All disruptive technologies upset traditional power balances, and the Internet is no exception. The standard story is that it empowers the powerless, but that’s only half the story. The Internet empowers everyone. Powerful institutions might be slow to make use of that new power, but since they are powerful, they can use it more effectively. Governments and corporations have woken up to the fact that not only can they use the Internet, they can control it for their interests. Unless we start deliberately debating the future we want to live in, and the role of information technology in enabling that world, we will end up with an Internet that benefits existing power structures and not society in general...
Eaten by the Internet
This book makes internet infrastructure visible as a force of political power, which is transforming the social world, from the bottom up—through fifteen chapters contributed by a global set of researchers, activists, and techies. We are living a unique moment: internet technologies are the default infrastructure for society, not just how we communicate but also how we organise our social life, politics, and economy, all the way down to our material environments, like cities. Our world is eaten by the internet. This means that those who control the internet control the bounds of public speech, economic production, social cohesion, and politics, making its infrastructure a core political terrain in the networked age. The book’s chapters cover a wide set of topics, spanning from the global politics of content moderation by internet infrastructure to the colonialism inherent in the race to plug the moon, from the harms wrought by blockchain companies in rural America to the particularities of online censorship across Asia. The chapters take on thorny topics, discussing power consolidation in the advertisement and cloud industry, the role of internet infrastructure in the war in Ukraine, and tech’s environmental impact—amongst others. In doing so, this book roots contemporary technology debates in the politics of internet infrastructure and urges us to ask how can we ensure our infrastructures sustain us, rather than consume us?
The Internet Is Making You Less Free
Our current age is defined by the internet. The internet—a technology that allows the decentralized, globalized dissemination of information—has become so
Opinion | Who Should Own the Internet? (Published 2014)
The destruction of privacy widens the existing power imbalance between the ruling factions and everyone else.
The Internet Transition
The Internet is allowing us to build a richer, more complex society but the way in which we Internet today is failing to support the governance systems that a more complex world requires. I take a look at why these issues are related, try to develop an intuition for a way forward, and point at the emerging field that is coming together to build that future.
The Internet Transition
The Internet is allowing us to build a richer, more complex society but the way in which we Internet today is failing to support the governance systems that a more complex world requires. I take a look at why these issues are related, try to develop an intuition for a way forward, and point at the emerging field that is coming together to build that future.
The Guardian view on the freedom of the internet: it’s under attack around the world | Editorial
Editorial: The net is a powerful weapon, and governments don’t want it in the hands of their critics
Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future
"For all the informational convenience the internet offers, it is deeply flawed. How can it be improved? Writer Ben Tarnoff proposes one possibility in this intriguing book, which urges the development of 'a public lane on the information superhighway.' It's worth checking out for yourself." – Seth MacFarlane Why is the internet so broken, and what could ever possibly fix it? In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet is broken, he argues, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda because it is profitable to do so. But the internet wasn't always like this—it had to be remade for the purposes of profit maximization, through a years-long process of privatization that turned a small research network into a powerhouse of global capitalism. Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and which set in motion the crises that consume it today. The solution to those crises is straightforward: deprivatize the internet. Deprivatization aims at creating an internet where people, and not profit, rule. It calls for shrinking the space of the market and diminishing the power of the profit motive. It calls for abolishing the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and the other giants that dominate our digital lives and developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control. To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone’s behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It's time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now.
Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future
"For all the informational convenience the internet offers, it is deeply flawed. How can it be improved? Writer Ben Tarnoff proposes one possibility in this intriguing book, which urges the development of 'a public lane on the information superhighway.' It's worth checking out for yourself." – Seth MacFarlane Why is the internet so broken, and what could ever possibly fix it? In Internet for the People, leading tech writer Ben Tarnoff offers an answer. The internet is broken, he argues, because it is owned by private firms and run for profit. Google annihilates your privacy and Facebook amplifies right-wing propaganda because it is profitable to do so. But the internet wasn't always like this—it had to be remade for the purposes of profit maximization, through a years-long process of privatization that turned a small research network into a powerhouse of global capitalism. Tarnoff tells the story of the privatization that made the modern internet, and which set in motion the crises that consume it today. The solution to those crises is straightforward: deprivatize the internet. Deprivatization aims at creating an internet where people, and not profit, rule. It calls for shrinking the space of the market and diminishing the power of the profit motive. It calls for abolishing the walled gardens of Google, Facebook, and the other giants that dominate our digital lives and developing publicly and cooperatively owned alternatives that encode real democratic control. To build a better internet, we need to change how it is owned and organized. Not with an eye towards making markets work better, but towards making them less dominant. Not in order to create a more competitive or more rule-bound version of privatization, but to overturn it. Otherwise, a small number of executives and investors will continue to make choices on everyone’s behalf, and these choices will remain tightly bound by the demands of the market. It's time to demand an internet by, and for, the people now.
The one and future internet
The internet has become inextricably entangled into our economies, cultural and social lives. We stand on the brink of the next technological revolution, in which the internet of things transforms ...
The Internet is a surveillance state | CNN
Bruce Schneier says our surveillance state is efficient beyond the wildest dreams of George Orwell, and consumers are given little chance to opt out
The future of the open internet — and our way of life — is in your hands
There are a lot of scary things happening these days, but here’s what keeps me up late at night. A handful of corporations are turning our open internet into this: These corporations want to lock down the internet and give us access to nothing more ...
How We Can Make the Internet Helpful Again
Amid an infodemic of misinformation and manipulation, it feels like the Internet uses us more than we use it. Taking back control is possible.
Please Let the Internet Die
Online spaces are captured by oligarchs and saturated with slop—and they’re exacerbating humanity’s worst impulses. It’s time to start over.
Society Desperately Needs An Alternative Web
In a world of rampant technology, and what will be the future of our planet, it is inflicting harms in the very fabric of society who depends on it. Is it too late to steer its path towards an internet intended to free information, preserve our privacy and be accountable to the needs of humanity?
What happened to the fight for the Internet? -- Dustycloud Brainstorms
At the moment I am writing this, bad internet bills are being proposed across the US, Canada, Europe, and the UK. They're using the usual tactics: they claim they're fighting for kids or fighting security risks, but in general, that's what surveillance and censorship bills have always claimed.
Is this a viable theory of change that points to an actual coherent vision for the future of a safe internet? There’s a lot of poor theories of change in current legislation on both sides of the aisle. Who is championing public utility moderation as an alternative to panopticon age gating?
Tynan Purdy ⁂
More and more I think moderation as a whole should be publicly funded. Lots of institutions providing lots of diverse moderation services would unlock product creators and communities to thrive safely.