Internet and blockchain technologies: authoritarian or democratic?

Both the internet and blockchain technologies started out as libertarian aspirations to empower individuals through decentralisation, openness, and freedom. Over time, however, competing visions have emerged. Notably, authoritarian nations like China and Russia have reasserted their internet sovereignty through technologies of censorship and surveillance. In the blockchain world, Facebook and J.P. Morgan are reportedly launching their own centralised cryptocurrencies. What these examples show is that both the internet and blockchain are not monolithic architectures, but rather fluid arrangements subject to evolution and political pressure.

Technical arrangements as forms of political order

The role of technological artifacts in expressing political values existed long before the advent of modern information technologies such as the internet and blockchain. They can embody varying forms of power and authority often at tension with each other. The most important of these conflicts are those between peer-to-peer association and large-scale organisation, between decentralised autonomy and institutional control. Writing in Technology and Culture in 1964, Mumford gives the classic statement on how the tension between authoritarian and democratic technics has played out throughout human history:

From late neolithic times in the Near East, right down to our own day, two technologies have recurrently existed side by side: one authoritarian, the other democratic, the first system-centered, immensely powerful, but inherently unstable, the other man-centered, relatively weak, but resourceful and durable.

Building on this distinction, Winner (1980) explores in his seminal paper Do Artifacts Have Politics? ways in which technologies can embody politics and social relations. One of his central ideas is that technology often does not allow much flexibility - to choose them is to choose a particular form of political life. In the first instance, the adoption of a given device or system requires the establishment and maintenance of a particular pattern of power and authority. In the second instance, certain kinds of technology are strongly compatible with particular institutionalised patterns of power and authority. In both cases, the initial choice about whether to adopt a technology is decisive regarding subsequent political consequences. In this sense, technological innovations are akin to legislative acts or political foundings that establish a form of order enduring over many generations.

One classical example is energy production and distribution. Nuclear power promotes long-term centralisation and hierarchy. Once artifacts like nuclear power plants have been built and put in operation, not only are they permanent fixtures, a culture of centralised, hierarchical managerial control to fulfil the high technical requirements will also have to be institutionalised over time. On the other hand, renewable energy such as solar is built in a disaggregated, distributed manner. It enables individuals and local communities to manage their affairs effectively, and is generally seen as being compatible with democratic, egalitarian, and communitarian ideals.

The peculiarities of internet and blockchain technologies

Today, it is generally understood that internet and blockchain technologies are also political. The designs of these systems combine technical, organisational, and socio-cultural characteristics that govern the behaviour and power of a wide range of public and private actors. However, here I venture to suggest that the political qualities of these systems are adaptable and malleable. The defining feature of pre-digital technologies is that power characteristics are by and large fixed once the decision to go ahead and build them has been made. Internet and blockchain networks, by contrast, are not monolithic architectures. Instead, dimensions of power and control points are dynamic and continuously evolving. Both authoritarian and democratic values can at once be reflected over these networks.

Such peculiar feature has its origin in the layered and open design of the internet and blockchain technologies (Van Valkenburgh, 2018). The internet was originally founded on the public, permissionless architecture of TCP/IP. No one needs to gain access to a private network or verify their identity in order to communicate online or build applications. On the other hand, one can always build permissioned and identified layers and applications on top of the open TCP/IP protocols. The openness of the protocol layer guarantees diverse participation, innovation, and transparency. It epitomises the democratic technics. However, it also allows the emergence of private and identified higher level layers that amplify the power of governments and private companies, introducing authoritarian technics to the internet architecture.

Amidst these tensions, one can count at least four internets, gradually shifting from democratic to authoritarian (O’Hara and Hall, 2018). Silicon Valley’s open internet represents the original cyberpunk vision of decentralisation, openness, and freedom. John Perry Barlow’s Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace is the most famous statement of this philosophy. Then, there is Brussels’ bourgeois internet, in which the European Union and Western European governments attempt to maintain civility and restrict what they consider to be “bad behaviour” through regulation. Third is Washington DC’s commercial internet which leverages innovation facilitated by data collection and oligopoly. Finally, Beijing’s authoritarian internet uses pervasive surveillance to influence social interactions and ensure political control.

Like the internet, blockchain technology has a layered architectural design. The Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance (Rauchs et al, 2018) develops a conceptual framework which breaks down blockchain technology into layers: a protocol layer which defines and codifies the constitutional arrangements amongst system participants, and the upper network and data layers which implement the ruleset and store transaction records. In Satoshi Nakamoto’s cyberpunk vision of Bitcoin, there is complete decentralisation and openness at all layers. Bitcoin’s protocol is open source and its governance and change follows an anarchic process. Network access and transaction processing are open and unrestricted, and data broadcast is public and transparent.

The same cannot be said for subsequent blockchain developments. The fact is that permissions and privileges can be easily configured at the upper layers of blockchain technology, introducing control and censorship in the hands of powerful actors. For instance, the network privilege of the cryptocurrency Ripple is dictated by Ripple Labs, a private company. The blockchain ecosystem is also characterised by a number of private actors, such as Microsoft and IBM, offering intermediation services with asymmetries of information and power. Even for Bitcoin, we are seeing centralisation tendencies at the upper network layer with major coin holders and miners. As is the case with the internet, power dynamics can potentially play out within and between each layer and evolve over time. The end result is that we see a departure from the original democratic technics of Bitcoin, and the emergence of authoritarian technics in blockchain technology.

Once again, there are multiple possible futures for blockchain technology, ranging from democratic to authoritarian. It is true that we are still in the early days, but one can speculate the set of institutional and ideological champions that will emerge (Manski and Manski, 2018). A libertarian blockchain, like Silicon Valley’s open internet, would be faithful to Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision of a truly decentralized and peer-to-peer network. Next, there could be a corporate blockchain similar to Washington DC’s commercial internet, where major corporations like Amazon and Facebook adapt a permissioned and identified blockchain to their own purposes. This can further the degree of data granularity captured and monetised by these platforms, centralising power and exacerbating inequality. Finally, a sovereign blockchain would encapsulate varying degrees of government power. At the mild end, in the style of Brussels’ bourgeois internet, regulations may appear to control blockchain activities like initial coin offerings. At the extreme end, blockchain and smart contract technologies can be used to monitor citizens and enforce rules in a draconian way, tending towards Beijing’s authoritarian internet.

Towards a critical theory of internet and blockchain

In Feenberg’s philosophy of technology (2003), we can view value-laden technology through substantive and critical theories. Substantive theory holds that when you choose a specific technology, you choose a specific way of life. However, technology in this view is autonomous in the sense that invention and development have their own immanent laws, and the next step in the evolution of the technology is not up to us. By contrast, critical theory holds that technology is humanly controllable and we could determine the next step in its evolution in accordance with our intentions. While recognising the catastrophic consequences of technological development under substantivism, it still sees a promise of greater freedom as long as we devise appropriate institutions for exercising human control over it.

Both the internet and blockchain technologies started out as an open and loosely coupled collection of protocols, standards, systems, and interest groups. Their early evolution supported creativity, autonomy, and decentralisation. However, this is often linked with relatively weak organisation and capacity to express a coherent voice (Benkler, 2016). As a result, later developments are recast by well-resourced corporate and state actors who are highly incentivised to instil their values, be it profit, authority, or power. Today, we see competing models on how these technologies should be governed. Several internets and blockchains are currently co-existing.

While this co-existence may be uneasy, it is also a reflection that the future is malleable. The key insight is that we have to view internet and blockchain technologies through the critical theory of technology before we can see genuine possibilities for creative intervention that could change power relations and preserve human alternatives. In fact, we are already seeing the pendulum swinging back to the community-led ethos of the original internet and blockchain. If these technologies have seen power and value captured by corporate actors and governments at the upper layers, today communities are mobilising from the ground up to rebalance power back to the protocol layer. For example, cryptocurrencies provide a way to incentivise individuals and groups to build and maintain internet services, rather than relying on proprietary corporate services (Dixon, 2019). To ensure co-evolutionary design and democratised knowledge of technical considerations, some newer blockchain projects are hard coding these spirits into the software, a method known as on-chain governance (Kritikos, 2018). All these are possible thanks to a critical understanding of the malleable political qualities of the internet and blockchain. In the end, whether the future is authoritarian or democratic, the choice is up to us.