The Politics of the (Inter)Net
Ten years ago, when the Internet started to go public after years of restriction to military, academic and governmental activities, things were nice, simple, and easy. Or so it seems now, with the benefit of hindsight. Numerous people took to the Net with great enthusiasm, and there was a lot of talk about empowerment of the individual and of golden opportunities for community-building.
At this stage, Governments - at least in the 'West' - thought of the Internet as mostly harmless, and were even mildly enthusiastic. The corporate world was hardly interested, since it could not figure out how to make money out of a free system. Microsoft's Bill Gates himself declared the Internet to be a temporary fad. Even the US military, which had funded the early development of the network, loathed its openness and lack of security. For a few years, it seemed that the not-for-profit sector - Civil Society - had the net almost all to itself: This was "the short summer of the Internet" - to quote theorist Geert Lovink.
But by the mid-nineties things had changed fast. It seemed that money could and would be made out of 'intangibles' after all. The 'new economy' was heralded and promised us riches and a long boom.
Instead 'dotcommania' and 'dotcomcrash' followed each other in quick succession. However, business was on the Net to stay, even though governments grew wary of the 'anarchy' allegedly prevailing on the Net. Politicians, despite knowing little about these new technologies, talked up various threats - 'kiddieporn' being the most well-known - to call for more surveillance and control. Various security agencies have done the same, instilling fear of net-based terrorism. To the powers that be in the political and corporate realm, the Internet looked like it was getting out of control - their control.
Things were growing fast, as connectivity spread over the planet, and bandwidth expanded exponentially. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) came to be seen as the symbol, if not the very core, of globalization. We were now living in a "networked" or an "information society", underwritten by a "knowledge economy". The ability to adapt to the new platform was seen as crucial. However, both corporate and government bodies proved worse at it than many individuals and grass-roots groups.
Especially after September 11 'control' is the key word for the authorities, and big stick methods, such as increasing surveillance responsibilities for service providers, and long prison sentences for "hackers" are being imposed; governments and security agencies hate the unfettered flow of information and communication. But the net (that is the people behind the net) is by nature averse to control and, in the well-worn phrase about the network structure of the net, "treats censorship as damage and routes around it".
In the meantime, the corporate world struggles with its twin aims of protecting its copyright and intellectual property, and enhancing ever further the return to their shareholders and 'brand value'. These are all threatened by the ubiquitous digital reality of perfect, cheap, and easily transmissible copying - jeopardising their super-profits and monopoly rent.
Business, governments, and all in positions of authority, fear the socio-political consequences of a technology that has turned the tables on the powerful and is empowering the weak.
But 'Civil Society' is responding. Many individual and collective actors ('knowledge workers', hackers, grass-root groups and citizen initiatives, even big NGOs...) are often succesfully resisting the onslaught on the right to communicate, and are upholding the idea(l) of a "public domain in cyberspace". On the Net too, maybe especially on the Net, the "empire" is struggling with the "multitudes" once again.
Patrice Riemens