#cyberradical

This is the first draft of the Social Change column, published in The Observer New Review on Sunday 28 November 2010. It's an extended version of the final cut - almost twice as long - which includes additional contributions from Channel 4's Alice Taylor and Matt Locke.

20 years ago almost to the day, the most radical innovation of modern times was released to the public. On 25 December1990, in a quiet computer lab in CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, Sir Tim Berners-Lee switched on the World Wide Web. This act set the agenda for expansive, far-reaching and inevitable transformations of political power, global economics, social interactions and personal identity. Berners-Lee’s move ushered in a communication revolution for one very important reason: he chose to release the technology for free.

This simple decision, based on a lifetime of working in development labs that supported openness, transparency and shared distribution, eclipses any hype about subsequent Twitter revolutions, Facebook campaigns or political protests we have ascribed to the platform since. It put the medium at the fore in a way that has not been seen since Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1450.

Like the printing press, the Web has been credited with ushering in an enlightenment: the power of information is now in the hands of the people, and, apparently, our social, psychological and cognitive capabilities are rapidly ascending into levels of sophistication that humanity has never witnessed. With the Web we can galvanise, coordinate, collaborate and overthrow. The Web is the most powerful harbinger of social change.

Frankly, that’s a really 1990’s thing to say.

Back then, when the Web was in its swaddling clothes, revolution meant building a website with the word “REVOLUTION!” in flashing red Comic Sans capital letters on a bright yellow background. Despite the crimes against design, e-radicalism required a degree of technological capability. Unfortunately, it was often no more effective than a giant billboard that people might drive by on the way to work or the shops, but wouldn’t otherwise have found if it wasn’t already on their digital pathway.

Things changed in 2003, when the barriers to entry were lowered to such a degree that ‘net pundits like Tim O’Reilly felt qualified to describe the new crop of publishing platforms like blogs and social networks as an entirely new phenomenon. With the advent of “Web 2.0”, millions of people grabbed virtual megaphones and overwhelmed the Web with details about what they had for breakfast. Effective radical action since has demanded a more nuanced and refined approach, and a return to Berners-Lee’s original ethos.

The new Web revolutionaries are enacting social change in a different way than their cyber-radical predecessors. There’s a shift in emphasis from publishing pamphleteering and propaganda – now lost in the sea of status updates – to radical actions that take seed in grassroots communities and are nurtured by technologists worldwide. The power, as 20-year old blogger and political activist Jody MacIntyre puts is, is with the people.

This has been particularly apparent in the explosion of technologies that circumvent censorship in countries where the media is controlled by governments. Over the last two decades, there has been a global shift in what access to information means; for many, it is now assumed to be a basic human right. Panic-stricken authoritarian regimes have tried to clamp down on the tsunami of opposition information that flows, unfettered, around the networks in their countries by shutting off access to dissident websites, but almost instantly, new tools emerge that open the pipelines again.

Walid Al-Saqaf developed an encryption technology called alkasir when the Yemeni government closed down his news aggregation site YemenPortal.net. As the son of a journalist murdered for reporting on a corrupt government, Al-Saqaf felt that it was important that he use both his journalism and IT skills to get around the blockade, “because I felt it would have been a betrayal to my own profession to simply manipulate what people see."

“Information freedom is essential if you’re really going to live a dignified life,” he argues. He believes that presenting his audience with both Government and dissident news sources will allow them to take better decisions. Alkasir provides the assurance of personal safety when users are looking at banned sites in the country.

China is perhaps the most infamous Web censor, but there is evidence that even its Great Firewall is undergoing renovation; its most popular blogger is Han Han, a 28-year-old professional rally car driver and author. He posts treatises that are openly critical of the current Chinese government, yet, because he speaks in the vernacular of the youth audience and has such a tremendous following [stat], his personal politics are generally overlooked by the censors.

“Although the Internet is controlled, when compared with traditional media, it better reflects reality,” Han says. Even in situations where his content is censored, there is a sense the next generation of Chinese youth has developed resilience against the government that their offline predecessors didn’t have because they know that information freedom is inevitable. “The atmosphere is not as terrifying as people in some Western countries may think,” he argues. “This is a game, and I’m playing by other people’s rules. I don’t think that the government disagrees with the ideas in the articles that were censored; they are afraid of the ideas spreading.”

Indeed, the crowd has become a powerful force in the battle against information oppression. The next generation of technologists are using the Web’s hyper-connectivity and plug-and-play capabilities to crowdsource action. Ory Okolloh’s Ushahidi, a tool that gathers streams of information from disproximate sources and displays it on a Google Map, was an important indicator of hubs activity during the post-election violence in Kenya in 2008, generated by on-the-ground witnesses reporting in via their mobile phones. The technology circumvented traditional hierarchies and communicated what was happening – live – to people inside and outside the country, despite the attempts to blockade traditional media.

Yet despite the fears of traditional media industries like newspapers and television that they are fast becoming obsolete, there is great respect amongst the modern cyber-radicals for the scale of attention that old media can bring. Tom Steinberg is the founder and director of MySociety, a technology company that builds digital tools that provide a direct pipeline between individuals, local communities and local government. Steinberg argues that there are two ways that politics has been transformed by the Web: “partisan campaigning to exert power and to beat your opponents into a pulp; and the creation of what you might call empowering platforms using general purpose tools that let people communicate, act, exert power or achieve goals like requesting information out of the Government."

Indeed, MySociety’s most successful projects, TheyWorkForYou, FixMyStreet and No. 10 Petitions, have inspired people to get involved. “The Internet presents more opportunity to lower these barriers than pre-Internet technology enabled,” he says. “You can make things that say, ‘Go on, just have a go.’"

Steinberg likes to think that his tools support a vibrant, healthy and lively democracy (“a rude and obnoxious place,” he says), encouraging communities of voices loud enough to be heard by political bodies. But, by his own admission, this grassroots facilitation comes with its own agenda; like Berners-Lee’s open Web, MySociety washes its hands of the content of community action. Steinberg is, however, pleased when people use what he has developed to demand radical change.

Yet it is in “politics with a capital P,” like Barack Obama’s strategy in the 2008 US Presidential elections - the current poster child for social change online - that Steinberg recognises the importance of old media formats. "If I was running an election campaign and I had ten thousand pounds, I would still spend it all on TV adverts, leaflets and posters,” he says. “The Internet is good at all sorts of things, but shoving your message down the throats of people who don’t care - which is what it takes to spike campaigns and win - it’s not particularly great at.”

Old media should wait before congratulating itself; there are revolutionaries within its ranks making headway in radical ways. Matt Locke and Alice Taylor are two insiders who have been working exclusively with interactive technology since the early days of the Web. Taylor is a veteran of the dot-com boom and was responsible for the first Channel 4 website. Locke, has a background in fine art photography, and started exploring interactive devices for exhibitions in the Northeast. Now, after a stint in the innovation labs of the BBC, the pair is responsible for commissioning cross-platform projects for Channel 4’s Education department. These are the people who have the attentions of the next generation.

The remit is to transform the attitudes of 14-19 year olds in everything from civil liberties to sexual activity, and they have chosen to do it online. “The Internet is the greatest human achievement ever. It has limitless capability. Our focus is just to make sure there’s stuff out there that isn’t designed to sell,” explains Taylor. So, rather than taking the traditional media model and transmitting public service information, they have carefully, and perhaps slightly insidiously, pieced together an award-winning slate of successful products that exploits the power of the Channel 4 brand, but transforms how the message is consumed.

"The future is written when millions of people get their hands on something and can start misusing it," explains Locke, currently the Acting Head of Crossplatform at the channel. “We are no longer the taste-makers and change-makers that large institutions were in the latter part of the 20th century," he says. “We’ve demonstrated to other people [within Channel 4] that the talent and the audience are there way before we are. We are taking our lead from them, rather than having the kind of expectation that, at a large institution, we should somehow teach them something.”

What is Yemen Portal?

YemenPortal.net is a news aggregator. More than ninety per cent is in Arabic. It gathers information or news articles released in the official news websites, as well as opposition, dissident and independent news websites, and puts them together so they present a comprehensive view of what happened throughout the day from all of those sources. This feature has allowed a lot of people to look into dissident content they didn’t know about.

Why was this necessary?

The traditional media in Yemen is very restrictive, and the broadcast media is monopolised by the State: you wake up in the morning in Yemen and open the news on TV and you find that all the news is about the President’s meetings and the Government’s meetings. Like in many authoritarian regimes, it’s merely reflecting the positive image of the State regime. So as an escape entry, readers find alternative news on the Internet. That’s why there are many more readers for dissident content on the Web than in the traditional media.

But Yemen Portal doesn't only give voice to dissident or opposition viewpoints.

I’m not doing it as a favour to the alternative websites, I’m just doing it because it’s necessary to get all the different views on the portal so just as the dissidents have a voice, so do the Government websites. I differentiate between what the Government says and what opposition news websites say and categorise them based on their affiliation on the front page so readers don’t get misled about who wrote it.

How did the Government respond to the fact that an increase in readership was discovering dissident content through Yemen Portal?

They simply blocked access to it, to the whole Website from within Yemen. Because we only have Government controlled Internet service providers, one single order from any Minister of Communication simply denies access to all users in Yemen. I never expected that to happen because I explained from the very start that I wasn't going to publish my own content or my own views. I’d let everyone else do it, like what Google News does.

Upon blocking my Website, I had three choices: I’d actually give way and let the Government control what appeared and what didn't appear on my Website; I'd shut it down altogether; or I'd continue to have the content that’s controversial, yet find ways to allow people to access the Website. I chose the last because I felt it would have been a betrayal to my own profession to simply manipulate what people see. If I shut it down, it would have meant a disaster on both academic and reputational levels.

When did you decide to create a tool that circumvented the Government blockades?

I'd decided that we needed to fight, not only on the campaigning level of promoting freedom of expression through articles, activism and workshops, but we also could develop technologies that allow people to access censored material, particularly material that is in no violation to laws. It’s not a terrorist Website that they’re blocking. They’re simply dissident websites that are calling for change. I have an academic degree in Computer Engineering, so I developed Alkasir.

How does Alkasir work?

Although it is a circumvention tool, it does not circumvent everything. It only circumvents what is blocked so, for example, if you were browsing the Internet and you wanted to open your Gmail, your Gmail would go through the local regular ISP. But once you open a blocked Website, that’s when it activates itself and changes into proxy mode, which is the encrypted mode. Your data to and from blocked websites are encrypted through this tunnel created through the software, and that helps to anonymise your activity on blocked websites, but leaves your activity on the regular websites identifiable.

In my opinion, that’s better than anonymising everything because if you anonymise everything, you give the impression to the monitors at the Internet Service Provider that there is a fishy connection. While in my software, some of the websites you visit would be blocked and would go through the encryption, but others would go directly. It shows that there is traffic going on and they see that regular websites are being opened. That helps to reduce the risk of being detected.

There’s no Holy Grail in anonymising and circumvention tools. There’s a misconception that there can be one way to absolutely hide your identity. That’s not possible. I mean, there will always be ways, just like you cannot secure a computer from viruses one hundred per cent. All you can do is raise awareness of what you should do, how you should do it.

Why do you feel that providing access to information at great risk to yourself is a risk worth taking?

It’s a human right. Information freedom is essential if you’re really going to live a dignified life. My father was killed in a traffic accident that was never investigated; it's still mysterious today. He was an activist who brought up issues of corruption, of grave criticism of the regime, criticism of wars that the regime had taken. He paid for it with his life and now I see what I am doing as a little something to help people know that they have a right to learn what’s going on around them. Once you’re better informed, you can take better decisions.

Although the means have changed – my father was a traditional journalist and I’m an online journalist – the same objective remains: to make sure that people know what is going on around them and what’s being said and done around them. The least I could do was to continue his message. I have skill in IT and it is a responsibility that I don't keep this knowledge to myself. I should utilise it in something that can help others. That’s why I’m doing this.

What you feel is the most powerful aspect of the digital world?

The lack of a centralised authority to control the flow of information is what makes the Internet unique and what it is today, and being built on a technology that is open source. Let us assume one day that the Internet was shut down by some super force. We already have the knowledge, and software developers around the world could replicate or build another Internet using the same technology.

It’s not impossible to develop an Internet without Government, and now with the evolution of peer-to-peer networking, there is also a real possibility of transmitting information in a way that extremely difficult for Governments to track.

How is the Web is most effective at influencing people?

There are various means of using technology in a way to combat oppression and authoritarianism and tyranny. You can use it as a way to disseminate information, but you can also use it to network. That is very useful for protests, for campaigns, for change and revolutions. Making sure that it's used for change and for something that is positive is essential. I’m relying on the intentions and objectives of content creators to ensure that the technology is used for positive ends.

What do you feel that the Web can’t do to change attitudes and behaviours?

What is Ushahidi?

Ushahidi is a non-profit technology company that specializes in developing free and open source software for crowdsourcing, visualization, and interactive mapping.  We build tools for democratizing information, increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for individuals to share their stories.

Ushahidi started as an ad hoc group of technologists and bloggers hammering out software in a couple days, trying to figure out a way to gather more and better information about the post-election violence in Kenya in January 2008. Since then, the Ushahidi platform has gone open source, and due to it being free, is now being utilized by organizations big and small all over the world.

Ushahidi has shown what a small team of dedicated people can do, leveraging technology to impact and create change all over the globe.

How has Ushahidi changed the political and social scene in Kenya and in the other countries where it's been implemented?

We have been disruptive in the crowdsourcing space and in showcasing the potential of technology in circumventing traditional hierarchies as far as information collection, visualization and dissemination.

How did digital technologies best meet your needs, rather than the traditional avenues of publication and dissemination?

Digital technologies offer the possibility of integration of various streams, ability to get up and running in a low cost way, and the possibility of reaching a much wider audience.

What is it about the Web that makes it an effective platform for influence?

It's accessibility, low barriers to publication of information, the ability to be who you are.   

What can't the Web do to change attitudes and behaviours?

The Web can't change attitudes and behaviors - it can influence, but it's individuals who change.

In which regions, sectors and social structures will we see the greatest and most radical change effected by the Web in 10 years?

What is the Pirate Bay?

The Pirate Bay was a project developed as part of the "anti anti-piracy group" we started, called Piratbyrån. Pirate Bay blew up because all the other file sharing sites were being shut down because of legal pressure from Hollywood. Most of the other torrent sites were run by 16-year-old guys, and when you're that age and you get a letter from Hollywood attorneys saying we're going to sue you for all the money in the world, you shut down your site.

We decided we weren't going to do that because we had the political ideal. Copyright holders spend millions on lobbyists, but they won't get results except to scare a few people. Putting legislation in place for scaring people isn't good for society. We wanted to make a statement and take on the fight.

The Internet is based on the idea that everyone can share whatever they want. If you start having gatekeepers you have a consumer and producer relationship. We didn't like the idea that corporations would take the Internet and turn it into cable TV.

Do you have a philosophical progenitor that has influenced your attitudes towards file sharing?

Piratbyrån was an art project with hackers, artists and thinkers. Our influence came from Public Enemy and from the Marxist movement, from Public Image Limited and KLF. It was traditional French philosophers rather than the American libertarians from the West Coast who inspired us.

Why do you believe you should be able to share files online?

I grew up with computers. I got my first computer when I was nine, and everything I learned about computers was from copies. I wouldn't be able to programme if it wasn't for illegally copying my first programming language compiler. I didn't have the money; I was a kid and no one spent money on it. It was too expensive for everyone!

How did your attitude to file sharing develop?

I started reading academic papers about file sharing that said it is good for the community; it's good for the artist. The only people who lose are the record companies and the studios. Copyright is based on the notion that there are certain companies who should be able to profit from culture. It's not based on the idea anymore that people who create things should be able to benefit, or get money for it.

Copyright is boring, so no one really wants to get to know it. It's such a big legal field, so the companies who can profit from it have a free arena to dictate terms, and no one can question it to work against it. But the Internet removed the middleman. I don't understand why that's a bad thing. I see the situation in the same way as discovering a car that runs on water and the oil companies forbidding water to be used in cars.

What are the alternatives to copyright in the digital age?

Rights management isn't always bad. Creative Commons makes people respect works in a different way. Today in the copyright regime, you don't respect works because it's just a thing that costs a Dollar. With Creative Commons, you put a value on the content in a different way: you say it's worth something more important than money, like a feeling. I think you should be able to copy whatever you want, but if you make money from it, then you should pay for it.

What should copyright mean in the digital global marketplace?

It should be part of freedom of speech. One of the UN's Human Rights Articles says any person should freely be able to participate in culture. Copyright is breaking this article.

What should consumers do to challenge the copyright regime?

If you don't respect the copyright law, then it doesn't apply to you. If the majority don't agree to the law it shouldn't be a law, or we're not living in a democracy. Either we put laws in place that no one respects, or we make laws that people respect. There's really no alternative.

How does the Web influence?

It's very radical when it comes to the low price, and, for the grassroots groups, the huge community you can reach very fast. You can see that with Wikileaks: they've not spent any money on anything, but they do good work and people trust them because they're not a big brand or company. There's no gatekeeper anymore. You have the power to influence as fast as you connect with the Internet. With Twitter and Facebook you don't even need to create your own publishing platform. You just have to have the idea.

In Sweden after the recent election, a 17-year-old girl created a Facebook group calling for a demonstration against the racists who were voted into office. 10 hours later, 6,000 people showed up and demonstrated. She's 17, she's an immigrant. She has no say in the traditional means, so she uses another democratic power to work against the things that happen to her. (translation)

What's happened over the past ten years that has given the Web greater power for social change?

The technology has become more accessible. That means you don't have to be a technologist to be an activist. Reducing the need for technological skills has been the biggest thing.

Where can't it be used to change attitudes and behaviours?

We have a problem with a class society: people who understand the technology and people who don't. My father can't use the Web because he doesn't know how. In modern countries, you're putting a lot of pressure on making people use the Internet, but 40% of Swedes can't do that because they don't know how to use it. We need to keep making it easier.

Where do you feel the most radical change will be felt?