Sergio Amadeu da Silveira - Cidadania e Redes Digitais

eng
c i t i z e n s h i p a n d d i g i t a l n e t w o r k s
Communication in distributed digital networks puts many highly distinct
cultures in daily contact. The great differences of the presential world,
the various ethnic perspectives and the different views of social classes
do not disappear in cyber space. Despite the information technologies
giving the impression of homogenizing behaviors, attitudes and purposes,
the communications in digital networks has not dissolved nor appeased the
differences. This also occurs because the ideals and world visions of the developers
are built-in their creations: In the software, codes and protocols, which enable the
networks to exist. In this sense, the greatest part of information technology, apparently
neutral, is the universalization of what Richard Barbrook called “Californian
Ideology”. The liberal ideas built-in the libertarian and anarchist dreams present in
the North-American culture are concentrated in the network operation rules and in
its communication architectures, i.e., they constitute the Internet’s technical protocols.
They are, therefore, what Boaventura de Souza Santos called “globalized localisms”
(2002, 65).
In this sense, the idea that there are “global communication technologies”
(WOLTON, 2003, 122) or “universal without totality” (LÉVY, 1999, 111) cannot
hide that the liberal and libertarian decisions conformed the protocols defining
the network operation. This means that the way the Internet works is not and was
not the only possible mode of organizing digital communication. It is enough to
remember that the French network Minitel was completely different from the Internet.
While Minitel had all information and intelligence concentrated in central
computers, the Internet does not have a computational center, which allowed all its
creative richness to be distributed through the extremities, in the users' computers.
The network communication technology is being used, reconfigured and assimilated
in a crescent pace by various cultures, including by the traditional communities,
whether in Nepal, or in the Amazon Forest. This process shall certainly lead
to a series of changes in each of these cultures. What is already observed are processes
of one type of de-intermediation and the elevation of the social interactions intra
and inter groups, mainly from the expansion and consolidation of the relationship
networks or social networks, a phenomenon of planetary dimension. Also outstanding
is the trend of involvement of the more mobilized segments of the network
in debates and in actions related to international issues, such as the military coup
d’état in Myanmar (2009), elections in Iran (2009), earthquakes in Haiti and Chile
(2010), among many other examples. Such facts may reinforce the proposition of
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