Informe de cada actividad

Extending the three layer model of the political realm to the internet can enable a more robust model of the online political realm that can enable it to be treated more seriously by demonstrating how it is directly analogous to pre-internet political realms. The physical space, or as Arendt called it, the walls of the polis, that simply provide the physical location for people to gather in common is equivalent to the physical

infrastructure of the internet. Similar to pre-internet conceptions of the political realm, the fibre optic cables, switches, and routers that form the physical hardware layer of the internet no more determine whether the internet can be a political realm than the walls of the ancient polis. The second layer of the constitution or framework of rules and

boundaries is equivalent to the software layer of the internet. Like a constitution, the software layer has something of a pre-political character as someone needs to make a website and program how it works before it can become part of the political realm. Software, like constitutions, are rule based mechanisms meant to provide shape to a shared space. The top layer of the pre-internet political realm, namely the people, could in computer terms be called the wetware.180 Like in pre-internet space, the people or wetware are clearly the most important element, as politics cannot exist without people and the internet would be uninteresting if no one used it. While each layer depends on the

one below it, the entire structure is determined by the people at the top who rely on the lower layers merely to collect them into a common space so that they can engage with each other politically. Thus as Barney points out, when Arendt describes the polis as not a physical location but as the space between people living together for the purpose of political speech and action, she could have been describing the world wide web.181

By pointing to the online political realm as having the same three layer model as pre-internet conceptions of the political realm, it helps to uncover arguments which seemingly critique the technology of the internet as unsuitable for politics, but are really critiques of the suitability of politics itself. Morozov for instance, makes the argument that people mostly use the internet for thoroughly non-political purposes and spend most of their time online looking at pictures of cats or pornography, and that therefore the internet as a whole is not suitable for politics.182 Morozov completely discounts the possibility of anything like the Arab Spring emerging from the internet, because he sees it as a space hopelessly lost to trivial pursuits.183 The fact that most people use the internet for shopping and entertainment does not make it a distraction from serious political engagement any more than the fact that most people use offline space for the same reasons make offline space a distraction from politics.

Chaves argues that because of the potential for state or corporate abuse at the hardware layer of DNS routing, the internet cannot serve as a political realm.184 She makes the mistake of attributing existing political configurations of internet backbone management to the very essence of the technology. Such arguments come across as inherently defeatist, as few would argue that because offline space is generally configured in anti-political ways we should abandon the terrain altogether. Creating alternatives to the status quo requires vision of what could be, rather than simply evaluating what is and concluding that the status quo is not what we want it to be. A similar argument is made by Robert McChesney who also conflates the hardware and software layers, leading to the argument that the pervasiveness of advertising online

181 _{Barney, “Invasion of Publicity: Digital Networks and the Privatization of the Public Sphere,” 108.} 182 _{Morozov, The Net Delusion, 57.}

183 _{Ibid., 201–203.}

makes the internet a problematic space for political engagement.185 The fact that most websites are commercial in purpose simply mirrors the fact that today almost all offline space is commercial and filled with advertisements. While these are problems to be aware of and potential sites for online activism, they do not amount to an argument against the possibility of a political realm unless one accepts that the pervasiveness of neoliberal capitalism in offline space makes alternative economic arrangements impossible as well.

What these arguments do is take examples from the software layer and confuse them with the hardware layer, thus the internet as a physical infrastructure is given an unalterable essence of being an entertainment or commercial delivery mechanism based on the current configuration of many websites at the software layer. But this is a wider argument against politics in general disguised as a critique of technology, as one could easily say that most people spend their free time in offline space going to shopping malls and driving on highways, therefore offline space is unsuitable for politics because most people do not use it for that purpose. It was precisely this anti-political attitude that Occupy sought to challenge by taking over non-political spaces and declaring them as sites of political contestation.

The top and middle layers which mark a space as political and provide the framework for a political realm cannot be reduced to the physical layer without rigidifying structures to the point where a protest or any other political act out of the ordinary would be disqualified as political in the first place. What matters when

considering the internet is really the nature of web sites and how people use them, as in the pre-internet political realm, the physical aspect is simply there. The internet without the software layer of the world wide web, email, or online games would be an extremely dull place, as its vitality is derived from what people do with it. The malleability of the software layer is what gives the world wide web one of its primary advantages for creating an online political realm. The pre-internet political realms have a tendency to make the software layer of frameworks, constitutions, and informal rules invisible to the point where they get identified with and reduced to the hardware layer, thus giving the

185 _{Robert W. McChesney, Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy}

appearance that such rules and frameworks are literally set in stone, as politics is associated with the physical structures of the hardware layer, such as a parliament building. On the internet, web sites are more transparently malleable. They were created by people and can be easily changed by people. Lawrence Lessig argues that software code is the law of cyberspace and that its constitutional architecture is continually being built by software developers.186 As Lessig goes on to argue, websites are not simply found and assumed to have rules written in stone in the manner of an offline constitution, but the software design is much more transparently a choice made by people, which can be easily changed or rewritten entirely to create a new set of code which regulates a new website. When a website serves as the middle layer of a framework for the political realm, politics can take on a more dynamic character. It could then be more apparent that politics consists of the actions and relationships formed by those in the political realm, rather than confusing politics with the space it takes place in.

3.5 The Durability and Commonality of a Potential Online World