what makes his work still relevant to those who strive for a post-capitalist mode of existence) is the way in which, so he claims, the tendency of capital to invest in technology to automate and hence reduce its labor costs to a minimum potentially frees up a ‘surplus’ of time and energy (labor) or an excess of productive capacity in relation to the basic, important and necessary labor of reproduction (a global economy, for example, should first of all produce enough wealth for all members of a planetary population to be adequately fed, clothed, cured and sheltered). However, what characterizes a capitalist economy is that this surplus of time and energy is not simply released, but must be constantly reabsorbed in the cycle of production of exchange value leading to increasing accumulation of wealth by the few (the collective capitalist) at the expense of the many (the multitudes).

Automation, then, when seen from the point of view of capital, must always be balanced with new ways to control (that is, absorb and exhaust) the time and energy thus released. It must produce poverty and stress when there should be wealth and leisure. It must make direct labour the measure of value even when it is apparent that science, technology and social cooperation constitute the source of the wealth produced. It thus inevitably leads to the periodic and widespread destruction of this accumulated wealth, in the form of psychic burnout, environmental catastrophe and physical destruction of the wealth through war. It creates hunger where there should be satiety, it puts food banks next to the opulence of the super-rich. That is why the notion of a post-capitalist mode of existence must become believable, that is, it must become what Maurizio Lazzarato described as an enduring autonomous focus of subjectivation. What a post-capitalist commonism then can aim for is not only a better distribution of wealth compared to the unsustainable one that we have today, but also a reclaiming of ‘disposable time’—that is, time and energy freed from work to be deployed in developing and complicating the very notion of what is ‘necessary’.

The history of capitalism has shown that automation as such has not reduced the quantity and intensity of labor demanded by managers and capitalists. On the contrary, in as much as technology is only a means of production to capital, where it has been able to deploy other means, it has not innovated. For example, industrial technologies of automation in the factory do not seem to have recently experienced any significant technological breakthroughs. Most industrial labor today is still heavily manual, automated only in the sense of being hooked up to the speed of electronic networks of prototyping, marketing and distribution; and it is rendered economically sustainable only by political means—that is, by exploiting geo-political and economic differences (arbitrage) on a global scale and by controlling migration flows through new technologies of the border. The state of things in most industries today is intensified exploitation, which produces an impoverished mode of mass production and consumption that is damaging to both to the body, subjectivity, social relations and the environment. As Marx put it, disposable time released by automation should allow for a change in the very essence of the ‘human’ so that the new subjectivity is allowed to return to the performing of necessary labor in such a way as to redefine what is necessary and what is needed.

It is not then simply about arguing for a ‘return’ to simpler times, but on the contrary a matter of acknowledging that growing food and feeding populations, constructing shelter and adequate housing, learning and researching, caring for the children, the sick and the elderly requires the mobilization of social invention and cooperation. The whole process is thus transformed from a process of production by the many for the few steeped in impoverishment and stress to one where the many redefine the meaning of what is necessary and valuable, while inventing new ways of achieving it. This corresponds in a way to the notion of ‘commonfare’ as recently elaborated by Andrea Fumagalli and Carlo Vercellone, implying, in the latter’s words, ‘the socialization of investment and money and the question of the modes of management and organisation which allow for an authentic democratic reappropriation of the institutions of Welfare…and the ecologic re-structuring of our systems of production¹³. We need to ask then not only how algorithmic automation works today (mainly in terms of control and monetization, feeding the debt economy) but also what kind of time and energy it subsumes and how it might be made to work once taken up by different social and political assemblages—autonomous ones not subsumed by or subjected to the capitalist drive to accumulation and exploitation.

The Red Stack: Virtual Money, Social Networks, Bio-Hypermedia

In a recent intervention, digital media and political theorist Benjamin H. Bratton has argued that we are witnessing the emergence of a new nomos of the earth, where older geopolitical divisions linked to territorial sovereign powers are intersecting the new nomos of the Internet and new forms of sovereignty extending in electronic space¹⁴. This new heterogenous nomos involves the overlapping of national governments (China, United States, European Union, Brasil, Egypt and such likes), transnational bodies (the IMF, the WTO, the European Banks and NGOs of various types), and corporations such as Google, Facebook, Apple, Amazon, etc., producing differentiated patterns of mutual accommodation marked by moments of conflict. Drawing on the organizational structure of computer networks or ‘the OSI network model, upon with the TCP/IP stack and the global internet itself is indirectly based’, Bratton has developed the concept and/or prototype of the ‘stack’ to define the features of ‘a possible new nomos of the earth linking technology, nature and the human.’¹⁵ The stack supports and modulates a kind of ‘social cybernetics’ able to compose ‘both equilibrium and emergence’. As a ‘megastructure’, the stack implies a ‘confluence of interoperable standards-based complex material-information systems of systems, organized according to a vertical section, topographic model of layers and protocols…composed equally of social, human and “analog” layers (chthonic energy sources, gestures, affects, user-actants, interfaces, cities and streets, rooms and buildings, organic and inorganic envelopes) and informational, non-human computational and “digital” layers (multiplexed fiber optic cables, datacenters, databases, data standards and protocols, urban-scale networks, embedded systems, universal addressing tables)’¹⁶.

In this section, drawing on Bratton’s political prototype, I would like to propose the concept of the ‘Red Stack’—that is, a new nomos for the post-capitalist common. Materializing the ‘red stack’ involves engaging with (at least) three levels of socio-technical innovation: virtual money, social networks, and bio-hypermedia. These three levels, although ‘stacked’, that is, layered, are to be understood at the same time as interacting transversally and nonlinearly. They constitute a possible way to think about an infrastructure of autonomization linking together technology and subjectivation.

Virtual money

The contemporary economy, as Christian Marazzi and others have argued, is founded on a form of money which has been turned into a series of signs, with no fixed referent (such as gold) to anchor them, explicitly dependent on the computational automation of simulational models, screen media with automated displays of data (indexes, graphics etc) and algo-trading (bot-to-bot transactions) as its emerging mode of automation¹⁷. As Toni Negri also puts it, ‘money today—as abstract machine—has taken on the peculiar function of supreme measure of the values extracted out of society in the real subsumption of the latter under capital’¹⁸.

Since ownership and control of capital-money (different, as Maurizio Lazzarato remind us, from wage-money, in its capacity to be used not only as a means of exchange, but as a means of investment empowering certain futures over others) is crucial to maintaining populations bonded to the current power relation, how can we turn financial money into the money of the common? An experiment such as Bitcoin demonstrates that in a way ‘the taboo on money has been broken’¹⁹ and that beyond the limits of this experience, forkings are already developing in different directions. What kind of relationship can be established between the algorithms of money-creation and ‘a constituent practice which affirms other criteria for the measurement of wealth, valorizing new and old collective needs outside the logic of finance’?²⁰

Current attempts to develop new kinds of cryptocurrencies must be judged, valued and rethought on the basis of this simple question as posed by Andrea Fumagalli: Is the currency created not limited solely to being a means of exchange, but can it also affect the entire cycle of money creation – from finance to exchange?²¹.

Does it allow speculation and hoarding, or does it promote investment in post-capitalist projects and facilitate freedom from exploitation, autonomy of organization etc.? What is becoming increasingly clear is that algorithms are an essential part of the process of creation of the money of the common, but that algorithms also have politics (What are the gendered politics of individual ‘mining’, for example, and of the complex technical knowledge and machinery implied in mining bitcoins?) Furthermore, the drive to completely automate money production in order to escape the fallacies of subjective factors and social relations might cause such relations to come back in the form of speculative trading. In the same way as financial capital is intrinsically linked to a certain kind of subjectivity (the financial predator narrated by Hollywood cinema), so an autonomous form of money needs to be both jacked into and productive of a new kind of subjectivity not limited to the hacking milieu as such, but at the same time oriented not towards monetization and accumulation but towards the empowering of social cooperation. Other questions that the design of the money of the common might involve are: Is it possible to draw on the current financialization of the Internet by corporations such as Google (with its Adsense/Adword programme) to subtract money from the circuit of capitalist accumulation and turn it into a money able to finance new forms of commonfare (education, research, health, environment etc)? What are the lessons to be learned from crowdfunding models and their limits in thinking about new forms of financing autonomous projects of social cooperation? How can we perfect and extend experiments such as that carried out by the Inter-Occupy movement during the Katrina hurricane in turning social networks into crowdfunding networks which can then be used as logistical infrastructure able to move not only information, but also physical goods?²².

Social Networks

Over the past ten years, digital media have undergone a process of becoming social that has introduced genuine innovation in relation to previous forms of social software (mailing lists, forums, multi-user domains, etc). If mailing lists, for example, drew on the communicational language of sending and receiving, social network sites and the diffusion of (proprietary) social plug-ins have turned the social relation itself into the content of new computational procedures. When sending and receiving a message, we can say that algorithms operate outside the social relation as such, in the space of the transmission and distribution of messages; but social network software places intervenes directly on the social relationship. Indeed, digital technologies and social network sites ‘cut into’ the social relation as such—that is, they turn it into a discrete object and introduce a new supplementary relation.²³

If, with Gabriel Tarde and Michel Foucault, we understand the social relation as an asymmetrical relation involving at least two poles (one active and the other receptive) and characterized by a certain degree of freedom, we can think of actions such as liking and being liked, writing and reading, looking and being looked at, tagging and being tagged, and even buying and selling as the kind of conducts that transindividuate the social (they induce the passage from the pre-individual through the individual to the collective). In social network sites and social plug-ins these actions become discrete technical objects (like buttons, comment boxes, tags etc) which are then linked to underlying data structures (for example the social graph) and subjected to the power of ranking of algorithms. This produces the characteristic spatio-temporal modality of digital sociality today: the feed, an algorithmically customized flow of opinions, beliefs, statements, desires expressed in words, images, sounds etc. Much reviled in contemporary critical theory for their supposedly homogenizing effect, these new technologies of the social, however, also open the possibility of experimenting with many-to-many interaction and thus with the very processes of individuation. Political experiments (se the various internet-based parties such as the 5 star movement, Pirate Party, Partido X) draw on the powers of these new socio-technical structures in order to produce massive processes of participation and deliberation; but, as with Bitcoin, they also show the far from resolved processes that link political subjectivation to algorithmic automation. They can function, however, because they draw on widely socialized new knowledges and crafts (how to construct a profile, how to cultivate a public, how to share and comment, how to make and post photos, videos, notes, how to publicize events) and on ‘soft skills’ of expression and relation (humour, argumentation, sparring) which are not implicitly good or bad, but present a series of affordances or degrees of freedom of expression for political action that cannot be left to capitalist monopolies. However, it is not only a matter of using social networks to organize resistance and revolt, but also a question of constructing a social mode of self-Information which can collect and reorganize existing drives towards autonomous and singular becomings. Given that algorithms, as we have said, cannot be unlinked from wider social assemblages, their materialization within the red stack involves the hijacking of social network technologies away from a mode of consumption whereby social networks can act as a distributed platform for learning about the world, fostering and nurturing new competences and skills, fostering planetary connections, and developing new ideas and values.

Bio-hypermedia

The term bio-hypermedia, coined by Giorgio Griziotti, identifies the ever more intimate relation between bodies and devices which is part of the diffusion of smart phones, tablet computers and ubiquitous computation. As digital networks shift away from the centrality of the desktop or even laptop machine towards smaller, portable devices, a new social and technical landscape emerges around ‘apps’ and ‘clouds’ which directly ‘intervene in how we feel, perceive and understand the world’.²⁴). Bratton defines the ‘apps’ for platforms such as Android and Apple as interfaces or membranes linking individual devices to large databases stored in the ‘cloud’ (massive data processing and storage centres owned by large corporations).²⁵

This topological continuity has allowed for the diffusion of downloadable apps which increasingly modulate the relationship of bodies and space. Such technologies not only ‘stick to the skin and respond to the touch’ (as Bruce Sterling once put it), but create new ‘zones’ around bodies which now move through ‘coded spaces’ overlayed with information, able to locate other bodies and places within interactive, informational visual maps. New spatial ecosystems emerging at the crossing of the ‘natural’ and the artificial allow for the activation of a process of chaosmotic co-creation of urban life.²⁶ Here again we can see how apps are, for capital, simply a means to ‘monetize’ and ‘accumulate’ data about the body’s movement while subsuming it ever more tightly in networks of consumption and surveillance. However, this subsumption of the mobile body under capital does not necessarily imply that this is the only possible use of these new technological affordances. Turning bio-hypermedia into components of the red stack (the mode of reappropriation of fixed capital in the age of the networked social) implies drawing together current experimentation with hardware (shenzei phone hacking technologies, makers movements, etc.) able to support a new breed of ‘imaginary apps’ (think for example about the apps devised by the artist collective Electronic Disturbance Theatre, which allow migrants to bypass border controls, or apps able to track the origin of commodities, their degrees of exploitation, etc.).

Conclusions

This short essay, a synthesis of a wider research process, means to propose another strategy for the construction of a machinic infrastructure of the common. The basic idea is that information technologies, which comprise algorithms as a central component, do not simply constitute a tool of capital, but are simultaneously constructing new potentialities for postneoliberal modes of government and postcapitalist modes of production. It is a matter here of opening possible lines of contamination with the large movements of programmers, hackers and makers involved in a process of re-coding of network architectures and information technologies based on values others than exchange and speculation, but also of acknowledging the wide process of technosocial literacy that has recently affected large swathes of the world population. It is a matter, then, of producing a convergence able to extend the problem of the reprogramming of the Internet away from recent trends towards corporatisation and monetisation at the expense of users’ freedom and control. Linking bio-informational communication to issues such as the production of a money of the commons able to socialize wealth, against current trends towards privatisation, accumulation and concentration, and saying that social networks and diffused communicational competences can also function as means to organize cooperation and produce new knowledges and values, means seeking for a new political synthesis which moves us away from the neoliberal paradigm of debt, austerity and accumulation. This is not a utopia, but a program for the invention of constituent social algorithms of the common.

In addition to the sources cited above, and the texts contained in this volume, we offer the following expandable bibliographical toolkit or open desiring biblio-machine. (Instructions: pick, choose and subtract/add to form your own assemblage of self-formation for the purposes of materialization of the red stack):

— L. Baroniant and C. Vercellone, Moneta Del Comune e Reddito Sociale Garantito (2013), Uninomade.

— M. Bauwens, The Social Web and Its Social Contracts: Some Notes on Social Antagonism in Netarchical Capitalism (2008), Re-Public Re-Imaging Democracy.

— F. Berardi and G. Lovink, A call to the army of love and to the army of software (2011), Nettime.

— R. Braidotti, The posthuman (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013).

— G. E. Coleman, Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012).

— A. Fumagalli, Trasformazione del lavoro e trasformazioni del welfare: precarietà e welfare del comune (commonfare) in Europa, in P. Leon and R. Realfonso (eds), L’Economia della precarietà (Rome: Manifestolibri, 2008), 159–74.

— G. Giannelli and A. Fumagalli, Il fenomeno Bitcoin: moneta alternativa o moneta speculativa? (2013), I Quaderni di San Precario.

— G. Griziotti, D. Lovaglio and T. Terranova, Netwar 2.0: Verso una convergenza della “calle” e della rete (2012), Uninomade 2.0.

— E. Grosz, Chaos, Territory, Art (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012).

— F. Guattari, Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm (Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995).

S. Jourdan, Game-over Bitcoin: Where Is the Next Human-Based Digital Currency? (2014).

— M. Lazzarato, Les puissances de l’invention (Paris: L’empecheurs de penser ronde, 2004).

— M. Lazzarato, The Making of the Indebted Man (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2013).

— G. Lovink and M. Rasch (eds), Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and their Alternatives (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Culture, 2013).

— A. Mackenzie (2013), Programming subjects in the regime of anticipation: software studies and subjectivity in In: Subjectivity. 6, p. 391-405

— L. Manovich, The Poetics of Augmented Space, Virtual Communication 5:2 (2006), 219–40.

— S. Mezzadra and B. Neilson, Border as Method or the Multiplication of Labor (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013).

— P. D. Miller aka DJ Spooky and S. Matviyenko, The Imaginary App (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, forthcoming).

— A. Negri, Acting in common and the limits of capital (2014), in Euronomade.

— A. Negri and M. Hardt, Commonwealth (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009).

— M. Pasquinelli, Google’s Page Rank Algorithm: A Diagram of the Cognitive Capitalism and the Rentier of the Common Intellect(2009).

— B. Scott, Heretic’s Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money (London: Pluto Press, 2013).

— G. Simondon, On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (1958), University of Western Ontario

— R. Stallman, Free Software: Free Society. Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman (Free Software Foundation, 2002).

— A. Toscano, Gaming the Plumbing: High-Frequency Trading and the Spaces of Capital (2013), in Mute.

— I. Wilkins and B. Dragos, Destructive Distraction? An Ecological Study of High Frequency Trading, in Mute.

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1. In the words of the programme of the worshop from which this essay originated: http://quaderni.sanprecario.info/2014/01/workshop-algorithms/ 
2. M. Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative (London: Zer0 Books, 2009); 2009, A. Williams and N. Srnciek, ‘#Accelerate: Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics’, this volume XXX-XXX. 
3. K. Marx, ‘Fragment on Machines’, this volume, XXX–XXX. 
4. Ibid., XXX. 
5. Ibid., XXX. 
6. M. Fuller, Software Studies: A Lexicon (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008); F. Berardi, The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009)  
7. A. Goffey, ‘Algorithm’, in Fuller (ed), Software Studies, 15–17: 15. 
8. Ibid. 
9. Fuller, Introduction to Fuller (ed), Software Studies, 5 
10. L. Parisi, Contagious Architecture: Computation, Aesthetics, Space (Cambridge, Mass. and Sidney: MIT Press, 2013), x. 
11. Ibid., ix. 
12. Marx, XXX. 
13. C. Vercellone, ‘From the crisis to the “commonfare” as new mode of production’, in special section on Eurocrisis (ed. G. Amendola, S. Mezzadra and T. Terranova), Theory, Culture and Society, forthcoming; also A. Fumagalli, ‘Digital (Crypto) Money and Alternative Financial Circuits: Lead the Attack to the Heart of the State, sorry, of Financial Market’ 
14. B. Bratton, On the Nomos of the Cloud (2012). 
15. Ibid. 
16. Ibid. 
17. C. Marazzi, Money in the World Crisis: The New Basis of Capitalist Power 
18. T. Negri, Reflections on the Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics, (2014), Euronomade 
19. Jaromil Rojio, Bitcoin, la fine del tabù della moneta (2014), in I Quaderni di San Precario. 
20. S. Lucarelli, Il principio della liquidità e la sua corruzione. Un contributo alla discussione su algoritmi e capitale (2014), in I Quaderni di san Precario 
21. A. Fumagalli, Commonfare: Per la riappropriazione del libero accesso ai beni comuni (2014), in Doppio Zero 
22. Common Ground Collective, Common Ground Collective, Food, not Bombs and Occupy Movement form Coalition to help Isaac & Kathrina Victims (2012), Interoccupy.net  
23. B. Stiegler, The Most Precious Good in the Era of Social Technologies, in G. Lovink and M. Rasch (eds), Unlike Us Reader: Social Media Monopolies and Their Alternatives (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Culture, 2013), 16–30. 
24. G. Griziotti, Biorank: algorithms and transformations in the bios of cognitive capitalism (2014), in I Quaderni di san Precario; also S. Portanova, Moving without a Body (Boston, MA: MIT Press, 2013 
25. B. Bratton, On Apps and Elementary Forms of Interfacial Life: Object, Image, Superimposition  
26. S. Iaconesi and O. Persico, The Co-Creation of the City: Re-programming Cities using Real-Time User-Generated Content 

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Dehui Chen: This is an idea about a new model of social network, to solve some common problems we have on the current social network platforms, such as data safety, the life span of personal data, distribution of personal data, fake news…this new model can also bring new features that we have never experienced until now.

ANYI network system is a decentralized social network composed by personal data units which is managed by users themselves. The data unit represents the individual of ANYI network, the units and the connections among them constitute the entire network.

General principle: Like physical properties, An individual should have full authority of his/her personal information, including personal data, social relationships, and so on.

Goal: To improve the social network both online and offline by rebuilding the relationships among the individuals, based on personal information units.

Features:

• Individuals manage their personal information by themselves and contact with others directly without using any servers.
• Ensure the security of data storage and transmission by using the asymmetric encryption technology.
• Achieve efficient and reasonable info resource interaction based on personal information units.
• Realize the circulation of reputation, help to spot fake news, amplify the effect of reputation in the real world.
• Realize the circulation of information resource in the social network which to maximize the benefits of social resources.

1. Current Troubles in Social Lives

We are enjoying the excellent benefit and convenience of the rapid development of the Internet and various technologies both online and offline. However there are still many outdated processes and new problems which are followed by the rapid changes.

• Data breaches occur frequently on various network platforms, It has already become a worldwide problem. Most people don’t think it is safe to save and manage important information on social softwares, And “Delete XX” movement also got massive support. Current social softwares only stay at the entertainment level and it is difficult for the social softwares to assist people’s social lives better without getting enough trust.
• Large amount of fake news and vague information on the Internet are seriously bothering us. The bad information spread so fast that we can not protect innocent people such as children from them.
• People identify information based on their own judgment. The limitation of individuals’ judgment gives the fake news much space. Furthermore, the fake news on the internet influences more widely and endless.
• It is an important way for people to get information from real social environment in daily lives. Currently, the information on the internet is disordered, Most of times, people obtain useful information from social environment occasionly. People cannot utilize the resource information in their social environment with high efficiency.
• Crisis of Trust. The Internet makes people’s social scope wider but there is no corresponding credibility support system. People don’t know the credibility of a new friend, so we are bearing the risks of being cheated or losing opportunities.
• It is common to use personal sensitive information (such as name,address, phone number, email…) as keyword to build the the relationships with different institutions. Our sensitive information is spreading widely due to the diversification nowadays.The risk of personal information leakage is high. Correspondingly, the institutions also have to cost on keeping these data safely. Moreover people can not manage the relationships easily.
• Nowadays, Filling out the application forms online or offline is normal to submit personal information. Everyone suffers the process of filling out the forms and waiting in long queues for the clerks to check. It will be worst if some mistakes happen. This incompetent way is wasting so much time again and again.
• In most business models, the customers’ data are stored and managed centralized. that makes individuals exist around various platforms like “fragments”. Personal social information is heavily dependent on the commercial platforms, influenced by the the rules and life cycle of them. Individual autonomy in current information age is rarely noticed.

To solve these above mentioned issues, We strongly believe that the ANYI network system is the best solution.

2. Introduction

Personal information unit is the basic element of ANYI network system. (hereinafter collectively referred to as ‘node’) The nodes are interconnected by peer-to-peer network technology (P2P) to form ANYI social network.

The node is composed of two parts: data and software (processing of data). In order to secure the data, the software part should be subdivided into two layers: intermediate layer and application layer.

The asymmetric cryptography technology is used to ensure the security of data storage and transmission, and the public key is used as the unique ID for the node in ANYI network.

The peer-to-peer network technology is used to realize direct communication among nodes by unified interaction rules, and center server is not needed anymore.

Individuals manage their own personal information autonomously; ANYI community customizes and maintains the interaction rules. The software that obeys the rules can be freely provided by any software vendor. No one can access or use any data without node owner’s permission.

2.1 Data

Personal data are only controlled by the node owner.
Data are independent of the application and users can freely choose applicaions to manage the data.

The data are divided into personal information (personal basic information, resource information, social information, access control, etc.) and ANYI network system setting information. Personal information is stored encrypted, the items is stored in a key-value form and the item-keys are uniformed defined. The owner can store any information on the node, including the information from outside.

ANYI node uses asymmetric cryptography technology to secure data. We also use the public key of the asymmetric cryptography as infividual’s ID at ANYI network. The ID will be used when building new relationships, sending/receiving messages with other nodes, and manage the access control. Moreover, multiple IDs can be derived from the original ID, to satisfy the anonymity requirements fo certain scenarios.

2.2 Intermediate layer

The intermediate layer is responsible for data processing, network interface and application software layer interfaces.

In the aspect of data, the intermediate layer realizes encryption/decryption of data and accesses data by using item-keys; In the aspect of interaction with the network, the common interaction interface of ANYI network should be realized; In the user interface aspect, the intermediate layer encapsulates data and keys to provide basic functional interfaces to the application layer.

2.3 Application Layer

The application layer uses the interfaces provided by the intermediate layer to perform data processing and network interaction, and provides a user-friendly operation interface.

To ensure security, the application layer does neither directly process data and keys, nor interact with the network directly.

2.4 Basic rules of personal nodes

ANYI network system runs on a peer-to-peer network protocol and adheres to the following rules to ensure network communication:

• When a node logins to the network, it broadcasts IP to the network if necessary and refreshes the IP info of the related nodes.
• The IPs are used to send messages to ohter nodes.
• If there is no IP of the target node, or the IP is invalid, the message will be sent by broadcast, The IP info will be updated when a valid response is received.
• The IP info will be auto-maintained if necessary when current node receives request or response.

Information exchange rules between personal nodes:

• Can send message or request proactively and have fault-tolerant processing when communication fails.
• Receives message.
• Synchronizes the updates in the network automatically.
• Responds query requests: Checks the permission and returns the result automatically.

3. Application Scenarios of ANYI Network System

3.1 Social network +

ANYI network system implements social functions by obeying the common interaction rules in the real world. User ID (The public key of the asymmetric cryptography) serves as the core part for the functions.

3.1.1 Establishing Relationships and Sending Messages

The two individuals establish the relationship by exchanging IDs, and manage the authorities and groups by using ID.

Messages for a certain node are encrypted. The sender encrypts the message with the recipient’s ID, a signature generated by the sender’s private key is also attached. The receiver can decrypt the message with his private key and verify the signature to confirm the message is not from a impostor.

3.1.2 Groups

Groups can be created and managed freely.

The group management is also based on IDs. There could be multiple administrators, and rules of the group can be freely customized. There will be no more limit from any platform, such as maximum number limit of members.

The sender uses the hashcode generated by all members’ ID to encrypt group messages, using a multi-signature rule (1-N) with a threshold of 1, so any member who contributed to the hashcode can decrypt the group message.

3.1.3 Management of different types of information

Personal daily life information can usually be divided into the following categories:

• Private information for oneself, such as schedule, memo.
• Instant information shared in a small scopes like family, friends, such as moments.
• Resource information such as business-related, like job opportunities, product discount, etc.

The life circles and targets of the above information are different. ANYI nodes can manage different kinds of information by classification and authority designation for each category.

For resource information, it is necessary to obey appropriate rules so that others can judge if the resource is still avalible. Generally, time, period, location, target people and conditions should be clear. The appropriate rules for different field will not be the same, ANYI community will keep on improving them.

Within the permission scope, the node can obtain real-time information updates of other nodes, and can search with keywords for certain resource information in the personal social network scope. Every node maintains their own node well, post resource to share with family or other scopes. So everyone can get precious resouce information based on trust.

3.1.4 Social network with Reputation

Reputation is an extremely important part of human social activities. Credit management in business has a long history. Personal credit management in the financial industry involves almost every social individual.

However, we don’t have a social product that can help managing and circulating dignified information in the daily lives. Offline people can only use reputation information in their social networks occasionally. People often miss opportunities or suffer losses because they can not get reputation information timely and effectively. This also provides huge space for continued scams and fraudulent business activities.

ANYI network system seeks to achieve the circulation of reputation information:

• Store the reputation info on ANYI node, and share it to social network.
• Relate people’s daily activities with their reputations.

The circulation of reputation can make people in social networks more self-disciplined, enable people to be able to identify a new face by referring to the reputation info from the proper network scope. The circulation of reputation can help to identify and mark the fake news and the creator, can amplify the influence of reputation and can also affect the development of the real society.

3.1.5 Management of Authority

As the amounts of information is increasing so fast that people can not catch up with it. People are losing the control of massive information. Currently we are involved in more and more social relationships. It is necessary for us to start managing information around us.

ANYI node supports flexible authority management which is based on the public keys(ID). We can manage the authority by minimum unit(each information item).

1. Pre-set permissions: The application processes the information according to such permissions. This is suitable for social relationships.

• You can classify various kinds of relationships.
• You can classify different types of information.
• You can set authority for any information (or information category).

1. Temporary authorization: It is for the situations such as the submission of personal information forms to non-friendship organizations.

3.2 Individual-centric new application scenarios

3.2.1 One-click information submission

Submitting personal information by means of paper or electronic forms is a very common routine. This is necessary but cumbersome, and it is easy to become a bottleneck in busy places such as airports. It will be worst if hand mistakes happen.

ANYI network system can improve this interaction. Using ANYI System, an individual can finish the submission by clicking one button.

• The organization prepares the request for ANYI interface. The request contains the specific request items and associated information.
• The individual scan the request with the node app and the app extracts the information from the node and generates the response content for the owner to confirm.
• The individual confirms the content and clicks the confirmation button to approve the submission,then the response content will be transferred to the organization at once.

Advantages:

• Efficient (fast, accurate):
  People can do the submission without filling out their basic information by hand repeatedly. There is nothing to worry about hand mistakes, and we don’t need to wait long in a queue for the clerks to check the papers.
• The interaction records will also retain on the personal node, so that the individual starts to be able to master personal interaction history.
• Organizations also can save costs accordingly.

Standardization:
Users have the right to know why these data are collected and how these data will be used. There should also be regulations to make sure the data are properly collected and used.

3.2.2 Reducing the usage of sensitive information & de-entity membership cards

Once one person has a node It means he has at least one ID that uniquely identifies himself. The ID can be used to establish relationships with organizations in daily life.
Sensitive information such as name, address, phone number, email, etc. are not necessary anymore in such cases. It will become safer because the frequency of sensitive information usage will be significantly reduced. Correspondingly, the organizations side can also save cost on keeping sensitive information.

On the other hand, the ID can take place of the entity membership cards or point cards. It does’n only eliminate the cumbersome card management for individuals, but also saves the costs around card issuance.

3.2.3 Individual-centered use of basic information

At the moment, our basic information is scattered in various organizations such as banks, insurance companies, government departments etc. When the basic information changes, we have to inform the organizations of the change one by one. And because we can not list up all the concerned organizations easily, it is possible that we forget some less important organizations like online shops. So we will be affected correspondingly, and the organizations also suffer the loss caused by the outdated data.

ANYI network system can solve this problem by this way:
The organizations stop storing customers’ data. They request the data from individual nodes if necessary.

• When establishing a relationship, the organization requests the individual’s permission of accessing certain items of data(without collecting the data at the moment).
• When some data changes, node owners just update the node.
• The organization requests the latest data through ANYI network system when necessary. (Personal nodes serve as unique source of personal basic data)

Advantages:

• When personal data changes, the only thing for a person to do is just to update his own node.
• We start to be able to manage the relationships, which means all are stored in our personal nodes. We can also inform concerning organizations of the change easily through ANYI network if necessary. When a certain business service is no longer needed, just disable the permission, so that the corresponding organization can not obtain the data anymore.
• The organizations can reduce the period of holding customers’ information or avoid to keep it, low-risk or no risk on leaking customers’ information. Confidentiality matters the most.
• The organizations can avoid the loss caused by outdated information.

3.2.4 Rationalization of information assets

We are used to more and more information services, such as online music, e-books, online education, insurance and so on. These services are our assets. However, we can not deal with such assets like the tangible assets, such as the exchange of ownerships.

Why can’t we sell/give an e-book or music to others?
In ANYI network system, we can use node ID to declare the ownership of the information assets, and the exchage of the ownerships can be realized through a change of the owner ID.

Let us take the online e-book as an example to explain how to realize it:

When the platform delivers a book to a purchaser A, First the platform uses A’s public key to declare that the e-book belongs to A, and encrypts the e-book with A’s public key. In this way, only A can decrypt the e-book.

When A wants to give/sell the e-book to B, A requests the platform to change the owner to B. After the platform verifies the ownership of A, the platform uses B’s pulbic key to re-declare the owner of the e-book and re-encrypts the e-book with B’s public key.

As a result, the e-book is available for the new owner, meanwhile the former owner of the e-book can not decrypt the e-book anymore.

Similarly, physical assets can also be managed by this mode. Because there is no easy-to-copy feature, the transfer of physical assets is simpler.
Furthermore, the manuals, quality guarantees, etc. of physical products can aslo exist in form of electronic information in ANYI network system. So we can get rid of the management of mass appendant materials of various products.

3.3 The future of individual information management

In addition to the cases above, there should be much more possibilities in all aspects of our daily lives. In current information era. the individuals are fragmented:

• In the field of e-commerce, the shopping histories are kept on the e-shops side. It is difficult for one person to view his all shopping history from a personal perspective.
• In medical aspect, medical institutions have personal medical records, but the individuals don’t . We have no a easy way to collect our health information from the medical institutions.
• In the social network aspect, people have their preference on different social network platforms. To keep necessary relationships, many people have to “seperate” themselves to use multi-social softwares.
• For education, a person may use different schools, websites, apps to learn a certain skill. we can not add up how much time we spent on it. This might be a strong encouragement if we can review the process of studying.

The personal node model of ANYI network system ensures personal priority. Individuals are able to collect all the information regularly, so that we can manage all the transaction information and points status across the organizations in the e-commerce aspect; We can check and use our own health information; We can manage social relationships naturally without being restricted by any third-party platforms; And also, referring clearly to studying our history data, we can adjust how to study in a better way.

On the internet world,the equality with the organizations ensures that we get back our own rights for information. Based on this, I believe everyone will enjoy a better life.

4. Centralization

4.1 Commercial decentralisation

Individual users are not free to migrate data between different social platforms. They cannot freely sell/give out information resources (such as music and e-books) they purchased. Users are enduring the risks of personal information being abused and leaked. Legitimate decision-making changes of commercial companies may affect ordinary users seriously(such as the termination of Email service).
These restrictions and risks on users are the inevitable outcome of the commercial centralization model. Without revolutionary change, the status quo cannot be changed or even prevented from deterioration.

The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) issued by the EU declares the rules for business and organizations and rights for citizens, However, GDPR only restricts enterprises by punishment after bad things happened, there is no effective damage recovery measures.

ANYI network system separates personal data from business platforms, individuals will not be so seriously influenced by the business organizations whatever happen on the business organization side.

The controversies about who is the data owner and who has right to control data also can be settled easily.

4.2 Administrative Centralization

As per mentioned in 3.2.1, we need professional judgement if the items collected are reasonable. We need the corresponding legal protection. The legitimate enforcement agency is needed when the information asset is treated the same as the properties. When keys are lost or stolen, we need a mechanism to help recover the control of our own nodes. ANYI network system also requires a real-name authentication mechanism to meet some certain needs.

In conclusion, we need legal lawmakers and law enforcers to protect and manage the world of information assets. This responsibility should only be taken by the governments.

5 Conclusions

Limited by the development of hardware and technology, the server-serving mode(both the client-sever mode and the browser-server mode) of software applications is the best long term solution. Commercial companies provided the resources that not everyone can afford, such as, storage, computing, security and so on that almost everyone can enjoy the applications easily.
However, In such server-serving structures, almost all the users’ data are stored on the servers. There is no independent existence of individuals on the internet. People are fragments around the platforms and anyone could be heavily influenced by the changes of the center platform, even if the changes are legit. Everyone can not collect all the personal data easily. It is impossible to build a real personal priority internet enviroment. As of now it is hard to say that we can continue to improve well in such condition.

Currently, we have got all the necessary conditions of hardware and technology to go without center-platforms. These are the following:

• The popularity of smartphone has enabled people to have independent storage, computing, management and network interaction capabilities.
• P2P network technology makes it possible for individuals to communicate without the third party.
• Asymmetric cryptography technology proves the security of information storage and transmission from theoretical and practical applications.

ANYI network system hopes to establish a new network that is reliable, persistent, efficient and reasonable to people’s lives.

Photo by z.b.p.

The post ANYI: A Dcentralized Social Network System Constituted by Personal Information Units appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The role of social networks and direct message applications (basically WhatsApp) in the electoral campaign of Jair Messias Bolsonaro is one of the central themes of the new forms of political configuration in Latin America. False news, propaganda, the construction of uncritical common sense and the sowing of hatred are not innovative practices in either political history or war. The attempt to configure passive and malleable subjects has been studied for centuries as a substratum of ideological struggles aimed at capturing the collective social will and directing it for the benefit of corporate interests. What has changed is the vehicle of its propaganda, its directionality and the territory where the circulation of myths and convincing and sensationalized slogans become more effective.

Virality and interactivity have supplanted the historical verticality of political discourse. These have substituted the characteristic downward directionality of the contents proposed by the party, the program and the candidate. Bolsonaro’s campaign was sustained with brutal gestures and relied on mythologies present in the accumulated social fears, much more than on proposals and projects. For a large part of the Brazilian population, especially those with less critical capacity to evaluate content, the intrinsic complexity of public policies is perceived as a convoluted and incomprehensible fiction.

Brazilians have changed the forms of communicational interaction and access to information. The cell phone has become the priority recipient of news exchanges and its inhabitants have access to news from WhatsApp, which has 120 million young and adult users integrated in affinity networks that provide a significant appearance of reliability on what they send and receive. These users represent 80 percent of all Brazilian voters and Bolsonaro’s campaign was fundamentally effective through this way, added to the platform of four social networks; Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

According to a report elaborated by the Latin American Strategic Center of Geopolitics (CELAG), the distribution between recipients of social networks of Bolsonaro, Haddad and Lula shows a clear preponderance of the first one over the other two, even in the sum of both petitioning leaders. The particularity of this data is that the target age of the followers is based on the youngest, the so-called millenials, who have limited exposure to TV, do not listen to radio frequency and the Internet and are informed only through networks segmented by interest groups.

Followers of Social Media networks (in millions of users) during the campaign

A large part of the campaign was configured by consultant experts in algorithms and audience analysis, capable of detecting the deepest emotional fears and rejections that permeate society. Several of these fears were previously inoculated with unusual persistence by hegemonic media, and then targeted at specific segments detected with demographic and statistical precision. The latter ended up constituting the central political activism of the army captain, exonerated in 1988, under the accusation of scheduling bombings at the Adutora del Guandu supply station, which provided drinking water to the municipality of Rio de Janeiro. The subsequent step consisted of using thousands of network influencers (previously detected for having a large number of followers) to geometrically multiply the threats, lies and occasional misrepresentations that could be maximized in the campaign. The final step included the use of robotic applications capable of analyzing the initial big data (provided by the reception trials), and willing to evaluate the success or failure of the fake-news. With that information, analysts were reoriented and repositioned precisely and tightly on the most pampered axes.

The viral circle predisposed to achieve a positive electoral wave to the interests of the Brazilian right was configured from seven agreed upon axes within the Bolsonaro campaign team, in which Steve Bannon, former chief advisor to Donald Trump, participates. Along with him were members of the Brazilian Army’s Electronic Warfare Communications Command (CComGEx), trained in sociology, anthropology, communication and statistics, knowledge available for Tactics and Operational Procedures (TTP), undoubted psychological warfare devices . According to analyst Rodrigo Lentz, Fernando Haddad was illegally monitored by teams led by General Sérgio Etchegoyen, currently a member of the institutional security ministry of the Brazilian presidency.

The chapters of fabricated communicational intoxication, chosen as a priority to delegitimize Fernando Haddad and the PT were the following (1) The existence of a supposed “gay kit”, oriented to sexualize girls and boys, that Haddad would have been distributed in public schools, while he was minister of education in Lula’s government. (2) Appealing to the Venezuelan crisis as the future potential of the direction of a PT government. The diffusion of empty gondolas with the sign of Chavismo was the central image that accompanied this viralization. (3) The spreading of an image of an old woman supposedly attacked by leftist militants (with her face deformed by the blows), when in reality it was a photograph of an actor who had had an accident. (4) Haddad’s alleged defense of incest, denounced by one of the extreme right-wing ideologues, Olavo Carvalho. (5) The alleged intention of the PT to legalize pedophilia. (6) The distribution of a photo of Dilma Rousseff as a member of a Cuban military battalion.

None of these viralizations would be effective if it were not directed specifically to those who have a less critical capacity to deny them or contrast them with reality. This is the role of robots that analyze big data and can orient more effective messages to each particular social segment. Historian Marc Bloch, shot by the Nazis for his status as a Jewish member of the French resistance on June 16, 1944, asked in a 1921 text: “False news, in all its forms, has been part of humanity. How are they born? (…) A falsehood only spreads and amplifies, it only comes to life on one condition, if it can find in the society in which it comes to life in a favorable breeding ground. Unconsciously it allows people to express their prejudices, their hatred, and their fears.” So fake-news is not new. It only demands subjects who accept to believe them in order to accommodate certain installed fears. The basic solution implies the development of critical citizens that are not affected by symbolic manipulations.

After the Second World War, Albert Camus published The Plague. In his last paragraph he stated: “For he knew that this happy crowd ignored what can be read in books, that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears, that it can sleep for decades in furniture, clothes, that it patiently waits in alcoves, cellars, suitcases, handkerchiefs and papers, and that a day may come when the plague, for the misfortune and teaching of men, wakes up its rats and sends them to die in a blissful city, for the misfortune and teaching of men,”. The plague has returned. His name is Bolsonaro; a Macri without marketing and without restraint.

Source: El Ciervo Herido, translated by Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau

Photo by krishna.naudin

The post The Role of Social Media in Bolsonaro’s Irresistible Ascent appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Scuttlebutt is slang for gossip, particularly among sailors. It is also the name of a peer-to-peer system ideal for social graphs, identity and messaging. Scuttlebutt was created by Dominic Tarr, a Node.js developer with more than 600 modules published on npm, who lives on a self-steering sailboat in New Zealand.

Dominic is often offline, but he’s still able to use a social network to communicate with his friends such as James Halliday (a.k.a. substack), who is also often offline. James has also authored hundreds of npm modules, such as Browserify, and is building a shack with his partner Marina on top of 300-year old lava flows in Hawaii.

Dominic and James are a few key figures in a community of eccentric open source hackers gathering in a social network independent from mainstream internet. The unique properties of Secure Scuttlebutt (SSB) make it possible for digital information to spread easily even in the absence of Internet Service Providers (ISP) and the internet’s backbone. What makes that possible is a decentralized protocol based on the mechanics of word of mouth.

Scuttlebutt is decentralized in a similar way that Bitcoin or BitTorrent are. Unlike centralized systems like PayPal or Dropbox, there is no single website or server to connect when using decentralized services. Which in turn means there is no single company with control over the network.

However, Scuttlebutt differs from Bitcoin and BitTorrent because there are no “singleton components” in the network. When accessing the BitTorrent network, for instance, you need to connect to a Distributed Hash Table (DHT, think of it as a huge round table where anyone can come and take a seat). However, to get access to the DHT in the first place, you need to connect to a bootstrapping server, such as router.bittorrent.com:6881 or router.utorrent.com:6881. These are very lightweight servers which simply introduce you to the DHT. They still depend on the existence of ISPs and the internet backbone. Also, those systems are concerned about public information. For instance, with Bitcoin, each peer stores the entire log of all transactions ever sent by anyone.

Secure Scuttlebutt is also different to federated social networks like Mastodon, Diaspora, GNU social, OStatus. Those technologies are not peer-to-peer, because each component is either a server or a client, but not both. Federated social networks are slightly better than centralized services like Facebook because they provide some degree of choice where your data should be hosted. However, there is still trust and dependency on third-party servers and ISPs, which makes it possible for admistrators of those to abuse their power, through content policies, privacy violations or censorship.

In Scuttlebutt, the “mesh” suffices. With simply two computers, a local router, and electricity, you can exchange messages between the computers with minimal effort and no technical skills. Each account in Scuttlebutt is a diary (or “log”) of what a person has publicly and digitally said. As those people move around between different WiFi / LAN networks, their log gets copy-pasted to different computers, and so digital information spreads.

What word of mouth is for humans, Scuttlebutt is for social news feeds. It is unstoppable and spreads fast. Once the word is out (just an arbitrary example) that Apple is releasing a new iPhone model, there is no way to restrict that information from spreading. A person may tell that piece of information to any of their friends, and those friends may in turn spread that information onwards.

With typical gossip, however, information deteriorates as it spreads and eventually becomes harmful rumor. Scuttlebutt on the other hand makes word of mouth securewith cryptography. Each Scuttlebutt account is comprised of simply two things: an append-only diary and private/public asymmetric crypto keys. An account’s identity is its public key. There are no unique usernames, because you can’t guarantee two people in separate places from choosing the same username, much like you cannot forbid the name “John Smith” to be given to a newborn in Canada if it is already taken by another person in Australia.

All information a person has published is registered in their diary. Public messages (like in Twitter) are the most common type of message in a diary, but you’ll also see “I am friends with that person” type of messages. To ‘send’ a private message to someone, I simply record a message in my diary, but encrypt it first, so the message isn’t plainly readable by anyone who gets their hands on a copy of the diary. Authenticity of diaries is preserved in that all diary entries reference the message that was written before, and then is signed. This prevents tampering and makes replication easier.

Every time two Scuttlebutt friends connect to the same WiFi, their computers will synchronize the latest messages in their diaries. Another way of synchronizing information is to connect to a common Scuttlebutt server, known as “pub”, set up by any member in the community. Pubs make information spread faster, and globally, but are totally dispensable. It’s even feasible to exchange latest news through sneakernet, using e.g. USB sticks.

This architecture is built so that network connections accurately represent the social graph and word of mouth. Typically with social networks like Facebook or Twitter, the network connections are centralized with their servers. The network architecture looks completely different to social architecture. Most users don’t care about this because the network architecture is invisible to them. However, it becomes a real problem once an authoritarian government or even the host company itself takes control over the network architecture in ways that disrupt the social architecture. It is not uncommon for a government to shut down a social network in a country for days/weeks, affecting how people communicate with each other. This has happened in Egypt, Cameroon, and Brazil.

With Scuttlebutt, the social graph is the network architecture, with peer-to-peer infrastructure accurately matching peer-to-peer interactions. It makes communication and the spread of information highly resilient, bringing improvements to freedom of speech with modern information technologies.

This peer-to-peer system has existed for more than two years and brought unique challenges and possibilities. For instance, unique usernames are impossible without a centralized username registry. On the other hand, this questions the need for a login system in the first place: why do you need to “enter” into the service? Scuttlebutt will not have a user registration flow, because such thing makes no sense in that world.

So far, the network has received a dedicated social network desktop app, a Soundcloud alternative, a Viewer webapp, and a git layer (putting “distributed” back into “distributed version control”). These work seemlessly together: a person using the git layer to push a commit will record that on their diary, which is visible also in the social network app, for their friends. Currently, the community is using this to “eat their own dog food”, coordinating team work and contributing code all on the same platform, without any intermediate company. GitHub being down will rarely be a problem for them.

The platform is being improved constantly, in areas such as: mobile support, an NPM alternative, WebRTC support for browser peers, and even legal transactions in New Zealand. It has proved to work as a platform setting the requirements and examples for a human-centered social network, as Dominic well described:

I wanted an open platform that anyone could build things on. (…) Also, we couldn’t realistically plan to just sit down and create an app that everyone wants to use, we need many experiments so that one can succeed, therefore we need a decentralized application platform more than we need any given a decentralized application.

To use Scuttlebutt, I recommend reading the ssb handbook.

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