The Challenges of Digital Citizenship
We need to create a more human experience online, urbanizing the digital environment could be the way. Is there a digital city?
As we strive to coexist online, new challenges give rise to the concept of digital citizenship. In this episode, we’ll explore the complex and ever-evolving world of internet societies, uncovering the hidden dynamics that shape our online interactions.
Join us as we take a journey through the streets of Renaissance cities, listen on all the main apps:
Read the episode transcript here:
Digital Citizenship
How can we build a model of cohabitation that brings together the natural and the digital? From the discovery of the bit as a basic particle to the conception of the digital sphere as an environment, including the moments of exploration and appropriation, we have come a long way. We have matured quite a bit in our relationship with digital technology. What stage are we in now?
Understanding the Digital Environment as a habitable space in which we also carry out part of our lives begs the question of the existence of a digital city. At the beginning of this chapter, we mentioned different types of cities projected onto the digital realm: the surveilled city, the population brought together around production and commerce, and the neighborhood as a forum for the exchange of ideas and political projection. In our history, we can find a moment in which these three dynamics overlapped: the first city states, which challenged the social fabric at the end of the Middle Ages. The model of collective urbanization that was dominant during this period, in terms of a materialization of ceremonies based on a collaborative model, can serve as a matrix for thinking about urbanization and the development of belonging in the Digital Environment.
The cosmogony of the Renaissance forged its own way of understanding humans in the development of a series of cities that were established when the Medieval model had come to an end. Territories like Barcelona or Venice began to accumulate economic power because of their strategic locations (with regards to commerce and war). Their wealth at first allowed them to make their social structures more complex and then to operate with a certain degree of independence from the kingdoms that existed at the time. Indeed, some of these cities even lent capital to reigning kings.
The entire process by which these city states are created was intimately linked to the development of collective organizations related to the trades of those who drove economic prosperity in the territory. That is, we see the economic and political growth of brotherhoods and guilds occurring in parallel. These were very active voluntary collective associations of production and knowledge that organized economic activity. From their Christian aspects as brotherhoods, they guaranteed protection, looking out for the sick and those who died in their families, often organizing ceremonies in their name and ensuring their survival. On the other hand, in their secular aspects as guilds, they busied themselves with research and sharing technical developments within each discipline.
These collectives not only regulated the labor and economy in a territory (and, in some cases, politics); they functioned as social structures of identity. A sculptor got their name, salary, and prestige from the guild they belonged to. Guilds also worked as the collective driving force of innovation. In a brotherhood of painters, it might happen that one member discovered a new pigment to create a color. That discovery was shared with the rest so that each individual could experiment with it on their own. Later, they would discuss and study the properties and limitations of the new color as a group in order to incorporate it, reject it, or improve it based on everyone’s opinions. The goal was to develop a novel, improved work of art that would bring prestige and recognition to all members, and that could benefit them economically.
Brotherhoods were not merely artistic or productive communities: they were models for the construction of identity and the production of reality. In a later stage of development, they acquired such complexity in their organization that they began to amass power and, eventually, their decisions affected the rest of society. That was how mercantile cities like Barcelona, Venice, or Antwerp gained importance thanks to the strength built by mercantile brotherhoods. While aristocratic classes were predominant in the rest of Europe, in Barcelona, for example, associated producers were the ones who enjoyed prestige and power. These city states had a specific statute that made them independent from the monarchical territory and allowed them to self-regulate. While monarchies were an ever-present power, these cities had a defined territory in which the citizen system built on communities of social interaction held sway. Kings, then, were obliged to coordinate power with cities. In this context, we can talk about the emergence of a new actor, an early bourgeoisie that could perform a prominent social role.
It is possible to equate the development of those brotherhoods to current communities of technological practices. We can thereby identify the emergence of a new social power: the digital bourgeoisie. This set of actors includes everything from the digital communications companies that gave birth to social networks or laid the foundations for inhabiting the network to some communities of productive knowledge. Different groups, which stand out for their productive role online, have now become new axes of power with enough importance for traditional states to begin to negotiate with them. The changes mentioned above with regards to productive relationships are also changes in the social distribution of power.
In addition, and perhaps intimately related to this, we can find clues in the development of those Renaissance cities to understand the changes we see today in the configuration of social identities. During that period, the condition of citizenship was acquired through vicinity and granted the person legal protection, the right to participate in public functions, and the obligation to observe laws. With the appearance of city states, we see the emergence, during that period, of a different kind of political participation and a novel concept of citizenship, more closely associated with community and productive ties that configure social and political roles.
Perhaps our progress toward the digital sphere and the digital sphere coming toward us can be understood through the lens of a similar reconfiguration of the logics of citizenship. Just as brotherhoods and guilds provided the community cohesion that Medieval societies needed to access new levels of power and autonomy, perhaps collective organization around the activities we carry out in the Digital Environment provide the space for the agreements and organization that we need. For example, many experiences confirm how the digitalization (and even automation) of many processes manages to de-bureaucratize how they function. How are citizenships shaped, then, in an environment without the materiality we are used to?
The city in a philosophical sense is an area that facilitates interactions and associations between ideas, people, interests, ideologies, lives, and exchanges. It is a physical space, but above all it is an abstract network of relationships between citizens in which economic activities are brought together with practices of community solidarity. It is true that the absence of materiality in the digital sphere makes it difficult to draw boundaries to conceptualize territory; we should then wonder whether it is possible to think of a digital city.
The city is also the land of logos, a constantly changing cultural space that coordinates practical aspects with issues of an existential nature, and, as such, it is a framework that is very sensitive to changes that have an impact on our ceremonies. We might think that some of the urban conflicts we perceive today are related to issues of borders, but not everything in a city can be reduced to a connection to territory. There are elements that make up citizenship that can surpass their territorial moorings, move beyond them, and exist without them. Perhaps the most significant aspects are related to the activities around which we come together as a human collective. If the experiences of the Renaissance help us to understand the foundations of the interaction between actors in a city and the way they generate belonging, there are aspects that the industrial society of recent centuries brought to the stage and can also be revelatory for interpreting some current phenomena.
Industrial societies, which were consolidated in the 19th century, triggered an important change of cosmogony. With the growth of automated processes of production and the installation of factories, the landscapes of cities were transformed, deepening their economic, political, and social centrality. In this context, many people were brought into productive society not as creative agents with a skill to learn but as a link in a long chain of mass production that only performs a small task that is completely automated and impossible to relate a priori to the object that comes out of the production line thousands of times a day. Mass migrations from the country to the city also meant entire generations of people given over to occupying a role in factories that was essential and specific but also lacking any indication of personal identity.
The social construction of a person in industrialized societies has been analyzed by sociologists, economists, and philosophers particularly as a process of loss of individual identity, alienation, and the emergence of new social actors. One theory that established itself as one of the most influential schools of thought during the 20th century was Marxism. Karl Marx, through dialectical materialism (a historical view of the modes of production), maintained a thesis according to which the main actors in history were collectives of people defined by their role in production and their relationship to property: social classes. According to this German economist of Jewish extraction, economic conditions and the social division of labor are vital to understanding the development of history and thinking about political interventions.
We can relate this way of viewing political and economic power based on collective functioning with the forms of community building mentioned above. Indeed, this economic and philosophical school of thought maintains that the progress of history is defined by the confrontation of different social classes with opposing objectives. Marx states that a social class becomes a “class for itself” when the individuals that make it up become conscious of that collective, thereby understanding their role in society, and decide to act accordingly. In this sense, a class becomes an agent of history once it recognizes itself as such and collectively organizes around its objectives.
In the same way some religions inspired communities to build connections of support, and guilds did the same thing at the end of the Middle Ages and during the Renaissance, politics conceived through the lens of social classes also called together collectives around the world that forged bonds and build networks of solidarity, especially in urban environments during the 20th century. Taking their cue from Renaissance guilds, many unions organized as collectives of professional aid and community solidarity, but in some cases, they acquired a class analysis of society.
These structures join others that crossed borders and questioned, in different historical moments, large groups of people with regards to the way they understood themselves, conceived of the world, and organized their actions. This was the case of critical theories about colonialism, as well as theories about racial segregation or gender. In the second half of the 20th century, a school of social thought arose that brought together all these axes of political and identity construction: the theory of intersectionality proposed by bell hooks. Through this concept, society can be understood as sets of systems of power that create different identities for people. It is a first step toward the theorization of a multiple social identity, defined by belonging to cultures and collectives that have their own histories and perform different social roles at the same time.
How do these transversal relationships, which are repeated in different geographical locations at the same time, affect the idea of citizenship? Throughout urban history, different cultural contexts have become signs of urbanity: theatrical and cinema offerings, discussions in cafes or bars, university education, and professional development. Today, a citizen is not only someone who lives in a super-populated area but also someone who participates in these discussions, accesses this intellectual capital, or consumes these cultural products. Can that only be done from an urban location? And what happens if we are in one city, but we participate in the exchanges of another?
Citizenship is an expression of belonging that a person has towards a particular society in which they participate. Nowadays in the Natural Environment, we tend to think of citizenship as being related to a territorial entity as a connection to a state organization, and as a role in productive society. In order to respond to the question of how we develop belonging in an environment without parameters of time and space, then, we can return to the way in which members of brotherhoods established belonging through cooperation and community participation. Brotherhoods not only regulated labor and economy within a territory but also functioned as social frameworks of identity. In the same way, class-based unions focused on building ties of belonging between their members, moving beyond labor problems and considering issues related to the social collective.
Politics, economy, symbolic representation, and the creation of meaning participate in the dialogue that shapes the city. The globalization of the last century built “big conversations” in which we participate digitally from many distant spots around the globe. In this sense, we can interpret the ever more common digital expressions of discontent, like the presence of protests on social networks and political violence online, as an affirmation that the digital city exists and is alive. We can even understand that the conflicts that drive that discontent in both environments is due in part to the expiry of former frameworks to interpret it.
Social mobility is the sociological study that observes the ability of people and groups to change their social status during a particular period and in a particular socioeconomic system. Experts from international organizations state that although the amount of global wealth being produced has multiplied in recent years thanks to technological advances, social mobility has dropped alarmingly. A historic concentration of wealth (World Inequality Report 2022), among other things, puts in crisis narratives of social advancement associated with study and work in cities. People search harder and harder to find citizenship that surpasses their immediate field of belonging, and the best medium to reach other places from one’s own place is digital technology. Citizenship today moves beyond known boundaries and expands in the Digital Environment according to new forms of logic that we are still trying to understand.
Just like in the past, when state power comes up against the emergence of new axes of power like the digital city, conflict arises. Many of our current crises can be explained by a lack of urbanity in the city and the way in which we build citizenship, that is, through the necessity of those elements that are necessary to define us socially but depend now on a city with no territory. We are still trying to understand how that new city defines us. Traditional methods (both ancient and modern) of creating social beings are in crisis, although some historical examples can point the way to what we lack. The importance of urbanizing the Digital Environment lies in the fact that, beyond issues related merely to productivity, it is a space where the rules of cohabitation are put up for discussion, as well as how we create culture and our emotions.
We have come a long way in our process of appropriating the Digital Environment. We went from being visitors to being users and prosumers. We can even start to see a kind of digital citizenship we cannot fully embody yet. But that not knowing how to behave, how to relate to each other, how to work and interact on the network, combined with changes that the digital realm effects on our old ways of doing things, causes anxiety, annoyance, and even conflict. The time has come to organize our cohabitation or, at least, to sit down and talk.
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In the upcoming season: get ready to e xplore the impact of global issues on our digital world. From cryptocurrency to political unrest, join us as we uncover the chaos shaping our present digital landscape. Don’t miss out on the urgent insights that could create a brighter tomorrow.
Digital Pilgrims is a podcast based upon the book “Digital Pilgrims. Towards a Quantum Humanity”.
