Excape from the Glass Prison. History and Future of Medical Computer Networks and Threatened Values in Web3’s Health Self-Infrastructuring?

Abstract

Medicine as a discipline and work environment has a long and complicated history with its media. In order to function well, communication channels and networks are required, but any medium, that saves, distributes and processes information, infringes on the idea of patient-doctor confidentiality. These problems were amplified, when computers became a relevant new medium in the 1970s.With their new communication scapes came a changing perception of privacy and trust as well as societal discourses that centered around a specific media culture of (medical) values. Some of the ideas first articulated in the 1970s are directly tied to the recent discourses surrounding the Web3, where structural and cultural problems become once again visible alongside the media that require updates and concern. This interview discusses the challenges presented in the history of media networks of communication in medicine and the implications for tomorrow’s medical networks, specifically drawing on concepts of self-infrastructuring and the old utopian promise of decentralized media.