Internet Social Contract (Part Two)

(Continued from Part One)

5. The Future of Revolution

Just as corporate power has been transferred to the internet, so too has the internet become a part of political change. China has been handling this friction for years, and the Arab Spring was only the first foam of this new wave of revolution. The protesters used the internet mainly as a tool for organization and press, agreeing to the terms of Twitter and Facebook in an effort to void their violated contract with the real-world state. But as power moves to the net, so will revolution.

It's only fair to address anarchists and crazies at this point because there hasn't been a full-blown political revolution on the internet yet, but even with a smaller audience, there's still much to say.

Users can opt not to sign any contracts, browse with Tor, and hack til curiosity's contented. This stateless contingent is not dead. Wikileaks sparked the closest thing to a net war when it leaked diplomatic cables, challenging the real world status quo, and endured the ensuing backlash, which disrupted the net's status quo. The post-leak politics proved hackers are at least as powerful as moneyed sites.

And hackers, who largely inhabit the aforementioned world of .onion addresses and BlackNets, simultaneously maintain a secure presence in web forums and the mainstream media by relying on pseudonymity, the employment of multiple fake identities, switched on and off at will to mask real-world identity. The cypher-punks used remailers to achieve pseudonymity, and everybody is free to create a second Google account when they logout of their first.

After watching only two YouTube videos and searching two other terms, this fake identity has personal search results that differ from the ones below, where I've selected to hide personal results (The selected globe in the top right, if you can see).

Integration has made this easier. I can create an account for Dan Cooper, fill out his profile, watch a few YouTube videos, search a few terms, and things will begin to move automatically. New videos and searches will be suggested; friends from his hometown will be suggested. The account will be bombarded with relevant adsense.

Cloned accounts can be created at other sites and soon a new person will begin to form, purely digital.

Creating a fake identity on Facebook explicitly violates their Terms of Service, confirming the exchange of anonymity for services proposed in Part One.

6. Life in Public

The anime Serial Experiments Lain explores the possibility of a digital life that creates a real-life analog (the inverse of current human behavior). Halfway through the series, the protagonist, Lain, learns she was originally digital and her physical existence is an extension of her digital locus. She then assumes the abilities a digital life would have: harnessing digital devices' hardware, saving herself to bot-net computers, and erasing the internet data so many people believe immortal.

But, most people aren't contented by speculation on the creation of a digital life not tethered to a body. Most people want to immortalize themselves, as they physically exist, online. So, they dump the data that defines them into blanks on social-networking sites in hopes of escaping a real emptiness, or even real mortality.

These users don't realize the digital world is not without death. As mentioned before, data can be erased; but online death is not inevitable. It's either murder or suicide.

Domain names can be cancelled and web time-machine can be duped. Brad Troemel's Tumblr, Jogging, was destroyed by suicide when the project Assembly violated Tumblr's terms of service by threatening web violence (DDoS) against other sites. (An example of justice on a contractual internet)

But stories of users like Breit Bart, whose web brand continues despite his death, still encourage people to escape the inevitable by putting themselves on the internet.

Hedonistic escapism is nothing new in cultural criticism. Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace have already addressed the special escape television offers.

In a way though, computers are worse because they trick users into thinking something has been achieved, when in reality nothing has changed.