For the Right to an Internet With Rights

By Javier Tolcachier

There is no doubt that the era is going through a technological revolution, with the onset of digitalization in almost all social activities?

The Internet, a space that is so important for our social interaction, is changing in its properties, is moving away from any possible democratic control and is increasingly being permeated by the commercial interests of companies. Interests that concentrate power and wealth in a handful of transnational corporations that have de facto control over the content circulating on the web.

Yes, the Internet and its related technologies, which could ideally serve a greater democratization of knowledge and political activity that could contribute to a better distribution of the wealth and collective heritage of humanity, are interfered with by certain monopoly intentions that prevent or prevent it is difficult for this to happen.

It is therefore essential to analyze in more detail the intentions and processes behind the installation of this technical-digital model, what main effects it has and what possible future it has.

Ongoing processes

It often happens that processes that have some external resemblance but are mobilized by different intentions become confused and assimilated as identical, even though they represent different and even opposing historical directions.

This is the case with processes such as globalization[1] and globalization. While the former corresponds to a historical tendency of the connection between peoples and cultures, which now forms a fully networked mosaic of diversity and on the way to a possible Universal Human Nation, globalization corresponds to the interest of capitalist corporations to expand their activities without geographical boundaries. trying to evade any localized responsibility.

It is evident that while globalization has a clear evolutionary direction that brings with it the possibility of sharing the historical accumulation of every culture and of working mutually together to overcome the common challenges and also the particular challenges of each people, globalization is working regressive and concentrates capital and power and the distancing of democratic decision-making capacities from the social basis, which has already been diminished by the disintegration of formal democracy into the institution of the state.

Something similar is happening with digital technologies and the Internet, as framed in the processes mentioned above.

If you look at the advancing digitization in the light of secularization, the benefits of shortening time and distances in communication become just as clear as the possibility of free access and exchange of knowledge.

In the sense of secularization, the Internet is a positive way of expressing yourself, comparing habits, exchanging experiences, strengthening projects, communicating utopias, calling for transformations and perceiving the world and humanity as a whole, united by a common fate.

But if we look at the same technological marvels under the magnifying glass of globalization, we see that we are facing a moment of reconsideration of the capitalist system, which, due to the monstrous speculative diversion of its surpluses and the reduction of capital, is at a crossroads of spaces with desirable ones Profit margins in productive activities of the real economy for their desire for unlimited and rash profit.

The globalized digital economy, together with the promoted “green revolution”, represents a way out of a system of exclusive and unjust accumulation, which by its nature tends to concentrate wealth, to social segmentation and, contrary to their claims, to plunder the common house, to privatization of welfare and for socialization only of need.

So it's no wonder that the World Economic Forum itself, a conclave of the powerful and insensitive, has fervently embraced both the digital issue and the green discourse on transformation. For Naomi Klein, “The Great Reset” - a program presented to Klaus Schwab, head of the WEF and board member of the elite Bilderberg Club, and Prince Charles, a conspicuous member of the British royal family - in Davos 2020 is a place to advertise to make for-profit technological solutions to complex social problems; to hear the opinion of the heads of transnational oil giants on the urgent need to address climate change; To listen to politicians what they say in a crisis: That this is a tragedy, but also an opportunity that they will work to build better and bring about a “fairer, greener, healthier planet”.

It was not for nothing that Microsoft CEO Brad Smith was among the keynote speakers on this occasion, who specifically stated: "Data and technology in general are indispensable tools to solve almost every problem we are confronted with".

It is also no coincidence that the World Economic Forum (WEF) opened the first Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in an area with a high density of incubators and technology companies back in March 2017 in San Francisco, USA.

The two ways

There is a clear fork in the road. One way is short and fast, that of uncritical digital technologization, which leads to a greater dependence on concentrations of power and an increase in inequality and social exclusion. The other way, with a view to the common interest and participation in society, may be longer and slower, but it leads to more autonomy, justice, inclusion and social complementarity.

On the path of concentrated capital, the Internet will lose all social and human components. The longed-for universal connectivity will then only be the exploitation of the social investments made by states in infrastructure by greedy entrepreneurs.

In this way, digital platforms will multiply and offer precarious work. Telework does not serve to reduce working hours, it will increase them. The wage gap between knowledge workers and second- or third-level jobs will widen. For women, the new digital exploitation will increase unpaid care work and the wage gap with men.

When the Internet finally becomes the highway of the transnational economy, the tools of information manipulation, surveillance and control will continue to multiply, turning people into objects of unlimited data extractivism.

The digital advancement of companies towards education and health will bring ideological intervention of their content and invasion of the privacy of the communities involved, always to the greater fame and fortune of mutual fund shareholders.

Along the way, the inequality between the global north and the south will increase, which will continue to supply the north with digital and physical goods through expanded consumption without enjoying the benefits of patent ownership and technology licenses.

In this way, companies will first come up with every glimmer of democratic activity and then conquer it, become a kind of global corporate government, intervene in the multilateral system of international relations and turn it into a mere screen to legitimize their interests.

The alternative route is to jointly acquire digital technology for the exclusive benefit of the entire human community.

For the right to the Internet to be an effective extension of rights, as in every other area and occasion in history, the crucial participation of peoples and their organizations is essential.

In this way, an alliance between the state and the organized community can be created, a public-community alliance that supplants the shameful “public-private partnership” that legitimized the penetration of capital into previously remote regions within the neoliberal framework. Limits of his business.

From this public-community alliance, universal connectivity projects of shared or autonomous administration can be carried out so that infrastructures, tools and knowledge as well as the necessary government investments are geared towards the common good and the education of active and critical users.

From this perspective, the priorities are to ensure sovereignty and autonomy through the development of decentralized, non-invasive, interoperable and freely selectable technological alternatives; Forging cooperation networks between organizations in order to turn from mere recipients into generators and makers of technology policy; and to enable unrestricted and shared access to strategic knowledge between nations.

It is inevitable today that large technology companies and digital platforms are burdened with high taxes and prevented from escaping to tax havens in order to finance an unconditional universal basic income. We must also demand laws that guarantee the protection and individual or collective ownership of data and regulate the action of commercial digital platforms in the public interest.

It is important to master not only the use but also the creation of technologies and social networks that are neither guardianship nor extractivist in order to promote communication, organization and social rapprochement.

Ultimately, scientific and technological progress is an achievement of peoples and their historical accumulation. For the full realization of man, digital tools must be used. Otherwise, they are not only useless but also harmful.

This paper was presented on 06/10/21 at the meeting of the Education, Academia, Science and Technology Group (GEACT), a civil society mechanism within the framework of the Agenda for Sustainable Development (Agenda 2030) and at the Forum of the Countries of Latin America and the Caribbean on Sustainable Development (FPALCDS). Some of the contents of the conference “Utopias or Dystopias” are part of the collective diagnoses and suggestions. Los Pueblos de America Latina y el Caribe ante la era digital ”organized by the Internet Ciudadana Space.

Javier Tolcachier is a researcher at the World Center for Humanist Studies and communicator for the international news agency Pressenza.

[1] To expand the concept of globalization, see Silo. Dictionary of New Humanism. Obras Completas Vol. II. P. 538 (2002) Mexico. Plaza y Valdés editorial team.

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This post was previously published on pressenza.com under a Creative Commons license.

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