Henrik Ingo – Ethics, freedom, and trust

The great achievement of the Web 2.0 phenomenon lies, for Henrik Ingo, in that it has significantly grown the mass of users who are at least instinctively coming to appreciate the joys of sharing (Youtube), communication (forums, Facebook) or access to information (blogs). The time has not (yet) arrived when everyone would be an active Linux user, but through Web 2.0 the same value system is penetrating into a larger crowd.

I was invited recently by re-public.gr to participate in a debate “to outline a critique of the social web organised along five axes: production, expoitation, individuality/collectivity, cultural difference, activism”, which the journal had started with a dialogue between Trebor Scholz and Paul Hartzog.

The task as outlined was for me surprisingly difficult to come to grips with. The whole terminology proposed seems foreign to me, yet supposedly I’m still an expert on Internet, communication, sharing and everything that this Web 2.0 thing is supposed to be. I mean, how did we get to the point where paying 10€ for a visit to the cinema counts as entertainment, whereas throwing a sheep on Facebook – for free! – is “exploitation”?

Since I never studied but the basics of Economy and/or Social studies, I first feared that this was simply some academic context I didn’t understand and therefore could not participate in. But with the benefit of reading other commenters on this topic, in particular the contribution of Michel Bauwens, I can now let a sigh of relief: It is not me who is not getting it, it is they! The whole framing of the question is wrong. Look guys, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube and MySpace users are not being exploited, or at least not in the sense you are proposing to use that word. They are in fact allies in the quest for open communication and/or sharing of content and even in the least charitable interpretation they are providing an entertainment service (where sharing a video is at least as entertaining as watching one) and thus not exploiting anyone.

“The Internet changes everything” they say. As an engineer – and hacker – it is an inspiring thought to think that technical innovations can change whole ways of living, organisation of whole societies. Yet, it has happened before. The steam engine led to industrialisation and capitalism. The invention of the printing press led to revolt against the established religion of a continent. And by the way, did you know that copyright legislation was not even invented until after the printing press? The explanation here is that before that invention, the act of someone laborously by hand producing a copy of you work, on expensive paper, or better yet leather, was an incredible honour to receive, certainly not an act anyone would have wanted to artificially limit by legislation. How appropriate then that the whole copyright regime is now in such a crisis with the advent of another technical revolution.

Once again: The Internet changes everything. And therefore trying to explain this phenomenon through frameworks and concepts straight from the cold-war-era, is simply going to lead us in the wrong direction.

But what then is the new system we are changing to? Striving for some kind of academically usable framework, the best explanation I have seen so far is proposed by Stefan Meretz and the Oekonux project, the concept of a “germ form“. In short, a germ form is something that is developing within, and as part of the old and prevalent system, yet it points, at the same time, towards a new system that is to replace the old one.

This is in stark contrast to the capitalist/socialist dualism, where the capitalists and the labour force are imagined in a mutual antagonistic dynamic. On the contrary, a germ form is not completely opposed to the predominant system. An example would be the Open Source software as a germ form of a new way of software production, or for that matter Web 2.0 as a new form of entertainment. Since there are companies profiting from Open Source (and those companies are allies, or members, of the Open Source community, not its enemies or exploiters) clearly Open Source is not against capitalism. At the same time, it is a very different system from the traditional capitalist model of software production, which was based on exclusion.

Another example would be the transition from feudal to capitalist society. The bourgeois class was initially part of the feudal system, and seen as ranking lower and owing servitude to the noble and clergy, if not to the peasants. At the same time, we can see with hindsight, that it was the germ form of a new system that was to overthrow the whole feudal system it was serving.

I therefore cannot emphasize enough the same point with Bauwens: The Internet is changing the system, and trying to explain the change with 20th century economical models is a big mistake, because that would lead to the denial of the change that is actually happening.

What is happening then and who are the agents in the new system? And what is the role of these Web 2.0 companies?

Scholz and Hartzog are correct in pointing out that Web 2.0 in itself is nothing revolutionary new. It is a continuum of a phenomenon we can witness throughout the evolution of all Internet technologies and Open Source (which are closely intertwined). Therefore we can easily outline the agents and demarcation lines based on our personal experience in this evolution, possibly adding some small details particular to Web 2.0.

Since the Web 2.0 is a continuum of the previous evolutionary stages of the Internet (such as the “Web 1.0″), its value system is the same. It is that of (information) sharing, open access and building of a commons: the hacker ethic that underlies not only the Open Source movement but also the Internet. Thus the protagonists of Web 2.0 range from the activist users, such as a Creative Commons advocate, to those who rejoice in the act of sharing a video, blogging and chatting. The primary antagonists are those who strive to hinder the inevitable progress: Microsoft in its active and backhanded efforts against Open Source, the music and movie industries with their tentacles deep in national legislation and those wishing to sensor the free flow of information on the Internet (for a multitude of reasons). In the middle there are of course the great mass of users, innocently unaware of this schism – and undoubtedly many of the aspiring Internet companies too.

The great achievement of the Web 2.0 phenomenon lies in that it has significantly grown the mass of users who are at least instinctively coming to appreciate the joys of sharing (Youtube), communication (forums, Facebook) or access to information (blogs). The time has not (yet) arrived when everyone would be an active Linux user, but through Web 2.0 the same value system is penetrating into a larger crowd.

A Web 2.0 company is typically one that facilitates some form of sharing – though in the case of say Facebook, the sharing of content, while it exists, is perhaps not its most charasteristic way of classification, it is perhaps better there to talk about rich communication. While doing so, Web 2.0 companies typically get the ownership of some central hub, such as the (proprietary) sharing technology itself (if built as a web service) or at least the common forum where the sharing takes place (should the technology or communication protocol be open).

Bauwens is further right in his assertion that the primary lines of tension are to be found here, and this will be defining in whether a company will be considered “good” or “evil” by the community. A company that can successfully resist the urge to exert too much control will be seen as an ally facilitating the sharing and communication of the community, one not in accord with the values of its community will be in trouble. In addition to the adherence to this hacker value of sharing and the commons, other values may certainly play also a part. One example would be privacy, how a company is trusted to treat the personal information of its users.

While the purely technical (de facto) openness of some service will be a crucial factor in deciding the classification of a company into good or evil, it is also somewhat a matter of public perception (or PR to be frank). One interesting example of this dynamic is Google. While it is not at all compatible with the hacker value system to store all one’s email on Google servers, approving that it is scanned for the purpose of advertising, myself and many of my friends have chosen to use GMail due to its accessibility, user friendliness and good spam filtering, even reliability. Yet, if this was Microsoft, or even Yahoo, some may have chosen not to utilise a similar service (I certainly would have).

So the lines between good and evil are not as absolute as one might think, trade offs are often made. (This does not of course include any of the millions of GMail users who use Google happily unaware of this question altogether.) For instance, it is an acceptable solution for me to store my email on Google, because I know I am able to download my email away from those servers (and actually do so for backup purposes) should I wish to change my email service. If this option wasn’t there, I would not have chosen to use GMail, it would be a showstopper. Compare this to some other platform, like Facebook, a similar service to “export” my data doesn’t exist. But, on the other hand, that data is currently not so important to me anyway. So I can afford a little innocent play with Facebook, even if it is not at all compatible with my hacker values, because the communication taking place there is not valuable to me (as data).

The social web is not, therefore, merely a web between human friends, but also a web of trust towards the companies acting in the community. And since a typical web 2.0 service will be free of charge anyway, trust is actually a dominating currency in the system and the existence of good Internet citizens an important asset to web companies.

Special issue: read also, social web
Tags: activism, capitalism, facebook, henrik ingo, open access, web2.0