Coding Notes

In the June 2009 issue of WIRED a group of three articles called “Our New New Economy” discusses the United States current economic climate and how it impacts three issues. While these articles don’t discuss specifically how our current economy impacts the three issues directly, they do discuss the importance of these three issues in shaping our new economy. The first article talks about the American car industry and how it must accept outside innovation in order to recover. The second article is about Google’s AdWord’s advertising service and how it can teach us something about auctions. The third article, the one I am going to talk about, is about how the internet is a socialistic entity and how that may encourage people to accept socialism in our real lives via the government. I disagree with Kevin Kelly’s, the writer behind “The New Socialism”, idea that socialism online can translate into the off line world and so I wanted to discuss why the internet is such a perfect platform for an idealistic socialism in the first place. First off though let me point out that I am not a political scientist, as regular readers should know, I am a computer scientist interested in philosophy and so my perception of Socialism may be slightly askew therefore, if I misunderstand something please correct me in the comments.

In order to discuss socialism appropriately we should first define what we are discussing, Kelly addresses the voodoo of the word socialism by defining it as such:

“When masses of people who own the means of production work toward a common goal and share their products in common, when they contribute labor without wages and enjoy the fruits free of charge, it’s not unreasonable to call that socialism.” – Kevin Kelly, “The New Socialism”, WIRED June 2009

Using one of the definitions in dictionary.com we can support that definition:

“A theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.”  – Dictionary.com

By synthesizing these definitions I will define socialism, for the purposes of this blog post, to be defined simply as:

Internet Socialism: A society that is community run, owned, and consumed without a governing body.

I don’t have any problems with Kelly or anyone else defining the internet in this way because it fits, as Kelly’s article points out there are many online services that are community run, owned, and consumed. Services like Twitter, Digg, Open Source Software, Facebook, Wikipedia, Blogs and the World Wide Web itself all fit this model, they are run by the community generating content, then that content is released to the community for it to own (do with as it pleases, rate it, modify, etc.), and for the community to then consume by deciding what to do with the content that it creates. Therefore, it is rather easy to see how the internet functions within a socialist type of facility however, Kelly’s closing words in his article scare me; he says:

“The force of online socialism is growing. Its dynamic is spreading beyond electrons — perhaps into elections.” – Kevin Kelly, “The New Socialism”, WIRED June 2009

Kelly poses the question that translates between internet socialism and physical world socialism within his article:

“How close to a noncapitalistic, open source, peer-production society can this movement take us? Every time that question has been asked, the answer has been: closer than we thought.” – Kevin Kelly, “The New Socialism”, WIRED June 2009

When Kelly poses this question I am assuming that by using words like “society” and “noncapitalistic” that he is referring to the real world that we (or atleast capitalist country’s) exist in, the non-internet physical world. The problem with making this comparison is that the internet provides an ideal context for socialism and community that doesn’t translate to the real world. It is in the differences between the internet and the real physical world that we can see how socialism wont translate. So what does the internet provide that the physical world doesn’t? Socialism cannot translate from the internet to the physical world because of three issues: the internet produces “soft” goods, the internet provides anonymity, and the internet is not itself owned by anyone.

Lets start with the first attribute, that the internet produces “soft” goods, or more specifically it provides digital goods. The property that the internet and its socialism produces are stored in binary electronic form, they are 1’s and 0’s on a hard disk. This attribute of the internet’s product is also at the core of the DRM debate, I was once told by someone that the reason that the music and movie industries don’t care about you taping TV or taping the songs from a movie onto a cassette is that it produces an imperfect copy. The internet and computers prevent this problem, digital content can be copied millions of times and still be exactly the same as the original copy, the 1’s will still be in the same places, and the 0’s will still be in the same places. This perfect copying ability of the internet means that the same property that I get, you also get. So on the internet the ideal is that the “products” are able to be copied perfectly and as many times as you want, creating a perfect distribution system within a community, no one has any need for greed because everyone gets exactly the same product, and if someone doesn’t have that product then someone can give you a perfect copy of it. This obviously doesn’t translate to the real world, in the real world we have issues of supply and demand, imperfections in manufacturing, and the inability to simply copy something as a distribution method. I cannot simply copy my land and house so you can have one as well, it’s impossible within our physical world, and this creates greed or want in people which prevents the internet’s ideal socialism from occurring in the physical world.

The second attribute, and I think the most important, is the issue of anonymity within the internet. The internet is accessed by billions of people, and all of those billions of people can sign up for a free e-mail account, sign up for a free twitter account, and their account will be just as capable as everyone else’s account. Furthermore, everyone that signs up for one of those accounts can put in fake data if they want and the power to detect whether that data is fake is limited because of the flexibility of IP addresses, cyber cafe’s and coffee shops as well as other issues. Essentially people can be whoever they want online, they can change their age, race, country, language, etc. this issue has been known for years. So how does this impact socialism on the internet? If you study any amount of history you will quickly notice the ideas in the physical world of classes, every society has classes, sometimes the differences between classes are small and sometimes they are large, but no matter what you will always have classes. Classes can be determined by social perceptions, by wealth, by land ownership, or any other physical means. The internet transcends the idea of a class society by allowing people to all have the same kind of account, my twitter account doesn’t do anything more or less than your’s does, I can customize it, but you can customize your account to be exactly the same as mine. This lack of uniqueness within online community prevents the idea of classes from rising up (for the most part) furthermore, if they did everyone could simply change their identity and suddenly be in a different class. This anonymity that the internet provides cannot translate to the physical world because you cannot change your identity, it takes work to create a physical brand for yourself and to attain belongings, this means that some will have and some will not have, creating classes. Thus in the physical world this class system prevents everyone from being on a level playing field, further preventing the idealistic socialism on the internet from translating to the physical world.

Continuing the discussion of classes I should point out that if net neutrality is lost then classes will rise up online. As soon as you have to pay for more bandwidth, or pay to access certain areas of the internet a class system will arise on the internet. This class system may not be exactly the same as the physical world but it will destroy some of the ideal that allows the internet to be an ideal socialistic community. The reason for this is that some will have more bandwidth, some will have less bandwidth, or something similar, and thus the classes of “lots of bandwidth” (we’ll call them the nobility) and the “not much bandwidth” (we’ll call them the peasants) will be created. This will destroy the community of the internet. So for all of you that had no other reason to like or dislike net neutrality there is another reason for you to consider.

The last attribute of the internet that prevents the socialistic ideal on the internet from translating to the physical world is that the internet is not owned. The internet is set up via routers, switches, hubs, etc., which are really just specialized computers, it consists of these specialized computers dealing within layers of open protocols and software to communicate. The internet could be set up via other computers (wireless networking makes this much easier via mesh networking). Furthermore, the Internet does not all disappear if one site goes off line. Because the internet is built around open and easily accessible technology, and because all of that technology is not owned by any one entity it is completely feasible for one section of the internet to be inaccessible all of a sudden and the internet would still exist. In fact if the entire internet died off a new internet could be set up among a group of friends; really its all just a collection of connections, when one connection is removed there are still other connections. This is perfect for socialism to thrive online because there is no one governing body, it all exists outside of extensive regulation or ownership. Yes, individual sites are owned by companies but the important thing is that all of the sites are not owned by the same company and they are not all subject to the same laws or rules.

So why can’t the non-ownership of the internet translate to the real world? To be short: because of government. Socialism is defined in the American Heritage Dictionary (according to dictionary.com) as:

“Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy.” – Dictionary.com (American Heritage Dictionary definition)

I know that people may argue with me on this point but lets face it, we need a government. Unless you create a country of five people you are most likely going to need some form of leadership to prevent complete chaos and moral disregard. The form that this government or leadership takes may be different but it suffices to say that it must exist. You cannot create the socialistic ideal of the internet within the physical world because the internet does not allow for physical crimes, someone cannot be physically murdered, assaulted, or otherwise impacted via the internet (ignoring the physical technologies that are controlled via the internet). This means that laws and protections don’t need to exist on the internet to prevent these crimes, in other words, the internet by its definition as an electronic medium regulates and prevents certain crimes simply by being that electrical medium. This does not translate to the real world, because in the real world we have greed (see point one) and we have classes (see point two) this creates conflict, which requires resolution, and this means that the idea of socialism must be regulated if it exists within the physical world. This regulation would most likely be manifested through some form of leadership or government. Many examples exist that show how government regulation of socialism in the physical world are negative (China is a very good example given its regulation of the internet). This regulation then prevents the ability for the community to run, own, and consume its own goods independent of some authority that regulates. This means that it is impossible for the idealistic notion of socialism that exists on the internet to translate to the physical world, because the “government class” must be created to essentially “own” everything.

To present an overview, the internet is a perfect platform for socialism because it produces “soft” or digital goods that can be infinitely and perfectly copied for “free”, the internet provides anonymity which allows for a classless society, and the internet is not dependent on a single governing authority either for its existence or for its regulation because through its electrical medium it is capable of preventing violent physical crimes. This ideal platform online doesn’t translate to the real world because physical good cannot be reproduced perfectly and indefinitely without significant cost to the consumer, the physical world does not allow for significant anonymity and so it creates classes which create conflict in the physical world, this conflict requires regulation and oversight which means that a government or some form of leader entity must exist to regulate and manage the physical community. The big problem with having a leader over a socialistic society is that they essentially manage everything, from the community and crime within it to the economy which gives it immense power which can create a very dangerous situation for the people under that government. When that government decides that it wants to exist to protect itself rather than the people you have what most socialistic countries are, which is a totalitarian government that regulates everything and prevents a society that is community run, owned, and consumed. Thus it is important to realize the differences between online and off line and why the “perfect” socialism on the internet cannot and should not be translated to the physical world.