There’s a standard version of the history of the Internet that traces it back to ARPA (the Advanced Research Projects Agency) in the 1960s. ARPA developed a way for computers to exchange information in small packets, so that two computers would not need to open a permanent and exclusive channel (such as a standard phone connection) in order to remain constantly in touch. Instead, they would send messages in small chunks that could be routed through whatever computers happened to be online until they reached their destination. ARPA was a military outfit (it soon became DARPA; the “D” stands for “Defense”), and its motive was to create a new communications network that could withstand massive disruption during wartime.

The DARPA system improved, and similar processes developed separately in the academic world. Under the auspices of the National Science Foundation, these networks were brought together (starting with a process for sharing email). After a while, the NSF named this network of networks the Internet, and so we entered the current era.

This is all true and important, but it’s like explaining the origins of a human being by listing all of her direct ancestors who happen to share her last name: her father, her paternal grandfather, and so on back. Lots of other ancestors have also contributed their genes and nurture, although their names are harder to retrieve. Similarly, if you look around today’s World Wide Web, you’ll see numerous important features that did not arise from ARPA, DARPA, or the NSF.

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In response to yesterday’s post about websites that will calculate

your ideology for you, Nels Lindahl

emailed me about a site called The

Political Compass. This is the most sophisticated and thoughtful

example of the genre, in my opinion. One of its great virtues is its

two-dimensional understanding of ideology, which is much better than

a simple left-right scale. I took the quiz and came out as a moderately

leftist social libertarian, similar to Nelson Mandela and the Dalai

Lama. I’m happy to accept that score.

This summer, I began work on a website that would ask visitors some

questions and then tell them their ideology. I got caught up with the

technical difficulties and never completed the project. However, I believe

it could be useful, since most people I know use ideology as a heuristic.

That is, we don’t have the time to make a very precise and nuanced evaluation

of each candidate for each office. Instead, we start with the assumption

that we are liberals, conservatives, moderates, libertarians, feminists,

environmentalists, or proponents of some other ideology, and then we

use cues in the candidates’ speech and behavior to decide which politicians

come closest to our ideology. CIRCLE surveys show that those young people

who have no ideology do not vote, which suggests that this shortcut

is essential.

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I have just posted two new articles about the idea of a “commons.” Both are defenses of a particular position, which I would summarize as follows: The Internet should be an open arena for creators to make and give away digital material. That is how the Net was born; but this commons ideal is now under serious threat from government censorship and especially from corporate control of the Internet’s “architecture” and intellectual property. So far, my argument is completely indebted to work by Lawrence Lessig, James Boyle, David Bollier, and Yochai Benkler, among others. I add the view that we won’t ever succeed in protecting the commons through legislation, court decisions, or clever software that circumvents corporate or state control. We need formal associations of citizens who have personal experience with the new digital media and commitment to using it for civic purposes. In “Building the E-Commons,” The Good Society, vol. 11, no. 3 (2002), pp. 1-9, I discuss one such association and then move to a general argument for the “associational commons” as our ideal. In “A Movement for the Commons?” The Responsive Community, vol. 13, no. 4 (Fall 2003), pp. 28-39, I start with the legal battle over intellectual property, and again conclude that we need citizens’ associations to protect and enrich the commons.

I buy the argument in Cass Sunstein’s book, Republic.com. Sunstein predicts that the Internet allows people to choose news and opinion that already interests them, while filtering out any views and facts that they find uncomfortable. As a result, the population splits into small communities of like-minded people who reinforce their shared views. Another result is a widening gap between those who are very interested in public issues and those who are not interested. Motivated citizens benefit from the availability of news and opinion online. Unmotivated ones can ignore the broader world much more then in the past, when they relied on TV for entertainment and the newspaper for want ads and crossword puzzles. Whether they liked it or not, in those days they saw news on television and on the front page of the newspaper.

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