We Are All Cyberlibertarians
An Exploration of Technological Determinism and Cyberlibertarianism
Those who study and write on technology will invariably get asked some version of that old age question, “is technology a force for good or bad?”
It’s a question that suggests a certain worldview, and subtly advocates for technological determinism.
Think about the responses. Either technology is viewed as a force that is benevolent or it is a force that is malevolent. But either answer makes technology exogenous. Technology acts onto society. This sort of technological determinism is the default frame of most conversations about technology but fundamentally misplaces technology in human ecology. Determinism aligns human actors and technological objects in a linear relationship with human agency often riding as a caboose.
Yet, that doesn’t describe the world in which technological objects are created and sustained. The iPhone was created by Apple following the success of the iPod to meld the hardware platform with the content of the mobile web, ultimately for the purpose of boosting sales. And people became enamored with it, lining up days before its release to grab one. Technologies aren’t alien objects. They are molded by particular interests and institutional goals, and rooted in society, especially the bourgeois virtues. Had there been a different purpose to the iPhone, it would have been alternatively designed.
Following Ian Barbour’s definition, we might think of technology as the application of organized knowledge to practical tasks by ordered systems of people and machines. This kludge of a definition conveys how technology is an assemblage. As applications of organized knowledge, technologies are based on practical experience, invention, and scientific theories. Highlighting how practical tasks are achieved allows for an emphasis on the material production of goods and services. The final bit about ordered systems of people and machines directs attention towards the social institutions where technology is embedded.
A systems approach to technology, what some have dubbed contextualism, is a mindset apart from technological and sociological determinism. For technological determinism, technology is made an independent variable. But technology doesn’t want anything, contrary to Kevin Kelly. It exists within human ecology, just as economic systems do. To make technology an outside force misplaces the role of human values in its creation and adoption. As separated from society, determinism allows for technology to be both mythologized and demonized.
Technopessimists often find themselves at odds with this systems approach, as well they should. Variety exists in the deployment of technology, differing from country to country. Widespread condemnation of technology denies that variability can occur on the ground, brushing off most of the uses and gratifications literature. Good riddance to the past, they mutter. So too, the inherent logic of the technology subordinates the role of human agency and the ability to redirect technological uses. But in the same way, it also muffles the ecstatic nature of the most ardent techno optimists.
Adam Thierer is right. We need to save the net from its supporters.
But we needn’t follow Barbour and other contextualists that give prominence to participatory freedom and are “less concerned about economic growth than about how growth is distributed and who receives the costs and benefits.” The deemphasis of the economic is a prominent streak running through tech criticism. Kudos to Barbour for being explicit where others aren’t.
Evgeny Morozov hints at the apotheosis of the political when he laments the state of tech criticism. “That radical critique of technology in America has come to a halt is in no way surprising: it could only be as strong as the emancipatory political vision to which it is attached.”
Such a view privileges a mode of thinking, raising the political above the economic. It assumes the production is already there and then gets to work divvying up the proceeds. Technological navel gazing is lost. We are less likely to ask, where, exactly, did this all come from?
The natural state of things isn’t the glut of information we find ourselves wading through. The natural state of things is information poverty. The ephemerality of voice, not the permanence of the electronic word, is the default state. Mechanical processing power, which gives us manipulation over ideas and math, and multiplies our efforts, is still in short supply, but was nonexistent just a half a century ago.
How we got to the current state of information abundance is clear, it is via permissionless innovation. In reality, permissionless innovation is just a subplot to the broader story about the Great Enrichment, a term coined by my former teacher Deirdre McCloskey. How else might we describe the 1000 percent increase in income since the 1800s? The mechanisms are simple, but powerful, she explains:
Give masses of ordinary people equality before the law and equality of social dignity, and leave them alone, and it turns out that they become extraordinarily creative and energetic.
When we say permissionless innovation, we are referring to that creativity and energy that pushes new technologies to be deployed, affording humans new abilities and experiences.
At core, this is what unites cyberlibertarians. The focus is on possibility of production, on the new, and on the opportunity of choice. Although a precise definition is difficult, cyberlibertarians are united in their enthusiasm for the new liberties offered by technology, enabled by permissionless innovation. A broad term to be sure, but let’s stick to loose fitting terms for now.
Accordingly, this is where cyberlibertarian suffers from its harshest critics. Yes, there is a tendency to prioritize the economic at the expense of the political, but it isn’t a hard rule. Ithiel de Sola Pool wondered two decades back if “the electronic resources for communications can be as free of public regulation in the future as the platform and printing press have been in the past.” Liberty was present from the very beginning.
Morozov’s critique is among the most powerful. Without a vision it serves to illuminate, there is no genuine tech critique. But Morozov’s critique is Hayek’s relief. Hayek is the foil in so many economic stories like these because he is the radical skeptic of planning. Morozov wants an strong “emancipatory political vision.” He isn’t alone, so do others. But as the other great Burke, Kenneth Burke, once observed, “every way of seeing is also a way of not seeing.” Every political vision is a method of not seeing other political visions. Hayekianism calls for multiplicities instead of a singular political chorus. For those singing this tune, Hayek is an existential threat.
David Golumbia goes further, and takes to task “otherwise brilliant leftists who carefully examine the political commitments of most everyone they side with [until they confront tech issues and] suddenly throw their lot in with libertarians.”
But consider some of the recent voices. Matt Ridley is often numbered with the transgressors, even though he aims for neither “unthinking praise or condemnation of all markets.” So too is Brink Lindsey numbered. And yet, he retorts back, “the ideologies of left and right share a dyspeptic frustration with the prevailing culture — and with the fact that most people are much less frustrated than they are!” The chief heretic would be its highest priestess, Dierdre McCloskey. It is her that commits the unforgiveable sin of combining virtues and the values of a commercial world. These authors do what so many others don’t. They try to incorporate the material world in their ethical explorations. And while there are problems, yes, there is still an important positive story to tell.
Professor Golumbia readily admits that cyberliberatarianism framing is dominant, and what has occurred is an “absorption of leftist rhetoric by the Right.” But this confuses two kinds of demarcations in the debate. One line might be made between the political leanings of traditional libertarians and “The Right.” Any cursory glance will yield a simple insight on that front, libertarians have long been in a tenuous relationship with this group. Ayn Rand famously hated them, with the “them” here being libertarians. While there is some overlap on policy, the moral backing between the right and libertarians differ greatly. They are not coterminus.
More importantly, notions of freedom and liberty, which are used interchangeably, form the core of Americans’ sense of self. Leftist rhetoric on liberty or freedom isn’t something to absorb. Liberty, in the words of historian Eric Foner, is the central term of our political vocabulary. It is deployed on all sides of the debate. If you are on the left or the right, or if you happen to be a libertarian, you are going to employ the term.
Foner is right, then. It is pointless to attempt to identify one meaning against which others are to be judged. Similarly, liberty or freedom on the Internet is not a fixed category or predetermined concept, but an “essentially contested concept,” that is defined in the course of disagreement.
Both Morozov and Golumbia look at the issue through the lens of political liberation and they find the rhetoric of freedom being used as a banner for political action. Of course they do. The politics of liberty is an American political discussion. It’s a banner that must be flown to garner support for any political action on the net. Within that rhetoric of freedom and liberty can the roots of action be found. Without, action falters.
At some level, then, we are all cyberlibertarians.
