Subcategory of technological utopianism
Cyber-utopianism
,
web-utopianism
,
digital utopianism
, or
utopian internet
is a subcategory of
technological utopianism
and the belief that online communication helps bring about a more decentralized,
democratic
, and libertarian society.
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
The desired values may also be privacy and anonymity, freedom of expression, access to culture and information or also socialist ideals leading to
digital socialism
.
[5]
[4]
Origins
[
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]
The Californian Ideology
is a set of beliefs combining bohemian and
anti-authoritarian
attitudes from the
counterculture of the 1960s
with
techno-utopianism
and support for
neoliberal
economic policies.
[6]
These beliefs are thought by some to have been characteristic of the culture of the IT industry in
Silicon Valley
and the West Coast of the United States during the dot-com boom of the 1990s.
[7]
Adam Curtis
connects it to
Ayn Rand
's
Objectivist
philosophy in the film
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (TV series)
. Such an ideology of digital utopianism fueled the first generation of Internet pioneers.
[8]
Examples
[
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]
Political usage
[
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]
One of the first initiatives associated with digital technologies and utopianism was the Chilean
Project Cybersyn
.
[9]
Project Cybersyn was an attempt of
cybernetic governance
for implementation of
socialist planning
under President
Salvador Allende
. The book
Towards a New Socialism
argues against the perception of digital socialism as a utopia.
[10]
Digital socialism can be categorized as a
real utopian project
.
[11]
Cyber socialism
is a name used for the practise of
file sharing
as a violation of
intellectual property
rights and whose legalisation was not expected - a utopia.
[12]
[13]
Cyber-utopianism serves as a base for
cyber-populism
.
Electronic democracy
as suggested and practised by
Pirate Parties
is being seen to be an idea motivated by cyber-utopianism.
[14]
In Italy, the
Five Star Movement
extensively uses cyber-utopian rhetoric, promising
direct democracy
and better environmental regulations through the
Web
. In this case, they used the wonder or
digital sublime
associated with
digital technologies
to develop their political vision.
[1]
Cognate utopias
[
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]
Cyber-utopianism has been considered a derivative of
extropianism
,
[15]
in which the ultimate goal is to upload human consciousness to the internet.
Ray Kurzweil
, especially in
The Age of Spiritual Machines
, writes about a form of cyber-utopianism known as the Singularity; wherein, technological advancement will be so rapid that life will become experientially different, incomprehensible, and advanced.
[16]
Hospitality exchange services
[
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]
Hospitality exchange services
(HospEx) are
social networking services
where hosts offer
homestays
for free. They are a
gift economy
and are shaped by
altruism
and are examples of cyber-utopianism.
[17]
[18]
Criticism
[
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]
The existence of this belief has been documented since the beginning of the internet. The bursting of the
dot-com bubble
diminished the majority-utopian views of cyberspace; however, modern day "cyber skeptics" continue to exist. They believe in the idea that
internet censorship
and
cyber sovereignty
allows repressive governments to adapt their tactics to respond to threats by using technology against dissenting movements.
[19]
Douglas Rushkoff
notes that, "ideas, information, and applications now launching on Web sites around the world capitalise on the transparency, usability, and accessibility that the internet was born to deliver".
[19]
In 2011,
Evgeny Morozov
, in his 2011 book
The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom,
critiqued the role of cyber-utopianism in global politics;
[20]
stating that the belief is naive and stubborn, enabling the opportunity for authoritarian control and monitoring.
[21]
Morozov notes that "former hippies", in the 1990s, are responsible for causing this misplaced utopian belief: "Cyber-utopians ambitiously set out to build a new and improved United Nations, only to end up with a digital Cirque du Soleil".
[21]
Criticism in the past couple of decades has been made out against positivist readings of the internet. In 2010,
Malcolm Gladwell
, argued his doubts about the emancipatory and empowering qualities of social media in an article in
The New Yorker
. In the article, Gladwell criticises
Clay Shirky
for propagating and overestimating the revolutionary potential of social media: "Shirky considers this model of activism an upgrade. But it is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger."
[22]
Cyber-utopianism has also been compared to a
secular religion
for the postmodern world.
[23]
In 2006,
Andrew Keen
wrote in
The Weekly Standard
that
Web 2.0
is a "grand utopian movement" similar to "communist society" as described by
Karl Marx
.
[24]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
Natale, Simone; Ballatore, Andrea (1 January 2014).
"The web will kill them all: new media, digital utopia, and political struggle in the Italian 5-Star Movement"
.
Media, Culture & Society
.
36
(1): 105?121.
doi
:
10.1177/0163443713511902
.
hdl
:
2318/1768935
.
ISSN
0163-4437
.
S2CID
73517559
. Retrieved
8 August
2021
.
- ^
Flichy, Patrice (2007).
The Internet Imaginaire
. The MIT Press.
ISBN
9780262062619
. Retrieved
8 August
2021
.
- ^
Vaidhyanathan, Siva (2012).
The Googlization of Everything
. ucpress.
ISBN
9780520272897
. Retrieved
8 August
2021
.
- ^
a
b
Fuchs, Christian (13 January 2020).
"The Utopian Internet, Computing, Communication, and Concrete Utopias: Reading William Morris, Peter Kropotkin, Ursula K. Le Guin, and P.M. in the Light of Digital Socialism"
.
TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique
.
18
(1): 146?186.
doi
:
10.31269/triplec.v18i1.1143
.
ISSN
1726-670X
.
S2CID
212845309
. Retrieved
22 August
2021
.
- ^
Burkart, Patrick (2014).
Pirate Politics
. The MIT Press.
ISBN
9780262026949
.
JSTOR
j.ctt9qf640
. Retrieved
22 August
2021
.
- ^
Turner, Fred (2008-05-15).
From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
. Chicago, Ill.: University Of Chicago Press.
ISBN
9780226817422
.
- ^
Barbrook, Richard; Cameron, Andy.
"The Californian Ideology"
.
Imaginary Futures
. Retrieved
April 27,
2014
.
- ^
J.M Reagle jr,
Good Faith Collaboration
(2010) p. 162
- ^
Staun, Harald.
"Post-kapitalistische Okonomie: Wann kommt der digitale Sozialismus?"
.
FAZ.NET
(in German)
. Retrieved
22 August
2021
.
- ^
"Towards a New Socialism"
.
ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu
.
Archived
from the original on 2020-02-09
. Retrieved
2020-07-13
.
- ^
Cox, Christopher M. (13 January 2020).
"Rising With the Robots: Towards a Human-Machine Autonomy for Digital Socialism"
.
TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique
.
18
(1): 67?83.
doi
:
10.31269/triplec.v18i1.1139
.
ISSN
1726-670X
.
S2CID
210969553
. Retrieved
28 December
2021
.
- ^
Filby, Michael (2011).
"Regulating File Sharing: Open Regulations for an Open Internet"
.
Journal of International Commercial Law and Technology
.
6
: 207
. Retrieved
28 December
2021
.
- ^
Filby, Michael (1 January 2008).
"Together in electric dreams: cyber socialism, utopia and the creative commons"
.
International Journal of Private Law
.
1
(1?2): 94?109.
doi
:
10.1504/IJPL.2008.019435
.
ISSN
1753-6235
. Retrieved
28 December
2021
.
- ^
Khutkyy, Dmytro (July 2019).
"Pirate Parties : The Social Movements of Electronic Democracy"
.
Journal of Comparative Politics
.
ISSN
1337-7477
. Retrieved
22 August
2021
.
- ^
"Cyber-utopianism - CrowdSociety"
.
crowdsociety.org
. Retrieved
2020-11-06
.
- ^
Kurzweil, R 1999,
The age of spiritual machines?: when computers exceed human intelligence
, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, N.S.W.
- ^
Schopf, Simon (2015-01-25).
"The Commodification of the Couch: A Dialectical Analysis of Hospitality Exchange Platforms"
.
TripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique
.
13
(1): 11?34?11?34.
doi
:
10.31269/triplec.v13i1.480
.
ISSN
1726-670X
. Retrieved
26 June
2021
.
- ^
Latja, Piia (2010).
"Creative Travel - Study of Tourism from a socio-cultural point of view - The Case of CouchSurfing"
. Retrieved
26 June
2021
.
- ^
a
b
Rushkoff, Douglas (2002).
Renaissance Now! Media Ecology and the New Global Narrative
. Hampton Press. pp. 26?28.
- ^
R. Sassower
,
Digital Exposure: Postmodern Capitalism
(2013) p. ix and p. 16
- ^
a
b
Morozov, Evgeny (2011).
The Net Delusion
. London: Penguin Group.
ISBN
978-1-84614-353-3
.
- ^
Gladwell, Malcolm (October 4, 2010).
"Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted"
.
The New Yorker
. Archived from
the original
on January 10, 2011
. Retrieved
May 1,
2024
.
- ^
B. Neilson,
Free Trade in the Bermuda Triangle
(2004) p. 181
- ^
Keen, Andrew (15 February 2006).
"Web 2.0; The second generation of the Internet has arrived. It's worse than you think"
.
The Weekly Standard
. Archived from
the original
on 25 February 2006.
Further reading
[
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]
- Dickel, Sascha, and Schrape, Jan-Felix (2017):
The Logic of Digital Utopianism
. Nano Ethics
- Margaret Wertheim,
The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace
(2000)
- Evgeny Morozov,
To Save Everything, Click Here
(2013)
- Turner, Fred.
From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism
. University Of Chicago Press, 2010.
- Flichy, Patrice. The internet imaginaire. Mit Press, 2007.
External links
[
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]