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-===== The Internet as a Planetary Platform =====
+**The Internet as a Planetary Platform**
 The consensus among historians today that the Internet played an essential part in the 21st Century emergence of vast planetary movements strong enough to overthrow the dying capitalist world-system. But for a long time it was a contested arena and a two-edged sword.The abandoned step-child of the U.S. military network designed to survive atomic attack, it was taken up by university researchers, students, hackers and networks of anti-capitalist protesters around the globe. At the same time, governments and corporations began exploiting the technology for political surveillance and commercial exploitation, as we shall see below. (See "The Dark Side of the Internet" below. MAKE LINK)
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 .	The Internet’s web-like global network, whose “center” is everywhere and nowhere, was turning out to be a more effective model for the emergence of planetary, democratic and working-class movements than the traditional hub-and-spokes, center/periphery, top-down model of centralized parties and “Internationals.”
+=====Networked Democracy=====
+Today, no one can deny the potential of online networking for revolutionary self-organization. The potential of the Web to enable new types of organization, based on the horizontal network model rather than the centralized hub-and-spokes model was less obvious a century ago. At the end of the 20th century, new forms of horizontal organizations began emerging in Latin America, rooted in urban neighborhoods and rural communities, in factories and on the land, yet networked nationally and even internationally. Self-organized, autonomous groups of peasants and indigenous peoples had been networking since 1992, when the Internet helped bring them together to celebrate 500 years of survival and resistance to colonialism. The symbolism of the woven web, powerful yet delicate, had already been proposed by activist women as an alternative to male-dominated, top-down power.
-====Connectivity, Complexity, Emergence====
+Activists from these movements began to network online and at World Social Forums, connecting with networks of workers, ecologists, and activists, comparing conditions, discussing strategy, and organizing global solidarity with similar movements as far off as Africa and Asia. These autonomous networks were also the power base of populist leaders like Lula, Kirchner, Correa, Chavez, and Morales, pushing these politicians to challenge the power of local landowners and global corporations and attacking them when they fail. Wired indigenous were indeed a planetary vanguard: challenging capitalism, protecting the land, and saving nature from the ravenous corporations. Far from being “historically backward,” rural communities successfully appropriated 21st century capitalist communications technology at its highest level and used it as a weapon for their own emancipation. Since 2011, so did the allegedly “backward” Arab masses.
+The model of a “network of networks” continued to prove effective as a structure for an expansive, flexible, practical, transnational organizing, and it also foreshadowed the structure of our 22nd century self-organized planetary society.
+The Achilles’ heel of democracy had always been the necessity of delegating authority to representatives who all too often end up forming a separate political class with its own interests. After the fall of totalitarian Communism and the collapse of the neo-liberal “New World Order” that succeeded it, people began asking questions like: “What if direct “town-meeting” type participatory democracy could be organized not only locally, but also regionally, and globally via Internet hookup? What if every citizen of the planet could make her/his voice heard equally with every other, get access to experts’ advice and unite with others of the same persuasion? And then vote – whether in their own mass assemblies or internationally via a secure Internet hookup? What if the great issues facing humanity could be debated everywhere and then decided in global referendums via the Internet?  What if economic planning on a global scale could be combined with worker self-management and maximum local autonomy? What if every individual could participate in decision-making in each of her capacities as resident, parent, child, producer, consumer, and citizen? What if, after centuries of successful revolutions being hijacked and perverted by new bureaucratic elites, the common people were able to control the destiny of a new society as it emerges from below?
+Back in 1958, when computers were in their infancy, the autonomist philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis was the first to imagine such a computer-connected self-managed society in his essay “The Content of Socialism.”   A critic of bureaucratic top-down management as exemplified by Russian Communism and the American corporation, Castoriadis saw socialism emerging out of workers’ self-activity. A professional economist, he was able to elaborate in concrete detail a complete national economy, free of the waste and coercion of corporate or Communist central planning. In Castoriadis’ scheme, “Planning Factories” produced alternative economic plans – to be debated in assemblies and eventually voted by the producers via wired hookups. These alternative plans set out in simple terms the relative costs and consequences of each proposal in terms of labor time, resources, growth and consumption levels – giving society the choice between enjoying more leisure or working harder for future goals. The concrete images in Castoriadis’ model made such an impression on me a half-century ago that I have never since doubted democratic socialism’s practical “do-ability.”
+Castoriadis’ vision of informed economic planning from below provided a concrete refutation of Nobel economist Friedrich Hayek’s anti-socialist argument that central planning is bound to fail because it cannot possibly assemble the information that is ultimately incorporated in the “marvel” of the price system which “registers the knowledge, the preferences, and values of countless people.” Castoriadis’ self-managed society also recalled Engels’ vision of the new world emerging out of the shell of the old – the image adopted in 1905 as the logo of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). What was original in 1958 was Castoriadis’ appropriation of the theories of the socialist-minded mathematician Norbert Weiner, the pioneer of computer science who explored the feedback principle and recognized the emergent quality of cybernetics – a word he coined.  By the Millenium, not only cyberneticists but physicists, biologists, mathematicians, economists and scientists in other fields are studying and analyzing the emergent phenomena of spontaneous self-organization from below in the context of Chaos/Complexity/Emergence Theory.
+=====Connectivity, Complexity, Emergence=====
 Connectivity was the new factor that made actual the age-old dream of humanity rising together in the 21st century. In the late 20th century, sociologists  demonstrated that there are only six degrees of separation between each of the then six billion humans on the planet. To be sure, these are weak connections, but it turned out that weak connections are the fabric that makes up the strength of complex network structures like the Internet, the physical universe (according to Quantum theory), and the human brain, with its billions of synapses.
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-==== Communications Technology and Revolution ====
+===== Communications Technology and Revolution =====
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 Mass surveillance fed hysteria and conspiracy theories both among leftists and reactionaries like Turkey’s strongman Erdogan. Yet however bleak the prospect of Internet tyranny, the contest over cyberspace long remained undecided.  Compared to the massive array of cyber weaponry in the hands of corporations and governments, the power of a few thousands cell phones in the hands of pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong seems puny. But was it? Thanks to an improvised networking App called FireChat, the cell phones enabled the “Umbrella Revolution” protesters to occupy the financial capital of Asia and hold the power Communist China at bay for more than two months. David vs. Goliath?
-==Government surveillance==
+====Government surveillance====
 Let us begin with the issue of mass surveillance. Whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s revelation of the CIA’s mass collection of telephone records and emails, including those of world leaders like Angela Merkel, finally opened the debate over Civil Liberties and the right of privacy. As U.S. President Obama and the Congress went through the motions of restricting mass surveillance, new revelations based on Snowden’s vast trove of government files showed that this surveillance, including dirty tricks, was only increasing. Moreover, the US was far from the only country waging cyber war against its citizens and perceived enemies abroad. China in particular had a highly developed surveillance and penetration apparatus. Also Russia. Furthermore, criminal elements used the same techniques to steal identities and empty people’s bank accounts.
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 Hackers were the natural enemies of censors and owners of “intellectual property.” Since the earliest days of Internet technology, “hacking” – a term presumably derived from “hacking around” (having fun) – was an essential expression of the playful, rebellious, innovative spirit of early amateur computer programmers. Hackers, working independently and in informal networks, have been responsible for much of the innovation which corporations subsequently took over, patented, and made millions off of. Patents are basically locked doors, keeping out the very people who imagined the technical treasures behind them. The hackers’ ideal is open source technology, like the Linux operating system: resulting from the merger of the ‘freeware’ movement and the model of decentralized collaboration via Internet.  Constantly upgraded by unpaid hackers, it rivals billionaire Microsoft’s Windows. The “hacker ethic” is thus cooperative, anti-corporate, anti-capitalist, if not outright socialistic. Scorning intellectual property laws, hackers delight in breaking through security firewalls – if only for the fun of showing how much smarter they are than their government and corporate rivals. The revenge of the nerds!
-The political cutting edge of the hacker subculture is the nebulous known as Anonymous. In late 2010, thousands of Anonymous hacktivists joined a mass digital assault on the websites of VISA, MasterCard, and PayPal to protest their blocking of cardholders contributions to WikiLeaks. Other targets, including the websites of corporations from Sony Entertainment and Fox to the Vatican and the Church of Scientology, were hacked, defaced, and embarrassed. The message was that no one was safe. Thousands of user accounts from pornography websites were released, exposing government employees and military personnel.
+The political cutting edge of the hacker subculture was the nebulous known as Anonymous. In late 2010, thousands of Anonymous hacktivists joined a mass digital assault on the websites of VISA, MasterCard, and PayPal to protest their blocking of cardholders contributions to WikiLeaks. Other targets, including the websites of corporations from Sony Entertainment and Fox to the Vatican and the Church of Scientology, were hacked, defaced, and embarrassed. The message was that no one was safe. Thousands of user accounts from pornography websites were released, exposing government employees and military personnel.
+To be sure, not all hackers were lovable Robin Hoods. On the dark side, the FBI recruited black-hat hackers as double agents, like the “friend” who snitched on Pfc. Manning. Moreover, online fraud and identity theft by hackers were thriving multi-million-dollar industries, and the very corporations and governments formerly raided by ludic white-hat hacktivists have recruited teams of highly-skilled well-paid hackers to carry Cyber war to higher levels. For example, in June 2015 it transpired that at least 21 million U.S. government personnel records had been obtained by hackers – probably from China. US intelligence hasn’t a clue about who did it, when it happened, or what else has been stolen.
+As for Cyber war between governments, the 2010 U.S.-Israeli cyber-attack on Iranian nuclear facilities gave a foretaste of the kind of mass destruction of communication and energy grids planned for future wars between nations. On the other hand, Cyber war is a real life computer game in which David and Goliath compete on an even playing field: the Internet. All that counts in this game is brains and initiative, and the subculture of programmers and hackers, imbued with the libertarian, cooperative, anarchic hacker mentality, has brains and initiative to spare.
+==Commercialization==
+ The Internet, originally a conduit for grad students to share research and jokes, has burgeoned into a platform for giant corporations. Within a generation, firms like eBay, Facebook, YouTube, Groupon, and Amazon – some starting literally in somebody’s garage – mushroomed into multi-billion-dollar businesses. Internet commerce, Internet entertainment, Internet communication and Internet social networks were the hottest items in the otherwise sluggish post-2008 economy. With its user base growing exponentially, the Internet connected corporations directly with the credit cards of an endless supply of consumers. It was free. It selected. It penetrated. It appealed to instant gratification and promoted addictions like gambling and pornography. Potential customers were targeted using algorithms that analyze the vast amount of their personal information available online. This could be as innocent as Amazon telling you that “readers who enjoyed the book you just bought also liked…” On the other hand:
+Your cell phone provider tracked your location and knows who’s with you. Your online and in-store purchasing patterns were recorded, and reveal if you were unemployed, sick, or pregnant. Your e-mails and texts exposed your intimate and casual friends. Google knew what you’re thinking because it saved your private searches. Facebook could determine your sexual orientation without you ever mentioning it.
-To be sure, not all hackers are lovable Robin Hoods. On the dark side, the FBI has recruited black-hat hackers as double agents, like the “friend” who snitched on Pfc. Manning. Moreover, online fraud and identity theft by hackers are thriving multi-million-dollar industries, and the very corporations and governments formerly raided by ludic white-hat hacktivists have recruited teams of highly-skilled well-paid hackers to carry Cyber war to higher levels. For example, in June 2015 it transpired that at least 21 million U.S. government personnel records had been obtained by hackers – probably from China. US intelligence hasn’t a clue about who did it, when it happened, or what else has been stolen.
+Every day, corporations were connecting the dots about peoples personal behavior – silently scrutinizing clues left behind by their work habits and Internet use. The data compiled and portraits created are incredibly detailed, to the point of being invasive… Hidden algorithms could make (or ruin) reputations, decide the destiny of entrepreneurs, or even devastate an entire economy.
-As for Cyber war between governments, the 2010 U.S.-Israeli cyber-attack on Iranian nuclear facilities has given us a foretaste of the kind of mass destruction of communication and energy grids planned for future wars between nations. On the other hand, Cyber war is a real life computer game in which David and Goliath compete on an even playing field: the Internet. All that counts in this game is brains and initiative, and the subculture of programmers, imbued with the libertarian, cooperative, anarchic hacker mentality, has brains and initiative to spare.
+====Culture====
-Commercialization The Internet, originally a conduit for grad students to share research and jokes, has burgeoned into a platform for giant corporations. Within a generation, firms like eBay, Facebook, YouTube, Groupon, and Amazon – some starting literally in somebody’s garage – have mushroomed into multi-billion-dollar businesses. Internet commerce, Internet entertainment, Internet communication and Internet social networks are the hottest items in the otherwise sluggish post-2008 economy. With its user base growing exponentially, the Internet connects corporations directly with the credit cards of an endless supply of consumers. It’s free. It selects. It penetrates. It appeals to instant gratification and promotes addictions like gambling and pornography. Potential customers are targeted using algorithms that analyze the vast amount of your personal information available online. This can be as innocent as Amazon telling you that “readers who enjoyed the book you just bought also liked…” On the other hand:
+Another serious danger was the way the algorithms used by Facebook and other sites ended up feeding users only information which the machine “thinks” they want, thus reinforcing their prejudices and insulating them from unpleasant information (for example about global warming). To be sure, close-mindedness is nothing new: long before the Internet, liberals, conservatives and extremists of the Right and Left generally read only publications they agreed with. The Internet algorithm has a multiplier effect.
-Your cell phone provider tracks your location and knows who’s with you. Your online and in-store purchasing patterns are recorded, and reveal if you're unemployed, sick, or pregnant. Your e-mails and texts expose your intimate and casual friends. Google knows what you’re thinking because it saves your private searches. Facebook can determine your sexual orientation without you ever mentioning it. (Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath, 2015)
+Worse still was the stultification (dumbing down) of the public through the Internet. The titles of contemporary books by media critics tell the whole sad story. For example: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (2011); The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30) by Mark Bauerlein (2009); Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992) and Amusing Ourselves to Death (2005) the latter a reprint of the classic by longtime media critic Neil Postman. Here again the Internet served as a multiplier effect to the evils of the commercialized mass culture purveyed in earlier generations via broadcast media like radio and TV (described in 1961 by FCC Chairman Newton N. Minow as “A Vast Wasteland”).
-Every day, corporations are connecting the dots about our personal behavior – silently scrutinizing clues left behind by our work habits and Internet use. The data compiled and portraits created are incredibly detailed, to the point of being invasive… Hidden algorithms can make (or ruin) reputations, decide the destiny of entrepreneurs, or even devastate an entire economy. (Frank Pasquale The Black Box Society, 2015)
+Indeed, during the broadcast era, the public could  choose only among various brands of pap (with rare exceptions) beamed down at them by the big networks, NBC, CBS and ABC. The difference with the Internet was that the public now had a vast number of choices, and that users are proactive (for better or for worse) in seeking out information and entertainment on demand. Thus although pornography occupied more sites than any other subject, with violence running a close second, Internauts also have instant access to Shakespeare, online university classes, Ted talks, Noam Chomsky, Wikipedia, Marxists.org etc., and all the links they lead to.
-Culture Another serious danger is the way the algorithms used by Facebook and other sites end up feeding users only information which the machine “thinks” they want, thus reinforcing their prejudices and insulating them from unpleasant information (for example about global warming). To be sure, close-mindedness is nothing new: long before the Internet, liberals, conservatives and extremists of the Right and Left generally read only publications they agreed with. The Internet has a multiplier effect.
+====Isolation====
-Worse still is the stultification (dumbing down) of the public through the Internet. The titles of recent books by media critics tell the whole sad story. For example: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr (2011); The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30) by Mark Bauerlein (2009); Technopoly: the Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992) and Amusing Ourselves to Death (2005) the latter a reprint of the classic by longtime media critic Neil Postman. Here again the Internet serves as a multiplier effect to the evils of the commercialized mass culture purveyed in earlier generations via broadcast media like radio and TV (described in 1961 by FCC Chairman Newton N. Minow as “A Vast Wasteland”).
+Another danger posed by the pervasiveness of Internet social media was a decline in sociability with people isolated alone in front of their screens. Increasingly, even when friends gathered, their attention was maddeningly focused on their online devices, prioritizing their virtual lives over their actual lives. According to MIT technology and society specialist Sherry Turkle writing in 2013, “technology has become the architect of our intimacies.” In Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other  she argues that “this relentless connection leads to a new solitude.” To be sure, the Internet could isolate people, but it also allowed them to get to know each other, to feel less alone, to access information, and eventually to mobilize massively for action.
-Indeed, during the broadcast era, the public could only choose among various brands of pap (with rare exceptions) beamed down at them by the big networks, NBC, CBS and ABC. The difference with the Internet is that the public now has a vast number of choices, and that users are proactive (for better or for worse) in seeking out information and entertainment on demand. Thus although pornography occupies more sites than any other subject, with violence running a close second, today’s Internauts also have instant access to Shakespeare, online university classes, Ted talks, Noam Chomsky, Wikipedia, Marxists.org etc., and all the links they lead to.
+Facebook “friends” may not have been the real friends whom we can depend on to nurse us when we’re sick, but they were an expression of the universal need of human beings for empathy, attention, sympathy, and admiration, however commercialized and crass Facebook may be. Indeed, according to economist and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin writing in 2010, empathic relations are more fundamental to what constitutes human nature than aggression and competition – as was previously believed. In The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis, Rifkin argues that Internet technology represented a “third industrial revolution” that would bring people together on an empathic basis and thus save the world from ecological catastrophe. As we now know, he was prophetic
-Isolation Another danger posed by the pervasiveness of Internet social media is a decline in sociability with people isolated alone in front of their screens. Increasingly, even when friends gather, their attention is maddeningly focused on their online devices, prioritizing their virtual lives over their actual lives. According to MIT technology and society specialist Sherry Turkle, “technology has become the architect of our intimacies.” In Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (2013) she argues that “this relentless connection leads to a new solitude.” To be sure, the Internet can isolate people, but it also allows them to get to know each other, to feel less alone, to access information, and eventually to mobilize massively for action.
+====Capitalist takeover of the Internet?====
-Facebook “friends” may not be the real friends whom we can depend on to nurse us when we’re sick, but they are an expression of the universal need of human beings for empathy, attention, sympathy, and admiration, however commercialized and crass Facebook may be. Indeed, according to economist and social theorist Jeremy Rifkin, empathic relations are more fundamental to what constitutes human nature than aggression and competition – as was previously believed. In The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis (2010), Rifkin argues that Internet technology represents a “third industrial revolution” that will bring people together on an empathic basis and thus save the world from ecological catastrophe.
+Nonetheless, massive data collection, invasion of privacy, mindless content, isolation, stultification of the public, attempts to privatize the Internet and above all its commercialization by mega-corporations were real threats to personal freedom and the democratic ideal. People began to ask the question: Aren’t big business and government taking over the Internet? The answer was not entirely, for the simple reason that the Internet is literally infinite. No one can occupy all that space. As long as everyone has equal access to post a blog or start a Twitter account, Cyberspace remains a level playing field. Low-cost sites like WikiLeaks (and Islamic State recruiting chat rooms!) had proven more influential than the US government’s costly propaganda apparatus and the mainstream media that follow the government “line.” It did not matter how many millions of glittering, seductive commercial sites are out there fishing for our wallets and for our hearts and minds. Open access – the possibility of many-to-many communication – remained the key to Internet democracy. Realizing this power, corporations and governments began a second wave of assaults, this time on the very technological basis of the Internet, on 'net neutrality,' platforms and domain names, in an effort to control it.
-Capitalist takeover of the Internet? Nonetheless, massive data collection, invasion of privacy, mindless content, isolation, stultification of the public, attempts to privatize the Internet and above all its commercialization by mega-corporations are real threats to personal freedom and the democratic ideal. We may legitimately ask the question: Aren’t big business and government taking over the Internet? The answer is no, for the simple reason that the Internet is literally infinite. No one can occupy all that space. As long as everyone has equal access to post a blog or start a Twitter account, Cyberspace remains a level playing field. Low-cost sites like WikiLeaks (and Islamic State recruiting chat rooms!) have proven more influential than the US government’s costly propaganda apparatus and the mainstream media that follow the government “line.” It does not matter how many millions of glittering, seductive commercial sites are out there fishing for our wallets and for our hearts and minds. Open access – the possibility of many-to-many communication – is the key to Internet democracy.
 This fundamental right to equal access to the Internet, known by the confusing name of “Network Neutrality,” has long been under attack by big business and the communications lobby in the U.S. Corporations want to establish a two-tier Internet with the big advertisers in the fast lane squeezing out the public. These efforts were frustrated by the Federal Communications Commission in 2015 after vast outpourings of objections from users, but one can be sure that the monopolists’ high-priced lawyers and lobbyists will be back. More contested terrain.
 The would-be privatizers and monopolizers will have a hard time fencing in Cyberspace, because the Internet and the World Wide Web were born free. The Internet from the start was common space, and the Web was created under an Open Source Copyright. The WWW was the brainchild of MIT Professor Tim (now Sir Tim) Berners-Lee, who made his idea available freely, with no patent and no royalties due. In 1994, he brought together various companies to create the self-governing World Wide Web Consortium (WC3) to oversee the Web, based on common standards and royalty-free technology easily adopted by anyone.

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