Brussels – (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The completion of a quest of comprehending everything AI-ish and digital has become raison d’être in contemporary times. A digital society that uses technology to promote fairness, equality of opportunity, and distribution of power is the vision of (new) CyberMarxism. However, bringing about this society faces both technological and ideological problems, in addition to huge regulatory and business adjustments.
The famous proverb ‘All roads lead to Rome’ pathos applies to the internet world as well, but in this case, Rome is sovereignty. It means there are myriad possibilities and ways of achieving always desirable the same ad hoc result – sovereignty. Digital space is an unexplored territory that emerged in the late 20th century, and one of the domains that offers new opportunities to states and other actors of international relations to acquire the most valuable present comprising control over and within. Sovereignty per se is rooted in the backing of peoples, who legitimize and give power to rulers to secure peace and order within a definite territory. Subsequently, overseeing digitized space is of great importance, for people who have always voted and consumed are now inhabitants and citizens of an extra area called the internet. Internet space does not equal real life, and therefore, while time can solve a certain number of problems without human intervention, the same does not happen on the Internet, so regulations and interventions are needed on the part of governance regarding the ideological order, among other things.
People eventually realize that politics massively intervene in digitalization and vice versa. As mentioned above, people are digital citizens now, and they inevitably will be inclined to have new and updated versions of the set of beliefs. I contend that this very ideology that will appeal to the majority of netizens is close to what the doctrine of Marxism tends to represent. I would not call the new movement “Neo-Marxism 2.0” because it would evoke the idea of an ideology that addresses earthly problems while simultaneously causing a deviation from new world problems and thus inappropriate for the new way of thinking. So why Cyber-Marxism? – Because the “Inter” of the Internet already gives half the answer to this, and if we try to be prudent, the people of the Internet will be equipped with the tenets of this ideology.
But why are regulations essential in ideologically and structurally incongruous environments?
Ideological and Technological Challenges
Prominent sociologists like Christian Fuchs contend that Communism is a movement that needs certain spaces for materialization. They deliberately exclude Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other network platforms from the list of such spaces. The appropriate spaces for such an epochal deed would be Tahrir Square, Syntagma Square, Puerta del Sol, etc.
Analysing Tahrir Square’s phenomenon and the sequences leads to a different approach. In the traditional sense, the Tahrir Revolution was not a communist revolution. However, campaigners and some figures calling for economic and social reforms shared socialist and Marxist beliefs.
In particular, the revolution that happened in Egypt in 2011 had several onsets and diverse outcomes. After the 25 January revolution, many scholars inferred that revolutions were not achieved in a couple of days. Conversely, revolutions, in general, are achievable through a prolonged process consisting of innumerable occurrences.
The Egyptian Revolution is an ideational convergence of tharwa (revolution) and intifada (insurrection). Many people struggled and died because of the lack of organizational capabilities and flawed communication systems.
It can be argued that if subaltern groups and “operators” of masses, as French polymath Gustave Le Bon would classify, employed the faculties of network platforms (in the perfect scenario), the organizational level of movements would be of the highest level and suffer a relatively small number of losses.
Sometimes, communication systems are controlled by autocrats, and this is one of the substantial reasons why people are unable to commit any act of liberation through the use of these networks.
Only if there exists a higher body that regulates technological advancements, continental issues are more likely to be solved in a more efficient way.
Unfortunately, in the case of Egypt, responsible and equitable national bodies were not always present to deal with neo-liberal forces and authoritarianism, and the community could not rely solely on self-regulation.
Fuchs examines the Critical Cyberculture Studies and Critical Political Economy Studies. His epistemological and ontological focus on dialectical philosophy investigates the relationship between the Internet/web 2.0 and society. This relationship, he concludes, is characterized by a sophisticated, dynamic, and discrepant nature.
American author and associate professor at the University of Western Ontario in the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, Nick Dyer-Witheford, is also against one-dimensional and techno-deterministic labels. To analyse the techno-capitalism of the 21st century, he reinvents Marxism and coins the new term – ‘Cyber-Marxism’. Hereby, he refers to autonomist cyber-Marxism as an alternative to the abovementioned approach and explains the added value emergence in today’s system strictly with respect to the autonomist Marxism approach.
Oppositely, senior researcher in the research group “Politics of Digitalization” at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Julia Pohle, and German political scientist Thorsten Thiel argue that deviation from pro-Marxian critique is noticed in juxtaposing Cyber exceptionalism and internet governance. Cyber exceptionalist thinking underlines the beneficial character of both the markets and public research hubs as being an important component in obtaining better Internet.
Concerning the market, Dr. Sebastian Heidebrecht offers market-oriented analyses and examines the indicators of further market liberal as well as public-interventionist governance of the digital sphere. According to his analyses, the experience of studying the flaws of GDPR made it possible to make a change consciously and intentionally to the public interventionist approach at the same time, giving more power to institutions like the Commission that adapt to new rules and redirect institutional purpose.
The conceptualization and quest for finding better solutions for sovereignty in a networked world are present in all the preceding authored pieces, and the tendency remains ongoing.
In 2020, the British government tried to create a centralized application to handle the information related to Coronavirus and population data; however, the attempt was in vain since developing an app not based on American companies’ programming interface was not an easy task for them. Later, they decided to emulate Italy and Germany and allow using the features of the decentralized version of applications of the same American companies, namely Google and Apple in maintaining the proper functionality of their apps. Afterward, during the conference on the Coronavirus matter, pro-European politician and Global Director of Privacy and Law Enforcement Commissioner’s Office, Gary Davis, preserved an opinion on the existence of the possibility of shutting down the system and contact tracing on a regional basis by Apple and Google. This very case represents an imaginable power grab in the realm of digitalization and warns about the loss of sovereignty if plugins are foreign run.
[…but one could argue that since the social media platforms are all ‘foreign run’, this is also a bit moot?]
In the digitized world, the most distinguished battles are waged by private companies and states, and those are unbalanced. In the real world, oftentimes, means of production are in the hands of states, but in the digital world, such prerogative is possessed by companies too, and they represent some sort of creative power that makes states dependent on them, especially during cyber attacks. At the same time, states can regulate the digital by imposing taxes, setting rules, kinds of acquiescence, and arbitrating the nature and legality of things, and this is the highest form of cybernetic power. However, companies are ahead of the states in terms of pioneering, hence, regulations always play the role of a chaser. Eventually, companies ruminate on the essence and speed of change, but the states supervise and control the trajectory of change. Having such an imbalanced and asymmetrical relationship makes states periodically refer to domiciled or local companies to confront foreign companies for political reasons. Infrequently, there are also cases when companies target their own countries and other domestic companies, as happened when Twitter blocked Trump or when Google won the case against Microsoft, wrote Italian and British philosopher Luciano Floridi in 2020.
Floridi claimed that, in the digital age, data are not bounded and thin on the ground. Conversely, the datum is like a renewable asset that is private and vulnerable to pliability to market drivers. Thus, information on the population is converted into data through various aggregations and later manipulated and utilized by both the states and transnational companies.
Because of technological progress and the gradual transformation of the character of conflict in international relations, the first two decades of the 21st century are important as being a begetter of the commencement of de facto digital corporate sovereignty. This type of sovereignty is mostly advocated by those who support corporate self-regulation and have the proclivity to think that a competitive approach and the state of being in market-based equilibria will ensure the prevention of abuse of power. This malevolent alliance of creative and cybernetic powers can generate a hegemonic core for corporate sovereignty followed by the exploitation of everything digital and jubilation over the repositioning from the individual as a voter-consumer to the individual as a follower-user.
Decades ago, it was thought that spreading capitalism would establish and maintain democratic order in communist states like China. But the Trojan Horse of capitalism experienced a failure partially caused by inadvertence. Such a thing was conditioned by the fact that after the end of World War II and the modern era, consumer desires were transformed and bloated, concomitantly alienating voter needs. Thereof, capitalism and democracy were seen as two sides of a coin, erroneously. Floridi, additionally, contended that Marx developed a fallacy in reasoning that capitalism could not convert ardent champions of the labourer ideals into its proponents. Subsequently, capitalism transfigured the working class, and it, even to this day, is triumphant by introducing a new – “shopping class” owing to consumerism. To endorse consumerism, it is crucial to preserve and conduct a modicum of reappropriation, letting the shopping class catch up with accelerating production. At this rate, the new class of consumers will be satisfied with an upgrade in social status and dream of a better future. Nevertheless, liberalism, too, revealed its weakness when the gradual maximization translated into political engagement and a desire for change.
In Europe, digital sovereignty appears more plausible and convincing through the GDPR and there is no need to be exceptionally prudent to see that 5G & AI sovereignty could also be maintained by this regulatory approach, for the reason that the establishment of supranational digital sovereignty would critically minimize the risks of totally being dependent on multinational companies in the digital sphere.
Network Platforms and Regulatory Approaches
American diplomat and political scientist Henry Kissinger asserted that even without full realization by the human mind, artificial intelligence is practically mingling with the human environment, and this process is further accelerated by the novelty, i.e., “global network platforms”. Such entities collect information about users and exploit it with the view to consolidate the data internationally. Despite this fact, users all over the globe are attracted to network platforms, synchronously creating positive network effects, as economists would call it. The exponential growth of users of such platforms is in direct correlation with spawning new but small providers satisfying the large demand. Moreover, network platforms draw on artificial intelligence as well, and in this order, we are arriving at the point of no return when human civilization intersects and converges with manmade wonderwork.
Sometimes, these network platforms are of a commercial nature and are mainly oriented on gaining profits from data misuse practices. They brought together enormous user bases, frequently covering a whole nation or even a continent. Some of them have greater ambitions and can be worthy of attention geopolitically.
Most big network platforms are based in the United States of America or China, and as a matter of fact, these platforms try to intervene in regional markets to build their user bases and gain commercial and strategic dominance that are significant to Washington and Beijing. The network platform operators’ corporate cultures and programs mirror the needs of customers and technology hubs that rub salt in the wounds. All the above factors transform the substance of foreign relations and diplomacy, consequently making us rethink and look at geopolitics in a new way.
Ipso facto, the alternative to not giving in to despair because of the scarily advanced technology is to become capable of using software in terms of regulating and curbing it on a supranational or regional level.
Architecture and regulation?
To address the multifaceted issues related to AI, network platforms, and digital sovereignty, one might look at Swiss legal scholar Rolf H. Weber’s legal approach to the database and the Internet in a comprehensive sense. Romana and Rolf H. Webers introduced the notion of the Internet of Things. IoT was a forthcoming worldwide Internet-based information architecture that dealt with the interchange of services and goods all around the internet. It ensured the secure delivery of goods and services translated from the physical world into the Internet. The advantage of this architecture was in providing clarity and cost-effectiveness of intercontinental distribution chain networks. Furthermore, the execution of IoT can vary and can be used in coding, computing, object recognition in cyberspace, and extracting information to enhance accommodative productivity. Therefore, IoT enables object and facility engagement easily for human convenience.
Weber argued that IoT was constructed on the Internet, and the framework of the Internet should be well-tried, for it is a tool laying the foundations of its smooth maintenance. The model of the Internet that is used today is provided by the “Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which itself is characterized by a hierarchical set-up having a single authoritative root with utter interoperability built on common standards in the name of an American-domiciled entity. Considering this, Weber posed the question of whether single or multi-root architecture would be appropriate and right for serving the community. The multi-root model is preferable because it does not allow countries and third parties to exploit and misuse a one-sided “Object Naming Service” (ONS) for geopolitical objects. ONS in its own right is DNS-based, making it a particular architecture that tracks down the information source for certain objects, simultaneously contributing to network addresses of services and holding data on “Electronic Product Codes” (EPCs).
Considering the intricacy of contemporary software services and the variety of its distributors and their desires, it is vital to have legal leverages that would defend entire nations. One of the options that leads to orderly arrangements is self-regulation. It is a kind of social control model based on humane principles and norms. Self-regulation uses the model of social constraints, and it is effective in ameliorating marketing opportunities.
Another proponent of community-led self-regulation was Iranian-American author and academic Hamid Mowlana. He underscored the utter importance of getting rid of the monopoly on controlling the distribution of power and values through information systems to the global community. At the same time, he tended to favor community building premised on humane principles.
Notwithstanding, the biggest shortfall of self-regulation is that it is not legally binding in comparison to government regulations. Weber, in his works, tries to offer the evaluation of government controlling type of legal frameworks. Firstly, he elaborates on “Trans governmental Networks”. The model allows for closing gaps via cooperation and coordination between governments from different countries, thus creating a new form of authority and nomocracy. In this case, those different countries represent an assembly of heterogeneous entities that have their national interests. For this very reason, some authors argue that national governments are counterproductive in resolving the networked world problems and suggest the delegation of responsibilities to a small number of supranational entities to be the better option.
Mowlana, on the other hand, offered an example of the “Intergovernmental Bureau of Informatics” (IBI), the institution that is responsible for determining the use of informatics for channelling information into better ways and practices.
The second proposal of Weber is for a “New International Legislator”. This model includes a governing body comprising other international actors. The outcome of negotiations later determines the terms of regulating IoT. Yet, this model cannot guarantee the smoothness and identical quality of elections in all regions. However, the regulation of IoT can be the prerogative of bodies like the EU Commission that could ensure troubleshooting and abrogation of disorder.
In 2009, according to its Communication, the EU affirmed that the advancement of IoT could not be handed on to the private sector. Following this, the EU Commission established 14 lines of action. The essence is in providing a more decentralized environment and giving users the possibility of disconnection anytime they want. The satisfaction of those principles is recommended to achieve advantageous progression for the community and the whole continent.
While tangible results have been achieved, the IoT landscape keeps evolving rapidly, and there are still ongoing challenges and opportunities.
The end…(still far from ending)
Plato, in his “Republic”, describes the soundings and rhythmics’ modes. He gives the examples of the Dorian, Phrygian, and other types of modes. Eventually, after observing the characteristics and impact of certain musical sounds, he decides which modes are most suitable for the guardians of the Republic.
TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and similar platforms have integrated a short-video feature. Those kinds of videos have background music that is sometimes deviated from the essence and purpose of the video message. Manipulations of sounds lead to psychological warfare, often for political reasons. This should be prevented, and the best way to do it is through regulations … again.
