Internet Social Contract (Part One)

1. The Right

If there are rights on the internet, they proceed from its purpose. The purpose of the internet is to share information; therefore, users have a right to share information. This right is natural because the purpose of the internet is intrinsic to its design.

2. The Original State

In the beginning there was the Department of Defense, and it was the bringer of technology and devastation. Fearing the coming winter, the Department of Defense sought out computer scientists and asked them for a new edge. It was then, in a place called California, that the internet was born; and it was made by computer experts for computer experts. The Department of Defense saw this and said, It is good; and it shared the internet with Man after fifteen years.

It was anarchy then. Not all sites had friendly names, so clunky link directories guided web traffic. Socio-politically speaking, this climate has a few anarchistic attributes.

1. The internet was less commercial because the population of skilled users was low.
2. The internet was potentially anonymous because web handles weren't tethered to a real identity.
3. Internet users had practically uninhibited access to content because most sites didn't have security, and most secure sites could be hacked.

3. The Signing

A social contract is an understanding, whether tacit or constitutional, between citizens and their government. The citizens sacrifice freedoms, and in exchange the government maintains the rights of the citizens. (See Hobbes, Locke, etc. for more)

The governments of the internet in this theoretical transposition are the sites that provide users services. The online organization of political power mirrors the Chomskian organization of power ruling the real world, specifically in places internet access is common. Citizens are users of these state-like sites. The citizens' real-world parallel is the post-industrial consumer.

The internet social contract has already been signed (well, no one signs things any more, so people haven't signed as much as clicked the contract's Agree button): users have given up anonymity and free mobility for services that let them exchange information more effectively.

Social networking software tethers identity, and internet actions are more easily tracked now that accounts across the web can be integrated (eg Facebook posts that I've listening on turntable.fm). And when power changed hands, the economic exclusivity inherent in things like paywalls began to segregate web traffic. These are the signs; the contract is signed.

4. The Contract

Facebook is contractual. Users abandon anonymity to redefine themselves with a feed of memes and aphorisms. Nothing they do is anonymous. Instead, it is linked to the profile they've created, the past they've chronicled, the posts they've approved. And with Facebook integration on the rise, the development of a cohesive online reputation is inevitable.

And reputation is power.

Reputation determines web traffic, which determines cultural influence and ad revenue. In this online surreality where culture is currency, cultural power is the only intrinsic power. Ad revenue translates to real world power and connects web power to real power.

But more often, real power is converted to web power, not the other way around. Internet marketplaces are the most obvious place to exchange real objects for real and digital returns, but new hardware like VR goggles and Twine, coupled with QR codes, will give more real world actions a digital analog.

The status quo is being extended to the net. No one wanted a revolution.

Hence my earlier choice of the word surreality. The internet has been integrated into the real world, nothing but a nice heads-up-display of the same old stuff, not at all what the chypher-punks dreamt in their emails almost twenty years ago, when the net was fresh.

2.3.4. What emerges from this is unclear, but I think it will be a form of anarcho-capitalist market system I call "crypto anarchy." (Voluntary communications only, with no third parties butting in.) --- The Cyphernomicon

Continued in Part Two . . .