Chapter 4: What are the alternatives?

# Chapter 4: What are the alternatives? ## Outline * Opening gambit: Stephen Levy in 1984 already proclaimed “decentralisation” as the main demand of the hacker ethics. * Start with Aaron Swartz’s ideas on the open web vs O'Reilly's web as platform. * Fediverse (Mastodon, etc.): [See what Roel Roscam Abbing is doing in terms of his Phd on the Fediverse!] * IRC: We are not recommending it as a solution to the contemporary problems of social media – what we argue is that a prime example of alternative possiblities – and a good model to learn from for building better things then what exists today. In fact the massive adoption of IRC today would probably destroy most of the good things we like about it. * Reasons why people might turn to alternatives (by desire, or by necessity): + Srnicek says that advertising as a business model (which is powering half of GAFAM) is volatile, so that such companies will slowly switch to a subscription model, creating a two-tier Internet. + Milton Mueller says that Internet fragmentation might happen (also called Balkanisation, but that is a loaded term) - so that not all US capitalist services will be available everywhere all the time – as it is in fact true already today in places like China, etc. + Privacy discussions for data sovereignty? + Driven by network effects and peer pressure? → If alternatives will have more users. + Declining US hegemony and foreign policy would lead to regulation such as banning US social media monopolies from more countries? * Gossip protocols: communication for a disconnected world (Islands on the Net)? * Conclude with the notion that history is change, so something else will surely happen, platforms are not forever. This case study does *not* necessarily recommend IRC as a medium of communication for activists, but rather seeks to put forward some theses on the history of technology that could be found useful in certain situations. ## From @Maxigas2017c However, it is known from seminal studies of contemporary peer production communities that **FLOSS [^2] developers** [@Coleman2012a], **hackerspace members** [@Maxigas2015a], **Wikipedia editors** [@Broughton2008a] and **Anonymous hacktivists** [@Dagdelen2012a] use primarily IRC for everyday backstage communication. While the first group has always been on IRC, the latter three adopted it after the apparent demise of the medium. **“Why these contemporary user groups – widely considered as disruptive innovators and early adopters – stick to a museological chat technology despite its obvious limitations within the current technological landscape?”** Currently popular social networking platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, offer similar features and appear to be a more obvious choice. *I propose that while IRC use can seem retrograde, it is actually a critical technology adoption practice that empirically evades, and analytically highlights the pitfalls of mainstream social media monopolies.* … *The systematic study of historical cases may contribute to the refinement of a taste for critical technology adoption practices in communities who wish to keep control over the technologies that mediate their social relations.* An appreciation of critique and recuperation in technological cycles may help to further technological sovereignty [@Hache2014d] over longer time frames, where local efforts could potentially become part of capitalist regimes of oppression and exploitation over time. A corollary observation is that technical features may result in crucially different technological affordances depending on their context of use: this shows that pure techniques should never be promoted or rejected in themselves. … These relatively sophisticated user groups benefit from the simplicity, flexibility and open architecture of the medium, which allows them to customise it to their needs. Conversely, most Internet users are used to be served by corporate social media platforms that cater to their needs effortlessly. The contrast between the two approaches to technology adoption begs the question **whether it is more desirable to work for the democratisation of knowledge or merely the democratisation of technology**. *The lack of backlogs helped to build technological sovereignty for Internet users for a decade and later sheltered peer producers from the capitalist requirements of exploitation and repression.* Those who care about IRC had to navigate a terrain of changing social conditions – including rifts in the technological landscape and paradigm shifts in political economy – which recontextualised the significance of technical features and limitations. The contemporary use of IRC is based on properties and patterns of the medium that were commonplace in the 1990s but were superseded by more capitalist media since then. Therefore, it can be conceptualised as a *time machine* which brings past technological and political conditions to the present, with surprising consequences. [^8] ## References Haché, Alex. 2014. "Technological Sovereignty." *Passarelle* 11 (11): 165--171. <http://www.coredem.info/rubrique48.html>. Levy, Steven. 1984. *Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution*. New York, NY: Anchor Press, Doubleday. Mueller, Milton. 2017. *Will the Internet Fragment?: Sovereignty, Globalization and Cyberspace*. Digital Futures. Polity Press.