Response 1—ElliotC (updated)

Response 1b

Problem: At present, Web-based information technology companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook have a disproportionately large amount of power, have a disproportionately large role in how individuals are able to conduct their daily lives, and are single points of failure for a large portion of the modern lifestyle. There is no practical way to rebel against this system. Van Gelder refers to “institutions whose behavior calls into question their right to exist” (“Introduction: How Occupy Wall Street Changes Everything”, Sarah Van Gelder, 2011, p. 10). The hegemony of corporations is a strong parallel to such institutions — unlike the government, corporations are private institutions with little to no public oversight and control, despite having a large and visible role (perhaps even larger than any one government) in individuals’ lives.

Proposed solution: To begin to challenge this power structure, as part of an ongoing project, I propose developing an semi-decentralized document-oriented computing platform that can integrate the abilities of traditional information technology systems into a single, cohesive system. Such a system should be free/libre software, and should be designed in such a way that it can adapt when needed to functioning as a fully decentralized, serverless system, transparently adjusting to the networking capabilities or lack thereof available to it on an ad-hoc basis. The existence of this project as a replacement would prevent single IT companies’ systems being single points of failure, and its distributed model would prevent it itself from being a single point of failure. Additionally, by being fully free/libre software, and by using a single system and data format for the full range of services, this proposal would reduce the dangers created by vendor lock-in, proprietary products, and incompatible IT systems.

Top strategies: My goal is to develop an initial implementation for this system, and create a community-led nonprofit organization to manage it. An alternative strategy could be omitting the implementation phase, and only focusing on developing a specification for such a system that could be presented elsewhere, although that strategy would risk increasing the problems the project is intended to fix (by providing existing IT companies with the project’s technological innovations, but not having a free/libre implementation of them to prevent existing companies using distorted clones of the idea to further their proprietary goals and vendor lock-in).

Target audience: This project is aimed at and would benefit people who currently use proprietary IT systems. Secondary audiences include people who already use and care about free/libre software, and people who have not used IT systems but would like to. Making such a system be accessible and aesthetically pleasing is important, but achieving those aims is mostly a solved problem, and by following standard best practices this should not be a significant issue in the development of this project. To help it be easy to use, a user interface proposal is available that serves as an iteration on traditional computing models while being simpler and more capable; I believe that this proposal should be used as the default user interface modality for the proposed IT system. The project itself is quite serious, reflecting its great importance (at least in my opinion) and substantial scope, but fun elements certainly play a role in it (free/libre computer games, etc.) — not to mention the simple fun of using a great system that you know you fully control and can rely on, rather than being controlled by and dependent on corporate interests!

Describe the hallmark characteristics of New Media. How do you think this changes who has the power to “define reality” via the media? Give an example of where this might be the case. (2-3 paragraphs)

The essay ‘What is New Media’ discusses two key concepts. First is the idea that things traditionally considered “media” or “mediums”, such as newsprint, radio, books, or television, are vehicles for communication within a given communication medium. Second is that there are three communication media: the interpersonal medium, the mass medium, and the new medium. The distinction of the new medium is the ability of content creators to provide information in a form that is tailored to individual readers.

One problem comes to mind that is caused, or at least heavily exacerbated, by the advent of this new medium. This problem does allow those who communicate to “define reality”, and undermines the shared truths that determine a society’s collective understanding of reality. This problem is that when information and documents are adjusted and filtered at the time they are viewed, to make them as palatable as possible to the given viewer, those documents are not available to society as a whole for collective consideration and discourse. This has been highlighted recently by the discussion of “fake news”, in the context of “social networking” Web sites such as Facebook, QZone, and Twitter. Web sites are sets of documents, and Web apps are typically documents that change depending on who is reading them. Social Web sites typically conform to that model, where the site is a document that loads a series of small summaries that link to other documents. The ability of the communicator (in this case, the social Web site) to “define reality” is determined by this model. Because the document selects summaries based on what will keep the reader engaged (so as to maximize advertising revenue for the Web site), the document is individual to the reader. Because the contents of the document are different for every reader, there is not any capacity for concrete collective commentary on the document; only on its general nature and manner of operation. Traditional document forms can be discussed and debated coherently, because they are always the same and thus form a common shared point of reference for discussion. By thus eliminating the traditional oversight, review, and cultural commentary on the contents of the documents that people are exposed to, the Web sites’ selection of snippets to present determines the perceived reality for each of its readers, and those realities are not shared between readers.

Exercise 1

Problem: A Disappearing Language: Solution B is the New Media solution. This is because solution A restricts control over what knowledge is stored and presented to a few selected experts, while solution B allows a democratization of this knowledge. In my opinion, both solutions should be used simultaneously, and integrated with each other, to provide access to both authoritative and democratically shared information. Of course, all the information should be libre-licensed.

Problem: Neglected Ruins: Solution B is, again, the New Media solution. This is because it similarly allows the democratization of communication and knowledge. That said, solution A is the preferable solution from an ethical standpoint as solution B involves littering and vandalizing historic buildings with stickers; such moral consideration is irrelevant from the perspective of which is the New Media solution, however.

Problem: Misunderstanding Computer Animation: Solution A is the New Media solution as it allows the “reader” of the document (the application) to shape their own experience of reading it through interacting with it. (Also, it avoids promoting proprietary software, which is always a good thing.)

Problem: A Broken Fountain: Solution A is the New Media solution. This is because it involves many people in the community, and enables them to all participate in the development, shaping, and use of the fountain. Solution B, by comparison, restricts engagement with and control over the work to a single artist or group, rather than granting engagement with it to a community as a whole.

Exercise 2

Problem: Centralized economies are unstable.

I have generally advocated for the use of an information technology system to manage and facilitate work by individuals, by tracking what needs to be done and what skills people have, and offering jobs to people with the relevant skills. This would allow the individuals to bypass the difficult job search and application process, which uses a lot of individuals’ time and energy without producing any real value from that expenditure. Then, when a job is completed, the person who did the work would be granted credits corresponding to the work they did, which could then be exchanged for goods or services. This type of system could be implemented as a single, centralized system. However, it could also be implemented as a decentralized system.

To decentralize such a system, individual computers that make up the information technology system would have to be able to negotiate information sharing between other computers that are accessible via network. If each individual computer has the entire capability to maintain the system, then the network would be able to split and recombine as needed depending on situation.

For instance, if a community in Maine, USA implemented such a system, and a community in Peru implemented such a system, the two systems would be able to be connected when a network connection between them was available, being able to share work assignments remotely, but if a storm or other situation disrupted the network connection, the two communities’ economies would split into separate economies and continue working independently seamlessly, and then recombine when the network connection returned. In such a system, each individual who has a computer thus has access to and control over that part of the economy. This still leaves one centralized aspect, though, which is the software controlling the economies. If it is community-maintained libre software, that problem is largely eliminated, aside from the usual problems of project governance. If it is preferred, the software could also have facilities for creating ad-hoc centralization, where one instance of the software within each group of instances accessible within a given network would adopt the role of leader. This could be decided automatically, and made fully invisible to users of the system, or through community selection with automatic selection as a fallback, which would probably be preferable so as to ensure that systems with good connectivity and uptime (such as servers in datacenters) were selected as leaders, avoiding unnecessary inefficiency and maximizing reliability.