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Hacking the Parasite: Why Rebuilding the Net Needs to Start in the Developing World

-- By CharlesRice - 07 Oct 2020

Introduction

The power of “the internet” is rapidly and irrevocably transforming human society. Radical social evolution was the goal of many of the net’s earliest pioneers—they envisioned a non-hierarchical platform for the free exchange of information and thought driving a new era of Lamarckian human evolution. Instead, today’s net is a behavior collection (surveillance) system deployed by states and corporations to perfect autocracy, reinforce harmful economic structures, and degrade human thought.

The basic conceit of this course is that the first quarter of the 21st century will determine how the internet transforms human society. More than that, those of us living now are the last generation with the ability to define this relationship. Unchecked, the current and ongoing transformation—driven by the networking of the species— will result in a completely new form of social power that transcends that exercised by any state, corporation, or international organization in history. If we fail to build an alternative political economy to break the current metabolism of the net and human society now, the forms of social control enabled by the net will shackle our descendants.

A peculiar feature of the pernicious political economy emerging around the net is that it initially emerged in—and continues to be refined and reinforced by—free and privileged OECD countries. The problematic physiology of the net is a creation of advanced western democracies, and in recent decades, it’s been exported to the developing world. With the growing ability to monetize the collection of user data internet penetration has spready to nearly every corner of the globe.

The expansion of the web into developing countries presents both challenges and opportunities. Developing countries are uniquely vulnerable to the predation of the parasitic net, and in some cases, eager to use the net as a tool of repression. At the same time, neither the physiology of the net nor the political economy supporting this structure are as entrenched in these new markets. Given the massive scale of ongoing economic and population growth outside of the OECD west, developing countries are ideal test labs for validating and scaling approaches that could catalyze broader systemic transformation.

Conditions: Growing Populations and Economies Driving Technical Demand

The global center of mass in terms of population, economic activity, and (to some degree) technical innovation is shifting away from western OECD countries and towards the developing world. Developing countries accounted for 40 percent of global GDP in 2000; by 2010 the share was nearly 50 percent and it is projected to reach nearly 60 percent by 2030. Similarly, developing countries have contributed 90 percent of the global population growth over the last 30 years (total increase of 2.5 billion people). While much of this has been driven by China and India, in particular, Africa figures to be the largest center of economic and population growth in coming decades.

One result of this explosive growth is that developing countries have a huge appetite for internet technologies. Emerging economies are seeking both technical solutions to practical problems and broader integration into the global innovation/technology economy. At the collective level, the UN recognized the need for an internet empowered “data revolution” to achieve its 2030 development agenda. At the individual level, developing countries are seeking to leverage net-driven “leapfrog technologies” to transform their approaches to a diverse range of challenges including infrastructure and disaster management, agriculture, public health, and access to finance. As of 2016, nearly half of all lower and middle-income countries released national science, technology, and innovation (STI) strategies.

Challenge: Institutional and Technical Vulnerability of Developing Countries

The first imperative for targeting developing countries as a starting point for a broader shift in the metabolism of the net and society is defensive. Developing countries represent a (growing) majority of global population and economic activity. In those countries where the parasitic structure of the net has yet to be fully embedded in society, it is critical to pushback and support the construction of a better physiology of the net.

As a general proposition, developing countries are put under unique institutional stress when managing extractive resources (user data collection clearly falls within this label). This vulnerability is exacerbated when the developing country is negotiating against sophisticated counterparts (like global technology companies). Tech companies are often able to impose terms—and resulting political economic structures—that are deeply harmful to their host countries.

The ultimate risk is that absent efforts to control the evolution of the net in the areas where it had been most recently introduced (and has the largest margin to grow) it will become a tool of suppression and control. This could occur either unconsciously or as the result of conscious authoritarian efforts (as is the case in China).

Opportunity: Seeding Transformative Change, Heading of Path Dependency

The second imperative for targeting developing countries is offensive. They represent the largest opportunity in terms of scale and suffer from the least path dependency in terms of the current metabolic equilibrium between the net and society. In this sense, developing countries offer fertile ground for a catalytic change in both the physiology and political economy of the net.

As they seek to meet these needs, developing countries have demonstrated a willingness to pursue arrangements of politics, law, and technology that don’t conform to those modeled by OECD powers. In the context of the net, this non-conformity plays out along malicious vectors, including through the creation of systems designed to empower authoritarianism and surveillance capitalism. Conversely, some developing countries have experimented with technologies and political economic structures (including non-hierarchical ones) that offer a path away from the parasite with the mind of god.

Conclusion

Modes of transmitting knowledge are the fundamental mechanisms of power. At its worst, the net is the ultimate tool for expanding the architecture of power--the means by which the few control the many. To combat this, we need to start where the many live and the few have yet to establish their structures of control.

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