Facebook: "We reserve the right, at our sole discretion, to change, modify, add, or delete portions of these Terms of Use at any time without further notice."
This phrase is coming from the Facebook's Terms of Use, which is basically the virtual contract. Also exploring further this contract we can see that the Facebook is keeping the all rights to use the content provided by its users:
"All content on the Site and available through the Service, including designs, text, graphics, pictures, video, information, applications, software, music, sound and other files, and their selection and arrangement (the "Site Content"), are the proprietary property of the Company, its users or its licensors with all rights reserved"
But there are not too much said about the things like the private massages. And what the "information" means anyway? Well, above to that they have their Facebook's Privacy Policy . There we can find such an information:
"We share your information with third parties only in limited circumstances where we believe such sharing is 1) reasonably necessary to offer the service, 2) legally required or, 3) permitted by you."
The term "believe" applied here is quite flexible. But unfortunately this "Private Policy" is not the part of the contract. Only thing what the users can do is to believe that nothing unwanted will happen with their content, like: pictures, messages, comments etc.
And the Facebook is not the only place in this virtual world which has similar "user friendly" legal structures. That reminds me about the surveillance society and the Big Brother. Technologically it is easy to monitor and misuse the information of users and by giving a legal permission we are totally open to that.
Rather more problematic is question about the choice and free will. People are doing many things on internet, except one - reading the internet based contracts. If it was for buying a car, house or other kind of contract between two persons, people would be more careful. But electronical environment is so dynamic, flexible, that the next users are skipping everything just to get their desired thing more faster. Then our choice is already predetermined - we are just having a goal to get in touch with our friends. That is the matter of the perception and also the attitude. Humans are like a mouses which are striving to get the cheese, even if they may suspicious about that if it is a mouse trap.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
Blogosphere and the World State!
When we enter the internet, what do we see? We can find enormous number of websites, portals, forums and blogs. All these are produced by very different people from all around the world. But internet is not just a homogeneous thing. It is multilevel network based socio-technical system created, shaped and produced by the humans. And those, which can use it and produce the content are not the chosen ones. These are the people, who are blessed or coursed with to possibility to access the magical world of the internet. This world is structured by different domains, topics, languages and different other features. People can interact with others and shape the communities around the internet. And that should not be necessarily based on geographical closeness, but rather mental based upon their interests, needs, passions, roles, characteristics and maybe a lot of other unknown reasons.
So, when we enter the internet, we have entered a certain district of the human mental territories. But we are not dealing with the People of The Internet in genral. We may found there just some sort of community, individuals or organizations, but not entire population of the internet users. Firstly there is a need here to distinguish different categories of internet users:
• Those who are aware about the existence of the internet, have the knowledge how to use it, like web surfing. They can have the email address and even have the internet connection @ home. But they may not be really interested in ‘that interneting’.
• Second group are competent and confident about this world. They know how to find what they want. They are aware about the different web features. Know different popular websites like Wikipedia etc. They can have profile in some social network or have their own blog or website.
• The third group are maybe more aware about the internet that the ‘real world’. Those are the full time internet users. They are active internet activists, members of communities, developers of the blogoshpere. Basically they consciously live more in the Internet that in the physical world.
This is of course very rough categorization but we can find some similar traits of the internet using to frame these people. In which category anyone belong, it’s up to him to decide. But should evaluate seriously the trend of the growing numbers of the internet using people, hence the groups 2 and 3 (maybe in the future there may appear the group 4 - people who have connected their body, mind with the internet).
But the question which I would like to address here is how it would change the society and the national state? In the terms of culture, society internet is playing a huge impact on the process of globalization. Humans are getting connected around the world. Now everyone can see himself and others in the same network and be the free citizen of the Internet. Everything is interrelated and the internet is giving us the opportunity to see that. It gives the freedom of the speech and self-expression. Of course there is some determined rules in this world again. Countries, religions and international organizations are trying to influence this global freedom like it was when Indonesia was threatening Youtube to delete the anti-muslim content, otherwise it will block this site inside the country. But in general the Internet is the place where to be for sharing the ideas, claims, arguments etc. National states have turned their attention towards the internet groups. Also the politicians are becoming the community builders now. The communities are shaped and used by the marketing and PR as well. Community building is becoming a common practice. Therefore it is has to become the part of the social reality fully integrated social institution the same as marriage, nation, police, state...you name it. Contra-argument to that could be that the internet may become less popular in the future (and we both know that it is not true). Future would really belong to the people from the groups 2,3 or maybe 4 or even 5. It is a fact that they are mosltly the young people, but they will grove up. And then the virtual communities will their own life time experience. Maybe there will be times when the grandpas and grandmas will show their myspace, facebook profiles from the web archives to their grandchildren.
Virtual communities are bringing the new type of social organization on the planet Earth. It will reshape the culture as such. But could it also reshape there "official" part of the world like the state and the governance? I would like to predict here that it would be quite possible. Governments are already using the web 2.0 tools and not only the conventional websites. That means that these things are integrating in the system of governance. But for such a system there is no need for having a physical territory. Different communities can actually be self-sustainable and act only on the virtual basis. But by the same time they can deal with the real issues, like the governance, voting, researching, teaching, judging etc. All that can happen on the global scale. Different functions can be delegated to the internet communities. At the moment we can see the tendencies, that the functions of the nation state are being delegated to the other levels, which is called the decentralization. Political thinkers like B. Guy Peters and John Pierre have been contemplating about such an ideas. In Pierre’s and Peters model the decentralization takes the place and the state power and control can be displaced in three ways-upward, towards international actors, downward towards regions, cities; outward, to institutions operating under considerable discretion from the state. Also they distinguish the government from the governance as the different modes. Second is more efficient, flexible and may undertake some sort of the political entrepreneurship. At the moment some functions through the decentralization are already delegated to the NGO's, like some areas of the health care to the Red Cross.
And that's why I would like to raise the question could the virtual communities could become the forth level of decentralization? The supra-national governments, local governments and the NGO's or private companies are institutionalized structures with legal background. While the online communities are rather volunteer groups. Difference is that they are more accessible and flexible than any of the previous forms of the social organization. Of course all the previous can also shape their virtual communities. But from that kind of perspective we can see that the commons-based peer production could become a type of governance as well. Combination of the internet and the real time activism may generate the new generation of the governance in the future. That kind of the governance would not have not the physical boarders. People who would manage these communities be from all around the world and it could be based on their specializations and knowledge and not specifically their ethnicity. Such a communities would be connected with the communities from the other specialization to exchange the information and take part in the decision making in efficient way. Like the community which would be responsible for agriculture could easily interact with the climate change community for coordinate the actions and policy making. Yes, especially useful it would be for dealing with the issues such as the global warming or terrorism (if they will be a problems for that time).
And maybe the most important role of such a communities would be in the shaping of the World State. But the approach here would be very different from that which many people have imagined, especially like the supporters of the "New World Order" conspiracy.Most of the ideas about the World state is rather pessimistic. Vision that it would be the super power influenced by the most powerful states and the big transnational corporations leading the world towards dystopia is still strong. That kind of organization would be based on the top-down model. While such a community based global governance would be more utopian button-up style formation. Of course that brings up many questions about the role of nations, culture, language, boarders, but thinking in that kind of way we can evaluate the possibilities of the internet communities in future no matter what is their condition at the moment.
So, when we enter the internet, we have entered a certain district of the human mental territories. But we are not dealing with the People of The Internet in genral. We may found there just some sort of community, individuals or organizations, but not entire population of the internet users. Firstly there is a need here to distinguish different categories of internet users:
• Those who are aware about the existence of the internet, have the knowledge how to use it, like web surfing. They can have the email address and even have the internet connection @ home. But they may not be really interested in ‘that interneting’.
• Second group are competent and confident about this world. They know how to find what they want. They are aware about the different web features. Know different popular websites like Wikipedia etc. They can have profile in some social network or have their own blog or website.
• The third group are maybe more aware about the internet that the ‘real world’. Those are the full time internet users. They are active internet activists, members of communities, developers of the blogoshpere. Basically they consciously live more in the Internet that in the physical world.
This is of course very rough categorization but we can find some similar traits of the internet using to frame these people. In which category anyone belong, it’s up to him to decide. But should evaluate seriously the trend of the growing numbers of the internet using people, hence the groups 2 and 3 (maybe in the future there may appear the group 4 - people who have connected their body, mind with the internet).
But the question which I would like to address here is how it would change the society and the national state? In the terms of culture, society internet is playing a huge impact on the process of globalization. Humans are getting connected around the world. Now everyone can see himself and others in the same network and be the free citizen of the Internet. Everything is interrelated and the internet is giving us the opportunity to see that. It gives the freedom of the speech and self-expression. Of course there is some determined rules in this world again. Countries, religions and international organizations are trying to influence this global freedom like it was when Indonesia was threatening Youtube to delete the anti-muslim content, otherwise it will block this site inside the country. But in general the Internet is the place where to be for sharing the ideas, claims, arguments etc. National states have turned their attention towards the internet groups. Also the politicians are becoming the community builders now. The communities are shaped and used by the marketing and PR as well. Community building is becoming a common practice. Therefore it is has to become the part of the social reality fully integrated social institution the same as marriage, nation, police, state...you name it. Contra-argument to that could be that the internet may become less popular in the future (and we both know that it is not true). Future would really belong to the people from the groups 2,3 or maybe 4 or even 5. It is a fact that they are mosltly the young people, but they will grove up. And then the virtual communities will their own life time experience. Maybe there will be times when the grandpas and grandmas will show their myspace, facebook profiles from the web archives to their grandchildren.
Virtual communities are bringing the new type of social organization on the planet Earth. It will reshape the culture as such. But could it also reshape there "official" part of the world like the state and the governance? I would like to predict here that it would be quite possible. Governments are already using the web 2.0 tools and not only the conventional websites. That means that these things are integrating in the system of governance. But for such a system there is no need for having a physical territory. Different communities can actually be self-sustainable and act only on the virtual basis. But by the same time they can deal with the real issues, like the governance, voting, researching, teaching, judging etc. All that can happen on the global scale. Different functions can be delegated to the internet communities. At the moment we can see the tendencies, that the functions of the nation state are being delegated to the other levels, which is called the decentralization. Political thinkers like B. Guy Peters and John Pierre have been contemplating about such an ideas. In Pierre’s and Peters model the decentralization takes the place and the state power and control can be displaced in three ways-upward, towards international actors, downward towards regions, cities; outward, to institutions operating under considerable discretion from the state. Also they distinguish the government from the governance as the different modes. Second is more efficient, flexible and may undertake some sort of the political entrepreneurship. At the moment some functions through the decentralization are already delegated to the NGO's, like some areas of the health care to the Red Cross.
And that's why I would like to raise the question could the virtual communities could become the forth level of decentralization? The supra-national governments, local governments and the NGO's or private companies are institutionalized structures with legal background. While the online communities are rather volunteer groups. Difference is that they are more accessible and flexible than any of the previous forms of the social organization. Of course all the previous can also shape their virtual communities. But from that kind of perspective we can see that the commons-based peer production could become a type of governance as well. Combination of the internet and the real time activism may generate the new generation of the governance in the future. That kind of the governance would not have not the physical boarders. People who would manage these communities be from all around the world and it could be based on their specializations and knowledge and not specifically their ethnicity. Such a communities would be connected with the communities from the other specialization to exchange the information and take part in the decision making in efficient way. Like the community which would be responsible for agriculture could easily interact with the climate change community for coordinate the actions and policy making. Yes, especially useful it would be for dealing with the issues such as the global warming or terrorism (if they will be a problems for that time).
And maybe the most important role of such a communities would be in the shaping of the World State. But the approach here would be very different from that which many people have imagined, especially like the supporters of the "New World Order" conspiracy.Most of the ideas about the World state is rather pessimistic. Vision that it would be the super power influenced by the most powerful states and the big transnational corporations leading the world towards dystopia is still strong. That kind of organization would be based on the top-down model. While such a community based global governance would be more utopian button-up style formation. Of course that brings up many questions about the role of nations, culture, language, boarders, but thinking in that kind of way we can evaluate the possibilities of the internet communities in future no matter what is their condition at the moment.
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