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.

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 . . .