23/2 - Tech | Imaginations

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Counter-Futuring the Internet. A Conversation
Iscen, Özgün Eylül; Miyazaki, Shintaro (2023) , S. 93-102
This paper is not as structured as a conventional paper but a meandering conversation on the topic “The Futures of the Internet” that builds upon the authors’ ongoing collaboration for the project Counter-N, web-based publishing, exchange, and research collection on alternative modes of computing. Our project highlights the entangled trajectories of computing and futuring in the forms of financial speculations, predictive algorithms, or apocalyptic narratives. In opposition, we invite other scholars and practitioners to dig into their potential histories and speculative presents to envision and enact alternative futures of the Internet. Ultimately, our conversation reveals the significance of a spatially and temporally expansive approach for grasping the future trajectory of networked society in its totality as much as within its frictions.
An Early Future of the Internet
Schröter, Jens (2023) , S. 80-92
The essay on "early Internet futures" reconstructs an episode from the early history of what later would be called "the Internet". It shows which socio-technical imaginations in the early developments at the (D)ARPA Information Processing Techniques Office existed. Two of the most influential ideas will be focused: Firstly, J.C.R. Lickliders early concept of an "intergalactic network" which evolved into, secondly, into his (and Robert Taylor's) famous paper on the computer as a communication device. This shows how new technological developments are connected to socio-technical imaginaries from the very beginning.
The Ends of the Internet. A Discussion
Heidersberger, Benjamin; van Treeck, Jan Claas (2023) , S. 146-154
In their discussion, Benjamin Heidersberger and Jan Claas van Treeck critically engage with the historical and ideological trajectory of the internet. They foreground three geopolitical spheres of influence shaping today's internet: the US, Europe, and China, each manifesting distinct socio-cultural values, technological infrastructures, and regulatory attitudes. Central to their discussion is the concept of 'territorialization' and 'anti-territorialization', illustrated through the national and international censorship cases vis-a-vis border-transcending aspirations of the internet founders-generation and currently Starlink. Anticipating a contested future, they posit a metaphorical arms race between control and resistance within the digital sphere, a splintering of the internet into a cyber-balkan of internets - considering the implications of these shifts for wider academic discourses on resistance, commoning, and decolonization.
Overcoming Modernity? How China’s Splinternet Reinforces the Impact of Geography in Global Internet Governance
Bogen, Cornelia (2023) , S. 104-145
According to the Chinese philosopher and information scientist Yuk Hui, China's rapid modernization within the last decades put China on equal footing with the West not only regarding its technological level, but also concerning people's technological unconsciousness (i.e., ignorance of the fact that our existence is conditioned by technology), belief in progress, and destructive relation to nature. At the same time, with the emergence of the Anthropocene, humankind has gradually come to realize that our modern ontological interpretations of the cosmos have distanced us from our environment. The ongoing platformization of societies and datafication follows the rule of natural laws in every area of life and poses the risk that humans are losing control over new technologies. Against that backdrop, this paper seeks to explore whether China’s past and present policy approach to domestic and global internet governance has enabled it to “adopt the global time axis as [its] own” to overcome modernity, without relapsing into a modern dualism between human beings and nature (cf. Hui 2020). First, I will show that China’s national digital policy and cyber sovereignty approach to internet development has led to a “splinternet” that a) shifts the burden of social governance from state authorities to other stakeholders, b) introduces market economy principles to digital capitalism and c) instills socialist values into internet regulation. However, none of these measures have helped to cultivate a technological consciousness that resists the pressures of technological modernization and worldwide military and economic competition. Second, while reconstructing the Chinese perspective on global internet governance, I will demonstrate how China currently aims at reforming the internet through its expansion of high-tech products and infrastructure abroad, and active participation in international cyberspace regulation. Third, I depict what a splinternet divided along geographic, political and economic boundaries might look like, if China and the US continue to instrumentalize global internet governance as a technological and ideological competition between two different political systems. Hence, while Hui considers modernity and de-modernization from the perspective of a global axis of time, I argue that it is also a question of space: the two cyber powers seek to return geography to the global cyberspace, which may risk further splintering the internet. To create a genuine community and shared future in both physical and cyber space, further development of digital technologies must overcome the ideological contest, address the most urgent questions of the twenty- first century, and consider different cosmotechnics to ensure a morally and ethically sound technology governance.
Tech | Imaginations
(2023)
These imaginations reveal a lot of the political and ideological self-descriptions of societies, hence the (techno-)imaginary also functions as a kind of epistemic tool. Concepts of the imaginary therefore have experienced an increasing attention in cultural theory and the social sciences in recent years. In particular, work from political philosophy, but also approaches from science and technology studies (STS) or communication and media studies are worth mentioning here. The term "techno-imagination", coined by Vilém Flusser in the early 1990s, refers to the close interconnection of (digital) media and imaginations, whose coupling can not only be understood as a driver of future technology via fictional discourses (e.g. science fiction), but much more fundamentally also as a constitutive element of society and sociality itself, as Castoriadis has argued. In the first part of the issue several theoretical contributions add new aspects to the discussion of socio-technical imaginaries, while in the second part a workshop held in January 2022 at the CAIS in Bochum is documented, in which the case of the imaginaries of “Future Internets” was discussed.

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