Who Owns the Future? by Jaron Lanier
Author:Jaron Lanier [Lanier, Jaron]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: General, Social Science, Business & Economics, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯), Future Studies, Computers, E-Commerce, Internet
ISBN: 9781451654998
Google: rORuxPh_IG4C
Amazon: 1451654960
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2013-05-07T00:00:00+00:00
PART SIX
Democracy
CHAPTER 16
Complaint Is Not Enough
Governments Are Learning the Tricks of Siren Servers
A revolutionary narrative is common in digital politics. Broadly speaking, that narrative counterpoises the inclusiveness, quickness, and sophistication of online social processes against the sluggish, exclusive club of old-fashioned government or corporate power. It’s a narrative that unites activists in the Arab Spring with Chinese and Iranian online dissidents, and with tweeters in the United States, Pirate Parties in Europe, nouveau high-tech billionaires, and “folk hero” rogue outfits like WikiLeaks.
That particular idea of revolution misses the point about how power in human affairs really works. It cedes the future of economics and places the entire burden on politics.
In our digital revolution, we might depose an old sort of dysfunctional center of power only to erect a new one that is equally dysfunctional. The reason is that online opposition to traditional power tends to promote new Siren Servers that in the long run are unlikely to be any better.
Also, it’s silly to think that only a particular sort of activist will benefit from a technology. It’s not as though traditional power structures have been sealed in stasis while digital networking has risen. Instead, old forms of power have been gradually melded into highly effective, modern Siren Servers.
A modern, digitally networked, national intelligence agency, such as the CIA/NSA/NRO complex in the United States, illustrates the trend. A visit to one of these organizations feels very much like a visit to the Googleplex or a major high-tech finance venture. The same sorts of cheery recent PhDs from top schools cavort in an airy and playful environment with lots of glass and excellent coffee. Spymaster Siren Servers thrive in all countries by now. We tend to hear more about the excesses of foreign ones in China or even Britain, but the trend is universal.
Nations increasingly recast themselves as Siren Servers in other ways as well. China, Iran, and to varying degrees all other nations wish to be the ultimate masters of digital information flow. The clichés are so familiar that you can fill in the blanks. Developing country X bans certain websites, or filters the Internet for certain words, but courageous citizens and stalwart Silicon Valley companies provide sneaky ways to contravene those restrictions. Or: Rich country Y spies on all its citizens online even though it is a democracy, in the hopes of catching terrorists.
It’s easy to motivate a coalition in opposition to control freakery in digital statesmanship, because democracy advocates and network entrepreneurs hate it equally. While there have been some interesting challenges to state power, particularly in the Arab Spring, elsewhere it hasn’t been so easy for such coalitions to have much of an effect. I suspect that the role of digital networking in the Arab Spring was a novelty effect.* When governments engage in the Siren Server game, they get good at it fast. (It appears that governments are getting better at getting ahead of citizen cyber-movements than commercial schemes, which consistently outwit regulators.)
*Since I wasn’t there, I will not take a position on whether Silicon Valley tech really played an essential role.
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