When in Doubt, Go French
A History Lesson for Digital Life
We already inhabit the Digital Environment. For people already used to working online from remote places or with teammates in different time zones, this might not come as news. An online meeting or war room yields the same value as coming together in a physical office. However, this habitation is still only natural for a small number of people. Not everyone is used to thinking of the Digital Environment as another dimension of space and time where we can do almost anything we do in the Natural Environment, albeit in a different way. Even as some people are transitioning to a different way of thinking about the Digital Environment, there are some issues that arise and affect us all.
In the meantime, we’re trying to understand the current historical moment and assign meaning to our experiences online. At times, the internet feels like a space devoid of significance, a hostile environment dominated by the worst we have to offer as a community. Bullying and harassment are common when we engage with each other on websites and social media. This brings forward a pressing question: how do we organize something so new? How do we sort out the problem of cohabitation in the Digital Environment?
Make it French
History could give us some clues as to how to solve this little problem. When Napoleon III returned to Paris after a 12-year exile to become the president of the Second Republic, he found the city overcrowded, filthy, and disease-ridden . Motivated by his desire to make the French capital an epicenter of economic and social life, Napoleon entrusted Georges-Eugène Haussmann, a renowned architect and urban planner, with his vision for Paris: air and light (not to mention sanitation).
One of the key points of this renovation was to create wide streets that would allow military regiments to march comfortably. This would discourage the building of barricades. Before this urban reform, small political groups were able to impact the city with very few resources. Haussmann also created parks, sewers, and public spaces. He improved the overall conditions of hygiene and adapted Paris to new means of transportation. In short, he transformed a medieval city into a modern one. As almost always happens, his opponents criticized his work. They claimed it was an attempt to suppress civil unrest in working-class areas of the city, which, of course, was an important part of Napoleon and Haussmann’s agenda.
City of blinding bits
So what does this nineteenth-century story have to do with the Digital Environment? The internet is pretty chaotic. Remember Les Miserables? It’s a good model for the current state of the Digital Environment. We can imagine a cluster of Parisian barricades, but in the online world. There aren’t many global rules, symbols, or contracts that dictate how we should behave online and interact with others. But is it possible to envision it being more orderly? Can the Digital Environment be urbanized?
In our example, social and political movements indirectly modified Paris’s distribution and symbolic meaning. It was in response to civil actions that Napoleon III ordered the renovation. The state stepped in to sort out a city that had changed as a result of the people’s appropriation. What do we do, then, with what we’ve got, with the current state of the Digital world?
Hopefully, we won’t need a Haussmann this time around. While he remains a controversial figure in history, the idea of taking something chaotic and making it friendlier to allow for a truer and more honest appropriation of space is interesting and could be reproduced in the Digital Environment.
Just like civil unrest and political action by social groups changed Paris, the communities active in the Digital Environment can begin to change its look and feel–and are already doing so. The Digital Environment’s population exceeds that of a city or country. No one has the authority to dictate or organize this shared space, but everyone is capable of influencing and enacting change inside their communities. All of us will decide how the digital realm is organized, and the way to approach this change is to establish symbolic elements that allow for emotional, social, and productive relationships and outcomes. Organizing the Digital Environment is a common endeavor. Finding meaningful coordinates there is a challenge we face as a group.
