The Internet Trap: Self-Governance, Information Security and Identity
Mid-21st Century Projections
The dream of the early Internet was about freedom. Freedom of information, knowledge and ultimately freedom for humankind.
This dream existed before there was a real stake online. As the Internet started to include more and more assets, the freedom of the Internet lead to very real consequences of theft (identity, credit, property).
So the need for an updated Internet is real.
There are innumerable propositions to (re)build the Internet. Many of them require major infrastructure investment. Since the Internet is a kind of commons, it’s doubtful that any massive coordination will occur as a whole. It’s also in the interests of governments (and super-massive corporations) to avoid any rebuilds that favor a centralized domain (since that will give one entity too much power, not to mention centralize security faults).
So let us assume that rebuilding the Internet will occur in patches, and those patches many not share the same mappable schema (especially as each group has different interests). Instead, the Internet needs to be able to be self-navigable, with security that can be in place to protect access.
In other words, it makes sense to predict that the Internet will self organize into self governing islands. See this solution — by Scion Architecture to create self governing islands. This solution was written by people who understand just who their networking security solution is for! (Here’s a hint: it’s not for us common users).
What follows is an examination of how we are the Internet even if the Internet is not for us. I mention a consequence of two influences before examining what is at stake with creating islands of self-governance.
Influence 1: Distribution groups want to preserve market share
In the past, before IT provided us so much feedback about what the social body was up to (before Big Data), it was difficult to manage distribution. If you did it too tightly, you limit who can buy your product. If you don’t limit your distribution, then you aren’t sure who is buying your product. (In fact, before digital scanners provided feedback to track who was buying what, the music industry had no idea just how popular country music was.)
So in that sense, while there was cooperation without feedback much of it was uncoordinated (which is what made the Wild West, well, wild).
Today the Internet has become entangled with nearly every aspect of human behavior. Thus it makes sense that the Internet begins to reflect the group relationships humans have, including various group apparatuses such as mega-corporations, governments and so on.
But what will these group apparatuses do once they have control of distribution?
The answer is easy: They will channel it to their own advantage.
As the Internet further enabled distribution to the market, so the market has become distribution itself.
Let us draw an analogy between internet distribution and securities trading. Currently securities trading is done online through “dark pools.” Dark pools are localized trading that happens in large security trading firms. Basically clients of those security firms make trades within a dark pool, which is isolated from the “free” marketplace. This has many consequences, but one possible impact, as suggested from Michael Lewis in his book Flashboys, is that security firms can profit at the expense of their clients as the trading price for the client may not reflect actual market prices.
In much the same way, an online media distributor with access to clients (such as Netflix) may align with an online media distributor with access to content (such as Sony Pictures) in order to create their own self-governing island. These kinds of alliances happen as part of the daily news. And what about difference prices to different customers? This is already happening.
Powerful groups want to preserve their resource collection/dissemination so they will be highly incentivized to rewire parts of the Internet to secure their market share.
This brings us to the second influence that will characterize the 22nd century’s social organization.
Influence 2: Information security is about appropriate distribution.
The question for InfoSec is always, appropriate for who?
We all want security for our assets. But most of us end users have no idea how the Internet works. The highly specialized knowledge needed to make a secure internet can only be supported by institutions that have the resources and the access.
Since they pay for it, they will design it to fit their needs.
Thus, the need for security, for InfoSec, will justify the barriers that will isolate the Internet into islands of self-governance.
In the name of protection the Internet will be parsed. One day, accessing a site with the extension .ru or .in may require that you have a kind of “online passport.” Going to .cn may also mean that you allow that government (or the HR department of some large company, to install some kind of monitoring system on your personal mobile device).
If this sounds like science fiction —you’re right: Max Barry wrote Jennifer Government in 2003, about a future dystopia in which corporations control much of how people can live.
This will happen as corporations create “reward networks” that encourage people to participate with corporations and their allies. This network is a foothold in establishing chains of distribution. Today, nearly every major company has spawned a rewards points system, including apps that track you, notify you of deals and seek to create feedback loops to reward people for continued patronage. In fact, Amazon is obviously doing this by buying Whole Foods. (Feedback loops which will be what makes web 3.0, but that’s for another post).
It’s possible that as reward networks get bigger, they will be incentivized to coalesce further to leverage each other. Such interest can become super-networks that colonize major sections of the Internet (and thus, entrap major portions of the population economically and informationally). Basically, being an employee/consumer in such a network is analogous to being trapped in a dark pool.
Consequence: Who is governing who?
All of this assumes that the super-massive entities that shape our world will be able to continue to increase their influence on our digital world. Because IT is very scaleable, and because attention is $, what is currently a frenzy of competition online can result in the winners snowballing and winning BIG. (If following the Pareto Principle, snowballing may be unlikely to be otherwise.)
We are beginning to see online platforms like Facebook or Twitter promoting certain media over other media (although some argue that this is already the case). This is analogous to firms with dark pools and High Frequency Traders (HFT) who can recharacterize the topology (“making the market”) just by having control of distribution. Unlike HFT, which in 2014, was estimated to be a $29 billion industry (off the backs of smaller traders), control of our media presents us the reality that we eventually will lack the ability to have alternative choices. Are we determined or are we free?
But wait, you might say, what about ICOs? What about digital coin? Isn’t that free? Won’t that save us from these dark pools?
Well, yes, currently it is free.
From a standpoint of liberal markets, China looks to be the bad guy, as it limits ICOs. Of course if the Chinese government limits it, the Chinese people will jump elsewhere to buy digital coins. But remember, our current internet is still just the first iteration. Are ICOs really that safe? From the view of safety, China is right to limit ICOs. As another article states, the Facebook and Twitters of digital coin are still yet to come. When these digital coin management systems come, they will be mega-secure, and thus, mega-self-contained. (The opposite outcome is that nations isolating digital coin access will destroy digital coin value by destroying the network that values digital coin.)
A national dark pool can destroy the freedom dreamed of through digital coin. If you thought that the echo chambers of social media are damaging, imagine what a true dark pool of internet commerce will do. (The horror of a digital slavery is what season 2 of Mr Robot establishes as being what is at stake.)
While InfoSec professionals are, no doubt, the champions protecting us against identity theft, credit fraud and so on, we must realize that InfoSec generally only works to preserve the status quo. And of course, those with the greatest interest in preserving the status quo have the most dollars to do it. They are the greedy, the wealthy and the privileged.
So who are the rogue InfoSec (hackers), but rogue employees?
There are, of course, alternative views. Massive information sharing along “secure” channels can result in these large organizations becoming “glass boxes.” No doubt, companies don’t want their internal politics to be policed by the public at large. So we may end up with InfoSec engineers working for institutions, governments and companies at cross-purposes.
All in all, fragmentation of the social body follows no class. And that’s what we’ll have when InfoSec is done releasing all the mimetic energies (as when one entity copies another).
Basically those that want it for themselves end up harming themselves the most. The Wealthy, the Aristocratic, the TV Reality Dictator they have everything — except they can’t have everything —sometimes not even their own cat. (Yet the Internet is full of cats.) That’s a pretty dire profession, InfoSec. You’re giving the bullies greater access to the rest of us.
Do we want that?
Fine tuning distribution ultimately presents us an echo chamber that elected Donald Trump, the first mega-celebrity, the little dictator.
Talking about Donald Trump may not make sense on the surface but you must understand.
Creating islands from the Internet IS as creating echo chambers.
The difference is that echo chambers aren’t built into the network the same way as network hardware may be. The consequence is the same. Echo chambers reflect the individuals that provoke the most “value”/attention for its membership just as an island will isolate us into smaller ponds to see the small fish as bigger fish in that pond.
But of course, as people are realizing, giving them access to us also means giving us access to them.
But that’s just in terms of social media. What happens when our newly liberated dollar becomes trapped in a dark pool?
It’s hard to imagine what the economy will do if all our money is trapped in a dark pool, because that depends on the kind of distribution network we are trapped in.
So instead, let us look at the implications of an online island of “self governance”/echo chamber.
Why does it matter if we end up in an echo-island-chamber?
Postscript: What is at stake?
Its inevitable that as group apparatuses (like corporations, governments and so on) bind themselves so they refine what they are indexing. As resources move onto being influenced by what happens online (making online attention a resource), so those wanting resources will come to the spotlight. Ramzan Kadyrov, Putin, Donald Trump — those seeking power and fortune end up in the places of power and fortune as super connected media can snow ball.
In a sense, chunking the Internet into islands serves to make the pool smaller for these localized power-brokers to appear. Could Donald Trump have become president if The United States population were concerned about Global issues? Probably not. But when we focus closer to home, those who are already big fish in smaller ponds have a chance at grabbing the spotlight.
So here’s the twist: As political influence is made personal through reality TV and social media (Ramzan Kadyrov) and vis versa (Donald Trump) we being to see how Information Technology actually effects the world.
As an aside, see Last Week Tonight, Season 3, episode 25. By exploring who Kadyrov is and his buddy-buddy relationship with Putin, we can see Trump reflected back to us in a very interesting way.
This brings us to our first question.
Question 1: If a decentralized, anarchist social media (which, despite everything, is what the Internet is like, as of this writing) can create pseudo-dictators (like Donald Trump) can it also destroy dictators (like Ramzan Kadyrov)?
Just how strong is social media’s feedback to actual political, economic and military power? It seems China, with its online control, does not want to find out. (This article is released today, as of this edit, 6/23/2017.) Just how much was the Arab Spring helped by Twitter? Would this revolution have happened in another way?
The answer is, of course, yes. What happened through a cause can be influenced through that same channel.
This question, however, is misleading as the context for a free Internet is pertinent only for the early 21st century.
The truth is, that while the Internet may be anarchist now, it may no longer be very quickly.
Already, many of us feel the pressure of the gatekeepers of social media forcing some of us out, especially in the alt-right.
We may not care about members of the alt-right having access to AirBnB, Uber, Twitter and Facebook, especially if we do not share their political views, but what happens to them happens to all of us.
The fact that Silicon Valley will collude to exclude some of us means that the social media echo chamber is intentional. As for a dark pool for dollars — this is already happening, even if the scale is not totally widespread.
With the Internet, control of distribution is control of money, information — everything. Essentially, control of distribution is a monopoly.
Islands of self-governance sounds neutral, but the “self” that governs is not our “self.” It is an institutional “self.” Self governance is inevitably political — but if the governing body isn’t us who is in control, then it follows that someone else, whoever the governing body is, is.
Parsing the Internet can isolate us but it can also intensify a new us… who gets to decide who “us” is?
How we take action is unclear until we can see what the problem is.
The problem is that the Internet is going to be split. How it is split will decide not who we are now, but who humankind will become.
As much as the Internet reflects us, we are the Internet. And we will stay being the Internet as the Internet is here to stay. We might be okay right now, but what about the people to come?
This brings us to the last question:
Question 2: Just who is the People to Come? And are they worth fighting for today?
Any thoughts?
Give me a follow, a clap or a response. If you like this article check out this article: The New Way Humans Have Always Been.
