I intend to thoroughly revise and partly rewrite my bachelor’s thesis, to publish it as a book. In the meanwhile, for all those who ask me about it, I am making it publicly available.
The rest of this page collects random inputs and resources gathered while writing the thesis. Its main topic is a philosophical and sociological account of the Internet; broadly put, its main and fundamental claim is: Computer Sciences are Social Sciences!
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Outline
- Historical account
- Paul Baran: centrifugal approach
- Licklider, ARPA, and collaborative endeavor
- The values of the early Web
- The Internet’s Original sin
- The spread of Surveillance Capitalism
- Zuboff and
the Unprecedented
- Stallman and the FSF
- The Linux phenomenon
- The intrinsic link between economics and technology: Weber
- Heidegger: the essence of technology
- Zuboff and
- Case study: Hong Kong’s Umbrella movement
- Political background: Hong Kong’s strive for democracy
- First wave: centralization and emotional control
- Second Wave:
be water
- Interpreting the Umbrella Movement with respect to Hannah Arendt’s conception of the social sphere
- A better Internet
- Philosophy in Science, rather than Philosophy of Science
- Using the Web to pursue utopias: Aaron Swartz and Brewster Khale
Missing things
- what is the problem with current Internet? Pinpoint why I am giving solutions. Solutions to what?
- Technocratic degeneration of society
- Public administration digital infrastructure subsidized to privates
- the better Internet
- Decentralization
- ≠ blockchain
- forcing interoperability by design.
- horizontal vs vertical scalability
- Alternative thinking, alternative technology
- Obsidian, Luhmann, Zettelkasten
- Deleuze’s rhyzomes
- The Fediverse as a/the solution
- Yarmo’s point about self-hosting
- Decentralization
- underline cypherpunks ≠ crypto-anarchism/cyberanarchism
- Panopticon
- Making ethical internet “cool”!
Insights
- Bernard Stiegler
- Digital spaces ownership
- Digital anarchism
- Intersectionality, coded bias
- Feminism
- Racism
- social media are of critical relevance because they are not mere services, but the medium through which virtually anything is conveyed
- content responsibility, freedom, regulation
- oil industry comparison
- Wiener’s Cybernetics?
- Hayek in relation to Wikipedia?
- The opposite of
move fast, break things
… ? - peer-to-peer
- encryption
- distribution of load and power
- Jonas’ ethics of technology
People
Notes from meeting with professor
- Heidegger sul senso della tecnica. La preoccupazione fondamentale è che la tecnica da mezzo neutrale si trasformasse in fine. Non più l’uomo che
- Hans Jonas: il problema del futuro non sarà più cosa noi potremo fare con la tecnica ma cosa la tecnica potrà fare di noi: Tecnica, medicina ed etica, primi capitoli
- Günther Anders: L’uomo è antiquato
Articoli più recenti che mettono in pratica quanto scritto prima
Come lo strumento tecnico è fatto condiziona l’utente. Esempio delle chiavi delle stanze più pesanti. Lo strumento non è neutro
Il modo in cui le tecniche si presentano impone anche un certo ordine social e un certo ordine culturale
Come orientano l’azione? Chi decide come viene orientata?