Techno-Political | Acquiring Digital Commons: The Control of the Internet as a theme in Political Thought

The Restless hunger for power, aggressiveness, and the disposition of acquisitiveness inherent in a human being is often attributed as the root of the problems in our society.[1] Francis Bacon was one of the first philosophers who delved into the similarity between political action and scientific action to advance the proposition that Scientific Action is superior to Political Action.[2] After taking into account the fundamental impulse of ‘aggression’, something that taken to be hard-wired into human beings, he was of the view that Science and Technology provided a noble outlet for the manifestation of those impulses.[3] He opined that the political impulse, i.e. the desire for power, conquest and empire is actually the guiding impulse of Science and Technology for a man can only obey Nature as long as it takes for him to learn her secrets.[4] It was not technological dexterity and insights but rather it was the power-hungry, over-weening pride, and the disregard for future that was placed at the core of historical craft-traditions and tool-using habits.[5]

This anthropological evidence depicting Man’s inherent nature to dominate his surroundings is a central element that must be brought into light to foray into the phenomena concerning Control of Digital Commons — The Internet. Today, most of the imprints of our activities are registered in some form or the other in the Digital Sphere. The imprints are essentially evaluated, mapping not only our actions but our emotional states too. Everything essential, from health to transport and other commodities, is regulated by some digital network and that is why Internet is our most important commons today. The Internet, ostensibly a platform for greater facilitation, communication, and convergance has today become the central theatre of novel power struggle. The contestants include the combination of privatized and state-controlled commons, corporations (Google, Facebook) and State Security Agencies.

Interestingly, Plato’s Republic is representative of the State’s political artifice that vehemently opposed the new techniques of that period including those of trade, finance and warfare-which was feared to tear the polis apart.[6] An artifice that plagued the Greek political state of affairs could also be observed repeating itself today in India’s Digital Political Legal Set-up. The growing presence of Internet entails the possibility of dethroning traditional forms of State political control, specifically the control of information.

At the international arena, India voted in favour of the Russia-backed cybercrime resolution at The U.N General Assembly, a proposal that was staunchly opposed by every country in favour of global and open internet.[7] Through-out the last couple of years, the government relied upon a total of 154 Internet Black-outs to curb the menace of spread of misinformation via Whatsapp.[8] Moreover, the government passed a sweeping surveillance order that gives 10 government agencies the authority to “tap, intercept, and decrypt all personal data on computers and networks.”[9] Even more recently, the IT Ministry has demanded feedback on rules to access encrypted messages sent over services like Whatspp. The Specification provides for government mandates in order to “trace and remove objectionable content” within 24 hours.[10] This is indicative of the larger scheme of creating government backdoors into digital systems and devices.

Karl Marx has stressed in the animistic passages of Capital that there is most definitely a “master” “in whose brain the machinery and his monopoly of it are inseparably united.”[11] Behind the individual who is dwarfed and diminished by his relationship to the technical means, stands an entity who takes up and manipulates for his own advantage the power that has been drained from the working class. The approach adopted by Indian Government resembles the master who could be seen as attempting to diminish the relationship of its citizens to the technical means, i.e. the Internet.

The opposition of the Indian Government to staunchly regulate an open Internet could potentially stem from the engendering of six psychological crises: the meaning crises, the reality crises, the belonging crises, the sobriety crises, the proximity crises, the warfare crises.[12]

An open and unrestricted Internet promotes pluralism, competing against the established religious underpinnings giving space for multiple viewpoints to have control over the social narrative. This society-wide secularization has led to meaning crises, where numerous Internet agencies are competing to satisfy our meaning hunger.

Further, we also find ourselves in reality crises, where grassroots and underground media provide different perceptions of the same event with the decline in journalistic ethics.

Additionally, advanced capitalism is proving to be create a society dominated by “marketing mentality” incentivizing individuals to treat one another as instruments. Social atomization is leading to feelings of isolation, alienation and depression and this separateness indicates the belonging crises.

Large Social Media companies are competing with each other over the attention economy, reducing our agency and their pervasiveness has created the sobriety crises.

The psychological concept of dissimilarity cascades posits that the more we get to know someone, the less we tend to like them. The Internet that flattens all social fences has putrefied our private lives, paving way for a society of scandal and thus entailing proximity crises.

Lastly, aside from state actors that engage in information warfare, other terrorist organizations, lone wolf hackers and big data mercenary firms advance agendas and transform our minds into weapons for hidden wars and we also find ourselves in a warfare crises.

The worst angels of our nature are leering from our shoulders and it is high time for us to contemplate whether the approach adopted by the Indian Government stems out from the fear of out of control Internet or is in guise a power-seizure man oeuvre to fortify political control.

[1] Edward 0. Wilson, Sociobiolog: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1975).

[2] Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, in Selected Writings, ed. Hugh G. Dick (New York: The Modem Library, 1 955), p. 537.

[3] Id at 537–539.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Lewis Mumford, The Myth of the Machine: The Pentaon of Power (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1 9 70), p. 1 55.

[6] Plato, Gorgias, trans. W. C. Helmbold (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1 952), p. 97.

[7] https://www.newamerica.org/cybersecurity-initiative/c2b/c2b-log/breaking-down-vote-russias-new-cybercrime-resolution-un/

[8] https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2018/rise-digital-authoritarianism.

[9]https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article25799115.ece/BINARY/Home-Ministry-order-on-computer-surveillance.pdf.

[10] https://www.wsj.com/articles/india-wants-access-to-encrypted-whatsapp-messages-11547551428.

[11] Marx, Capital, pp. 462·463.

[12] https://medium.com/s/world-wide-wtf/memetic-tribes-and-culture-war-2-0-14705c43f6bb.