➪ Declaration of independence of Cyberspace
I believe many of the ideas outlined by Barlow are still identifiable in certain discourses about the internet. However, they seem very distant, almost dissonant, with the current online landscape and perceptions of the “potential” of anonymity and unfettered online freedom.
Personally, most of my memories of being an active participant in online spaces, starting around 12-13 years old, were with online space that had already become very structured. I think I never had the feeling of discovering a space of freedom in which I could participate, at least not in the way evoked by Barlow (of course I was not bothered with re-inventing democracy at this age, but I know of friends who had very different experiences, being much more involved in blogging activities and text/video chat).
It always seemed like a space in which I could consume information but never overcome a certain opacity. I could (and I did) produce content on social media platforms, for example, but this is already a very regimented space, which I have only see getting more and more constrictive.
Moreover, the concepts of anonymity, unaccountability and freedom that Barlow talks about evoke very different images for me.
I would associate them with 4chan or Hunter Moore (although it is true that the Arab Spring also comes to mind).
Overall, Barlow’s text seems to reflect a very specific moment in internet history. In my opinion, he overlooks many of the dangers of an unregulated public forum, if there is no actionable plane to agree on and disseminate the “ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal” through which “our governance will emerge”.
Moreover, he does not seem to anticipate the incredible potential of big data technologies, harnessed by corporations and governments to inculcate their own ethics, and push the internet of anonymity, freedom and unaccountability to the margins.
➪ Engineering the Public: Big data, surveillance and computational politics
(I am sorry, I think Sara Saloum also may have talked about a similar topic, but we did our presentation about Foucault together and this is the first reaction I had to the text)
Modern surveillance infrastructures, increasingly involved with the online world and intertwined with other types of data gathering and online targeting have often been compared to Foucault’s concept of the panopticon. The scholarship about this often has a misguided focus on the physical incarnation of the panopticon, rather than the deeper processes that it is supposed to represent.
Foucault’s panopticon does not just involve an asymmetrical gaze, but the concept of the examination. This involves the constant and minute gathering of personal data (!) and a “normalizing judgement”, where the individual is not just judged by belonging to a certain category determined through observation, judged against a set of normative criteria and ranked in comparison to others and the “norm”.
This has striking resonance with the text. However, what is a central theme in Foucault’s work is the concept of internalization, which Is self-regulation because one is being “watched”, but not only that.
It also includes the fact that the individual is an integral part of their subjection in the panopticon. Divulging information about oneself (for example at the psychologist) is integral to allowing the panoptic power to determine the truth about you through observation and normalizing judgement.
Divulging this information involves a whole set of self-perceptions and identifications that are self-impositions of this observation-normalizing judgement combination.
Foucault is very conscious that modes of power are historically contingent. It is very possible he would think the panopticon does not apply to the online world (he died in 1984, so who knows?).
I am personally conflicted about whether it applies. On the one hand, the internet has given rise to impressive uses of data gathering, analysis and storage that bestows astronomical precision and exhaustiveness to information gathering.
However, the data gathered, although it is deeply tied to us, does not necessarily involve a process of identification, divulgation and collaborative truth-making. Does the panopticon still apply if the Obama campaign determines who I am in their own words (that I may never know), and that I never need to identify with them to be qualified and treated as such?
link to the article that outlines this view by comparing Michel Foucault and Shoshana Zuboff's works