<p><em>To fight a hundred times and win a hundred times is not the blessing of blessings. The blessing of blessings is to beat the other man's army without getting into the fight yourself.</em></p>
First published in <ahref="http://twenty.fibreculturejournal.org/2012/06/20/fcj-147-liberation-technology-and-the-arab-spring-from-utopia-to-atopia-and-beyond/"target="blank">The Fibreculture Journal</a>, Issue 20, 2012<br>
<pclass="indent">Abstract: While the tendency in the West to refer to the Arab Spring movements as ‘Twitter Revolutions’ has passed, a liberal discourse of ‘liberation technology’ (information and communication technologies that empower grassroots movements) continues to influence our ideas about networked participation. Unfortunately, this utopian discourse tends to circumvent any discussion of the capitalist market structure in which these tools operate. In this paper, I suggest that liberation technologies may in fact increase opportunities for political participation, but that they simultaneously create certain kinds of inequalities. I end by proposing a theoretical framework for locating alternative practices of participation and liberation.</p>
<p>After some initial fascination with the concept, there now appears to be more skepticism than support for the idea that tools like Twitter and Facebook are single-handedly responsible for igniting the Arab Spring movements. As we witness the immense effort and human cost that has gone into uprisings in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Western Sahara and Yemen, we recognise that it takes much more than a social media platform to organise and sustain a grassroots protest movement. And yet, the neoliberal discourse behind the trope of a “Twitter Revolution” (a revolution enabled by “liberation technologies” which empower oppressed groups) continues to function — especially in Western media and academia — as a utopian discourse that conceals the role of communicative capitalism in undermining democracy. The meme of the Twitter Revolution may have come and gone, but the ideology that gave rise to it continues to colour our ideas about participation and democracy.</p>
<p>What follows are some observations about the manner in which discourses around liberation technology are used to imagine a utopian model of activism in which digitally networked communities are capable of changing their political realities through mediated participation facilitated by corporations. Specifically, I want to do three things: 1) to examine how the utopian discourse of liberation technology circumvents any discussion of the market structure of digital information and communication technologies; 2) to explore how this utopian discourse normalises the role of digital networks as platforms that increase participation while simultaneously increasing inequality, and 3) to propose responses to the utopian discourse of liberation technology that provide alternative imaginings of social participation. I should clarify that my objective is not to provide a detailed account of the unfolding of the Arab Spring movements or their continuing repercussions; rather, my goal is to describe how the assumptions behind the rhetoric of liberation technology correlate to the practice of civic disobedience, and to delineate a theoretical framework for understanding the contrast between the two. Hence, I do not believe my argument is limited to a North African or Middle Eastern context. Events since the Arab Spring such as the England riots in August of 2011, or the emergence of the Occupy movement in September (which happened after this text was originally submitted for publication, and are therefore not discussed in detail) serve to extend the validity and application of my argument.</p>
<p>It would be adequate to begin by expanding the constrictive parameters set forth by the concept of utopia. Here, I will take a page from McKenzie Wark (2007) and augment this idea with the concepts of heterotopia and atopia. While a utopia is a nowhere that exists in a theoretical realm, a heterotopia is an actual but different space, an elsewhere where exceptional conditions from those that usually apply exist. Thus, while a utopia can only exist in the imagination, a heterotopia is an “island” (such as a school, a prison, a stadium or a hospital) where people are allowed — or forced — to follow different social rules. Lastly, an atopia is similarly an alternative site with different social norms, except that in this case, the site can be located anywhere or everywhere; it is borderless. In the remainder of this paper, I will be sometimes alluding to how the discourses of digital networks, participatory media, and mobilisation inscribe social participation in the different topological planes of utopia, heterotopia and atopia. Although these concepts are not central to my argument per se, they will help me frame a critique of liberation technology.</p>
<p>There is, indeed, much utopianism around the discourse of social media and recent protest movements. Even before the so-called Twitter Revolution, we can point to a growing trend, particularly within mainstream and even alternative journalism, that suggested that protest movements all over the world were transformed by participatory media (examples include statements about the revolutionary impact of cell phones in the Philippines, YouTube in Iran, Facebook in Moldova, and so on). I am choosing to collect this particular brand of techno-utopianism under the rubric of “liberation technology,” not because this is a term that is readily recognisable in popular or academic discourses, but because of its rich semiotic meaning. One noticeable place where a definition of liberation technology is attempted is the Web site for the <em>Program on Liberation Technology</em> at Stanford University. There, we are informed that the goal of the program is to research ‘how information technology can be used to defend human rights, improve governance, empower the poor, promote economic development, and pursue a variety of other social goods’ (‘Program on Liberation Technology’).</p>
<p>These are worthy goals. But my first encounter with the term “liberation technology” made me think of a similarly sounding concept, and even now, typing those words in Wikipedia will cause the search algorithm to ask: ‘Did you mean liberation theology?’ At first glance, perhaps both movements share a certain ethos and idealism. But my critique of liberation technology centers on the fact that, whereas liberation theology sought to lend legitimacy to the struggle of the oppressed by questioning the hierarchical structure of the Catholic church from within, and suggesting that the church itself could be the source of injustice, liberation technology does not seem very interested in questioning the roles and structures of the institutions that own and control social media networks. Instead, liberation technology seems to posit a worldview whereby technologies that emerge in the context of capitalism (precisely at places like Stanford) can be used by those wishing to challenge capitalism itself.</p>
<p>As the history of global unrest intersects with the emerging affordances of information and communication technologies (ICT), no one can deny that these can — often in unforeseen ways — aid in the defence of human rights, improve governance, empower the poor, and so on. But that is not the point. The point is that while presenting these technologies as nothing less than the agents of liberation, a critique of the capitalist institutions and superstructures in which these technologies operate is obscured, and this critique is necessary for understanding the relationship between capitalism and ICT, as well as for opening up new frontiers of liberation.</p>
<p>It has already been convincingly argued that neoliberalism would not have been possible without ICT (cf. Robert Neubauer, 2011), to the extent that these technologies facilitated transnational flexible production and unrestricted capital flows, causing the erosion of organised labour and the promotion of an unregulated, privatised “free” market as the solution to all of society’s ills. But here I am more interested in the link between capitalism and communication as an act of participation in society. Jodi Dean’s concept of communicative capitalism is particularly relevant, since she defines it as ‘the materialisation of ideas of inclusion and participation in information, entertainment, and communication technologies in ways that capture resistance and intensify global capitalism’ (2009: 2). In communicative capitalism, everyone has the tools and opportunities to express an opinion. “Participation” in society is therefore identified first and foremost as the ability to communicate, to express one’s opinion, in particular about the — mostly commercial — choices that give individuals their identity. However, the overabundance of communication in a marketplace in which all statements compete for visibility results in an environment where political change becomes difficult (if all options are equally valid, how can one option be declared superior?). Thus, the more we communicate (through our participation in digital networks, for instance), the more resistance is obstructed, and the more the ideology of capitalism is reinforced. Communicative capitalism — to paraphrase Gilles Deleuze — doesn’t stop people from expressing themselves, but forces them to express themselves continuously (1997: 129).</p>
<p>Encouraging compulsive and continuous expression has turned out to be a profitable business model, as evidenced by the growth of the social media industry. Facebook, launched only in 2004, was adding on average 250,000 new members a day by 2007. Currently, it has over 845 million members (‘Facebook Company Info’), who store ‘more than 100 petabytes (100 quadrillion bytes) of photos and videos’ in the company’s servers (‘Facebook Infrastructure’). According to industry reports, the social networking market as a whole grew 87% from February 2006 to February 2007 (Britton and McGonegal, 2007: 80). Currently, the world spends over 110 billion minutes a month on social networks and blog sites, which equates to 22% of all time spent online (Nielsen Wire, 2010). Social media is driven by advertisements targeted to users based on the demographic data they provide, and the amount spent on advertising in social network services was $1.4 billion in 2008, with companies spending $305 and $850 million dollars to advertise their products on Facebook and MySpace, respectively (Eskelsen, Marcus and Ferree, 2009: 102-103). While the launch of new social media companies gives the impression of a competitive market, merger and acquisition trends suggest a move towards conglomeration that mirrors that of (and intersects with) traditional broadcast media. In a notable example, MySpace (which currently has over 185 million members) was acquired for US$580 million in 2005 by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, one of the eight companies that dominate the global media market (although it was later sold again, once it lost its market share to Facebook).</p>
<p>In essence, communicative capitalism means that communication and social exchange take place not just in any environment, but in a privatised one. The neoliberal impulse to subsume all social communication and participation to market forces can only be achieved if the network is made the dominant episteme or model for organising social realities. This is accomplished by the application of what I call a nodocentric filter to social formations, which renders all human interaction in terms of network dynamics (not just any network, but a digital network with a profit-driven infrastructure). Under a nodocentric view, the goal is to assign to everything its place in the network. Nodocentrism is an epistemic stance where the distance between a node and something outside the network is, for all practical purposes, infinite (Mejias, 2010). Thus, to be anything other than a node is to be invisible, non-existent. The technologies of communicative capitalism are applied towards the creation of a pervasive or ubiquitous computing environment in which every thing and every utterance must be integrated or assimilated as a node in a digital network.</p>
<p>—1—<br>
After some initial fascination with the concept, there now appears to be more skepticism than support for the idea that tools like Twitter and Facebook are single-handedly responsible for igniting the Arab Spring movements. As we witness the immense effort and human cost that has gone into uprisings in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Western Sahara and Yemen, we recognise that it takes much more than a social media platform to organise and sustain a grassroots protest movement. And yet, the neoliberal discourse behind the trope of a “Twitter Revolution” (a revolution enabled by “liberation technologies” which empower oppressed groups) continues to function — especially in Western media and academia — as a utopian discourse that conceals the role of communicative capitalism in undermining democracy. The meme of the Twitter Revolution may have come and gone, but the ideology that gave rise to it continues to colour our ideas about participation and democracy.</p>
<p>—2—<br>
What follows are some observations about the manner in which discourses around liberation technology are used to imagine a utopian model of activism in which digitally networked communities are capable of changing their political realities through mediated participation facilitated by corporations. Specifically, I want to do three things: 1) to examine how the utopian discourse of liberation technology circumvents any discussion of the market structure of digital information and communication technologies; 2) to explore how this utopian discourse normalises the role of digital networks as platforms that increase participation while simultaneously increasing inequality, and 3) to propose responses to the utopian discourse of liberation technology that provide alternative imaginings of social participation. I should clarify that my objective is not to provide a detailed account of the unfolding of the Arab Spring movements or their continuing repercussions; rather, my goal is to describe how the assumptions behind the rhetoric of liberation technology correlate to the practice of civic disobedience, and to delineate a theoretical framework for understanding the contrast between the two. Hence, I do not believe my argument is limited to a North African or Middle Eastern context. Events since the Arab Spring such as the England riots in August of 2011, or the emergence of the Occupy movement in September (which happened after this text was originally submitted for publication, and are therefore not discussed in detail) serve to extend the validity and application of my argument.</p>
<p>—3—<br>
It would be adequate to begin by expanding the constrictive parameters set forth by the concept of utopia. Here, I will take a page from McKenzie Wark (2007) and augment this idea with the concepts of heterotopia and atopia. While a utopia is a nowhere that exists in a theoretical realm, a heterotopia is an actual but different space, an elsewhere where exceptional conditions from those that usually apply exist. Thus, while a utopia can only exist in the imagination, a heterotopia is an “island” (such as a school, a prison, a stadium or a hospital) where people are allowed — or forced — to follow different social rules. Lastly, an atopia is similarly an alternative site with different social norms, except that in this case, the site can be located anywhere or everywhere; it is borderless. In the remainder of this paper, I will be sometimes alluding to how the discourses of digital networks, participatory media, and mobilisation inscribe social participation in the different topological planes of utopia, heterotopia and atopia. Although these concepts are not central to my argument per se, they will help me frame a critique of liberation technology.</p>
<p>—4—<br>
There is, indeed, much utopianism around the discourse of social media and recent protest movements. Even before the so-called Twitter Revolution, we can point to a growing trend, particularly within mainstream and even alternative journalism, that suggested that protest movements all over the world were transformed by participatory media (examples include statements about the revolutionary impact of cell phones in the Philippines, YouTube in Iran, Facebook in Moldova, and so on). I am choosing to collect this particular brand of techno-utopianism under the rubric of “liberation technology,” not because this is a term that is readily recognisable in popular or academic discourses, but because of its rich semiotic meaning. One noticeable place where a definition of liberation technology is attempted is the Web site for the <em>Program on Liberation Technology</em> at Stanford University. There, we are informed that the goal of the program is to research ‘how information technology can be used to defend human rights, improve governance, empower the poor, promote economic development, and pursue a variety of other social goods’ (‘Program on Liberation Technology’).</p>
<p>—5—<br>
These are worthy goals. But my first encounter with the term “liberation technology” made me think of a similarly sounding concept, and even now, typing those words in Wikipedia will cause the search algorithm to ask: ‘Did you mean liberation theology?’ At first glance, perhaps both movements share a certain ethos and idealism. But my critique of liberation technology centers on the fact that, whereas liberation theology sought to lend legitimacy to the struggle of the oppressed by questioning the hierarchical structure of the Catholic church from within, and suggesting that the church itself could be the source of injustice, liberation technology does not seem very interested in questioning the roles and structures of the institutions that own and control social media networks. Instead, liberation technology seems to posit a worldview whereby technologies that emerge in the context of capitalism (precisely at places like Stanford) can be used by those wishing to challenge capitalism itself.</p>
<p>—6—<br>
As the history of global unrest intersects with the emerging affordances of information and communication technologies (ICT), no one can deny that these can — often in unforeseen ways — aid in the defence of human rights, improve governance, empower the poor, and so on. But that is not the point. The point is that while presenting these technologies as nothing less than the agents of liberation, a critique of the capitalist institutions and superstructures in which these technologies operate is obscured, and this critique is necessary for understanding the relationship between capitalism and ICT, as well as for opening up new frontiers of liberation.</p>
<p>—7—<br>
It has already been convincingly argued that neoliberalism would not have been possible without ICT (cf. Robert Neubauer, 2011), to the extent that these technologies facilitated transnational flexible production and unrestricted capital flows, causing the erosion of organised labour and the promotion of an unregulated, privatised “free” market as the solution to all of society’s ills. But here I am more interested in the link between capitalism and communication as an act of participation in society. Jodi Dean’s concept of communicative capitalism is particularly relevant, since she defines it as ‘the materialisation of ideas of inclusion and participation in information, entertainment, and communication technologies in ways that capture resistance and intensify global capitalism’ (2009: 2). In communicative capitalism, everyone has the tools and opportunities to express an opinion. “Participation” in society is therefore identified first and foremost as the ability to communicate, to express one’s opinion, in particular about the — mostly commercial — choices that give individuals their identity. However, the overabundance of communication in a marketplace in which all statements compete for visibility results in an environment where political change becomes difficult (if all options are equally valid, how can one option be declared superior?). Thus, the more we communicate (through our participation in digital networks, for instance), the more resistance is obstructed, and the more the ideology of capitalism is reinforced. Communicative capitalism — to paraphrase Gilles Deleuze — doesn’t stop people from expressing themselves, but forces them to express themselves continuously (1997: 129).</p>
<p>—8—<br>
Encouraging compulsive and continuous expression has turned out to be a profitable business model, as evidenced by the growth of the social media industry. Facebook, launched only in 2004, was adding on average 250,000 new members a day by 2007. Currently, it has over 845 million members (‘Facebook Company Info’), who store ‘more than 100 petabytes (100 quadrillion bytes) of photos and videos’ in the company’s servers (‘Facebook Infrastructure’). According to industry reports, the social networking market as a whole grew 87% from February 2006 to February 2007 (Britton and McGonegal, 2007: 80). Currently, the world spends over 110 billion minutes a month on social networks and blog sites, which equates to 22% of all time spent online (Nielsen Wire, 2010). Social media is driven by advertisements targeted to users based on the demographic data they provide, and the amount spent on advertising in social network services was $1.4 billion in 2008, with companies spending $305 and $850 million dollars to advertise their products on Facebook and MySpace, respectively (Eskelsen, Marcus and Ferree, 2009: 102-103). While the launch of new social media companies gives the impression of a competitive market, merger and acquisition trends suggest a move towards conglomeration that mirrors that of (and intersects with) traditional broadcast media. In a notable example, MySpace (which currently has over 185 million members) was acquired for US$580 million in 2005 by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, one of the eight companies that dominate the global media market (although it was later sold again, once it lost its market share to Facebook).</p>
<p>—9—<br>
In essence, communicative capitalism means that communication and social exchange take place not just in any environment, but in a privatised one. The neoliberal impulse to subsume all social communication and participation to market forces can only be achieved if the network is made the dominant episteme or model for organising social realities. This is accomplished by the application of what I call a nodocentric filter to social formations, which renders all human interaction in terms of network dynamics (not just any network, but a digital network with a profit-driven infrastructure). Under a nodocentric view, the goal is to assign to everything its place in the network. Nodocentrism is an epistemic stance where the distance between a node and something outside the network is, for all practical purposes, infinite (Mejias, 2010). Thus, to be anything other than a node is to be invisible, non-existent. The technologies of communicative capitalism are applied towards the creation of a pervasive or ubiquitous computing environment in which every thing and every utterance must be integrated or assimilated as a node in a digital network.</p>
<pclass="indent">—10—<br></p>
<p>As a way to illustrate the concept of nodocentrism in broader terms, consider the example of search engine results, and how they point to documents, sites or objects that have been indexed in a database. What has not been indexed is not listed as a result, and it might as well not even exist in the universe of knowable things as far as the search engine is concerned. Nodocentrism is also at work in the creation of friend lists like the ones used in social networking programs. These lists are nodocentric because they depict a social network comprised of individuals available (or potentially available) to interact with, but they render invisible the individuals who are not on the list because they do not use the same program, or because they do not have an account with that service. The algorithms of digital networks operationalise decisions about what is included or not included on the list. I am not suggesting that nodocentrism provides a deficient or false image of the world; I am simply pointing out how it embodies a politics of network inclusion and exclusion.</p>
<p>Consider the example of social movements like the Arab Spring. The discourse of liberation technology presents these movements as the work of “wired” activists, although this portrayal excludes the work and participation of activists who are not computer literate, or simply not social media users. Social change is thus imagined as an outcome of information flows within a network, and activists are portrayed as nodes transmitting dissent to other nodes. In order for liberation to happen, everyone must be connected to the same digital networks. Change and resistance are conceived in nodocentric terms.</p>
Simon Browne
5 years ago