Manifest Digital
Why the web is ‘becoming’ political
“The extended order [of civilization] resulted not from human design or intention but spontaneously: it arose from unintentionally conforming to certain traditional and largely moral practices, many of which men tend to dislike, whose significance they usually fail to understand, whose validity they cannot prove, and which have nonetheless fairly rapidly spread by means of an evolutionary selection…This process is perhaps the least appreciated facet of human evolution.”
-Friedrich Hayek
De-Centralizing The Web
Networked computers and “packet switching” date back to the 60s, but most agree that the internet as we know it began 25 years ago when Tim Berners-Lee turned a NeXT computer into the world’s first web server.
Recently, Wired Magazine posted an interview with Berners-Lee in which he says, “I want a web that’s open, works internationally, works as well as possible and is not nation-based.” It is a significant statement coming from the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the most important web standards organization in the world, because it means that Tim Berners-Lee is supportive of a decentralized web. One where the UK can’t block porn, the US can’t tap Facebook, and China can’t block sites linked to the Dalai Lama.
The geeks, hackers, and engineery folk of the world are excitedly scrambling for a solution to the web’s security problem. BitTorrent and Bitcoin, specifically colored coins or derivative protocols, seem to be promising ways of offering both information exchange and address stability. One hacker has already built such a protocol for static websites, and I expect many more will emerge in the coming weeks, months, and years — until a victor emerges.
These solutions are very exciting, and it is fun to trace the stacking of technologies over time (the web -> Napster -> BitTorrent -> Bitcoin -> Bitnet?), but what draws me to this subject is the deceptively elusive ‘why’. I say deceptively because it seems very obvious: people want freedom, dammit! But so did the patriots of yore, and they built not a decentralized web, but rather a highly centralized national government. The same government that created the NSA. The same government that the geeks, whether they know it or not, are pushing back against.
The web is inherently anti-centralization.
This seems obvious to the kinds of people who get excited about hacking together new web protocols. The kind who are used to committing code to collaborative Github projects — stroking the keys to our great digital kingdom. Yes we have the omnipresent Facebook, but we also have Secret and Snapchat and Twitter.
What is not obvious is why we move so strongly in the opposite direction in the physical world. Perhaps it is because computing is young and civilization is very old, but the two worlds, the digital and the physical, are really not so distinct.
I believe it is not about the youth of the web, but rather its incredible communication bandwidth. Our intelligence is founded on language, and, at nearly all times in human history, when we have ordained to found a central government it has been atop two communication technologies: speech and writing by pen-and-ink. The printing press that disseminated Thomas Paine’s, “Common Sense,” was an incredible boon to our ability to share information throughout the second millennium, but its impact pales in comparison to that of the World Wide Web.
Centralization of authority is valuable to groups primarily because it makes it easy to standardize. Standardization helps us work together at scale. It’s why the EU was formed, and why the Federalists won out against the Anti-Federalists. Centralized government can discuss amongst itself relatively quickly in, say, an Oval Office or a Capitol Building, and then apply its decisions universally — and quickly.
The internet enables extremely fast and high volume communication. Standards can develop and compete rapidly, digital products can be launched with a strike of the return key, and debates can be held between thousands of actively engaged participants in a matter of hours. It’s cool, and it is the reason the geeks behind all of it are good at making stuff. They standardize organically and across organizations.
Today, these dynamics occur primarily among tech companies, developers, and science nerds; but they are probably just the early adopters. The cyclical startup booms we have been experiencing (with increasing frequency and subtler amplitudes) are spurred on by both the creation and the progressive digitization of sectors of our economy. The same infrastructure that allows coders to develop new web standards may soon enable educators to more rapidly improve course curriculums. The impact of this still young technology will not remain restricted to the digital realm, and will increasingly absorb or come into conflict with functions of the State. The West is heading East.
“Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”
― Franklin D. Roosevelt
The new push to decentralize the internet is an overt declaration of the web’s implicit nature. It is a nature that is in direct and meaningful opposition to the centralized governments of the world. It will be a battle fought on millions of tiny fronts, with winners decided rapidly and by necessity — and de-centralization will largely win out. The good news for nationalists is two-fold: 1) the government will retain its monopoly on the use of force, and plenty of policy will be left to the rigor of centralized government, and 2) for all of the cat gifs on Reddit, the internet is still our most powerful tool for the diffusion of knowledge.
In my most optimistic and romantic moments I think that we are heading into a future where knowledge, not force, is our most valuable commodity. Where the world is open, works well together, works as well as possible and is based on people. But of course, evolution is rarely so didactic.
