Cyber-utopianism
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Cyber-utopianism or web-utopianism or digital utopianism or utopian internet is a subcategory of technological utopianism and the belief that online communication helps bring about a more decentralized, democratic, and libertarian society.[1][2][3][4] The desired values may also be privacy and anonymity, freedom of expression, access to culture and information or also socialist ideals leading to digital socialism.[5][4]
Origins
Examples
Political usage
One of the first initiatives associated with digital technologies and utopianism was the Chilean
Cyber socialism is a name used for the practise of file sharing as a violation of intellectual property rights and whose legalisation was not expected - a utopia.[12][13]
Cyber-utopianism serves as a base for
Cognate utopias
Cyber-utopianism has been considered a derivative of extropianism,[15] in which the ultimate goal is to upload human consciousness to the internet. Ray Kurzweil, especially in The Age of Spiritual Machines, writes about a form of cyber-utopianism known as the Singularity; wherein, technological advancement will be so rapid that life will become experientially different, incomprehensible, and advanced.[16]
Hospitality exchange services
Hospitality exchange services (HospEx) are social networking services where hosts offer homestays for free. They are a gift economy and are shaped by altruism and are examples of cyber-utopianism.[17][18]
Criticism
The existence of this belief has been documented since the beginning of the internet. The bursting of the
Criticism in the past couple of decades has been made out against positivist readings of the internet. In 2010, Malcolm Gladwell, argued his doubts about the emancipatory and empowering qualities of social media in an article in The New Yorker. In the article, Gladwell criticises Clay Shirky for propagating and overestimating the revolutionary potential of social media: "Shirky considers this model of activism an upgrade. But it is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger."[22]
Cyber-utopianism has also been compared to a secular religion for the postmodern world.[23] In 2006, Andrew Keen wrote in The Weekly Standard that Web 2.0 is a "grand utopian movement" similar to "communist society" as described by Karl Marx.[24]
See also
References
- ^ S2CID 73517559. Retrieved 8 August 2021.
- ISBN 9780262062619. Retrieved 8 August 2021.
- ISBN 9780520272897. Retrieved 8 August 2021.
- JSTOR j.ctt9qf640. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
- ISBN 9780226817422.
- ^ Barbrook, Richard; Cameron, Andy. "The Californian Ideology". Imaginary Futures. Retrieved April 27, 2014.
- ^ J.M Reagle jr, Good Faith Collaboration (2010) p. 162
- ^ Staun, Harald. "Post-kapitalistische Ökonomie: Wann kommt der digitale Sozialismus?". FAZ.NET (in German). Retrieved 22 August 2021.
- ^ "Towards a New Socialism". ricardo.ecn.wfu.edu. Archived from the original on 2020-02-09. Retrieved 2020-07-13.
- S2CID 210969553. Retrieved 28 December 2021.
- ^ Filby, Michael (2011). "Regulating File Sharing: Open Regulations for an Open Internet". Journal of International Commercial Law and Technology. 6: 207. Retrieved 28 December 2021.
- ISSN 1753-6235. Retrieved 28 December 2021.
- ISSN 1337-7477. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
- ^ "Cyber-utopianism - CrowdSociety". crowdsociety.org. Retrieved 2020-11-06.
- ^ Kurzweil, R 1999, The age of spiritual machines : when computers exceed human intelligence, Allen & Unwin, St Leonards, N.S.W.
- ISSN 1726-670X. Retrieved 26 June 2021.
- ^ Latja, Piia (2010). "Creative Travel - Study of Tourism from a socio-cultural point of view - The Case of CouchSurfing". Retrieved 26 June 2021.
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(help) - ^ a b Rushkoff, Douglas (2002). Renaissance Now! Media Ecology and the New Global Narrative. Hampton Press. pp. 26–28.
- R. Sassower, Digital Exposure: Postmodern Capitalism (2013) p. ix and p. 16
- ^ ISBN 978-1-84614-353-3.
- ^ Gladwell, Malcolm (4 October 2010). "Small Change". The New Yorker. Retrieved 26 September 2011.
- ^ B. Neilson, Free Trade in the Bermuda Triangle (2004) p. 181
- ^ Keen, Andrew (15 February 2006). "Web 2.0; The second generation of the Internet has arrived. It's worse than you think". The Weekly Standard. Archived from the original on 25 February 2006.
Further reading
- Dickel, Sascha, and Schrape, Jan-Felix (2017): The Logic of Digital Utopianism. Nano Ethics
- Margaret Wertheim, The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace (2000)
- Evgeny Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here (2013)
- Turner, Fred. From counterculture to cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of digital utopianism. University Of Chicago Press, 2010.
- Flichy, Patrice. The internet imaginaire. Mit Press, 2007.