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26C3: A Hacker’s Utopia

Sandro Gaycken talks about: What’s there, what’s missing and why there might be a problem.

Grand social utopias have sort of failed, e.g. the soviet union. Now there is a renaissance of utopias which are a little bit smaller. Many of these are technology related.

This is interesting for technology philosophers.

Utopias – An Introduction

Utopian ideas stem from human desires. We want a lot of things and there are some things we can’t change which leads to dramas. But there are also things we can change. This is very inspiring for utopians.

There are social organisations like the socialist utopias tried but there are also technological advances. An example for the utopians based on the latter is the industrial revolution. Of course social organisation and technological advances also interact.

Systematic utopian ideas started with the advent of modern science. They tried to explore systematically the connections between the social organisation and technological advances. This allowed the emerge of utopian ideas.

The Golden Age is what utopian ideas try to find which is the maximal desirable society etc.

The social functions of utopian ideas had were inspiring the political agenda, inspiration for change and inspiration of design. Mainly though it’s a comparison and critique of societal states. (e.g. if we could change a little here and there we could have a better/idea society).

We also see many dystopian ideas in e.g. movies like Matrix or books like 1984. They also critize the actual society and do comparions.

There is also the interesting thing that the industrial revolution sort of promised that we don’t have to work anymore but now we seem to be afraid of all the jobs we are losing because of it.

Another differentiation is whether there is a technological or social orientation where the one follows the other in different directions. Either social changes happen after some invention or social changes require technological changes.

A last distinction is whether a utopia is local or global. Local ones might surround only particular ideas and not whole humankind.

A Hacker’s Utopia

• Hackers repeatedly provided utopian ideas
• Tied to information & communication technologies
• Correspond change with the rise of IT. You can see how the utopian ideas have grown alongside IT
• According to societal diffusion and an ensuingf potential for technological development and/or social change
• Four Stages

Stage 1: Proto-Utopia

• Loal, technology-oriented
• MIT-TMRC
• Hacker Ethic: strongly local and technology-based reflection of working conditions
  • Information must be free
  • Computers can change the world for the better
  • Distrust authority
• This has a lot to do with their working conditions like not being able to access informatino they needed and authorities who did not want to give it to them.
• Diffuse utopian extensions: “a world in line with the hacker ethic would be a great place” (if everyone is like us)
• But not a clue what that could look like

Stage 2: Materializing Utopia

• Local, technology oriented
• 60ies to 80ies: PCs, networks
• Large-scale societal diffusion of computers and networks seems principally possible but not really
• Enabled utopian visions
• Ted Nelson: (1965, 1974): Internet (had the idea of it just before it was realized at ARPANET). He also invited hypertext.
• Utopian ideas interact with technical R&D
• Why shouldn’t be all computers networked together? Why shouldn’t everybody have access to a computer?

Stage 3: Local Ideology

• Technology- and social-oriented
• 80ies to now: large-scale distribution of computers and the internet
• Technology exists, now: challenged conditions of use (social aspect rather than technicalo)
• Freedom of (IT-related) information = political agenda
• Open Source Movement, Anti-Surveillance Movement
• Actual and feasible social & technological moves: GPL/GNU, Linux, Lawsuits, Anonymizer, PGP
• (he confuses Free Software with Open Source bit IMHO)

Stage 4: Social Utopia & Globalizing Ideology

• As of late: information society, many societal processes are somewhat IT-based
• Utopian extrapolation: society can be changed through the use of ICT
• Hacker community proposes new utopian ideas: “Free Information Society” with more democracy and freedom from capitalism, censorship, dictators and other menaces
• Technology stays fixed, changes are social (editor: Is it really fixed? Is the rise of social networks etc. not changing quite a lot? Might depend on definition)

Difficult Times

• Information society is a dangerous place
• Dystopia 1984: information technology + totalitarianism.
• Political activism with a clear agenda is incredibly important because information technology is already there and we have no receipt against totaliarianism. And if this happens then we are directly in the 1984 scenario.
• Stage 3 to Stage 4: The development of ideologies, of new social utopias and the “globalization” of ideologies need a lot of care

Free Information Society

• Genuine agenda: Societal problems related to the freedom of knowledge or to the potentials of techno-authoritarian suppression
• Even if not ICT-related

Good examples:

• Anti-surveillance movement, open Source
• Anti-Censorship
• The “read-write”-society
• Digital Divide
• Patents

Free “Informatized” Society?

• Problematic agenda: Any socvietal problems whenever ICT have something to do with it should be done by hackers ethics
• Responsibility rather superficial
• Hacker’s utopian ideas were never meant to consitute a global ideology.

Blind spots:

• Interpreting blind spots by generalizations
  • IT-informatino to any kind of information. What is information, what is not? What’s the relation to knowledge? Why should information be free? (he says that there is no IPR on open source, which is not really true)
• Distrust in authorities
  • Which authorities should not be trusted? How do we get along without them? Which mechanisms should regulate societal decision making?
• New topics: How to deal with them?

Extenions

Someopen questions are improvised

Some open questions are filled with background cultures

USA: hippie culture. Outcome: radical right-wing neoliberal information politics. Anti-state, Pro-Capitalism

EU: socialist & anarchist culture. Outcome: renewed socialist revolutionism.  anti-state, anti-capitalism.

case in point: Politication of illegal downloads.

Legitimate parts: Reform of property rights, mainstream music & film as knowledge

Problems: Many arguments lack scientific rigor and proof. Is it really case of knowledge? “Free-beer”-issue, not “free speech”, inconsistencies with antu-surveillance arguments (technological determinism, democratic processes, rule of law. E.g. some technological means are now proposed), Detrimental realpolitical consequences regarding surveillance & the freedom of speech

Conclusions

clarify the agenda, tackle the open questions

Be tolerant towards alternative agendas & allow democratic process

 

This transcript probably contains mistakes and errors and if you detect them please send me a note so I can fix them!