WatsonFeb 18, 2023
"To summarise, we are traversing an epochal change and we lack the institutional capacity to complete this transformation without imploding. (...) We can fix the failed state that is the Internet if we approach building tech with institutional principles, and an Internet that delivers on its cooperative promise of deeper, denser institutional capacity is what we need as a planetary civilisation." (#robinberjon)
#internet #complexity #transition #society
https://berjon.com/internet-transition/
The Internet Transition

The Internet is allowing us to build a richer, more complex society but the way in which we Internet today is failing to support the governance systems that a more complex world requires. I take a look at why these issues are related, try to develop an intuition for a way forward, and point at the emerging field that is coming together to build that future.

Robin Berjon
StrypeyFeb 13, 2023

"... whoever has more data, especially from more varied sources, will structurally tend to outcompete whoever has less. Because of this, broad sharing of data enables increased returns to scale and scope, leading to dominance, winner-take-all, and competition for the market rather than in the market."

#RobinBerjon, 2021

https://berjon.com/competition-privacy/

#privacy #competition #markets #data

Competition & Privacy: It's Both Or Nothing

If you've spent any amount of time discussing reforms to improve privacy online, you've likely encountered the Big Knob Theory. Like Covid it comes in variants, but its core tenet can be summarised thus: there exists (metaphorically) a Big Knob that can either be turned towards "privacy" or towards "competition" — but it's very much a zero-sum game and you can't have both. It's a popular position; but is it true?

Robin Berjon
StrypeyFeb 13, 2023

"Given the fast-growing complexity of our digital lives, we are facing with high probability and inside of a few years the dystopia of a single company inserting itself as the broker for all of our transactions with third parties. As a community, we need to become systematic and unforgiving in hardening our architectures against capture and we need to do it proactively rather than reactively."

#RobinBerjon, 2022

https://berjon.com/capture-resistance/

#CaptureResistance

Capture Resistance

For the longest time, word was that the Web would free the world; now, it seems as if most of the world wants to liberate the Web. I believe that we can tackle decentralisation and antitrust more effectively by developing a pragmatic and concrete approach to capture resistance inspired by the methods of cybersecurity.

Robin Berjon
StrypeyFeb 13, 2023

"The Internet-wide data free-for-all is key to the process of how some firms rose to dominance. This includes access to information about other businesses’ internal operation that platform infrastructure can observe, network effects in the valuation of data that make bigger players win systematically, or the conquest of adjacent data-rich markets through predatory pricing powered by universal identifiers and lack of purpose limitations."

#RobinBerjon, 2022

https://berjon.com/principled-privacy/

#privacy

Principled Privacy

In this digital hellscape of ours, what is it that we talk about when we talk about privacy? We talk about power. Concentrations of data are concentrations of power, or, as the freshly-minted first public draft of the W3C’s Privacy Principles states, “asymmetries of information and of automation create commanding asymmetries of power.” That’s the problem to which privacy is the solution.

Robin Berjon
Show threadStrypeyFeb 8, 2023

"The [W3C's] membership-based governance model that prevails today (and its accountability shortcomings) actively prevents other sources of financing. Why help fund an organisation that looks like it will serve its members first and Big Tech first amongst those? No matter how much the individual representatives of those companies might sincerely seek to be independent from their employers, if that independence is not guaranteed by the process... it’s a pinky promise."

#RobinBerjon, 2022

#W3C

Show threadStrypeyFeb 8, 2023

"It’s important to note that preventing the concentration of power is not about (architectural) decentralisation. Architectural decentralisation can certainly help, but it isn’t enough: as explained in Capture Resistance, linking on the Web is technically decentralised, but that was not enough to protect the Web from being centralised by Google. What matters here is the active checks and balances on excessive power."

#RobinBerjon, 2022

#decentralisation

StrypeyFeb 8, 2023

"I remember a time... when the W3C was indeed a member organisation — but you can’t work for the Web if you don’t work with the Web. Over the years, the W3C community layered fix atop fix to progressively address the vexations and limitations of being a member organisation. Three decades in, the W3C looks a lot more like a public interest organisation financed by a generous group of donors who call themselves 'members'."

#RobinBerjon, 2022

https://berjon.com/w3c-governance/

#W3C #WWW #standards

Reinventing W3C Governance

The W3C is nearing its 30th year of existence, and the Consortium’s community is working on reforming it. All of the proposals made to date assume that it will remain a membership organisation — I have a different suggestion.

Robin Berjon
barefootliamJan 27, 2023

https://berjon.com/internet-transition/
Robin Berjon on the future of governance...

“the Internet is largely a failed state with much infrastructure at the whims of gangs and their billionaire warlords ... anticooperative dynamics prevent collective intelligence”

#robinBerjon #future #governance #internet #fixingThePlanet #sociopolitics #politicalScience #daffodilPetals

The Internet Transition

The Internet is allowing us to build a richer, more complex society but the way in which we Internet today is failing to support the governance systems that a more complex world requires. I take a look at why these issues are related, try to develop an intuition for a way forward, and point at the emerging field that is coming together to build that future.

Robin Berjon
Doug BelshawJan 26, 2023

I think it’s fair to say that this article features ‘florid prose’ but the gist is that we should want society to be as complex as possible. This allow innovation to flourish and means we can solve some of the knottiest problems facing our world. However, we’re hamstrung by issues around transnational governance, and particularly in the digital realm. To summarise, we are traversing an epochal change and we lack the institutional capacity to complete this transformation without imploding. We could well fail, and the consequences of failure at this juncture would be catastrophic. However, we can collectively rise to the challenge and an exciting assemblage of subfields is emerging to help. We can fix the failed state that is the Internet if we approach building tech with institutional principles, and an Internet that delivers on its cooperative promise of deeper, denser institutional capacity is what we need as a planetary civilisation. We don’t need a worldwide technical U.N. to figure this out. Rather, we need transnational topic-specific governance systems that interact with one another wherever they connect and overlap but that do not control one another, and that exercise subsidiarity to one another as well as to more local institutions. Yes, it will be a glorious mess — a Cambrian mess — but we will be collectively smarter for it. Source: The Internet Transition | Robin Berjon

https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2023/01/26/cambrian-governance-models/

Cambrian governance models

I think it's fair to say that this article features 'florid prose' but the gist is that we should want society to be as complex as possible. This allow innovation to flourish and means we can solve some of the knottiest problems facing our world. However, we're hamstrung by issues around transnat

Doug Belshaw's Thought Shrapnel
StrypeyJan 24, 2023

This!

"Networked technology that mediates so much of our lives is social engineering — which is to say that deciding how it works is politics."

#RobinBerjon, 2023

https://berjon.com/internet-transition/

#politics #NetCulture #decentralization #Web3

The Internet Transition

The Internet is allowing us to build a richer, more complex society but the way in which we Internet today is failing to support the governance systems that a more complex world requires. I take a look at why these issues are related, try to develop an intuition for a way forward, and point at the emerging field that is coming together to build that future.

Robin Berjon