Khalid, Natrajan D.

Ethics – MWF/3:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Contract for the Web

Over the past centuries, technologies have regularly come along that completely change how

we connect to each other: the printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, the newspaper, the radio, the

television. All are technologies that begin social revolutions. We’re living through one such revolution

now. It started in 1962 with a humble, almost boring idea: connecting computers together. Today,

almost 3 billion people are connected. What kind of revolution are we going through?

Firstly, it is fast. It took humanity 25 years after the Guttenberg Press arrived for the first English

book to be printed. In its first twenty-five years, the reached just ten percent of America. In 1995, less

than one percent of the world’s population was connected. The first billion was reached in 2005. The

second billion in 2010. The third billion at the end of 2014. The benefits of the internet can be witnessed

all around us. In a European-wide poll, people put the internet at the top of their daily essentials –

ahead of the bath, the car, and the television. Across the globe, the internet helped through the

advancements of our civilization by spoon-feeding us with a lot of knowledge which can be use from

our daily lives. Tim Berners-Lee created the initiative called Contract of the web to promote the safety

of internet users against political manipulation, fake news, privacy violations, and other harmful

entities on the internet. Such entities contribute to this initiative in order for the contract to be effective

and pragmatic. The government’s role is to guarantee the free access of the internet within its wing.

They also promote the protection of every individuals’ right to privacy and data from being breached

by foreign or unknown users to avoid leakage (i.e. The Rule on the Writ of Habeas Data). The

institutions and companies create jobs as well as contents to cater the consumers. And the actors who

shapes the course of the internet. However, with the good intentions of the said initiative, we cannot

just skip to the scenario that it is a one-hundred percent successful platform. With all the current issues

that is bombarded to the internet, such anomalies can be observed. Some of the examples are the social

media and other personal information breaching within the internet setting. The harvesting of personal

information can be used by other unknown users, or worst-case scenario, by the government who puts

the sanction within the state. The problem when it comes to creating social media accounts is that it
generates a delusional intuition of being free. It is, without a doubt, exercise our right to create our

social media accounts. However, the problem lies within the company and institution or the

government who runs and manages the platform. Because the more you create an account, the more

the website/s requests for your personal information. According to Quartz.com, as of 2015, the number

of data requests by Facebook has a total of 17,577. Even smartphones can be considered as a threat to

data breaching due to its capability of collecting personal information: from audio recordings, our

locations via GPS, phone books and logs, social media accounts, websites and apps we’ve been used,

finger prints, and facial recognitions as well. This information that are being asked by the technologies

and social media accounts threatens the security of each and every individual. We cannot deny the fact

that this information is being utilized by the government and some private companies and institutions

for their own sake. This is the reason why we are allowed to use our technology: for them to harvest

our personal information that can be used in a good or bad way without our knowledge. With our

actions being considered as free: applying for visa, credit cards, finger prints and facial recognitions, it

creates an illusion of welcoming. The methods by which controlled and monitored are no longer

perceive as methods of control at all but rather as exercises of our own freedom. People or institutions,

in their outmost behavior promotes control rather than discipline. People will believe that they are free

due to them being able to exercise their volition to do what they want to do, especially creating such

accounts, without knowing that this can be leveraged by some institutions (either private or public).

This manifestation of control enables them to predict or cater our needs or services that we want. This

is what makes societies of control so dangerous and so effective. When we buy phones to create social

media accounts, use a credit card, or go to an airport, we are doing this with our consent and

knowledge. Yet, by that very act we are increasing the power that institutions have over us. Once it is

decided that we have disobeyed the standards of some institution, it is very easy to them limit our

freedom, place prohibitions on us, and punish us from a distance. To an increasing extent, we rely on

things like cards, internet accounts, codes, and mobile and electronic services, which can be shut off at

any moment. Thus, the exercise of power no longer requires direct physical intervention instead, it can

be exercised merely through the manipulation of flows of information. This can be in a form of

suppression, when the government wants to shut you down because you are opposing them (i.e. they

might be abusing their power). It can be described as an Orwellian situation, wherein everything that
is related to you are being watched by the state or some sketchy hegemonic institution. By following

some set of algorithms, they can manipulate the environment of world wide web.

It is hard to come up with an endgame with accordance to the problems of the internet. Although

the aim is empathic and egalitarian, such agendas can be applied to the initiative. It is hard to regulate

the internet because everyone is free to use it. Discipline and accountability should be the utmost

priority of the pioneers of the initiative. It should safeguard the collective users of the internet, not for

the sake of the investors or the tycoons of the programs and other institutions. Private companies and

the government should be synchronized when formulating a proper execution on how they will fight

these anomalies of the internet. Because it is not literally the people who will suffer from this crash, but

the institution where the people lives in will.