The paradox of corporate platforms as tools of social revolution

Excerpted from Becky Hogge, who in the full article asks, could there be another way?

“The web tools of the Arab renaissance are very far from those of the cyber-utopians. Facebook is a hierarchy, not a network. Twitter is a hierarchy, not a network. Gmail is a hierarchy, not a network. Yes, those of us who use these tools are “networked”: we are, as the utopians would say, loosely joined. But we are also fused to the corporate giants that provide and profit from these tools, through whose buzzing servers our intimate or banal exchanges pass.

Arbor Networks, itself a giant in the world of network security, estimates that about 60% of all web traffic terminates at about 150 companies, and 30% of all web traffic terminates at about thirty companies: including Google, Facebook and Twitter. These US corporations are the hypergiants, the new intermediaries or gatekeepers, and they are beginning to dominate the net.

The Arab awakening that was inspired in the same week as Amazon wielded its own weapon is to some the next major realisation of the hacker-utopian ideal. The fact that the vigorous protest movements in north Africa that have written themselves into the history of their societies are, in their cyber aspect at least, fuelled by three US corporations may matter less to participants facing an authoritarian power-structure of another kind. But as they develop further, the limits of these virtual “pseudo-public spaces” are bound to become more apparent.

It was against the corporate transformation and undermining of public space, detailed by Naomi Klein in her millennial polemic No Logo, that John Perry Barlow’s “citizens of the future” hoped the net would push. Instead, a technology that gave citizens the ability to retrieve public space and public discourse from corporate control has turned into something beyond the worst imaginings of Klein’s anti-globalisation movement: a vehicle of corporate hypergiants possessed of unmatched efficiency in selling back to citizen-consumers their own expression and desire.”

How to explain that, despite corporate control, state censorship, and other obvious limitations, they were nevertheless the communication tools of choice for the new generation of young activists?

The answer is that we must distinguish between the corporate ownership, and the surviving reality of the peer to peer socialization that these networks create. One does not need a ‘pure’ p2p technical network for such socialization to occur.

This is expressed in the concept by Joss Hands, in his recent book, @ is for Activism, which speaks of ‘recognition networks’:

“What characterises this digitally mediated activism? I describe in my recent book ‘@ is For Activism: Dissent, Resistance and Rebellion in a Digital Culture’ a particular form that I refer to as a ‘quasi-autonomous recognition network’ (QARN). The idea conveys the patterns that modern digital networks enable in the forms and practices of activism, and that I believe have been very much in evidence over recent months. By using the Internet to communicate and organise, activists are able to leverage two of its key features: its distributed architecture and its scale-free topology.

Firstly, distribution refers to the anyone-to-anyone, or many-to-many, horizontal communications protocols that the Internet is built upon, and which support its openness and robustness. There are hierarchical elements that present points of vulnerability, such as the domain name system, but so long as the network is not decapitated this is not an impediment to the experience and routes of distribution. Secondly, the Internet is a scale-free network, which means there are no limits to the number of nodes that can connect to each other. This means that despite its general horizontal character, when certain nodes become connected enough they can function in ways not dissimilar to a broadcast medium, but without being restricted to a central point of broadcast.

However, digital networks are not simply parsing binary code, but are enabling communication. The Internet’s two-directional, or rather multidirectional, digital flows are entwined with dialogical human communications via text, image and sound. All natural language contains sets of validity claims that are invoked in acts of verbal communication. Claims to truth, truthfulness, rightness and comprehensibility are raised in most speech acts. These claims pertain to all manner of statements, all of which are directed at interlocutors with the aim of convincing them as to whether a claim about the world is true, the speaker is being honest or if an imperative to act is justified. In accepting, or rejecting, any particular proposition, speakers and listeners, or writers and readers, inherently recognise the validity, not only of their claims, but also the rights of each other to make them, to accept them or act on them.

To put it bluntly: we speak, we discuss, we decide and we act – in so doing, we form bonds of recognition, both in terms of what we agree about and in the recognition of our differences. This is what Jürgen Habermas describes as communicative action. It is therefore also inevitably imbedded in the flows and exchanges, the links and connection, of digital networks. When we put communicative action and distributed networks together, opportunities to engage in dialogue, to come to agreement and to act necessarily scale up. Because of the size of the Internet you are much more likely to find someone who does agree with you than if you are harassing passers by on a street corner. And of course, online, the more people who cluster together in agreement, the more likely they are to attract others who agree with them, exponentially.

This is how I imagine a recognition network: I say quasi-autonomous because the actors, while bound together with agreement on certain things, will disagree on others, so clusters will be identifiable with particular agendas, but will still be transversally connected across the network as a whole – these networks are somewhat autonomous, but only in relative terms. The QARNs are not limited in scale, or by orthodox or formal structures or institutional constraints, but they operate in and through the dynamic flows of communication constitutive of digital networks. In operating ‘across borders’, so to speak, they are also augmenting and supplementing concrete relations, given that the Internet is now so interwoven into everyday life to be largely inseparable from it.”

7 Comments The paradox of corporate platforms as tools of social revolution

  1. AvatarTom Crowl

    I don’t think I’m the best explainer… at least not in a short form. In trying to explain in my long-winded way my own development, why I think its a key… and the reason for it in a series of comments on Venessa Miemis’ very fine blog “Emergent by Design”…

    She summarized my meanderings with this:

    “…are you trying to say there needs to be a p2p network controlled by its users and not governments or corporations, and that transactions should be able to be made via this network with no transaction fee?”

    And, of course… YES! That’s exactly what I’ve been saying.

    Except to add that the pragmatic model for that is already designed… and in preliminary form… BUILT.

    Here’s a post written about 3 years ago when building prototype:

    Why Chagora … written 5/31/08
    http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-chagora.html

    And a Newer One:
    Decision Technologies: Currencies and the Social Contract
    http://culturalengineer.blogspot.com/2010/07/decision-technologies-currencies-and.html

    (Money, like advertising and torture devices are DECISION technologies… and operate at a very fundamental level to steer human decision. Viewing currencies in this light has utility.)

    Demo http://www.Chagora.com
    LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/culturalengineer

    While my Commons-dedicated Account method… (and it IS a specific method)was originally conceived out of a desire to address issues in political fundraising and for the networking of very small contributions…

    THE SAME MECHANISM IS VIABLE FOR ALL TRANSACTIONS!

    AND can undercut PayPal and all similar while offering capabilities they cannot.
    But there are very important issues involved with how such a system is implemented and the nature of its ownership (which must be universal but in specific ways).

    I believe there’s a critical opportunity that won’t be open long… to at least begin to make changes in the structure of finance, money and credit-creation generally… to de-centralize at least a part of that process.

    And I’d like to suggest why a GENERAL UTILITY Internet Wallet under Commons control and ownership has a vital role to play in accomplishing those ends. Ends that may never be reached by request or accident at this stage… especially if they are dependent upon a positive response from the same Corporatist mindset you refer to. They must be intentionally designed and implemented… and come into existence alongside (but not in direct opposition to) existing structures. (in my opinion… which sorely needs feedback).

    And I know I have to have some responsibility in this… whether some personality quirk… or simply the inability to get out and meet people face-to-face…

    The evolution of television provides an example of how a ‘hard’ technology… which COULD have done a lot more to open up politics, community, and civic life generally… has instead made politics ridiculously expensive… ALL because of the ‘soft’ technologies around it (first laws and regulation… finally simply cultural acceptance and forgetting)… ultimately becoming a sea of marketing to the ‘lizard brain’ and vastly INCREASING the cost of civic participation instead of reducing it.

    I’d like to explain why this is a way of preventing that from happening in this vital landscape… and its global potentials.

    But I think this is a very important model. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t. Here’s my problem… I know I could be wrong… But I think I may be right! This landscape is rapidly taking shape and once that happens inertia makes some changes very difficult. I feel like I’m running against a clock. But unless I can find out that I’m wrong I’m pretty much stuck in this race. And if I’m right… I feel rather bad that I haven’t been able to run faster. Its a dilemma.

  2. AvatarRichard C Adler

    The usual analogy of the shopping mall seems appropriate here: an owned space, often heavily monitored and controlled (no unauthorized solicitations or public notices, etc), and yet frequently used by young people and other segments of a community as if it was civic space.

    Any of us reading this blog would be instantly aware of this space’s limitations–before even setting foot there–but that doesn’t mean those limitations are apparent to those actually using it.

    Add to that the fact that the platforms are there. For all the talk of alternative platforms, I suspect these activists would point out those alternatives lack both the ease-of-use and the pervasiveness of corporate platforms. And when the demonstration is already assembling and protests have begun, one reaches for the easiest and most available tool to hand.

    One probably doesn’t have time to learn to use anything else, much less convince acquaintances and strangers to adopt something they’ve never used before, perhaps even as the momentum of a public demonstration is already getting underway. Yes, there may be issues of corporate control or state censorship, but the advantages of the platform may still make it the least worst available option.

    This is not to say we shouldn’t try to promote and encourage the adoption of non-corporate alternatives. But young activists may have very different priorities than those of us on the sidelines.

  3. AvatarPoor Richard

    Richard,

    Thanks for reminding me of that shopping mall analogy. What a ubiquitous metaphor of our modern cargo-cult societies.

    But imagine with me: we drive up to a typical-looking mall, park, and go in. Just inside the door is an organic, local-sourced fruit and veggie stand (perhaps an annex of a larger farmers market in town). Surprised, we ask the attendant how they can afford the rent in this mall, eyeballing a boutique opposite. She explains that the whole mall is a cooperative. She pays two percent of her gross as rent. You say, “But two percent of your gross can’t be that much.” She explains that each year all the co-op members have an opportunity to renegotiate their rents. Some members like her don’t pay nearly as much rent as others but the other co-op members place a value on the customer base the veggie stand attracts to the mall.

    There is no good reason that Facebook or Second Life should be the only malls in town. On the contrary–there is every reason that there should be cooperative p2p malls–awesome (sick?) malls that will attract young activists from all over the county.

  4. AvatarStephen

    I am knew to the P2P community and feel it is a great theory that is in deep need of discussion. I want to add a key feature I feel that sheds some angle on this topic. I really enjoy the reference of capitalist technology being used in revolutions and though it is ironic to the corporations that public space is being reclaimed, what I really enjoy seeing is the dialectics of the capitalist economy creating the tools that are used to revolt against itself.

  5. AvatarRichard C Adler

    Poor Richard,

    That’s a very worthy idea. And one that doesn’t require the replacement of malls as people already know them (a next to impossible feat) so much as it adds a new kind of mall to those already existing in the community.

    The challenge, of course, would lie in convincing the community to embrace that mall as their own. Not necessarily to the exclusion of the malls they already know, but enough to make the cooperative mall a success.

    I sometimes wonder if what P2P really needs is a new breed of marketing consultant, who knows how to promote P2P ideas convincingly in every circle of a community, and do so in an ethical and transparent way. Not that P2P doesn’t have articulate and appealing advocates already, but there’s much progress yet to be made in reaching out to the average person in the street.

    That requires marketing, but not marketing as we tend to know it today (and yet, a marketing that could provide a worthy challenge to it).

  6. AvatarPoor Richard

    Richard,

    Our mall was originally just an analogy for Facebook or Twitter, but then in both our minds it became a literal mall. Interesting!

    P2P could definitely use some marketing and PR people one of these days. When I can control my contrarian impulses I can hit some pretty good PR licks in print, but I’m not big on face time with people. If you want to start a P2PR company I’ll have to telecommute. 😉

Leave A Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.