ELGAR ADVANCED INTRODUCTIONS

Advanced lntroduction to

Manuel Castells

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Advanced lntroduction to Digital Society
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Advanced lntroduction to

Digital Society
MANUEL CASTELLS
Wallis Annenberg Chair in Communication Technology and
Society, University of Southern California, USA

Elgar Advanced lntroductions

~ Edward Elgar
~ PUBLISHING

Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA

© Manuel Castells 2024

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Para Isidora, el amor de mi vida.
Contents

List offigures viii

Acknowledgements ix

1 Introduction: a digital society 1

2 W e communicate, therefore we are 9

3 End of privacy? The Surveillance State and

informational capitalism 31

4 The digitalization of financia! markets: from

derivatives to cryptocurrencies 52

5 Teleworking and the networked metropolis 65

6 Human learning, computer learning, Al learning 79

7 Digital divides: territory, gender, age, class,

ethnicity, cultures 93

8 Networked social movements llO

9 Social media and political polarization 122

10 War and peace in the time of digital machines 132

ll Conclusion: the digital society and the network

society 145

Index 148

vii
Figures

1.1 Percentage of population that are mobile-cellular

telephone subscriptions and Internet users, by region 2
1.2 Internet ofThings (IoT) and non-IoT active device
connections worldwide from 2010 to 2025 (in billions) 3
1.3 Location of servers for main cloud providers
offering infrastructure as a service (IaaS) 4
1.4 Language and image recognition capabilities of Al systems 5
2.1 Time spent per <lay with digital versus traditional
media in the U nited States from 2011 to 2023 10
2.2 The media landscape 18
2.3 Estimated circulation ofUS daily newspapers 21
2.4 Book purchasing: e-books vs printed 22
2.5 The PayPal mafia, key members 23
3.1 Dates when collaboration with NSA began for each
provider 35
4.1 Comparative analysis of global financial values (in
US$ billion) 53
7.1 Scatterplot comparing Internet use and Gini score 101
7.2 Share of websites using selected languages
compared to estimated share of Internet users
speaking those languages 103

viii
Acknowledgements

Ali books are shared endeavors under the responsibility of the author.
This one is no exception. Thus, I want to name and thank the main
persons that have contributed to this work in its final form.

My first and foremost gratitude is to Juan Ortiz Freuler, Wallis Annenberg

Graduate Fellow, for his truly outstanding research assistance in the elab-
oration of this book. Furthermore, he has been my interlocutor through-
out the long process of analyzing and making sense of the information we
have been gathering. Many of his ideas have inspired my writing, albeit
I am the only one responsible for the possible shortcomings of the work
submitted to your attention. Additional excellent research assistance was
provided by my student Marley Randazzo. The students of my graduate
courses at the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism,
University of Southern California (USC), particularly in Comm 647
(Network Society) and Comm 670 (Culture and Economy), have also
informed with their research papers sorne of the issues I cover in this
book. It goes without saying that their work is fully cited in the references
of the relevant chapters.

My efficient administrative assistant Ms. Pauline Martinez at USC has

been in charge of the coordination of the whole project and of the prepa-
ration of the manuscript with her usual diligence and professionalism.

Ian Tuttle has been, once again, the editor who makes possible that my
books, and this one in particular, reach my readers in proper English.

I express my heartfelt recognition to all the contributors that I have cited

and to many others, including my colleagues in California, in England, in
China, in Mexico, in Argentina, in Portugal, in Costa Rica, and in Spain

ix
x ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

who have also helped my understanding in our interactions. I am par-

ticularly indebted to Jonathan Aronson, Jonathan Taplin, Ernest Wilson,
and Geoff Cowan at the USC Annenberg School of Communication and
Journalism. My special acknowledgment to my Dean, Willow Bay, for her
unwavering support to my work at the School. And I am also intellectually
indebted to my colleagues and friends, neuroscientists Antonio Damasio
and Hanna Damasio at USC. To John Thompson at the University of
Cambridge. To Jerry Feldman at the University of California-Berkeley. To
Martin Carnoy at Stanford University. To Imma Tubella, David Megia,
Arnau Monterde, and Mireia Fenández-Ardevol at the Open University
of Catalonia. To Cui Baoquo at Tsinghua University. To Fan Dong at
Zhejiang University. To Mr. Ren, CEO of Huawei. To Mr. Ma, CEO of
Tencent. To my research assistant and former doctoral student at USC,
Yuehan Wang. To Carmen Rodriguez Armesta in Mexico. To Fernando
Calderon in Buenos Aires. To Gustavo Cardoso in Portugal. To Isidora
Chacon in Costa Rica, whose ideas on education transformed my think-
ing on the matter. And to my colleagues in the Spanish Government from
whom I learned the policy implications of the digitalization of society.

As is the case for most of my current research, I have benefitted from the
institutional and financia! support of the Annenberg Foundation, as well
as from the Provost Office at the U niversity of Southern California.

As for the worthiness of all these contributions to the completion of this

book, only you, respected reader, will be the judge.
Pacific Palisades, California, November 2023
1 lntroduction: a digital
society

W e live now in an almost entirely digitized society. According to an

article published in 2011 in the journal Science, whereas in 1986 less than
1% of the world's mediated information was stored in digital format, by
2007 this had reached 94% (Hilbert & López, 2011), and by 2014 it was
reaching a staggering 99.5% (Hilbert, 2015). Since producing, storing,
and processing information is a key component of ali forms oflife, it can
safely be concluded that digitally producing, storing, and exchanging
information shapes the forms ofhuman organization that we call society.

The digital format of information has allowed for an explosion of global

communication enabled by Internet protocols and digitized telecommu-
nications. In the world at large, the number of Internet users grew from
2.6 million in 1990 to 5.3 billion in 2022, and mobile subscriptions went
from 23,500 in 1980 to over 8 billion in 2020, in a planet of about 8 billion
people (World Bank, 2022).

In Figure 1.1 we can observe the growth of mobile phone subscriptions

and Internet users in the world by region.

The diffusion of digital communication is the fastest of any technology.

In terms of reaching 50 million users: It took 64 years for airlines to do
so. It took automobiles 62 years, 50 years for the telephone, 46 years for
electricity, 22 years for television, 14 years for computers, 12 years for
mobile phones, 7 years for the Internet, 4 years for Facebook (Desjardins,
2018). By 2023, it took just 2 months for ChatGPT to reach 100 million
users (Milmo, 2023).

Massive, accelerated digital information creation results largely from

the expansion oflnternet uses and the growth in the number oflnternet
users. Thus, in 2021, in one minute on the global Internet, there were 500
hours of content uploaded to YouTube, about 200 million emails sent,
695,000 stories shared over Instagram, 5,000 downloads of the TikTok
2 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

, so •
•
Attica (UobilO)
Amoricu (UobilO)
)( - b S1atH (UobilO)
♦ Asia-Pacr1c (Mobil4)

*
•
CIS (UobilO)
Euro~ (t.lobÑ)

""'ª (lncernet)
..j
100 .o.

.e
s
o
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.
e

♦
Am•nc as Onltm•O
AIU Stau>s (lnl.,,,.,,

Asia· Pacinc llntemeo

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~
Q.

e
a
•
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c1s(1ntemeo
Ew01>e onternet)
~

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Year

Notes: a). There are more subscriptions than people in many regions because
sorne own multiple connected devices (e.g. work and personal; or tablet and
phonel, while others own multiple SIM cards to take advantage of different
pricing promotions, orto ensure coverage while moving across the territory.
b). The region CIS stands for the Commonwealth of lndependent States. lt is
a political and economic organization that was formed in December 1991, after
the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The CIS consists of 1O member states,
namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldava,
Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Source: Juan Ortiz Freuler using data from the lnternational
Telecommunications Union (UN).

Figure 1.1 Percentage of population that are mobile-cellular

telephone subscriptions and Internet users, by region

app, 28,000 subscribers watching Netflix, 2 million swipes on Tinder, and

US$1.6 million spent online (Lewis, 2021).

Not only are people generating digital content for other people, but
machines are generating digital data for other machines that are con-
nected over the Internet. These are the smart home devices, but also the
connected cars and networked industrial equipment. This Internet of
 INTRODUCTION: A DIGITAL SOCIETY 3

Things (IoT) is growing rapidly, producing a massive amount of digital

data that is processed by other machines and which no humans will ever
see. These devices are now quickly outpacing human-centered Internet
devices, like smartphones, laptops, and computers in terms of active
Internet connections, as shown in Figure 1.2.

..
IO

..
,

,_, ..,.., .. ., ... .. 10. 10 10

l010 l)l1 Mil 101) NU .?OIS l1Uf :?111 lOII lOH .?UO ,cm 101? .?Oll ?3.?& ?tl5

Note: Non-loT includes mobile phones, tablets, PCs, laptops, and fixed line
phones. loT includes all business-to-business (82B) and consumer devices
connected. Examples of loT connections include connected cars, smart
home devices, and connected industrial equipment. In comparison, non-loT
connections include smartphones, laptops, and computers, with connections of
these types of devices set to amount to just over 1O billion units by 2025-three
times fewer than loT device connection.
Source: Author.

Figure 1.2 Internet of Things (loT) and non-loT active device

connections worldwide from 201 O to 2025 (in billions)

The result is an immense flow of human and computer data that has
been accumulating over the years and keeps growing by the minute.
This system is only made possible by the rise of cloud computing. 1

Cloud computing refers to the delivery of computing services over the

Internet or "cloud." These services include servers, storage, databases, net-
working, software, and analytics. It allows users to access these services
without needing physical infrastructure, such as servers and data centers, on
their own premises. The cloud service provider (e.g., Amazon Web Services,
4 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

Expenditures related to the investment in this infrastructure rose from

US$61 billion in 2009 to US$178 billion in 2021 (Vailshery, 2022b).
While in 2015, 30% of all corporate data were stored in the cloud, the
proportion reached over 60% in 2022 (Vailshery, 2022c). The critical role
of mega-servers and their geographical concentration raises major issues
in terms of countries' sovereignty, as data centers have become major
factors of wealth and power. Figure 1.3 shows the unequal geographical
distribution ofkey cloud infrastructure by region in 2018.

,..

US &CMad41

Note: Data represents only infrastructure as a service (laaS) providers and does
not include software as a service (SaaS) providers. laaS is what a company
that wants to outsource its data centers would rely on (it does not include data
centers managed directly by a company like Microsoft or Facebook to provide
services directly to its usersl. Data only includes the data center information
from Alibaba, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, IBM, lnteroute,
Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, and OVH. Zones are defined as discrete data
centers or data center sites (Microsoft's Azure regions are equivalent to AWS
and Google's availability zones in this figure).
Source: Author.

Figure 1.3 Location of servers for main cloud providers offering

infrastructure as a service (laaS)

Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud) manages and maintains the infrastructure,

allowing clients to focus on using the computing resources for their specific
needs. Cloud computing offers scalability, flexibility, cost-effectiveness, and
ease of use to its customers, while driving an overall consolidation of the
digital markets through abusive gatekeeping of computing resources and
horizontal integration by incumbent cloud providers.
 INTRODUCTION: A DIGITAL SOCIETY 5

The acceleration being descríbed in this text <loes not concern just the
diffusion of existing technologies. The capabilities of new digital technol-
ogies are also accelerating, powered by the growing accumulation of data,
novel techniques developed to process such data and learn from it, and
available computing power. In Figure 1.4 we can see the quickening pace
at which the capabilities of different artificial intelligence (AI) models
have achieved human-like performance. Whereas, starting in 1998, it took
researchers 18 years to have Al achieve human performance in handwrit-
ing recognition, by 2016, it took 4 years for researchers to have Al achieve
such human performance in reading comprehension.
Tt!lt L(J f i;.5 ;;f 1 'l t: A l rt:1.Jtivt: to h lJW.J fl pt: r form.i r1c~
•20

20

-40

-60

·80 Language understanding

100
2005 '
2010 2015 2020
T~ nr,.;i:b1litynf<t:idlAl~•m li;ni,rmr1 mu1
to .ln i·1iti .l l ~edo11n.1nc.e ::,f -100
• , •• - •:• 1.,,-·. • ) • ; 1, ,,¡ ,., 1 •:,-1 "-. I'.-, , "' • ~ ••- •
'.)_,W,.,d,:, D~t •·• , • ~., •., .. , t .,, ,I <" ,·,: ,.... , o ·•' e· , •~:, ,~ :t,-.,,. '., 1, ("

Source: Max Roser (2022).

Figure 1.4 Language and image recognition capabilities of Al

systems

Moreover, by 2023, Generative Pre-Trained Transformer (GPT) models

were performing better than most humans on most standardized tests
(like SAT, LSAT, GRE), with major leaps in progress achieved in just
a matter of months (Eloundou et al., 2023). The explosion of Large
Language Models (LLMs), most of them managed by prívate companies,
is quickly transforming the landscape of Al applications in education,
research, health services, transportation, warfare, management, and deci-
sion making, as I will analyze in the following chapters. In a problematic
trend, academic research labs are now lagging far behind the prívate
sector, as the percentage of Al PhDs hired by the industry jumped from
25% in 2004 to 73% in 2020 (Ahmed et al., 2023).

Together with the development of Al, the other major recent technolog-
ical transformation has been the improvement of digital connectivity,
6 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

with the diffusion of SG connections, and ongoing progress that will

shape what will be known as 6G. The new technologies of connectivity
substantially increased the speed of transmission, the volume of data that
can be communicated, anda reduction in the latency of communication. 2

Yet, perhaps the most significant technological change in progress is the

coming of age of quantum computing, capable of unprecedented speed
and volume of calculation, that is expected to reach the commercial stage
around 2030. China defined quantum computing as a key priority in its
2021 Five-Year Plan (Creemers, 2022). The simulation capabilities of
quantum computing provide a major tool for strategic decision making
in business, in government, and in the military, beyond its promise in the
exploration of the new frontiers of science.

These major technological breakthroughs, considered as a cluster of

interactive components, are expected to impact decisively on the infor-
mation processing occupations, as well as services at large. However, this
is not necessarily a cause for future mass unemployment. We know from
history that rather than phasing out employment, technology replaces
humans in the performance of specific tasks, typically reshaping human
time allocation toward more skilled activities. However, unless there are
protective policies, sorne professions could be negatively affected. A case
in point is the attempt by Hollywood studios to record the images and
voices of actresses and actors in order to reproduce their performance
by AI-powered virtual characters, thus phasing them out of production
without adequate compensation. Similarly, writers could be reduced to
becoming editors of scripts written by GPTs trained on the prior work
of these same writers. The Hollywood artists and writers' strike in 2023
signaled determined resistance against the substitution of Al for humans
in a wide range of activities. The ultimate outcome will not depend on
technology but on power relationships.

Latency refers to the delay between an action and its response in telecom-
munications. In SG networks, achieving low latency is crucial to provide
faster response times and better performance for applications such as
remote medical care, virtual reality, and online gaming. It enables near
real-time interactions. The SG standard sets a target latency ofless than 1
millisecond, which is significantly lower than the average latency of 4G net-
works. To achieve low latency in SG, improvements in network architecture
and advanced technologies such as network slicing and millimeter wave fre-
quencies are required.
 INTRODUCTION: A DIGITAL SOCIETY 7

Provided that the training and education system is transformed accord-

ingly, and that governments and companies assist workers in the transi-
tion while respecting their rights, the impact could be positive in terms
of productivity and quality of life. Fears of negative disruption by the
acceleration of digitalization may be appeased on the basis of social
science-based knowledge of specific effects, sector by sector. Institutions
will have to design policies to cope with the new challenges of what could
be a quantum leap ofhuman creativity, or else blindly jump into an uncer-
tain technological galaxy. This is what this book attempts to explore, free
of ideological prejudice.

References

Ahmed, N., Wahed, M., & Thompson, N.C. (2023) "The growing influence of
industry in Al research," Science, 379(6635), pp. 884-886. https://doi.org/10
.1126/ science.ade2420.
Creemers, R. (2022) "Translation: 14th Five-Year Plan for national informati-
zation - Dec. 2021," DigiChina. Available at: https://digichina.stanford.edu/
work/translation-14th-five-year-plan-for-national-informatization -dec-2021 /
(accessed on 20 April 2023).
Desjardins, J. (2018) "How long <loes it take to hit 50 million users?," Visual
Capitalist. Available at: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-long-does-it
-take-to-hit-50-million-users/ (accessed on 21 March 2023).
Eloundou, T., Manning, S., Mishkin, P., & Rock, D. (2023) "GPTs are GPTs: An
early look at the labor market impact potential of large language models,"
arXiv. Available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10130 (accessed on 20 March
2023).
Hilbert, M. (2015) "Quantifying the data deluge and the data drought," SSRN
Electronic Journal. https:/1 doi.org/ 10.2139 / ssrn.2984851.
Hilbert, M., & López, P. (2011) "The world's technological capacity to store, com-
municate, and compute information," Science, 332(6025), pp. 60-65. https://
doi.org/10.l 126/science.1200970.
Lewis, L. (2021) "A minute on the Internet in 2021," Statista Infographics.
Available at: https:/ /www.statista.com/chart/25443/estimated-amount-of-data
-created-on-the-internet-in-one-minute (accessed on 20 April 2023).
Milmo, D. (2023) "ChatGPT reaches 100 million users two months after launch,"
The Guardian, 2 February. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/
technology/2023/feb/02/ chatgpt-100-million-users-open-ai-fastest-growing
-app (accessed on 20 April 2023).
Roser, M. (2022) "The brief history of artificial intelligence: The world has
changed fast - what might be next?," Our World in Data. Available at: https://
ourworldindata.org/brief-history-of-ai (accessed on 20 April 2023).
8 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

Vailshery, L.S. (2022a) "Global IoT and non-IoT connections 2010-2025,"

Statista. Available at: https:/ /www.statista.com/statistics/1101442/iot-number
-of-connected-devices-worldwide/ (accessed on 20 April 2023).
Vailshery, L.S. (2022b) "Percent of corporate data stored in the cloud 2022,"
Statista. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1062879/worldwide
-cloud-storage-of-corporate-data/ (accessed on 20 April 2023).
Vailshery, L.S. (2022c) "Global cloud and data center spending 2021," Statista.
Available at: https:/ /www.statista.com/statistics/1114926/enterprise-spending
-cloud-and-data-centers/ (accessed on 20 April 2023).
World Bank (2022) World Development IndicatorslDataBank. Available at:
https:// databank. worldbank.org/indicator /NY. GDP .MKTP .KD .ZG/ lff4a498/
Popular-Indicators (accessed on 8 May 2021).
2 We communicate,
therefore we are

Humans are social animals that develop their consciousness and organ-
ize their lives by communicating with each other. Our neural networks
connect with the neural networks of other human individuals and with
the networks of our natural and cultural environment. Communication is
the construction of meaning through the exchange of information. Thus,
a technological revolution focused on information and communication
necessarily induces powerful effects in the entire human experience, in
close interaction with the cultures and institutions of societies in all their
diversity.

The twentieth century saw the rise of mass communication, which was
characterized by one-directional messages sent from a limited number of
senders to a very large number of receivers (McChesney, 2007; Neuman,
2016). With the advent of the Internet in 1969, and the gradual deploy-
ment of interactive digital communication networks, a new form of
communication emerged: mass self-communication (Castells, 2009). It is
"mass" because it has the capacity to reach a global audience, surpassing
in its reach any prior form of communication. It is "self' because the mes-
sages can be sent, received, selected, retrieved, combined, and interacted
with by both sender(s) and receiver(s). Furthermore, relentless multiplic-
ity of messages converges in a hypertext that becomes the evolving frame
of reference for all communicative practices. However, the autonomy of
the self-communicated being is relative. It is mediated by social organiza-
tions, and by the owners and controllers of the digital networks of com-
munication that increasingly manage messages on the basis of algorithms
whose parameters are unknown to the communicating subjects. As the
industrial technology and the industrial society shaped mass communi-
cation, originating the mass media, communication technology and the
network society patterned mass self-communication. The diffusion of
digital networking technology has been the fastest of any communication
technology in human history, as shown in the introduction to this book.

9
10 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

Mass media is being overtaken by what has been labeled "social media" 1
in terms of time spent, as shown in Figure 2.1.

& :1i¡¡a1 ■ TnuHorilll

,.__
-------.

i 2(10

"" "" 'º"

Note: Data refers to projections after 2020.
Source: Designed by Juan Ortiz Freuler based on data aggregated by Statista,
2023b.

Figure 2.1 Time spent per day with digital versus traditional media
in the United States from 2011 to 2023

The new communication sphere transcends the boundaries of space and

time. It is local and global, multimodal, synchronous and asynchronous
at the same time. In terms of human-to-human interaction, the key
technology was the development of the so-called "smartphone" by Steve
Jobs and his team at Apple in 2007, that is, a handheld computer with
an Internet-focused communicating device. It distributes messages and
data over communication networks from anywhere to anywhere. What
is called "mobile communication" <loes not necessarily operate on the

Social media is an ambiguous term because ali media are social. I follow
boyd and Ellison in naming these communication networks as "social
network sites" (boyd & Ellison, 2007). In fact, the proper concept is "digital
social network sites," because it is essential to specify the technology of
communication.
 WE COMMUNICATE, THEREFORE WE ARE 11

move: most calls are from workplaces, homes, and schools. The critica!
feature is that it ensures permanent connectivity (Katz & Aakhus, 2002;
Ling, 2004; Castells et al., 2006). With 8.6 billion wireless subscriptions
in 2023 (Statista, 2023a) in a planet of 8 billion people, and with 86% of
the world population using smartphones, we have crossed a threshold of
a social organization that could be conceptualized as the "communication
society," as Alain Touraine proposed (Touraine, 2021) rather than the
"information society." Internet protocols made globally distributed digital
communication possible, much like the electrical engine decentralized
energy power in industrial societies. Granted, inequalities in the use of the
Internet persist, as I will analyze in Chapter 8. Yet, these are inequalities
within a shared social structure (the network society) anda shared tech-
nological paradigm (the digital society).

Sociability 3.0

Being social means relating to other people at different levels of inti-

macy and frequency. Sociologists usually differentiate between weak ties
(such as occasional acquaintances) and strong ties (family, long-standing
friendships, love relationships) (Wellman et al., 2001). Sociability 1.0,
in the pre-industrial age, was largely determined by family, mainly by
extended family, and contiguity at work or residence. With large-scale
urbanization prompted by industrialization, intimate relationships were
limited to a close-knit group, while social interaction diffused over space
and time, with the separation between work and residence. Participation
in society at large took the form of voluntary associations and segmented
interest groups. It was a transition from "community" to "associa-
tion" (Fischer, 1976; Tonnies, 2001 [1887]). This form of sociability 2.0
included the previous form, but became more comprehensive. The for-
mation of opinions and values that would guide behavior was increasingly
dependent on mass media, from the print press to radio and television.
Telephone interaction connected individuals (Fischer, 1994).

With the Internet and the explosion of social media, a new form of socia-
bility, which we could call 3.0, gradually took shape (Castells, 2001; Katz
& Rice, 2002; Castells et al., 2003; Baym, 2015). Strong ties were usually
created by face-to-face interaction or through family and other forms of
constructed social life. But Internet-based communication emphasized
12 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

strong ties while making possible, with little effort, the exploration and
maintenance of weak ties (Rainie & Wellman, 2012). The coming of this
new sociability was clouded by nostalgia for the loss of "authentic socia-
bility," denying Internet interactions any meaningful role in the expres-
sion of deep emotions. Moreover, cultural resistance to change blamed
online sociability for destroying the previous social life. With the Internet,
as has usually been asserted in the media based on anecdotal evidence,
people were considered to be isolated, lonely, depressed, and ultimately
alienated (Wolton, 2000). We entered full speed into a new society failing
to recognize what it was, and attributing to the Internet responsibility for
our grave social ills, as had also been the case earlier with the diffusion of
television (Postman, 1986), albeit Umberto Eco challenged this assump-
tion (Eco, 1984). Fears focused on the potentially damaging consequences
for children and youth. They were the Internet generation, sentenced
to be mentally impaired, incapable of learning, and ultimately prone to
becoming dangerous nerds because they were living in a communication
environment that their parents did not understand.

Fortunately, we have good social science and dozens of research insti-

tutes for the social study of the Internet around the world, such as the
Oxford Internet Institute, the Harvard Berkman Klein Center, the Pew
Research Center in Washington or the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute
in Barcelona. A number of studies have shown that, while many youths
do have personal problems and feel isolated, the use of the Internet was
alleviating rather than causing these problems. It has been shown that
off-line sociability and online sociability were cumulative, not exclusive
from each other. That is, the more you are social face-to-face, the more
you are social on the Internet, and the more you socialize online, the more
you broaden your overall sociability (Castells et al., 2003; Hampton, 2004;
Rainie & Wellman, 2012). In synthesis, the results of academic research
show that a new form of intense sociability emerges.

When people have feelings of isolation and alienation, being social on

the Internet often helps them to cope with these feelings. Rather than
unhappiness resulting from the use of the Internet, the important study
by Nahoi Koo, among others, showed the contrary. Using data from
the University of Michigan World Values Survey on a global represent-
ative sample, she observed that the intensity of Internet use correlates
positively with the indicators of life satisfaction (Koo, 2017). There is
an explanation for this finding that coincides with other studies on the
 WE COMMUNICATE, THEREFORE WE ARE 13

Internet: Internet increases overall sociability. And the use of the Internet
empowers people who are disempowered, particularly women, ethnic
minorities, and broadly geographically dispersed like-minded people
(BCS, 2010). In her structural equation model to explain subjective
satisfaction of Internet users, Koo introduced the two key variables that
increase personal well-being: density of social relationships and empow-
erment as a result of access to information. Both factors are stimulated by
the use of the Internet (Graham & Dutton, 2014). Furthermore, against
the image that was created by sorne early studies about the predominance
of fake identities on the Internet, grouping in social networking sites, as in
Facebook, is based on affinity and convergence of interests. 2

In fact, the available evidence shows (Persily & Tucker, 2020) that
politically motivated groups are built on sorne common assumptions of
ideological values and political positions, a phenomenon at the origin
of political polarization in the networks and in society. It could well be
that sorne users hide their real names, but not their ideas and identities,
since the purpose of participating in the interaction is precisely to find
companionship in their orientations (Baym, 2015). Faking names is not
equivalent to faking identities. Exposure of who they are is essential for
most users. In part, it is a narcissistic practice that is pervasive in digital
media. But more importantly, it is indicative of a search for soulmates that
soothes the misunderstanding, isolation, and hostility suffered in social
life (Tones, 1997; Yates et al., 2020).

As the use of the Internet expanded to ali spheres of social life, it contrib-
uted to amplify or even transform sorne of the most important dimen-
sions of human relationships, such as heterosexual dating and mating.
A number of statistical studies in the United States (US), summarized
and discussed by Marley Randazzo (2022), found that by 2017, before the
Covid-19 pandemic, about 40% of new couples had met online, followed
by introduction by friends (20%), meeting at work (10%), school (10%),
family (7% ), while the number of those meeting in bars was negligible. Of
course, the 2020 pandemic accelerated, but did not cause, the trend toward

Por instance, if cats formed a group, it would be oflittle use for a dog to join
it, even if it can take advantage of the fact that on the Internet no one knows
that you are a dog, as suggested in the now famous New Yorker cartoon. In
any case, nowadays the networking site knows everything about who is in
the group, as I will argue in Chapter 3.
14 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

digital dating as a match-making mechanism, creating a large market for

digital dating platforms. Contributing factors appear to be the need to
evaluate features of potential partners before engaging in a relationship,
while retaining the possibility of maintaining simultaneous relationships
before making a choice. A number of factors seem to be operating in this
new sociability pattern. First, marriage has been delayed (in the US, the
median age formen to marry is 30 years and for women it is 28). Second,
contrary to public perception, the share of adults (particularly male) aged
18-30 who had not had sex in the last year grew from 10% in 2008 to
23% in 2018 (it should be remembered that this concerns heterosexual
sex) (Ingraham, 2019). This could be a result, as we hypothesized sorne
time ago (Castells & Subirats, 2007), of men's reaction to the growing
autonomy and consciousness of women. Men may be increasingly cau-
tious before committing, a trend that could explain simultaneously late
marriages, less male sexual activity, and greater use of digital platforms of
intermediation. 3

What is clear is that intervening in the midst of a deep cultural trans-

formation of heterosexual romantic practices, digital dating platforms
contribute to modifying one of the most important traditional practices
ofhuman sociability.

This trend is consistent with another major socio-technical evolution: the

Internet has been shown to be a powerful contributing factor favoring the
autonomy of individuals vis-a-vis the norms and values that are domi-
nant in institutions (Rainie & Wellman, 2012; Graham & Dutton, 2014).
There is no crisis of sociability, but rather the emergence of a new form
of sociability, conceptualized by Wellman as "networked individualism."
Individuals define their own interests and life projects, but they network
with other individuals.

In 2003, I conducted a study based on a large survey of 3,000 people,

a representative sample of the population of Catalonia (Castells et al.,

There are cultural differences in the frequency of sexual activity. For

instance, in Spain in 2021, the average frequency of sexual activity formen
was once a week. In Spain, digital platforms have also increased their role
in dating and mating in the last decade. Another element to be considered
is that pornography with advanced digital technologies is rising sharply in
most countries.
 WE COMMUNICATE, THEREFORE WE ARE 15

2003). We defined five types of social autonomy: personal, professional,

socio-political, cultural, and body-centered. We showed that the five
dimensions were statistically independent among themselves. But every
one of them correlated positively with the level of autonomy shown by
the surveyed individuals, as measured on a scale of autonomous behavior.
This is a significant finding because, as Giddens has theorized, the process
of individuation is an essential feature of our contemporary societies
(Giddens, 1992). Understanding by individuation the capacity of people
to define autonomous projects, distancing oneself from the dominant
norms of society or organizations. Technologies are adopted and become
powerful tools for humans when they fit with the values of a significant
number ofhumans in a given historical context. So, the Internet is a tool
of communicative autonomy that fits particularly well in a culture in
which values of individuation result in the definition and implementation
of self-defined projects by the most autonomous people in society. The
Internet was created by a culture of autonomy (Castells, 2001), and, in
return, decisively contributes to the strengthening of this culture for
autonomous social actors, who are a decisive minority in the exploration
of the new frontiers of innovation and social change. Moreover, on the
Internet, the users are producers of innovation that shapes social interac-
tion both there and in society. Yet, notwithstanding this relative auton-
omy of users/producers, Internet platforms are owned and managed by
companies that often condition users' interaction through their design
features and the algorithms that manage moderation and curation of the
circulating content, among other examples.

Digital social network sites

Social interaction on the Internet, for all kinds of purposes besides socia-
bility, is based on digital social network sites. Following the definition by
boyd and Ellison (2007: 211), social network sites are "web-based services
that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile
within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom
they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connec-
tions and those made by others within the system." The users of social
network sites (popularly labeled "social media") account for the majority
of Internet users nowadays. The first large-scale site was Friendster,
launched in San Francisco in 2002. Facebook started at Harvard in 2004,
16 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

then moved to Silicon Valley to benefit from the ecosystem of innovation

and its labor pool. In January 2023, worldwide there were thousands of
social network sites for all kinds of purposes with 4.7 billion users, or
59.4% of the world's population, thus representing the most important
form of extended sociability globally, always coexisting with face-to-face
interaction. While 25.9% of world Internet users communicate using
the English language, almost three-quarters of users do not use English,
including 19.8% who use Chinese and 8% Spanish (Statista, 20226).
Moreover, there is a gradual and relative decline in the dominance ofUS
platforms like Facebook and other Meta networks, due to the increasing
weight of Chinese networking sites (such as WeChat, TikTok-Douyin,
Kuaishou, etc.), and alternative networks such as Telegram and Signal.
Table 2.1 ranks the main social site networks by numbers of users.

The relative ranking of social networks is not as stable as it may appear.

It is highly sensitive to changes in management (e.g., initial exodus of
Twitter users after it was taken over by Elon Musk), to technological
innovation from competitors (TikTok outcompeting Facebook), or to
the obsolescence ofbusiness models based almost exclusively on targeted
advertising (as appears to be the case with Facebook transforming itself
into Meta and seeking revenue from the sale of virtual reality headsets,
smart sunglasses, and marketplace fees). Ultimately, the transformation
of the digital communication industry is impacting substantially the
practices in social networks as new technologies, new business models,
and new organizational structures emerge.

The convergence of communication and Internet

industries: multimedia business networks

Digital communication and the media industry are organized around

a handful of very large companies at the core of multimodal business net-
works, as Arsenault and Castells showed in their study in 2008 (Arsenault
& Castells, 2008). However, while the global, networked structure of the
industry persists, the nodes of its configuration have changed over time,
and continue to change as business diversifies, markets expand, and
mergers and acquisition follow the transformation of capital and tech-
nology. Technology companies, social media companies, entertainment
companies, e-commerce, financial services, and distribution companies
 WE COMMUNICATE, THEREFORE WE ARE 17

Table 2.1 Most popular social networks worldwide as of January

2023, ranked by number of monthly active users (in
millions)

Number of monthly active

Platform name users (millions)

Facebook 2,958

YouTube 2,514

WhatsApp 2,000ª

lnstagram 2,000

WeChat 1,309

TikTok 1,051

Facebook Messenger 931

Douyin 715b

Telegram 700

Snapchat 635

Kuaishou 626

Sina Weibo 584

QQ 574

Twitter 556

Pinterest 445

Notes: al. Platforms have not published updated user figures in the past 12
months, so figures may be out of date and less reliable. b). Number of daily
active users, so monthly active user number is likely higher.
Source: Author.

mix and recombine constantly trying to reinvent themselves in an indus-

try marked by relentless technological and organizational change.

The data and networks presented in Figure 2.2 should be interpreted

with care. First, in sharp contrast with the data from 20 years earlier,
Internet companies (Facebook, Amazon, and Google) seem to dominate
the multimedia business structure. This is because they have become
key nades for the distribution of third-party content via the Internet,
a relevant source of revenue nowadays, and one that offers gatekeeping
powers, often abused to gain a competitive advantage or extract fees. An
18 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

Key
Disney Warner
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$1.3T
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33°/J,stake

: Verizon AT&T
Comcast , $1173B $118B
$t5tB-O ,-, 0,
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ln19PU~_:_::.:~-/ \ ' NBC '-_,/
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v
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Charter Cox '

$60B $26B 'v./ DirecTv
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Roku Dish Altice USA

$10B
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Source: Designed by Juan Ortiz Freuler based on prior work by Rani Molla for
Recode (2022) using data from company reports, Lechtman Research group and
Recode reporting.

Figure 2.2 The media landscape

example of this is the way in which iOS (Apple) and Android (Alphabet)
manage the app store, and the "tax" they impose on sales that take place
within their mobile environments, which range from 15 to 30%. Content
creator platforms like Facebook (30% of monthly fan subscriptions) and
YouTube (45% ofrevenue from ads on videos), as well as the more pro-
fessional space of Amazon (20-30% on subscriptions), also extract value
from any transaction taking place through their platform (Campbell &
Alexander, 2021).

Secondly, using their abundance of capital, these companies are able

to invest and network with multiple companies to disintermediate the
connection with their users, and to control the production of content. For
 WE COMMUNICATE, THEREFORE WE ARE 19

instance, Amazon or Meta have the financial resources to venture into

new projects that may fail or yield results only in the long term. This may
be the case for Zuckerberg's Metaverse that, as of2023, did not appear to
be any more successful than the first virtual reality experiment, Second
Life, which launched in 2003 and which, by 2010, was going through
a series of massive layoffs, resulting in a cut of 30% of its workforce.

Thirdly, market capitalization might be a misleading measure by which

to understand this market after media convergence, combined with
mechanisms ofhorizontal and vertical integration, make the listed market
capitalization the result of a much broader strategy than simply media.
For example, Apple's revenue (and arguably its market capitalization) is
preeminently a result of its capabilities as a manufacturer of the iPhone
and other devices. Apple, and other tech companies included here, do
not publish disaggregated data that might help us better understand or
estimate the specific role played by its media industry branches, such as
AppleTV streaming entertainment, in their overall market capitalization.

Fourthly, cross-collaboration is still key. Observing the more traditional

multimedia segment of the industry, the dominant companies in terms
of market capitalization are different: Disney, Comcast, ATT, Sony. Each
one of them is part of a conglomerate of other media and social media
companies, related in networks of collaboration. For instance, Disney,
outcompeted by Netflix for sorne time, reached parity in terms of sub-
scribers by networking with Hulu, and by diversifying its content lines
with different television channels and film studios, besides investing in
theme parks and merchandising. Hulu develops content with Disney and
networks with Comcast to increase its reach.

Fifthly, a key tech company like Microsoft is not in the graph, in spite of
being the second largest company in market capitalization in the world.
This is because the failure of its Internet Explorer limited its gatekeeping
role in the Internet and in the media industry at large. Yet, its new search
engine, Bing, is starting to compete with Google, and it is becoming
a giant in the media-adjacent gaming sector. Indeed, Microsoft remains
a major source of innovation in the software computing industry and,
as such, is a key technological resource for media and communication
companies. lts role as a key node will certainly increase as a result of its
strategy of investing in Al, mainly through its participation in OpenAI,
an organization to which Elon Musk had originally provided funds. The
20 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

ability of third parties to plug into the LLMs developed by OpenAI that
are housed in Microsoft Azure data centers might become a space where
key gatekeeping takes place. In fact, this control over the data centers
powering a key Al service might place Microsoft in a similar position of
power to that being exercised by the mobile app store gatekeepers today
(Apple and Google), or the power exercised by Facebook on gatekeeping
access to its user base five or ten years ago.

Thus, if we are interested in the broader Internet market where the

digital takes place, the 2022 ranking by market capitalization should
include Microsoft. These five companies (Google, Apple, Facebook,
Amazon, Microsoft) conform to the GAFAM acronym under which
people discuss "big tech," since they also dominate the Internet ranking
in terms of revenue. In the ranking by revenue, other Internet-based com-
panies are also to be included in leading positions, such as the Chinese
Tencent (WeChat, and also the dominant global company in video
games), Alibaba (the Chinese giant in e-commerce), Salesforce (cloud
computing and data management), Jingdong or Joybuy (major service
and e-commerce Chinese company), Booking.com (the Internet-based
tourism company), and Baidu (the leading web search engine in China).
Therefore, the media landscape is being shaped by a set oflarger Internet
companies' gatekeeping information flows. In short, the Internet com-
panies operating as multimedia companies tend to be much larger than
the traditional media companies that in most cases are now included in
multimedia networks anchored around the technological and financia!
power oflnternet companies.

The sharing of digital language, Internet networks, and new technologies,

particularly Al, mean that all these companies operate in very different
markets that apparently do not have anything in common: financia!
services, legal services, theme parks, travel, and publication of content
along multiple platforms, be it print, e-books, music (64% of Internet
users listen to music over the Internet), podcasts, or virtual reality models,
models that are used either for immersed personal experiences, military
training, or simulation models for corporate strategies.

As for traditional newspapers, they are experiencing a precipitous decline

in terms of readership and revenue (see Figure 2.3). Consequently, pro-
fessional journalism has shifted to a model of "networked journalism,"
 WE COMMUNICATE, THEREFORE WE ARE 21

based on digital newsrooms operating on the Internet 24/7 (van der Haak
et al., 2012).

¡
llaJ,::O-J, )00

2-0,:00,:,00

•
'~º- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
IN() 1110 2000 ,0,0

Source: Elaborated by Juan Ortiz Freuler using data from Pew Research Center
(2021).

Figure 2.3 Estimated circulation of US daily newspapers

Economy, culture, and technology interact in the formation of the media

landscape. The trend toward digitization of media industries is also
shaped by cultural factors. As a result, and in contrast to what I have
shown for newspapers and video, book publishing is still largely domi-
nated by print (see Figure 2.4).

New business models: audiences, friends, avatars

When mature markets appear to be saturated or companies confront

new constraints, firms use the versatility of networking and technological
change to explore new business models or fields. For instance, when
Facebook realized that its profit-making model based on targeted adver-
tising was challenged by both new, more innovative competitors, such as
TikTok, as well as growing resistance to the unfettered collection of per-
sonal data from its users, Zuckerberg searched for a new digital promised
land. He concentrated his considerable assets in an interna! project whose
most ambitious horizon is to shift human experience to a new metaverse
in which we could reconstruct our unhappy world, moving from making
22 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

•bot ........ 1

- -- - 1
Source: Elaborated by Juan Ortiz Freuler using data aggregated by Statista
(2022al.

Figure 2.4 Book purchasing: e-books vs printed

friends to assuming avatars as the projection of our inner desires.

While the launch of Second Life in 2003 did not live up to its promise,
Zuckerberg and other visionaries felt that majar advances in Al and chips
could now propel innovations that could offer a remedy for the growing
despair in society-a movement that has been brilliantly analyzed and
documented by Jonathan Taplin in his book End of Reality (2023).

These new business models brought into the digital industries scene
a new brand of entrepreneurs, epitomized by what has been labeled "The
PayPal mafia." These were risk-taking entrepreneurs who met around an
innovative model of virtual payment that, without challenging the exist-
ing currencies, virtualized transactions over the Internet.

In Figure 2.5, we can see the expansion and growing influence of the
original PayPal managers and investors through the new ventures in the
industry, including the launch ofkey companies like Linkedln, YouTube,
and Yelp, pioneering what many carne to call Web 2.0. Thiel and Musk,
at the time when they were friends, cooperated in developing PayPal and
have become key figures in today's Internet entrepreneurialism. The sale
of his participation in PayPal provided Musk with the $175 million that
he used to invest in Tesla and, later on, with heavy support from NASA, in
 WE COMMUNICATE, THEREFORE WE ARE 23

Sltxlie:1 al
U. Sta.. lord

o,,,.,
1 PayPal 1
Sold to Ebay In 2002
fof$1.Sbllion

Source: Elaborated by Juan Ortiz Freuler, based on several sources, including

Hoffman and Casnocha, 2013; Forrest, 2014; VentureBeat, 2019; Hartmans,
2020; Wikipedia, n.d.

Figure 2.5 The PayPal mafia, key members

SpaceX, the ultimate escape from reality toward regenerating the human
race on Mars.

Microsoft, on the other hand, took a different route, updating its business
model based on software development and advertising. lts new strategy
was to develop AI-based algorithms that would adapt software solutions
to customized demands in real time. This was the origin of a major
breakthrough in Al applications, the ChatGPT developed by OpenAI.
The massive public attention that followed from Chat GPT's launch
prompted a technological and public relations race with Google's Bard
or Meta's Llama and others. This race will be transforming and diffusing
the deployment of Al in the coming years, reshaping a number of profes-
sional tasks previously assumed to be beyond automation, as mentioned
in the Introduction.

The change of guard in leading digital technology entrepreneurs, be

it in the Internet or in other technology-led industry segments, is also
a cultural change. The people Taplin calls "the Technocrats" share a belief
24 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

in the demiurgic power of technology, beyond their diverse political pref-

erences. Although the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were always driven
by their passion for technological innovation, the new generation feels
more empowered than ever as shown by their risk-taking strategies
aimed at "disrupting" a wide variety of sectors: virtual pseudosocial
media (Zuckerberg), automated transportation and space exploration
(Musk), finance (Andreesen, Thiel) or government, including security
and spyware (Thiel).

Their libertarian belief, often contradictory in its application, becomes

embodied in their financial and technological capacity to impose their
will as individuals, calling on their believers to sever ties with institutions
and to assume the power they deserve as superior individuals. Peter Thiel
clearly articulates this ideology of authoritarian technocracy on behalf of
the individual: "Your mind is software. Program it. Your body is a shell.
Change it. Death is a disease. Cure it. Extinction is approaching. Fight it"
(Stein, 2014). As for Elon Musk, "[t]he long-term ultimate objective-the
holy grail-is: we would like to make life multiplanetary" (Stein, 2014).
These are expressions of ideas but they are not without consequences:
ideology materializes in technologies by which we live our lives.

In its search for new sources of profit and power, the communication
industry moved from capturing audiences to shepherding weak friend-
ships. Then from interacting with other humans to cohabit a multiverse
disembodied as avatars, or as a multiplanetary species, thus attempting to
construct a new form of sociability: Sociability 00 •

A disinformed information society: fake news

The large majority of people in the US and most digitally advanced

European countries obtain their news, and information at large, from
digital social network sites and search engines. Meanwhile, readership
and revenue for newspapers is declining precipitously. Television viewers
are vastly outnumbered by social media users. As a result, the filtering
role exercised by professional journalism is fading away. W e must dif-
ferentiate rumors from fake news ourselves. Rumors refer to unverified
accounts of sorne event. Rumors have always existed in communication
environments, and history is full of examples of the powerful effects of
 WE COMMUNICATE, THEREFORE WE ARE 25

rumors that distort the actual experience. Fake news, according to sorne
researchers, includes messages diffused by different means that convey
erroneous information, willingly or unintentionally. In other definitions,
fake news relates to the deliberate spreading of news that is knowingly
false or inexact, which is also referred to as disinformation. What is
labeled as "deep fake" uses digital technologies, particularly Al, to achieve
highly realistic effects in the fabrication of content, such as depicting
a violent act or a statement by a prominent politician who appears in
person saying what the creators of news find convenient to their cause.
For example, in the Brazilian presidential election of 2018, a deep fake
portrayed candidate Lula as threatening his opponents.

In the US, in the 2016 presidential election won by Donald Trump, fake
news, of different kinds, became highly influential in the dissemination
of political information. Trump followers, and to a lesser degree Russian
trolls, distributed a massive amount of fake news to damage Hillary
Clinton's image, contributing to her defeat. While all communication
environments have seen disinformation distributed on a mass scale,
Internet networks and digitization have decisively contributed to pollute
the public information environment, particularly amplifying fake news
and increasing its credibility. This is, first of all, because of the rapid
diffusion of Internet messages: virality, defined as "a social information
process in which content is shared with often distant networks resulting
in a sharp acceleration of social information" (Nahon & Hemsley, 2013).
Since most people get their news from social media and online news
outlets, forwarding the message is easy, fast, and could be targeted on
a massive scale.

Secondly, social bots, with their networks of reach programmed to

achieve complementarity and impact during propaganda campaigns,
automate and multiply the forwarded messages.

Thirdly, the development of powerful Al algorithms, such as ChatGPT 4.0

and others, sharply increases the capacity to design and distribute credible
fake news, blurring the digital information sphere where fact and fiction
can hardly be differentiated.

Fourthly, because of the well-known fact that negative messages stick more
effectively with viewers, the negativity of fake news constructs a receptive
environment for such news. Moreover, over the past decade, more news
26 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

headlines have become increasingly negative as an acknowledgment that

this fuels distribution (Robertson et al., 2023). However, we must also
consider that individuals lend greater credibility to messages that fit with
their predispositions (Castells, 2009). In other words, targeted disinfor-
mation campaigns focus on reinforcing negative perceptions of those
that already feel that way. But they also induce doubts in people or voters
uncertain in their opinions. Since a key characteristic of contemporary
societies is the growing distrust in institutions, including the mainstream
media, it follows that communication environments are more receptive
to messages that challenge stories published by professional journalism.
The declining legitimacy of societal institutions induces a self-fulfilling
prophecy: the more there is suspicion about information conveyed by tra-
ditional media, the more people are receptive to fake news that eventually
confirms their distrust.

However, there are important cultural differences in the acceptance of

negative fake news depending on the country and on the level of educa-
tion. The more educated a person is, the more likely that she will develop
a capacity to critically engage with content, and vice versa. Also, national
differences are conducive to a greater acceptance or not of the "official
story," depending on the degree of consensus between citizens and their
institutions. This is not confined to political or ideological opinions, but
includes all cognitive dimensions of social life. For instance, during the
Covid-19 pandemic, a significant segment of many societies as educated
as, for instance, France, lent credibility to rumors, as well as to fake news,
that challenged the belief in scientific consensus and led to distrust in
vaccines. This disinformation was very costly in human lives, and con-
ditioned the feasibility of many health policies. In China, 40% of people
over 65 refused to be vaccinated to the point that the government resorted
to massive, lengthy confinement to control the spread of the virus, ulti-
mately provoking resistance that aggravated the pandemic. Conspiracy
theories, such as attributing to the vaccines a capability of implanting
chips in our body, populated social networks, caused social anxiety, and
ultimately resulted in thousands of deaths. The crisis of institutional
trust was amplified in the digital social networks. In so doing, the social
"truth" disappeared in the minds of millions of people, undermining the
capacity of humans to live together under common social norms. For
instance, the calling into question of science, which has been a funda-
mental factor underlying the historical experience of social progress and
shared well-being, is largely a result of disinformation in the digital social
 WE COMMUNICATE, THEREFORE WE ARE 27

networks. The growing role of fake news in shaping the minds ofhumans
by diffusing such "news" at an accelerated pace is a destructive trend that
threatens our survival, both as individuals and as a species.

In this context there are increasing calls for regulation of the digital media
environment from many quarters, including politicians, scientists, and
sorne leaders of technology companies. However, these well-intentioned
proposals contrast with the reality of the vested interests of capitalism
and the State in our time, namely, informational capitalism and the
Surveillance State.

References

Arsenault, A.H., & Castells, M. (2008) "The structure and dynamics of global
multi-media business networks," International Journal of Communication, 2,
pp. 707-748.
Baym, N.K. (2015) Personal Connections in the Digital Age, 2nd edn. Cambridge:
Polity.
BCS (2010) The Information Dividend: Can IT Make You "Happier"? Swindon,
UK: Trajectory Partnership. Available at: https://www.trajectorypartnership
.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09 /BCS_Information_Dividend_Global.pdf
(accessed on 18 October 2023).
boyd, d.m., & Ellison, N.B. (2007) "Social network sites: Definition, history,
and scholarship," Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13(1),
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3 End of privacy? The
Surveillance State and
informational capitalism

Throughout history, a fundamental instrument to assert power is the

control of information and the monopoly of communication (Castells,
2009). A key mechanism to fulfill these goals is the collection of informa-
tion on people in an asymmetrical manner through surveillance, where
the surveilled are kept in the dark. In informational capitalism (Castells,
2000; 2012), the accumulation of information on human activities and
their subsequent commodification is a form of capital accumulation.
The appropriation of communication messages is ensured by corporate
control over the networks of communication, and government control
over the corporations, thus combining their technical and legal capacity
to accumulate and distribute information selectively to targeted audi-
ences. A digital society is characterized by a digital hypertext that is at the
same time constantly produced and modified and constantly accessed,
recombined, remixed, and redirected by the communicating actors.
Under the conditions of digital information and communication, there is
simultaneously an increasing centralization of information and a decreas-
ing monopoly over communication. There is a decreasing monopoly
over communication because of the rise of mass self-communication,
as defined in the previous chapter. In this paradigm there are billions of
interactive, communicative subjects. However, information is increas-
ingly centralized in the servers of a handful oflnternet-based companies,
and in government servers. In fact, a key factor that enables the cen-
tralized control of information is precisely the decentralized, multiple
networks of communication where everybody and everything exchange
messages and information. The technological ability to surveille, track,
store, and analyze these multiple processes of communication, and the
accumulated hypertext resulting over time from the exchange of infor-
mation, represents a substantial leap in the control over information.
The technological and organizational capacity required to collect data
at a planetary scale requires considerable resources, particularly political

31
32 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

power and corporate wealth, which are in the hands of State agencies and
a few private corporations.

Meanwhile, the possibility of communicative autonomy increases the

capacity of people and organizations to exchange information over
Internet networks. Certainly, these networks are surveilled, mediated
by companies' algorithms and used by corporations and by the State to
gather information. But in general terms, the tlow of information is not
interrupted precisely because unfettered communication provides the
opportunity to access and collect information by the institutions and
companies able to do so.

Surveillance is certainly a form of invasion of privacy. But the most sig-

nificant threat to privacy, defined as the right of people not to disclose
information about their lives without their explicit consent, <loes not
come from governments but from corporations, and precisely from the
Internet and communication corporations (Castells, 2001). In this case
the breach of privacy derives from a business model partly based on
retrieving and exploiting commercially the information provided by or
retrieved from users. Contemporary capitalism is informational capital-
ism (Cohen, 2019).

Thus, the threats to democracy resulting from surveillance and the threats
to privacy resulting from the commodification of our lives signal the per-
sistence in the Information Age of the domination of social life by the two
major institutions that structure society: the State and capital.

The rise of a global Big Brother

State surveillance is common to ali States. However, digitization has

now provided the technological platform for the formation of a globally
networked surveillance bureaucracy. At its core there is the US National
Security Agency (NSA), which is connected by international agreements,
formal or informal, to other similar agencies. The Five Eyes cooperation
program between the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand
exemplified the networking strategy that, over time, strengthened the
joint surveillance capabilities of Western governments. The Five Eyes
program (1941) expanded to Nine Eyes (late 1940s), incorporating France,
 END OF PRIVACY? 33

Denmark, Netherlands, and Norway. Later, the agencies of Germany,

Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Sweden were added, forming the Fourteen Eyes
program (mid 2000s). Ultimately, following the geopolitical configura-
tion of States, the surveillance networks include all NATO countries and
their allies, such as Israel's Mossad (Greenwald, 2014). Russia and China
developed their own networks centered on their very large surveillance
agencies (Russia's FSB and China's MSS) (Gill & Phythian, 2018). Other
countries, such as India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Saudí Arabia, and
Morocco, engaged in a changing pattern of collaboration depending on
specific needs.

The evolving geopolitical context accelerated the global networking

strategy after the 2001 terrorist attack on N ew York. The legal and judicial
constraints to state surveillance were significantly weakened in the name
of national security and what was presented as a need to respond to the
menace of Islamic terrorism. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the
heightened tensions between the US and China, increased the power
and the autonomy of the major surveillance agencies. Thus, the NSA is
located in the Defense Department, unlike the CIA or FBI, and largely
protected from congressional inquiries because of military imperatives.
The British GCHQ, while formally dependent on the Foreign Secretary,
is independent from the Foreign Office, as its director has the rank of
Permanent Secretary.

The digital global surveillance system in the twenty-first century was

greatly enhanced after the alarm triggered by terrorist networks. The
NSA's director Michael Hayden declared that identifying potential threats
at a global scale was like finding a needle in a haystack. And so he needed
the entire haystack. President Bush and his successors issued several exec-
utive orders to circumvent the judicial controls that had been established.
The War on Terror justified everything. The main judicial control, the
authorization required by the Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA)
court, remained. But in almost all instances, the court authorized the
requests from the NSA. However, after 2001, the NSA realized that it was
not on the cutting edge of digital surveillance technologies, so it embarked
on a massive upgrading of its capability, modernizing sorne of its existing
programs, and creating a flurry of new programs, thanks to technology
transfer from the major US Internet companies, world leaders in digital
technology.
34 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

Thanks to the revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden, 1 we know

the existence and characteristics of sorne of these programs. Particularly
important was the PRISM program that facilitated access to the data
of users of participating companies. Figure 3.1 shows the sequence of
cooperation of the most important technology companies. 2 ICREACH
is a search engine used by all US surveillance analysts to access billions
of records of phone calls, emails, cell phone locations, and messages.
UPSTREAM allowed the NSA to collect information on telecommu-
nication traffic around the world by accessing intercontinental cables
and Internet exchange points. TAILORED ACCESS OPERATOR was
capable of retrieving two petabytes of data, the equivalent of three
million CD-ROM clises, every hour. Other programs, increasingly
secretive, include ROOM 641 in cooperation with AT&T, SPECIAL
COLLECTION SERVICES, SENTRY EAGLE, MARINA, PINWALE,
and MYSTIC (for voice interception). MUSCULAR, developed in coop-
eration with GCHQ, was specifically designed to intercept information
in the networks of Google, prompting a strong public reaction from this
company. BULLRUN was designed to break into encrypted networks,
while OPTIC NERVE was used to collect webcam pictures from Yahoo!
users. AURORAGOLD was used to intercept mobile phone calls and
text messages. Other programs, such as QUANTUM, allowed the NSA
to identify and replace the web content requested by a user. Meanwhile,
XKEYSCORE was the in-house search engine that made it possible for
NSA operatives to sieve through the vast amounts of data being aggre-
gated by a variety of programs, making it possible for them to find details
regarding specific individuals and institutions. XKEYSCORE was the
way in which the needles were retrieved from the haystack. The Snowden

Edward Snowden is a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor

and whistleblower who released classified documents revealing the extent
of the US government's surveillance programs in 2013. Snowden grew up
in Maryland and enlisted in the US Army before beginning a career in the
intelligence community. In 2013, while working for the NSA in Hawaii,
Snowden shared classified documents with journalists, exposing a range of
surveillance programs that he believed violated privacy rights and consti-
tutional protections. He fled to Hong Kong and later Russia, where he was
granted asylum since in the US he had been charged with espionage and
theft of government property. Snowden's actions sparked a global outrage
and debate on surveillance and privacy, which has led to significant reforms
in government surveillance practices.
This slide was produced and used by the NSA for internal NSA briefings. It
shows the companies actively cooperating with the PRISM program.
 END OF PRIVACY? 35

files inform on the basic characteristics of most of these programs. It goes

without saying that other governments, particularly China, use similar
technologies for their own spying and interception practices.

TOP SECRET HotmaU" Gol :talk\'I Youfm

M 1 ••• "Yl\,EoOr AOL ~ = IIA

v 'Fl Dates
When PRISM Collection
Began F or Each Provider

PRISM Program Cost: -

$20M per year

2007 2008 2009 20 10 20 11 20 12 2013

TOP SECRETIISI ,'ORCON1 "OFOR!-1
Source: Snowden-published by Washington Post (201 3) : https ://da.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Fil: Prism_slide_5.jpg.

Figure 3.1 Dates when collaboration with NSA began for each
provider

The NSA collects so much data that it had to build a dedicated data center
in Bluffdale, Utah. The data center covers one million square feet, roughly
the size of 12 soccer fields, and is estimated to be able to store an exabyte
or more of data, which would easily surpass the capacity needed to store
voice recordings for all the phone calls made in the US in a year (Hill,
2013; Higgins, 2014).

However, if surveillance can operate at such proportions it is because

of the systematic digitization of everything that both people do in their
lives and organizations and institutions do in their daily management:
personal interaction, credit cards, online banking, e-commerce, financia!
36 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

transactions, travel reservations, Uber or Lyft users' travels, online edu-

cation, health services, real estate searches, search habits, entertainrnent
(including adult websites, a rnajor cornponent of digital entertainrnent),
cyber-religion, video-garning, and the like. This is what Schneier (2016)
calls the "digital exhaust," and what I would call "digital traces," whose
forrnation and configuration have been analyzed by a nurnber of experts
in the field (Hepp et al., 2018). In short, Big Brother could not exist
without the contribution of the Little Sisters that record the digital traces
of our everyday life.

From Big Brother to Little Sisters: business models

based on the collection, commodification, and
processing of users' information

As the saying goes in Silicon Valley, "if you are not paying for a service,
you are the product." This is clear in the case of rnajor consurner-facing
platforrns. For instance, over 81 % of the revenue of the largest Internet
cornpany, Alphabet, in 2021, carne frorn advertising, particularly frorn
targeted advertising enabled by the inforrnation that users provide
through their searches on Google. The irnportance of advertising is even
greater for Meta: in 2021 it accounted for alrnost 98% of its total revenue
(Ang, 2022). Meta's strategies to extract revenue frorn data are diverse
and sorne of thern are cornpany secrets. What we do know is that they
go frorn direct ad placernent on its websites to ad-related services, such
as dashboards enabling custornized aggregations that provide useful
inforrnation on the social characteristics and geographical location of seg-
rnents of users that can enable a corporate branding strategy, for exarnple.
In both cases, the arnount and quality of inforrnation retrieved frorn users
are at the core of their business rnodel (Myers-West, 2019).

The business rnodel ofTikTok, at its launch in the US, was alrnost exclu-
sively based on advertising. After 2021, services and technology added
sources of revenue, such as in-app purchases, creator cornrnissions, and
branded hashtags. Much like in the case of other creator platforrns, a key
factor in the success of TikTok was the full cooperation of its users in
editing, producing, rernixing, and distributing videos across the app and
beyond. This cooperation is rnirrored by access to an audience of users
powered by a black-box curation algorithrn. Thus, the business rnodel of
 END OF PRIVACY? 37

TikTok builds on an existing formula that combines advertising with free

labor from the users (except for the minuscule percent that have amassed
a large enough audience to get a creator commission from the platform).
TikTok's novelty lies in the tools it incorporated into the platform to help
users create content and the powerful algorithm that distributes content
in a hyper-personalized way.

However, while retrieval of information from users for advertising

purposes is at the core of sorne major Internet companies, particularly
the platforms of social media networks, it is not the same for other
Internet-based companies. In 2021, advertising was estimated to rep-
resent just over 1% of Apple's revenues. 3 For Microsoft, although the
company <loes not disaggregate its total revenue in terms of advertising,
we can estimate it falls somewhere between 5% and 15% (Microsoft, 2021;
Ang, 2022). For Amazon, advertising represents merely 7% of revenues
(Ang, 2022).

What is essential for all digital companies is the volume and quality of
the traffic they generate in their networks, directly or indirectly. More
specifically, what matters is the number of daily and monthly active users,
frequency of their interaction, and quality of the information they gener-
ate directly and indirectly. These metrics are key in defining the financia!
valuation of these corporations, the most important source of capital
accumulation for all companies.

In the case of Amazon, the information obtained from their users is essen-
tial for the optimization of the platform and targeted placement of their
products. Moreover, information processing technologies are critical for
a distribution company that is based on "click and brick," in which infor-
mation systems underlie a vast transportation and warehousing network
(Khan, 2017).

Thus, while commodification of users' data is essential in social media

networks, it plays a lesser role in Internet-based companies at large.
What has been discussed as data capitalism should be understood as just
one segment of the digital economy that follows the systemic rules of
informational capitalism, structured around the production and trade

$4 billion out of a revenue of $365 billion in 2021 (Stokel-Walker, 2022;

Statista, 2021).
38 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

of information and knowledge, and their application to all sectors of the

digital economy (Peitz & Waldfogel, 2012; Cohen, 2019).

The connection between informational capitalism and the Surveillance

State operates on the basis of the digitization of everything, on their
storage of everything in databases, and on the circulation of information
over multiple Internet-based communication networks. The technologies
of surveillance used by the State focus on the interception ofbytes circu-
lating over these networks, be it social media, e-commerce, companies'
interactions, or other communication agents. This is how what I call
"Little Sisters" operate as the enabling factor for the growth ofBig Brother.

The battle over privacy

At the 1999 launch ofJini, then a new program from Sun Microsystems,
its CEO Scott McNealy made a statement that became a classic in Silicon
Valley history: On the Internet "you have zero privacy anyway. Get over
it" (Sprenger, 1999). However, people do not seem to have gotten over it.
In the US, a Pew Research Center survey in 2014 found that 80% of users
of social networking sites were concerned about advertisers or businesses
having access to their data, and 70% were also concerned about gov-
ernment surveillance (Pew Research Center, 2014). Moreover, in other
surveys users claimed that in reaction to news of surveillance they had
changed their online habits to minimize sharing their data (Geiger, 2018).
Similar concerns were expressed in the UK (Gibbs, 2015) and Europe at
large (CIGI-Ipsos, 2019). As the massive breach of privacy by companies
and governments became widely known, multipronged resistance carne
from various quarters.

A first line of resistance has come from a number of whistleblowers

working in the security agencies, particularly the NSA, who sacrificed
their careers and sometimes went to jail to denounce practices that were
unlawful and endangered people's constitutional rights. The most notable
was Snowden, who, knowing what had happened to his predecessors,
took the precaution ofleaving the country with key information files that
were then published by mainstream media around the world. But there
were a number of other whistleblowers from the NSA that carne before
him, such as William Binney (2002), Thomas Drake (2006), and Mark
 END OF PRIVACY? 39

Klein (2006). It is important to underline that whistleblowing on abuses

of privacy went beyond the US and beyond the government. In the UK,
for example, Christopher Wylie, from Cambridge Analytica, revealed the
unauthorized use of Facebook data by his company to help the Brexit
campaign in 2016, triggering a broad debate regarding the risks posed by
the data stored under the control of social media platforms.

Julian Assange and Wikileaks were a key player in many revelations per-
taining to illegal government practices. In 2017, for example, Wikileaks
disclosed VAULT7, which compiled technologies and procedures used
by the CIA for its hacking and cyberspying operations (Wikileaks, 2017).
Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, and was soon
after set to be extradited by the UK to stand trial in the US. The severity
of the potential punishment on Assange and ali of these ethical objectors,
and the new security measures introduced by the agencies, aim to limit
the string of revelations about these practices over time. Time will tell
if they have been effective. In contrast, the European Union has rolled
out legal protections for whistleblowers to ensure their agencies operate
according to legal standards. Yet, the law has rarely been implemented,
raising the question of whether potential whistleblowers actually trust
these safety nets.

A second line of defense of privacy was built by techno-libertarians. These

are skilled programmers who developed and distributed encryption, cir-
cumventing government surveillance. This clash-which placed govern-
ment agencies and law enforcement on the side of weakening encryption,
and the programmers (self-employed or working for large companies) on
the side of promoting more widespread and powerful encryption-has
been raging for a number of years now, and is colloquially referred to
as crypto-wars. The father of the Internet, Vint Cerf, and the father of
the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, are on record criticizing the
excesses of the NSA and supporting advanced encryption to be used by
citizens and companies as a barrier to unwarranted intrusion by surveil-
lance agencies and unauthorized use of personal data (Ferenstein, 2013;
Pilkington, 2013).

Sorne ethical hackers have leveraged military-funded programs and dis-

tributed them over the Internet. The most important case is The Onion
Router (TOR), originally designed by the US Navy in 2002, and adapted
by Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson to protect Internet traffic
40 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

from government surveillance and operations aimed at repressing social

movements. TOR helped the protesters considerably during the Arab
Spring as well as other demonstrations around the world. Hacker Moxie
Marlinspike developed the encrypted application Signal, a highly popular
messaging app among activists and politicians around the world, and
whose encryption technology has come to power mainstream applica-
tions like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger.

Thirdly, in countries where civil society organizations are strong, they

have taken companies and the executive branch to court. In the US, civil
society organizations reacting to the revelations include the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF) 4 and the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU), 5 and include Liberty in the UK (Siddique, 2021). In 2020, in
a court case shepherded by the ACLU, the US Court of Appeals for the
Ninth Circuit ruled that the warrantless telephone operation that secretly
collects millions of Americans' telephone records violated the FISA and
may well have been unconstitutional.

However, the conservative majority in the US Supreme Court reduced the

protection of privacy that had come from legal actions from civil society
organizations. Thus, in February 2023, the US Supreme Court denied the
Wikimedia Foundation's petition for review of its legal challenge to the
NSA's "Upstream" surveillance program. This carne after, in 2022, the
Supreme Court restricted women's right toan abortion in Dobbs, which
put into question the hierarchy of the right to privacy within the US legal
system (Gajda, 2022).

Governments in various countries carne under pressure from their

citizens, particularly in Europe, to provide stronger protections against
government and business intrusion in their lives. Furthermore, they

In July 2013, EFF filed a lawsuit following revelations that an FISA court
had ordered Verizon to turn over all customer phone records to the NSA,
including who connected and for how long (EFF, n.d.).
In 2014 ACLU and others, including EFF, supported a lawsuit that chal-
lenged the government's bulk collection of telephone records, in particu-
lar questioning the notion that people have no expectation of privacy when
they entrust information to others (EFF, n.d.). In 2016, ACLU obtained
a victory when a Circuit Court found that the "staggering" amount of infor-
mation collected by the NSA was a violation of the Fourth Amendment and
the Patriot Act (Stempel, 2015).
 END OF PRIVACY? 41

protested to the US government regarding NSA spying practices that did

not respect even leaders of allied countries, such as Germany's Chancellor
Angela Merkel or Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff (Watts, 2013;
MacAskill, 2015). It seemed that the dynamics of the surveillance regime
were largely autonomous and not under close political supervision.

Internet companies became concerned about the reluctance of their

users to accept the use of their personal data and about the growth of
legal activism with potential judicial hostility to their intrusive practices.
Furthermore, they realized the risks of cooperating too closely with
government agencies that were penetrating their networks and databases
with or without their consent. A renegotiation of the relationship between
governments and Internet companies became necessary, impacting both
the surveillance regime and the informational business model.

Resetting the cooperation between governments and

information technology companies

Faced with increasing criticism from their customers about the depth
of the intrusion into their lives, Internet companies took steps to show
reform, including adopting technologies of encryption for the transfer
and storage of user data, which could better protect users from third-party
intrusions. In doing so, they were following the criteria put forward
by most independent experts, including those at the World Wide Web
Consortiurn (W3C) that stewards web standards, and of the Internet
Engineering Task Force (IETF), which manages the Internet protocol,
who had issued a statement asserting that "Well-implemented cryptog-
raphy can be effective against pervasive monitoring and will benefit the
Internet if used more" (Farrell, 2012), after which a coordinated effort
toward secure Internet and web traffic was made.

Furthermore, digital rights non-profits and major companies like

Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Reddit created a lobbying group named
Reset the Net, to push back against pervasive government surveillance
practices that were undermining the trust of their users. Google reacted to
42 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

security agencies' intrusion into their own networks and storage facilities,
issuing a formal statement:

W e have long been concerned about the possibility of this kind of snooping,
which is why we have continued to extend encryption across more and more
Google services and links ... W e are outraged at the lengths to which the gov-
ernment seems to have gone to intercept data from our prívate fiber networks,
and it underscores the need for urgent reform (BBC, 2013).

The shift in public opinion that followed went further than what the
companies could have expected. In 2018, thousands of Google employees
publicly opposed collaborating with US military programs, requesting
that the company discontinue Project Maven designed to update the
artificial intelligence systems powering the image recognition capabilities
in military drones (Statt, 2018).

This prompted a backlash from Republican congressman Matt Gaetz,

who, in a hearing with big tech CEOs in 2020, asked:

Do any of the rest of you take a different view? That is to say that your com-
panies don't embrace American values. It' s great to see that none of you do ...
Mr. Pichai is, did you weigh the input from your employees when making the
decision to abandon [Project Maven] with the United States military?

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, answered: "Congressman, thanks for your

concern. As I said earlier, we are deeply committed to supporting the
military and the US government" (Rev, 2020).

As part of this hesitant reset, less scrupulous companies offered their

services. As soon as Maven was abandoned by Google following employee
resistance, other companies tried to move in and get this and similar con-
tracts. For instance, Palantir, a government-focused company founded
by Peter Thiel in 2003, carne to the rescue of the Pentagon in 2019. It
rebranded Project Maven as Project Tron, and moved forward the project
of updating the Al capabilities of US military drones, signaling capacity
and appetite to work on projects that most major multinationals consid-
ered unethical or reputationally risky (Greene, 2019).

The contradictory interests of tech companies carne into the open. On the
one hand, they have to preserve their lucrative contracts with the US gov-
ernment and, more important, to prevent being hit with anti-monopoly
legislation. On the other hand, they could not lose the trust of their users
 END OF PRIVACY? 43

in the US or risk their burgeoning businesses outside of the US for being

perceived as tools of the US government (Ortiz Freuler, 2022), as Internet
users in the US now represent just 7.5% of global users. And to do so
they have to engage in the policy of encryption of their communication,
making covert government surveillance operations more difficult, or at
least that is the framing.

This tension between being a multinational company and growing geo-

political tensions was also expressed by Microsoft' s decision, in 2017, to
try to bring sorne order to the networks of global collaboration by floating
the idea of a Digital Geneva Convention on a global scale (Smith, 2017).
However, it did not convince world leaders and was slowly dropped by
Microsoft.

Yet, new frontiers of technological innovation have come to the forefront,

opening new doors for digital surveillance. An example is Elon Musk's
Starlink, largely financed by NASA, in an attempt to secure early domi-
nance in low orbit space, where he is deploying a constellation of satellites
that could soon replace traditional Earth telecommunications infra-
structure. The rush is on to occupy these low orbit areas before Chinese
(Chen, 2023) or European (Tones, 2023) corporations manage to step in,
thus enabling the US to control the next centralized choke point through
which governments might be able to pull and push data circulating across
the network (Ortiz Freuler, 2022).

Elon Musk collaborated with Microsoft in investing in an innova-

tive company OpenAI, which now offers services to the Microsoft
suite of apps, including its search engine, Bing. In November 2022,
OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a powerful Al chatbot application hosted
on Microsoft servers, whose success made it possible for the company
to gather a wealth of interaction data from its users, a key step in iden-
tifying what works and retraining the system, which contributed greatly
to OpenAI's ability to continue to outpace its competitors. On the other
hand, Google, Uber, Tesla, and others are in the race to develop Al tech-
nologies for self-driving cars, which includes deploying a wide variety of
sensors on millions of vehicles that are constantly navigating the urban
networks, thus broadening their capacity to collect information both from
users and the urban environment.
44 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

Internet companies, particularly social media companies, restructured

themselves seeking to diversify their business models. Over the past
years they have been incorporating fees for sales in digital marketplaces
(Constine, 2016), user subscriptions (Mehta, 2023), and sales of products
like virtual reality headsets (Forbes, 2023) and smart glasses (Weatherbed,
2023), among a variety of strategies that could allow them to become less
dependent on the commodification of personal information. This move
is becoming urgent as users and regulators across the globe become more
wary of the reutilization of these data for purposes that are not aligned
with individual or national interests.

New actors are also coming in from what Silicon Valley used to perceive
as a stagnant periphery: China. Outcompeted by TikTok among young
users, Facebook rebranded as Meta and refocused resources toward the
development of headsets that (they hope) will replace smartphones as
the gates between the virtual and physical worlds. This enabled a public
relations campaign that would refocus attention away from Facebook's
poor performance and onto its promise of a future in which its billions
of users migrate to the Metaverse, a place in which Facebook will not
have to deal with Apple or Google, who currently control the market
for operating systems on smartphones and have influenced the rules to
ensure the pro minen ce of their own products and data collection systems
(O'Flaherty, 2022) (see Chapter 2). Meanwhile, Facebook and other US
social media companies seem to be rallying Western governments to their
rescue and to support them in undermining TikTok's growth by accusing
it of spying for the Chinese government. Thus, the Snowden revelations
created seismic waves that shook the old model of surveillance, sparked
new business models, and reshuffled the actors. However, the need for
surveillance, and their markets, never disappeared. They were merely
transformed and innovated upon.

New surveillance technologies, new business models

Faced with resistance from civil society, judicial institutions, and new
regulations to respond to pressure from citizens, government surveil-
lance practices had to adapt. There was, however, a technical problem:
companies increasingly encrypted their traffic against external snooping,
while offering service to users in exchange for exploiting their personal
 END OF PRIVACY? 45

data to an ever-increasing depth. With greater technical sophistication

of encryption, and stricter regulation protecting privacy, the surveillance
operations shifted to less detectable technologies able to circumvent
encryption by shifting the attack to the edges of the network rather than
the choke points in the middle. That is, while the companies had focused
on effectively encrypting the information as it moved across the cables of
the network, the intelligence agencies began targeting the smartphones,
computers, and applications on the edges of the network, where they
could access the content once it had been decrypted by each individual
recipient.

Although there is now a flurry of this kind of surveillance technologies,

I will exemplify the procedures with the widely exposed case of Pegasus.
Pegasus is a malware program, developed by a private Israeli company,
NSO (an acronym that stands for Niv, Shalev, and Omri, the names of the
company's founders), for use by government surveillance agencies. The
program infects a target's phone and sends back data, including photos,
messages, and audio/video recordings to NSO clients. Pegasus's developer
says that the software cannot be traced back to the government using it
(NSO, n.d.)-a crucial feature for clandestine operations, although given
the constant evolution of countersurveillance technology, I personally
doubt such promises can be made.

However, as soon as a new surveillance technology appears, technologi-

cally savvy freedom fighters get to work. A University ofToronto-related,
independent non-profit organization, Citizen Lab, dared to track the
deployment of Pegasus. At the time of writing, they had found that 45
countries were affected by the espionage network. Files, photos, instant
messaging, browsing history, location tracking, and social networks are
the kinds of information that can be accessed.

A Catalan researcher working at Citizen Lab found evidence that the

phones of Catalan pro-independence leaders have been hacked using
Pegasus, a fact acknowledged by the Spanish Government. On the other
hand, the phone of the Spanish Prime Minister and of the Defense
Minister were also hacked, probably by Moroccan intelligence, and, sepa-
rately, by Russian hackers during the Ukraine war.

Another notorious case was the intrusion into JeffBezos's smartphone. In

this case, Pegasus was used for the retrieval of intimate and sexually explicit
46 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

photographs with which he was later subjected to an attempt at extortion

tied to his ownership of the Washington Post. Saudí Arabian intelligence
has been suspected, with sorne tying the case to crown prince of Saudí
Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman's discomfort with the Washington Post's
investigative reporting regarding the murder of its reporter, Khashoggi, at
the hands of Saudí intelligence (Nast, 2020). Media reports claimed that
the WhatsApp message that infected Bezos's phone was sent from the
personal WhatsApp account ofbin Salman. Even the richest person in the
world could be exposed, at least for an instant.

The Bezos case prompted sorne governments, particularly in the US, to

take action against NSO, although obviously the company denied respon-
sibility. Thereafter WhatsApp decided to sue NSO for exploiting its infra-
structure (Kirby, 2020). NSO claims it helps "government intelligence
and law-enforcement agencies use technology to meet the challenges of
encryption" during terrorism and criminal investigations. The company
insists it works exclusively with government agencies (Priest et al., 2021),
and that it cuts off access to Pegasus when it finds evidence of abuse by
an agency (Kabir & Ravet, 2021). In its 2021 transparency report, the
company claims it has exercised this power and cut off abusing clients
in the past (NSO, 2021). However, an investigation released by Amnesty
International in 2021 has shown that hundreds of journalists and activists
that are unlikely to be terrorists have been targeted by the company, and
in sorne cases, like in Mexico, seemingly linked to subsequent assassi-
nations (Clark, 2021). As a consequence of this triad of forces, the US
government eventually moved forward and blacklisted the NSO group,
with catastrophic commercial consequences.

Meanwhile, the US contractor, L3Harris, a company that lists the Defense

Department as its biggest government client, is said to have cited support
from US intelligence officials in its effort to acquire the blacklisted NSO,
and potentially wash its technologies and house them under a new
companywith tiesto the US (Mazzetti & Bergman, 2022).

So, over these past decades, although surveillance technologies and

mechanisms may change, critica! information seems to always end up in
the hands of the Global Surveillance Bureaucracy, while companies keep
tracking the lives of their users for their profit-making strategies.
 END OF PRIVACY? 47

End of privacy?

The battle over privacy never ends. Living in a digital environment makes
it more difficult than ever to preserve privacy. Yet, civil society mobili-
zation, technologies of countersurveillance, citizen activism, informed
journalism, judicial protection, and government legislation to respond
to the concerns of their voters, show the persistence of the dialectics
between power and counterpower as we entera new regime of surveil-
lance and new informational business models, increasingly dominated
by information-hungry Al algorithms. The deep fears about machines
(their algorithms, strictly speaking) taking over our lives are obscuring
the actual contours of our digital existence: States and oligopolistic com-
panies appropriate the new technologies without sharing information and
understanding with citizens and clients. However, there will be no end to
privacy as long as people's consciousness and critical thinking are ready
and able to counter the techno-determinism that characterizes the new
masters of the world.

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The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2023/8/3/23818462/meta
-ray-ban-stories-smart-glasses-retention-reality-labs (accessed on 19 October
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Wikileaks (2017) Vault 7: Projects. Available at: https://wikileaks.org/vault7/
#Pandemic (accessed on 24 February 2023).
4 The digitalization of
financial markets:
from derivatives to
cryptocu rrencies

The securitization of everything

Financia! markets are the nervous system of the capitalist economy. The
economic value of everything is determined by trade in the financia!
markets. Capital accumulation results from the valuation and devaluation
of any assets by this trade. In order to be traded, assets become securities,
that is, a fungible support of financia! value that can be traded, such as
currency, equity, debt, or derivatives. In the twenty-first century, the
financia! markets have been transformed by their global interdependence,
and by the development of derivatives.

Derivatives are formalized by an over-the-counter contract between

parties who agree to set a benchmark, or combination of assets, to
establish the value of the derivative that they trade in a given time frame.
Futures, options, and credit swaps are derivatives. Most of them constitute
synthetic securities, because they combine the value, present or future, of
their components, in a security that <loes not have a material existence,
and whose value is assigned by trade in the market, without necessarily
depending on the value of the underlying assets. This is because the
derivative is simply the result of a mathematical formula, generally esti-
mating probabilities of change in values, and because the market operates
largely in terms of perception rather than according to rational estimates
(Volcker, 2001: 75-85). As shown in Figure 4.1, the notional value of
global derivatives was about six times higher than the global GDP in 2022.

Credit default swaps (CDS), a component of the derivatives market,

reached a 5-year peak in transactions in 2023, with a total value of
US$3,800 billion (Cooper, 2023). Although this is a small proportion

52
 THE DIGITALIZATION OF FINANCIAL MARKETS 53

""'·"°

,. _ _ __ ..,,,_
11,.111 ____ __

Source: Compiled and elaborated graphically by Juan Ortiz Freuler based on

data from the following sources (ordered from left to rightl: CoinGecko (n.d.l;
BIS (2022 *Estímate for 20 majar economies + EU); Companies Market Cap
(2023); IMF (2023); SIFMA (2023); Bloomberg via IIF (2023a); Savills Global
Research (2023 estimatedl; Credit Suisse (2023); BIS (2023).

Figure 4.1 Comparative analysis of global financial values (in US$

billion)

of the total derivatives market value, it is significant because the CDS,

supposedly a mechanism to leverage risk, have been shown to be partly
responsible for the financia! crisis of 2008-1 O, as many of the loans that
were swapped used unsecured mortgage loans as collateral, whose default
brought clown major financia! companies, such as Lehman Brothers, ush-
ering in the crisis. More significantly, they were at the so urce of the bank-
ruptcy of AIG, the insurer of 50% of the banks in the world, then bailed
out by the US Government to prevent an even greater collapse (Castells
et al., 2012). In 2010, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
established new regulati ons concerning the CDS. Yet, their substantial
increase as a proportion of credit derivatives being traded shows how
difficult it is to regulate operations that are conducted in the markets with
very little transparency, making proper accounting difficult because of the
complexity of synthetic securities. This is because CDS, rather than a risk
management mechanism, have been used as a strategy of speculation,
betting on increase or decrease in values of a synthetic security whose
composition depends, in a large number of eventualities, on the specificity
of the multiple credits that are swapped. Financia! regulators are aware of
the risks involved in this market dynamics, but they also appreciate the
growth potential offered by derivatives, inducing the creation of a gigan-
tic reservoir of capital. While the value of this capital is largely virtual, it
materializes in lending opportunities that keep the economy growing,
54 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

albeit with increasing financia! risk. Pity for the companies that default,
particularly for the small ones (if they are too big to fail, they will be bailed
out by the government-with taxpayers' money).

This transformation of financia! markets has been made possible by wide-

spread deregulation and liberalization of markets and financia! institu-
tions, and by the use of powerful mathematical models processed at high
speed in computer networks. In the comparative research I led on the
2008-10 economic crisis, we showed that the complexity of the transac-
tions, and the speed and volume of the exchanges, could only be managed
by a flurryofnew digital technologies (Castells et al., 2012). This trend was
subsequently analyzed in depth by a group of researchers in Marszk and
Lechman (2021). Given the deepening of the securitization of everything
and the proliferation of the derivatives of endless securities, the coming of
age of artificial intelligence was a most welcome development (Remolina
& Gurrea-Martinez, 2023). However, while this new technological trans-
formation provided better tools for calculations in private financia! trans-
actions, it did not improve the management capacity of the regulators. In
fact, it enhanced the ability of the financia! markets to strengthen their
own unregulated dynamics. Capital returns resulting from the workings
of a black box whose program was largely unknown favored the rise of
what I conceptualized time ago as the "Financia! Automaton." As I wrote:
"Humankind's nightmare of seeing our machines taking control of our
world seems on the edge of becoming reality, not in the form of robots
eliminating our jobs or government computers that police our lives, but
as an electronically based system of financia! transactions" (Castells, 2001:
56). The Automaton is a network of digital networks that process all secu-
rities in the global financia! markets on the basis of mathematical models
without direct reference to their original underlying assets. The Financia!
Automaton fully materialized through high frequency trading (HFT)
computerized systems, introduced in the New York Stock Exchange in
2002, increasing the speed of transactions to a 64 millionth of a second,
compared with severa! seconds per transaction in the 1980s. In 2011,
nano trading technology accelerated the speed, operating at 1 billionth
of a second per transaction. Thus, the turnover of capital was boosted
on the basis of digitalization of the transactions. Global capital is now
largely virtual. Indeed, in terms of global wealth, in 2020 it was estimated
that around 97% was held in digital form, and was traded over electronic
networks (Mookerjee, 2021). This is why in 2023, the US Federal Reserve
Board explored the possibility of creating a new currency, the "Central
 THE DIGITALIZATION OF FINANCIAL MARKETS 55

Bank digital currency (CBDC)," backed by the monetary authority,

equivalent in value to paper money. Although the Board did not dare
to pursue this project at the time (they may eventually proceed), in fact
they were late with their idea. Because in the meantime multiple tribes
of techno-crypto libertarians were introducing into the financia! markets
a number of currencies that threatened to escape the control of the State
and of financia! intermediaries, thus potentially transforming the nature
of money, of capital, and of capitalism. Not by ending it, but by expanding
and deregulating its accumulation.

Cryptocu rrencies

Economy is culture (Banet-Weiser & Castells, 2017) beca use transactions

rely on a shared consensus of what is valuable. In each society, what is val-
uable depends on people's beliefs, and ultimately on the power relation-
ships that make sorne values prevail over others. Capitalism is a culture
enshrined in institutions as a result of power relationships that determine
that the source of value is the capacity of capital to generate additional
capital, measured in monetary units, as defined by the State. Currencies,
as the formalization of money, are the communication means by which
transactions can be enacted on the basis of the acceptance of a common
standard of value that forms a transactional community (Swartz, 2020).
This value is asserted by the issuer of the currency, usually the govern-
ment, or a designated authority, and materialized in a technological
support that provides the key practica! features of any given currency:
rarity (or managed scarcity), divisibility, and durability. The support
required to assure these features evolved with technology. Gold was for
a long time the support of a common standard for trading value, until it
was replaced by paper money, which is a government-backed tender that
would guarantee the nominal value, in its origin fictitiously equivalent
to the amount of gold in government hands. Later carne plastic money
(i.e., credit/debit card accounts) issued by banks, denominated in legal
currency, and supported by the assets and debts of cardholders. Thus, it is
only fitting that in the digital society, a new form of money would emerge:
a digital currency, that is a form of payment produced and operated
in bits transacted over digital networks. Furthermore, since the digital
society is simply the technological platform that allows the deployment
of a new social structure-the network society (as I explain elsewhere in
56 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

this volume)-the production of digital currencies denominated in a new

measure of value, independent from governments and from the financia!
institutions, took place in networks designed to distribute the creation
of value along peer-to-peer networks, bypassing any center of control.
W e must distinguish between digital trading of traditional currencies
(operated in financia! markets, as shown above), digital currencies, and
cryptocurrencies, whose value is created, and traded in networks, using
digital signatures that include users' secret private keys to verify their
ownership of the assets against the records included on the decentralized
ledger that is called a blockchain. Bitcoin is the most important of crypto-
currencies, and so I will focus my analysis on it, although I will also refer
to other currencies, like Ethereum, that expand the reach of the digital
currency market.

The most significant feature of these currencies is that they are rooted
in expressions of the crypto culture that emerged in the late twentieth
century (Levy, 2001). The aims of the programmers, who called them-
selves crypto-anarchists (1970s) and later cypherpunks (1990s), were
distant from the financia! world. They were primarily concerned with
the defense of cryptographic technology to protect their privacy from the
intrusion of the government and of financia! companies. Max Brichta
(2022, 2023) has provided a documented account of the cultural history
of Bitcoin that clearly demonstrates how the technologies that gave birth
to cryptocurrency networks emerged from successive waves of creative
techies concerned about the concentration of power and capital result-
ing, paradoxically, from the Internet revolution. Techno-rebels such as
Ayn Rand and Timothy May, later joined by Eric Hughes in 1992, laid
the ground for a number of projects aimed directly at the creation of
a crypto digital currency as a means for securing people's autonomy.
David Chaum's work, highly influential on May's and others', was more
directly focused on transforming finance. Chaum also created DigiCash,
a company designed to provide technology to make anonymous transac-
tions without interference. Yet it was based on standard currencies and
was subjected to the dangers of centralization of the network.

Several cypherpunks-most importantly Adam Back, the creator of the

concept behind the "Proof of W ork" algorithm that became central to
the security of the Bitcoin network; W ei Dei, the designer of voluntary
marketplaces, based on an expansion of online communities; and Nick
Szabo, the programmer of BitGold, perhaps the first decentralized cur-
 THE DIGITALIZATION OF FINANCIAL MARKETS 57

rency system-contributed the building blocks that made the creation

and expansion of Bitcoin possible. This happened at the onset of the
most major financia! crisis in decades, on 31 October 2008. On that <lay,
a message was posted on a mailing list for cryptographers created by
Hughes and other crypto-hackers, signed with the pseudonym Satoshi
Nakamoto. 1 The message started with the following sentence: "I've been
working on a new electronic cash system that's fully peer-to-peer, with
no trusted third party" (Franceschet, 2023). He went on to publish, in
February 2009, a white paper "Bitcoin: A peer-to-peer electronic cash
system," that was commented on and improved by the network of cryp-
tographers, in particular with regard to software security. The system was
based on blockchain technology that later migrated from this application
to a large number of applications used in multiple domains. Without
going into the specification ofblockchain technology, which can be easily
consulted in multiple sources (e.g., Baucherel, 2020), I will simply empha-
size the features that result from an application of the cypherpunk culture
into networked digital technology. Two characteristics are essential: first,
a networked public ledger that is protected by cryptography; second,
a mechanism to record and store data regarding the transactions so that
the computers on the network can authenticate each transaction accord-
ing to a "Proof ofWork" mechanism, that is, a record that provides proof
of when the transaction has happened, and which requires high com-
putation power in order to disincentivize rogue actors from attempting
to manipulate the ledger. Each transaction is consecutively appended to
an ever-growing ledger of chained transactions, meaning it is incredibly
transparent (albeit pseudonymous). In fact, given this never-ending chain
of consecutive transactions, the technology should have been labeled
time-chain. Yet, blockchain has become the popular name of this digital

Satoshi Nakamoto <loes not exist under such a name. It may be a person or
a group of networked persons. He/she/it has never been identified, and the
claims of a few people to be Satoshi Nakamoto have been dismissed upon
further investigation. It is probably someone or sorne people educated in
the UK because of the English spelling. W e know "Satoshi" is the creator of
Bitcoin because it originated the first transaction in the blockchain network,
although the recipient of the transaction may have been himself. The last
trace dates to 2011 when it communicated to someone in the network that
"I have moved to other things." Behind its mystery it may well be that, as one
of the goals of cypherpunks, it was trying to avo id taxation. Because it was
the original miner, its fortune in Bitcoins may have reached US$78 billion at
the height of the Bitcoin frenzy in 2021.
58 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

network technology. In a blockchain, the consensus mechanism, involv-

ing hundreds of distributed computers, makes it practically impossible to
delete or alter any past records, so that, in its application in Bitcoin, the
distributed public ledger records the transaction and also calculates its
value in Bitcoins.

The production of new Bitcoins takes place by "mining." The Bitcoin

code limits the number of Bitcoins that can be minted to a maximum
of 21 million, thus ensuring the scarcity of the currency to limit its
devaluation, or at least this was the goal. Mining involves running the
Bitcoin code to verify transactions, and solving a given "hash," that is
a mathematical problem whose solution requires a certain amount of
computational power that grows with the number of transactions. The
miner that first solves the hash is rewarded in Bitcoins in an amount that
halves roughly every 4 years, another key deflationary characteristic of the
design. Thus, whereas the reward for successful miners was 12.5 Bitcoins
until 2020 (around US$45,000 in February 2019 prices but US$147,500
at August 2020 prices), it dropped to 6.25 Bitcoins in 2020-23 (roughly
worth US$172,161 in October 2023), and at sorne point in 2024, it will
become 3.125 Bitcoins. After this reward is assigned, the block of transac-
tions is added to the blockchain with copies being verified by thousands
of computers across the network. The process restarts, with a different
hash, approximately every 10 minutes. Once a Bitcoin has been generated
through the mining process, its owner can trade it for other cryptocur-
rencies or standard currencies on digital exchanges, thus contributing to
price dynamic.

However, to fully understand the nature ofBitcoin, I must emphasize-as

pointed out by Brichta-that it is both a process in a network andan asset
as the product resulting from the process. Without the network, running
on the basis of a precise code, there would be no Bitcoins, and so Bitcoin
is a network creation, with the network formed by miners who share
certain values and own significant computing capacity. Once Bitcoins
are created, they are financia! assets, traded in the financia! market. This
double characteristic induces the misunderstanding ofBitcoin as a purely
speculative system. In fact, Bitcoin traders speculate in Bitcoins just as
financia! traders in general do on every traded asset, as I described in my
analysis of securitization in the financia! markets. Indeed, securitization
is another form of digitizing the trading of value, since most securi-
ties now are synthetic derivatives from practically untraceable origins,
 THE DIGITALIZATION OF FINANCIAL MARKETS 59

while the logic of the miners, still rooted in the culture of cryptographic
freedom, can be better characterized by pursuing accumulation of value
in the network and in the individual nodes managed by the participating
miner. For most of them, mining Bitcoins is a form of communication, or
speech, and even free speech. As Wales and Ovelmen (2019: 210) argue,
"Bitcoin is an ideological technology that was created specifically to allow
its users to associate with a broad global network of individuals who share
common values through a communication network that rejects the need
to depend on centralized intermediaries" (cited by Brichta, 2022).

In 2023 it was calculated that there were around 12 million monthly

transacting wallets that were moving roughly US$100 billion each month,
with over 100 million wallets transacting yearly, and 50,000 developers
were working regularly on crypto-related GitHub repositories (Horowitz,
2023).

The scarcity built into the Bitcoin algorithm, and the increasing insecurity
in financia! markets, has driven a substantial increase in its valuation (and
of other cryptocurrencies) over the last decade. Between 2017 and 2023,
for example, the value of Bitcoin saw an increase of 2,562%, while the
Dow Jones Industrial Average grew by 75.2% and the US Dollar Index
9.97%. On the other hand, crypto markets are characterized by volatility,
and by sorne spectacular crashes, as in 2020-21. However, at the time of
writing, Bitcoin seems to be substantially less volatile than the main stock
exchange indexes (Bloomberg, 2023b). Regardless of the perception of
volatility, the market capitalization of digital currency markets, including
crypto, remained high in 2023, reaching an estimated value of over US$1
trillion.

The growing public attention on cryptocurrencies has prompted major

banks, credit companies, and financia! institutions to seek a piece of the
Bitcoin trading markets. Banks such as Citi, Bank of America, Bank of
New York, and others, as well as financia! companies as important as
Goldman Sachs, have either announced interest or are already offering
institutional investors and valuable clients the ability to trade in crypto-
currency through their accounts.

Thus, it would appear that digital currencies are here to stay, in a striking
corroboration of the fact that culture creates value, even though any value
60 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

created in a capitalist economy is also added to the mother of ali valua-

tions, the global financial markets.

Blockchain platforms, digital currencies, and smart

contracts

The technology underlying Bitcoin, blockchain, has become widely used

as support for a number of new forms of digital financial transactions.
A particularly important type of transaction is the so-called "smart con-
tract." Through them, contracting parties inscribe the contractual condi-
tions on the blockchain, allowing for the transfer of assets to take place
automatically once the meeting of conditions is certified by the network,
without needing the intervention of any other third party or authenti-
cation organization. This is tantamount to automating transactions and
therefore it reduces transaction costs and increases the velocity of the
turnover of capital involved in the transaction. The design of the original
Bitcoin blockchain was adapted by Ethereum and others to better serve
this type of service. Thus, Ethereum enabled a tlurry of new digital cur-
rencies and tokens to enter the market, on the basis of a technology that,
in addition to offering the characteristics of a cryptographic digital cur-
rency, also facilitated "smart contracts" and similar operations. Ethereum
was introduced in 2014, and its blockchain supports its own currency, the
"ether," as well as a variety of distributed applications, including "smart
contracts." Ethereum's continued success is also due to its tlexibility. In
2022 it successfully reformed a core element of the original blockchain
protocol with the purpose to achieve a more efficient management of
the energy involved in the consensus mechanism. As a result, Ethereum
energy consumption dropped by 99% and it now uses 30,000 to 50,000
times less energy than Bitcoin (Horowitz, 2023), making ita key sticking
point for individuals and companies seeking to have a greener portfolio.

Blockchain technology has also supported the development of smart

contracts that made it possible to issue "digital tokens," each one of
the tokens following its own rules, according to the code that runs the
network. Thus, tokens are often issued as a vehicle for the funding of
new projects or to otherwise assign roles and responsibilities to members,
which, according to sorne analysts, leads to a "token digital community"
with expectations within such communities of escalation toward a "token
 THE DIGITALIZATION OF FINANCIAL MARKETS 61

economy." Tokens can typically be traded, and so eventually they are also
incorporated onto the financial market.

To allow people to keep their assets within their digital wallets in times
of volatility, "stable coins" were introduced. These are digital currencies
whose value is pegged to a financial asset or to a standard currency,
like the US dollar. Many of the biggest scandals carne from companies
that claimed to offer a stable coin, but <lid not have the corresponding
reserves, triggering investigations from the SEC that they are selling an
unregistered security (Forbes, 2023). When a digital currency is backed
by a central bank it becomes a CBDC that, while being digital, is not nec-
essarily nor typically blockchain based, but rather a virtual representation
of paper money, known and regulated by the financia! authorities.

The empire strikes back: the State and

cryptocu rrencies

Cryptocurrencies emerged as an expression of a libertarian culture

trying to escape the control of governments over transactions between
people, and their subsequent taxation, by using their own self-generated
currency behind the safety of encryption and software-managed network
interaction. This is unacceptable for the State. Because, as Cory Doctorow
reminds us, the historical origin of money is to be a facilitator of trans-
actions of goods and services among people that had to be rendered
visible, so they could be taxed (Doctorow, 2020). Therefore, it is logical
that the Chinese State, founded on the principle of exercising effective
control over the economy and society, would be the most determined
opponent ofBitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, particularly because 26%
of the global mining took place in China in 2020. Therefore, in 2021, the
Chinese Government banned all trading and mining of Bitcoin. Many
of the miners were forced to emigrate to continue their trade in more
hospitable lands. However, sorne mining seems to continue under cover.
The Chinese Government has also been tightening up its control over ali
forms of unregulated digital finance. For instance, in 2020 it blocked the
initial public offering (IPO) of Ant, which was expected to be the largest
IPO in history (Canales, 2020). Ant, a fintech company that is part of the
Alibaba Group-the most valuable financial company in China-was
trying to become a lending company beyond the control of regulators.
62 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

The company's CEO, the legendary Mr. Ma, was forced into informal
exile in Japan.

At the same time, the Bank of China has been piloting its own CBDC, the
e-CNY or digital yuan, which will provide the government with real-time
insights regarding the country's economic heartbeat, as well as a tighter
control over transactions. At the time of writing the pilot already had over
100 million wallets and over US$250 billion in transactions, although
it represented only 0.16% of the circulating money supply (Wee, 2023).
The US Federal Reserve Board, as mentioned above, was exploring the
creation of a similar currency so as to not be left behind in the global
race toward new money, and it may eventually introduce it. Indeed,
by June 2023, 11 countries (mostly from the Caribbean) had launched
their CBDCs, while another 78 were in the process of researching before
proceeding. In the US, the main difficulties appeared to be the fear of the
Federal Reserve that the introduction of a stable digital currency backed
by the government would trigger a rush ofbanking customers to transfer
their savings into more convenient means of payment, especially among
the digital natives, thus hurting bank deposits.

Two small states, El Salvador and the Central African Republic, have
already tried to join the digital trend by recognizing Bitcoin as legal tender
in their country. However, the low level of digital literacy among their
population, and the incapacity of regulators to ride the tiger of the global
cryptocurrency markets, at least at the time of writing, seem to have
provoked considerable losses to their economies and to the government's
budget (Ongweso, 2022).

Techno-libertarians were able to reinvent money, as digital currencies are

expanding at a fast rate, thus changing financia! markets. Yet, while the
original intent was to move into cryptocurrencies that would free people's
money from the State, they've had to face the Leviathan that has haunted
human history. To be continued.

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5 Teleworking and the
networked metropolis

Urbanization and digital communication

For a long time, futurologists were predicting that the advent of digital
information and communication technologies (ICTs) would allow for
widespread teleworking, so decreasing the need for spatial concentration
of population and activities. It would follow a pattern of territorial sprawl
that would contain urban growth. Instead, while connectivity, digitiza-
tion, and Internet use have expanded atan accelerated rate, in the last four
decades the planet has experienced the largest wave of urbanization in
human history. The percentage of urban population in the world was 39%
in 1980, 47% in 2000, 57% in 2023, and is projected to reach 68% by 2050.
Moreover, this process of urbanization is characterized by the increasing
relevance of a new spatial form that I conceptualized as the metropolitan
region (Castells, 2010). Although size of population is not the only dis-
tinctive feature of the metropolitan region, using itas an indicator shows
the trend: in 1960 there were only two metropolitan areas with more than
ten million inhabitants, while in 2022, there are 44. The reasons for this
apparent paradox are well known to urban research. Population follows
jobs, and jobs result from economic activity, both in production and
consumption. Spatial concentration favors economies of scale in infra-
structure, labor resources, ancillary services, and consumption markets.
Furthermore, in the knowledge and information economy that charac-
terizes the Information Age, economies of synergy became paramount
in fostering innovation and productivity. Synergy is favored by recurrent
interaction among knowledge producers. Interaction is a function of
the extent of communication bandwidth, and the broadest bandwidth
is direct human communication. Decision making in ali human activ-
ities requires multiple dimensions of communication that cannot be
fully performed at distance, such as confidentiality, personal trust, and
synchronous cooperation. The spatial concentration of high-level man-
agement functions explains the persistence of concentration in central

65
66 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

business districts (CBD). The synergy of direct interaction explains the

role of territorial concentration in the formation of milieux of innovation,
such as technology areas, artistic hubs, or research universities (Castells &
Hall, 1994; Hall, 1998). Besides, history and geography played a key role
in keeping in place the upper layer of decision-making and innovation
centers. The real estate value ofbuildings and facilities in these locations
would be lost by moving out, unless the whole production and innovation
complex were to move at the same time. This is why London's City, New
York's Wall Street, Silicon Valley, or the Harvard-MIT campuses remain
where they are even if they enjoy the most powerful telecommunication
facilities in the world that could make possible their decentralization.

Since the high value producers live and work in certain areas, labor pools,
consumer services, and the markets that result from this concentration
keep attracting population and increasing real estate prices, feeding met-
ropolitan concentration as an expression of the concentration of wealth,
power, and knowledge. However, a large share of economic activities and
their labor needs do not require the same level of economies of synergy.
As for economies of scale it depends on the relationship between the
productivity that can be achieved by work at distance and the price of
real estate. If work at distance <loes not affect productivity excessively,
the cost-saving strategy ofleaving the main metropolitan centers and/or
dispersing labor could be attractive to employers. This follows substantial
intra-metropolitan decentralization with multiple secondary centers of
information production, anda residential sprawl that is largely dependent
on housing affordability and the life cycle of the residents. Therefore,
there are two processes shaping the spatial structure at the same time:
metropolitan concentration and intra-metropolitan decentralization.

The spatial result of this process is the metropolitan region that is con-
nected to other metropolitan regions in the country and in the world
by telecommunication and information systems. Because they are the
centers of accumulation of capital, talent, and technology, and subse-
quently privileged spaces for urban amenities, they increasingly attract
high-level functions, skilled workers, entrepreneurs and innovators, and
feed themselves with global exchanges, forming a global network of
metropolitan regions (Taylor & Derudder, 2016). The intra-metropolitan
space is highly diversified, encompassing built areas, open space, and in
sorne cases agricultura! production. The metropolitan areas are internally
networked by multimodal transportation networks and Internet connec-
 TELEWORKING ANO THE NETWORKED METROPOLIS 67

tions that allow for home-based entertainment, and delivery of shopping

and food staples. This is the networked metropolis, that is the spatial
patterning of the new urban form of the Information Age, the metropol-
itan region. This spatial pattern emerged gradually without significant
increase of teleworking. Functional activities were networked, house-
holds were networked (physically and digitally), global and metropolitan
transportation and Internet networks connected economy, culture, and
society around the planet. But most people, including most knowledge
producers, continued to be submitted to exhausting, life-consuming daily
commuting, contributing to congestion and pollution, ultimately adding
to our self-destructive process of climate change. Then Covid-19 struck
in 2020. And we were forced to protect ourselves from bodily contact
by migrating everything that could be migrated to digital networks over
the Internet. For a while, teleworking exploded everywhere, and we
discovered that we could function in a new world of teleworking and
tele-everything, waiting for the salvation of vaccines produced by science.
The question arises: <loes this development signal a paradigm shift in
organizing work, life, and the city?

Teleworking: a retrospective perspective

Teleworking rarely refers to exclusively working from home. In fact,

many professionals sometimes work from transportation, cafes, libraries,
and the like (Castells et al., 2006). Thus, I will refer to "remote work"
or "non-workplace working location." It is usually considered "remote
work" if someone works from home half of the working days in a 4-week
time span.

Looking back, the pop notion of the "electronic cottage" (Huws, 1991)
never materialized. In the US, sorne scholars predicted in the 1980s that,
by 2000, 20 million people would be teleworking. In fact, at that date only
4.2 million (3.3% of the labor force) were "usually" working from home
(Mateyka et al., 2012). By 2019, just before the pandemic, they remained
at 4. 7% of the labor force (Barrero et al., 2021).

In the European Union in 1999, only 2% of the labor force worked from
home at least once a week (Gareis & Kordey, 2000), with Finland being at
the top (6.7%) and Spain being at the bottom (1.3%) In the UK, just about
68 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

2.4% were teleworking under this broad definition. In 2019, in the EU,
only 3.2% were "usually" working from home (Eurofound, 2022).

The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021 changed drastically the use
of teleworking. The study by Brynjolfsson et al. (2020) showed that, in
the US, 35.2% changed their activity to teleworking, adding to the 15%
that were already working remotely sorne of the time. Younger workers
were the most likely to switch to remote working. W ornen favor working
at home slightly more than men. Areas with higher proportions of
management and professional employees experienced a higher increase
in teleworking. Indeed, according to the study by Barrero et al. (2021),
information workers were working from home 2.28 days per week,
while manufacturing workers did so for only 0.93 days. Hansen et al.
(2023) showed a particularly strong increase in remote work jobs posting
between 2019 and 2023 in San Francisco (+491%), Boston (+437%), and
N ew York (+420%). The same study showed a similar disparity between
cities in the UK, with strong concentration in the main cities such as
London (+693%) and Edinburgh (+811%). In the European Union, the
share of employees working from home sorne of the time went from
11.1 % in 2019 to 21.9% in 2021. Similar trends were found in a study
of 20 OECD countries (Adrjan et al., 2022), with the exception of Japan
where the number of teleworkers remained stable. In general, the increase
in remote work carne from workers who were working in-person before.
This study included a survey of workers' feelings on their experience of
teleworking. The majority considered ita positive experience. Fifty-four
percent said they had higher productivity in contrast to only 13% who felt
less productive. They perceived major benefits for their lives in terms of
saving time, tlexibility in organizing work, fewer meetings, and avoiding
long commuting. In the US, 61 million minutes per day were saved by
avoiding commuting during the pandemic. Women valued benefits from
teleworking more than men. In a survey by Aksoy et al. (2022), 25% of
respondents said they would quit their job if they were compelled to
return to the office. They were ready to reduce their earnings up to 5%
to pay for remote work 2 or 3 days per week. In the US, 33% said they
would leave their job if they had to return full time to the office. This
attitude was stronger for highly skilled professionals, those most coveted
by companies.

Managers are positive about teleworking in general, but less than workers
beca use they fear loss of control of the work process (Criscuolo et al.,
 TELEWORKING ANO THE NETWORKED METROPOLIS 69

2021). However, both workers and managers expressed their preference

for a hybrid model, spending sorne time in the workplace and sorne time
working at home. This is because they also need to socialize with col-
leagues and they need to maintain space-time boundaries between work
and home life. In fact, in the US, hybrid working represents around 25.6%
of the workforce, while full remote work is limited to 7.9%. This sudden
increase in teleworking was favored by technological innovation that
provided new tools for collaborative working at distance, such as Zoom,
Microsoft Teams, and Webex (Florida et al., 2023). The fast progress in
artificial intelligence is enhancing productivity in processes of remote
work thanks to improved human-Al interaction, and automation of
communication (Jarrahi et al., 2023).

However, the jury is still out concerning the intensity of teleworking

after the partial confinement of the Covid-19 pandemic. Most activities
returned to the usual pattern, particularly in education, health, govern-
ment, and social services. Yet, the accumulated experience was used in
increasing distant working cooperation, for instance in education. In
the private sector, the information-intensive activities kept increasing
the frequency of teleworking, to save office space and location costs in
expensive areas, and to make life easier for workers. The persistence of
teleworking varied substantially depending on sectors and on geographic
areas, depending on the relative importance of information processing
employment in their labor pools.

At the time of writing (2023), studies that evaluated teleworking in the

post-pandemic situation were scarce. However, an interesting study by
Hansen et al. (2023) projected growth of teleworking by analyzing remote
work job postings. They appeared to be increasing in a number of coun-
tries. In the US, the number of job offers explicitly mentioning remote
work increased from 3.5% in 2014 to 12.5% in January 2023. The study
was able to evaluate vacancy postings that explicitly offered hybrid or fully
remote work from 2020 to 2023 in five industrialized countries.

In the US, the share of postings of remote work offerings increased

substantially in San Francisco, Boston, and New York and stabilized in
2022-23, mainly reflecting the growth of information and knowledge
sectors. Since these are the sectors that lead economic growth and add
highly skilled employment, it would not be fanciful to project the increase
of remote work or hybrid work in the coming years.
70 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

An emerging spatial structure?

Concentration of activities and residence in the largest metropolitan

areas seems to have slowed down in the post-Covid years, while still
being the predominant form ofhuman settlements around the world. An
insightful analysis by Marley Randazzo using US Census data (Randazzo,
2022) shows a large metropolitan outmigration in the 15 most populated
metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in 2021-22, with San Francisco
and N ew York leading the tren d. There is a flow of residents into smaller
metropolitan areas and sorne rural counties. However, at the same time,
international immigration concentrates in the largest metropolitan areas,
where job opportunities are the highest, compensating sorne of the loss of
population in these cities. What is a definite trend is the outmigration out
of the urban core, following the pattern of metropolitan decentralization
into suburbs and exurbs. Ramani and Bloom (2021) provided additional
evidence on the decentralization pattern. They showed that in 2021 the
densest urban areas lost 9% of their population and 16% of their busi-
nesses relative to pre-Covid-19 levels. Fifty-eight percent of the movers
relocated within the same metropolitan areas, into suburbs and exurbs,
both for population and business, while 29% moved to midsized metro
areas, 9% went to other large cities, and 4% to rural areas. While telework
facilitates this movement, the main reasons for this outmigration seem to
be the increase in real estate prices and the life cycle of the large cohort
of millennials. The urban renaissance based on the appeal of the culture
of city life diminishes as millennials reach the age of forming families
rather than frequenting bars (Myers, 2016). The possibility of telework-
ing may be more relevant to explain the relocation of offices outside the
CBDs, influenced by the impact of rising real estate costs as a result of the
concentration of valuable activities in a limited space. Traffic congestion,
pollution, and the perception of unsafe environment are factors related
to employee preference for the hybrid model of work location, including
as much the wishes of managers as individuals. Yet, the feasibility of this
preference is conditioned by the relocation of business. Sin ce businesses
are also moving, there is a convergence of interests that could con tribute
to a new model of urban flows, and therefore to a new pattern of urban
settlements, under the conditions of efficient teleworking based on new
ICTs. Nevertheless, it should be clear that the high-level decision-making
centers and the main centers of innovation, be it in technology, research,
or culture, seem to reproduce their traditional pattern oflocating in a few
 TELEWORKING ANO THE NETWORKED METROPOLIS 71

centers supported by the best infrastructure and the symbolic value of

their location.

Overall, the emerging spatial structure seems to be characterized by

several simultaneous trends:

• Persistence of dominance of the largest metropolitan areas at the top

of the hierarchy of wealth, power, knowledge, and culture. They are
globally connected, and they continue to be magnets for attraction of
capital and labor at the international level. They also are increasingly
the most expensive areas to live and to do business.
• Intra-metropolitan decentralization of business, residence, and ser-
vices, favored by the possibility of teleworking, and dense transporta-
tion systems.
• Sorne limited deconcentration of population and activities moving to
medium-sized metropolitan areas and sorne rural areas.

Nonetheless, much of this movement is in fact a territorial expansion of

large metropolitan areas that overflow into areas that can be connected
by fast transportation and Internet networks. These areas may remain
categorized as rural in the census, but they become part of the actual met-
ropolitan areas. Furthermore, what characterizes the metropolitan region,
in my analysis, is that it links up gradually with preexisting urban centers
that become incorporated into the daily workings of the metropolis. Thus,
what the growth of teleworking may be inducing over time is to increase
the network of intra-metropolitan connections to form a much larger
territorial expanse. The image of the "electronic cottage," working from
a mountain top while cities fade into the past, continues to be a utopian
vision, as an attempt to escape the unbearable reality of unsustainable
megalopolises.

That is, unless emerging embryos of an alternative work and life culture
pickup steam using teleworking as a tool of social transformation.

Digital nomads

"[Digital Nomads] are mobile professionals who perform their work

remotely from anywhere in the world utilizing digital technologies"
(Hannonen, 2020: 335). The concept was introduced by Makimoto
72 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

and Manners in 1997. Although the phenomenon grew in importance

throughout the years, it became highly significant after the Covid-19
pandemic, as companies released control over the workplace of their
employees. In the US, the number of digital nomads grew by 49% from
2019 to 2020, reaching 10.9 million in 2020. Since that date it has contin-
ued to increase, reaching 15.5 million in the US and 35 million worldwide
in 2023, creating a value of US$787 billion per year. This shows that its
expansion is not limited to the effects of the pandemic. In fact, it is an
indicator of a profound cultural change, in which freedom and discovery
are paramount motivations for those highly skilled professionals whose
knowledge and qualifications allow them to decide the time and space
of their work. As Makimoto and Manners predicted, they are driven by
"lifestyle freed by technology from constraints of geography and distan ce"
(1997: 242). Lower cost of living than in the countries where they used
to work is also a major consideration. In 2023, their average living costs
in their chosen paradises were around US$1,700 monthly, while their
average annual income was over US$120,000. Mobility and autonomy
of their work <loes not lower their productivity. In fact, it increased
by 4% over what it was in their previous location. Fifty-one percent of
digital nomads come from the US, 8% from the UK, 5% from Russia, 5%
from Canada, and 3% from Germany. Their preferences go to countries
perceived as exotic, and definitely lower cost, with Mexico and Thailand
topping the list, followed by Indonesia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Brazil, and
Portugal. The top five most popular cities are Mexico City, Chiang Mai,
Bali, Medellin, and Lisbon. Forty-six percent are self-employed, including
freelancers, while 35% are employees working at distance. They are pro-
grammers, designers, creators, and work in technology, finance, cultural
industries, and marketing. Two-thirds are single and are not interested
in dating. Men in their thirties are the dominant group. Children and
families are absent from their world. The pursuit of freedom, exemplified
in their frequent traveling, is paramount in all dimensions of life. They
rarely mix on a regular basis with the local population (Hermann & Paris,
2020; Clayton, 2021; MBO Partners, 2023). Many countries try to attract
them because of their contribution to the economy and their technolog-
ical know-how by offering special visas and fiscal exemptions. A case in
point is Puerto Rico, which has succeeded in creating a large community
of bitcoiners. Sarah Clayton has investigated in detail the fascinating
experience of these bitcoiners in her doctoral dissertation (Clayton, 2021 ).
 TELEWORKING ANO THE NETWORKED METROPOLIS 73

The phenomenon of digital nomadism is rooted in a culture of individual

freedom that is achieved by superior knowledge and entrepreneurial
spirit, essential value-holding assets in our society. Thus, it is bound to
keep growing, with different manifestations, be it freelancing, remote
work for companies, or self-programmed lives. It is statistically minor
but culturally significant because it influences the imaginary of the young
generation of techno-savvy professionals. Instead ofbeing attracted by the
amenities of the urban life of old cities, they decided to select for them-
selves the locations that were most desirable to them. So doing, they made
them desirable and increased the outmigration of those professionals who
had a choice to get away from the downtowns of the main metropolitan
areas in developed countries. The spatial consequences of digital nomad-
ism are complex to evaluate because trends and choices vary constantly,
as the travel experiences become an endless search for new discoveries.
However, we can already say that a small group of influential individuals
has moved fully into a global space of flows, leaving behind a space of
places where most people live, survive, and suffer in a degraded urban
world from where the only ones able to escape are the new elites of the
digital society.

Telework and cities in a global perspective

Most of the empirical analysis presented in this chapter depicts trends in

the US, because much of the scholarly evidence that has been collected
refers to this country. How has teleworking in the rest of the world
impacted on the metropolitan structure during and after the Covid-19
pandemic? In Europe, both the size of the urban population and urban
growth decreased during the pandemic, largely due to a decrease in net
migration (Tricarico & De Vidovich, 2021). Larger cities experienced
higher declines in population growth. Sixty-one of the 66 largest metro-
politan areas experienced, on average, a drop of93% in their growth rate.
One in five cities had declines of over 1%, including 64 Spanish cities and
34 German cities. Sixty-three percent ofEuropean cities reported popula-
tion loss in absolute terms during the pandemic; 28% were already losing
population before the pandemic, 27% changed from growth to decline,
with over half of Spanish, Italian, German, and Belgian cities being in
this group. This included Berlín, Rome, and Madrid. Yet, overall, there
has not been massive outmigration from metropolitan areas. In France,
74 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

intra-metropolitan decentralization continued, with suburbs and exurbs

growing in the periphery of the metropolitan areas.

In the UK, a decline in residential mobility has been observed, with greater
mobility decreases in the most-dense areas (Rowe et al., 2023). Most city
out-movers relocated in the nearby countryside, thus expanding the met-
ropolitan area rather than reversing the migration flows. Indeed, when
there is a nearby major city, outmigrants choose a new urban environ-
ment rather than the countryside. Only a small share of city out-movers
changed location far from their city. For instance, just 4% moved from
Inner London to other cities. In Italy, telework is very limited, and the
decline in metropolitan population appears to be related to the reduction
of international migration during the pandemic and to overall popula-
tion decline (-6.7% in 2020, -4.3% in 2021). Pre-pandemic population
increases reversed in northern and central Italy. In Spain, the territorial
effects of the pandemic were more significant (González-Leonardo &
Rowe, 2022). Thus, core cities increased outmigration and decreased
immigration, while rural areas decreased outmigration (12.6%) and
increased immigration by 20.5%. Madrid and Barcelona experienced
substantial net migration declines (-12.4% and-14%), while low-density
provinces had large gains in internal migration, particularly areas around
Madrid. However, the study by Chapple et al. (2023) showed sub-
stantial downtown recovery in Europe by the Fall of 2022: economic
activity increased in relationship to the pre-pandemic period by 175%
in Barcelona, 150% in Madrid, 173% in Berlin, and 115% in Paris. The
tourist industry seems to have played a role in the speed of this recovery.
Therefore, metropolitan concentration and intra-metropolitan decentral-
ization continue to be the dominant trends in the long term. Teleworking
is largely intra-metropolitan.

In North America, the post-pandemic downtown recovery was more

limited: 31 % in San Francisco, 43% in Seattle, 46% in Montreal, as
examples of a similar trend. The economy picked up in the main metro-
politan areas after the pandemic. Yet, locations for residents and business
changed their pattern, making plausible the hypothesis that remote work
became more significant, and kept growing with a recovered economy.

Overall, spatial patterns in Europe after the pandemic do not seem to be

different from those in the US, albeit with a greater strength of downtown
 TELEWORKING ANO THE NETWORKED METROPOLIS 75

areas in the post-pandemic period, perhaps dueto their attractiveness for

global tlows of travelers.

In Japan, the pandemic slowed inter-prefectural migration toward Tokyo

while remote areas gained population (Fielding & Ishikawa, 2021).

As for developing countries, which account for the large majority of world
population, the few reliable studies (Gottlieb et al., 2021; Saltiel, 2020)
evaluate at less than 10% the number of urban jobs that can be performed
remotely. This considerably restricted the measures to prevent Covid-19
contagions in these countries. Remote work is limited to high-level
managerial positions and clerical workers. Thus, the spatial patterns for
most of the urban world continue to be determined by economic and
social forces characterized by uneven territorial development. Most assets
and job opportunities are concentrated in the largest metropolitan areas,
which continue to attract massive tlows of domestic and international
migration that feed the expansion of gigantic metropolitan regions with
extreme social inequality and environmental degradation. In 2023, the 20
largest metropolitan areas in the world are growing faster in population
than the other metropolitan areas. The top ten areas house populations
of over 20 or 30 million (Tokyo, Delhi, Jakarta, Shanghai, Manila, Seoul,
Cairo, Kolkata, Mumbai, Sao Paulo) (World Population Review, 2023). In
these areas, advanced telecommunication networks and Internet services
connect their top managerial functions with similar locations around the
world, forming a global network of communication to serve the strategi-
cally decisive nuclei of the global economy (Taylor & Derudder, 2016).
The primary role of the global telecommunication infrastructure is to
configure a space of tlows for global capital and power, while removing
the daily life of the dominant elites from the surrounding territories
where most people live. There is, however, a special form of people's
teleworking: the mobile phone networks of the informal economy that
organize markets and provide jobs for the majority of the urban labor
force. Therefore, the practice of teleworking is stratified like everything
else between global tlows and local places. However, local places are also
connected by digital phone networks that provide platforms for survival
in a sharply segregated metropolitan world.
76 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

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6 Human learning, computer
learning, Al learning

The capacity to process information in order to learn from accumulated

knowledge and experience is a fundamental feature of our species. This is
the source of our ability to act upon our environment and onto ourselves
to enact whatever our consciousness and will decide to do.

In modern societies, there has been an increasing formalization and insti-

tutionalization of the learning process in the education system. However,
learning is much broader because it extends to all forms of learning,
including learning in the family, at work, and in society at large. Formal
education is also broader than learning because it includes the reproduc-
tion of norms and rules specific to the social context where education
takes place.

My analysis in this book will focus on learning in the context of formal

education, as the digitalization of the learning procedures is transforming
the previous forms of teaching and learning, sometimes in tension with
the established rules of educational institutions. Formal education offers
a convenient vantage point of observation to examine the interaction
between digital technologies of information and communication, and
human learning. The key feature of formal education is that teaching
mediates the learning process. And the fundamental transformation is the
changing forms of interaction between teachers, machines, and students.
In this regard, it may be useful to distinguish sequentially between differ-
ent forms of this interaction.

Computers in education

The effects of digitalization on educational attainment have to be analyzed

in a broader perspective by understanding the factors that favor academic
performance, measured by seores in the classroom and at the country
level. What has been established for a long time, starting with the classic

79
80 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

study by Bourdieu and Passeron (1970), is that academic achievement is

largely intluenced by the social background of the students: the higher the
educational level of the parents, the higher the success of their children.
Educational level of parents correlates with income, and with the quality
of the educational institutions attended by their children, the other ele-
ments that contribute to academic achievement. Yet, the educational level
of families is in fact the most important factor, thus reproducing social
stratification rather than correcting overall inequality.

Interpretations of this basic fact include the correspondence between the

values of the teachers and the cultural level of the learned classes, as well
as the ability of the family to provide help and support the students in
their homework. A second major positive intluence on students' perfor-
mance is the quality of the teachers. Indeed, this is a consistent finding
in the studies conducted in multiple countries and in diverse technolog-
ical environments. The quality of the teachers is a direct function of the
quality of their training in higher education institutions, of their salaries,
and of their social prestige. Scandinavia, and particularly Finland, score
high in these three factors, and so they have the highest quality primary
education in the world (Castells & Himanen, 2002; Thrupp et al., 2023).

However, while these sociocultural factors continue to operate in the

twenty-first century, the question remains open with regard to the poten-
tial changes introduced by digital technology in the education process.
Time ago, there was a widespread belief that introducing computers in
the classroom would help teaching and learning, potentially leveling the
chances of students that were entering the digital world together, while
their parents were less adapted to the digital generation. This beliefled to
policies such as "one laptop per child" as a lever of educational improve-
ment, and ultimately, relative equalization of opportunities. It soon
became clear that if computers were not connected to the Internet, they
were little more than a typewriter attached to a calculator. Connecting
the schools to the Internet thus became the real issue. This strategy met
with the obstacle of lack of adequate connectivity infrastructure in many
schools, particularly in low-income countries and neighborhoods.

Inequality in Internet access and in the quality of digital technologies

continues to be a major issue, as I will show in Chapter 7. However, once
schools were updated to incorporate laptops with Internet connection,
scholarly research discovered that there is no magic formula to improve
 HUMAN LEARNING, COMPUTER LEARNING, Al LEARNING 81

education by simply introducing digital technology. Indeed, in surveys

both in the US and at the international level, the large majority of teachers
agree that the use ofICTs was a priority to improve their work. However,
in a 2018 International Computer Literacy Survey, almost half of teachers
complained that they did not have enough technical support, and only
41 % considered that there was not enough time to prepare the lessons
with the new methodology. Moreover, in spite of the favorable attitude
of teachers toward digital technology, the same survey in a number of
countries found that the average percentage of teachers using ICTs at
the school was 48%, reaching 50% in the US, and with sorne countries
ranking much lower, such as Germany (23%), Italy (35%), or Chile (25%)
(National Center for Education Statistics, 2018). In fact, only a minority
of people surveyed in a number of countries considered that their formal
education had given them the technology knowledge they need (39% for
the US, 31 % for the UK, 25% for Germany), with China being the excep-
tion (68% feel they acquired the necessary skills and knowledge) (Statista,
2018). This may be the outcome of governments accounting for only 11 %
of funding for educational technology innovations, in contrast to the
prívate sector (40%) or even NGOs (46%) (Brookings Institution, 2019).

Research on the relationship between use of computers at school and

academic achievement counters the optimism about the positive role
of digital technology. The main reliable source in the measurement of
academic achievement, the OECD PISA studies that compare a number
of countries, found no positive correlation between use of computers in
schools and educational outcomes. Moreover, in most countries, the use
of computers in the classroom was negatively correlated with academic
performance. On the other hand, in sorne countries, use of computers
at home proved beneficia! for math and science learning. A possible
hypothesis is that the school setting was not favorable to a synergistic
contribution between teachers and students. Indeed, students who do not
use their digital devices in their reading classrooms have a better academic
performance than those who use them, in every region of the world, with
the important exception of North America. In North America, Sweden,
and Australia, using digital technology for more than 60 hours per week
is positively associated with higher seores. Thus, there is clearly a wide
diversity of technology effects that appear to be associated with the level
of technological development. However, in most of the world, low use
of technology correlates positively with achievement (OECD, 2018).
Another OCED study asserts that "As in earlier studies, the frequency of
82 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

technology use in schools correlates negatively with math, reading, and

science achievement in the large majority of countries," a finding that is
supported and analyzed by a number of academic articles (Shewbridge et
al., 2005; Woessmann & Fuchs, 2007; OECD, 2015).

On the other hand, an older study concluded that in most countries

the use of computers at home correlates positively with science seores
(OECD, 2010). How can we make sense of the discrepancy of findings,
particularly since the most used data come from the same source (OECD,
2018) at different points in time? I would suggest that educational insti-
tutions have met difficulties in deepening the incorporation of digital
technologies successfully. In the research program I directed on a repre-
sentative sample of secondary schools in Catalonia, we reached a mean-
ingful conclusion: in spite of the fact that the schools were connected to
the Internet, teachers and students would perform better when working
at home on their own, while their work with Internet at the school was
not frequent and constrained by institutional rules (Momino et al., 2008).
Yet, working at home using the Internet is not advised by educators out of
fear that unsupervised students may be distracted by playing video games,
particularly boys, who spend more time than girls playing rather than
studying (OECD, 2018; Statista, 2019). Excessive video-gaming negatively
affects academic performance (OECD, 2018: 35). However, contrary to
the usual perception of adults, playing video games seems to improve
performance in digital reading, and overall digital skills when limited to
a moderate amount of time.

The fact remains that the majority of findings in the stream of research
on computers and academic advancement in school settings point to
disappointing results of the contribution of technology per se to better
educational outcomes. Thus, Karlsson (2022) found a negative associa-
tion between computer use and test seores in primary schools. This neg-
ative impact of technology on academic achievement was larger among
low-performing pupils. What about computers for academic work at
home? In an even more shocking finding, still using international survey
data from OECD PISA, Agasisti et al. found that "the use ofICT at home
for school-related tasks results in the average student achieving lower
seores and that this negative association is more pronounced for low
achievers and even more so for high achievers" (2020: 601-620). Belgium
and the Netherlands were exceptions, showing positive effects. Yet, all
 HUMAN LEARNING, COMPUTER LEARNING, Al LEARNING 83

other countries in the survey showed negative associations, particularly

Germany.

How can we make sense of the recurrent finding showing no relation-

ship or even negative relationships between use of the Internet and
learning in school-related tasks? An interesting hypothesis, elaborated
by OECD experts, suggests that "In the past, students could find clear
and often singular answers to their questions in carefully curated and
government-approved textbooks, and they could generally trust those
answers to be true" (my emphasis).

Today, they will find thousands of answers to their questions online, and
it is up to them to figure out what is true and what is false, what is right
and what is wrong. While in many off-line situations readers can assume
that the author of the text they are reading is competent, well informed,
and benevolent, when reading online blogs, forums, or news sites, readers
must constantly assess the quality and reliability of the information, based
on implicit or explicit cues related to the content, format, or so urce of the
text. This is not exactly a new phenomenon, but the speed, volume, and
reach of information tlows in the current digital ecosystem have created
the perfect conditions for fake news to thrive, affecting public opinion and
political choices. In this "post-truth" climate, quantity seems to be valued
more than quality when it comes to information. Assertions that "feel
right" but have no basis in fact become accepted as truth. Algorithms that
sort people into groups of like-minded individuals create social media
echo chambers that amplify views, and leave individuals uninformed
of and insulated from opposing arguments that may alter their beliefs.
"There is a scarcity of attention, but an abundance of information"
(OECD, 2018). The same PISA study found that less than 10% of students
in OECD countries were able to differentiate between fact and opinion.

In line with these arguments a striking new development in educational

policy took place in June 2023. Sweden, one of the first countries to intro-
duce computers in public schools, reversed the practice, and downplayed
the role of the Internet in learning while restoring the widespread use of
textbooks.

Lost in the fog of the Internet galaxy, and with little training in critical
reading, students become largely dependent on the guidance of their
teachers. At the same time the worsening of the conditions under which
84 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

educational institutions perform creates a major obstacle for teachers to

fulfill their traditional role, while the digitally savvy generation lives in
the fantasy ofbeing empowered by their unlimited access to information
without being able to evaluate the accuracy. It follows a crisis of the learn-
ing process increasingly dominated by disinformed bewilderment.

Distance learning

Distance learning is a traditional form of education, particularly in higher

education and in professional training. Yet, it has been transformed by
the use of the Internet. The first major university to teach 100% over the
Internet was the Open University of Catalonia (UOC), which started
operations in September 1995, the same year the commercialization of
the World Wide Web began. Currently the UOC offers a broad variety of
programs and degrees to over 60,000 students. Sorne of the best distance
education institutions, such as the Open University in the UK and the
Open University in the Netherlands, gradually shifted to 100% Internet
teaching. In the twenty-first century, there was a massive expansion of
distance learning, both public and private, at all levels of education, but
mainly in higher education and employee training. The total number of
enrolments reached 47 million in 2017. Naturally, the trend increased
substantially during the Covid-19 pandemic, reaching 189 million in
2021 (WEF, 2022). In the US, the percentage of undergraduate students
at degree-granting postsecondary institutions who enrolled exclusively in
distance education courses reached 52% of the total. In the case of private
for-profit universities, it was much higher: 89% of the total (National
Center for Education Statistics, 2021). It appears that for-profit univer-
sities believe that Internet-based education offers the possibility to teach
to large numbers while saving costs by automating the learning process
instead of hiring teachers. However, cost cutting depends on the quality
of the service provided. Internet-based teaching that uses personalized
interaction and continuous evaluation of the learning process can in fact
be more expensive, because it requires a vast network of highly qualified
educators. Yet, the large majority of online courses offer substandard
quality. In most Latin American countries, the paradox is that public
in-presence universities, usually ofbetter quality than most private insti-
tutions, enroll middle-class students paying low tuition because of their
better performance in academic tests, while lower-income groups tend
 HUMAN LEARNING, COMPUTER LEARNING, Al LEARNING 85

to only access more expensive for-profit online universities. The debate

concerning the quality of online education rages all over the world, and
online education is usually considered to be inferior to traditional educa-
tion by the academic establishment.

Cutting across the fog of a polarized debate dominated by corporatist

ideology and business interests, I can propose three main conclusions.
First, distance education seems to be better suited to professionals who
are already in the labor market and need to update or acquire a specific
skill or receive a new degree as they search for a promotion.

Secondly, for standard undergraduate education, and for advanced

research degrees, in-presence education is preferable, particularly because
of the role played by the social environment among young students.

Thirdly, in those cases where the location of students makes it difficult to

travel to a school, and even more so when there is an emergency, such as
a pandemic (probably a recurrent event in the coming years), there is no
option other than distance education. If so, it is essential to improve the
quality, the methodology, and the connectivity infrastructure for a fruitful
deployment of education and vocational training on a large scale.

Furthermore, the existence of distance education may increase educa-

tional inequality if low-income students do not have access to quality
infrastructure, or any infrastructure at all. This is particularly dramatic in
the case of primary and secondary education. Thirty-one percent of stu-
dents in these educational levels worldwide cannot be connected digitally,
either beca use of lack of public infrastructure or lack of family resources.
This is a particularly acute problem in Africa, South Asia, and Latín
America (Brookings Institution, 2020). According to UNICEF, at least
463 million students cannot access distance learning (UNICEF, 2020).

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, ChatGPT

The process of learning and, more specifically, the formal education

system are being deeply impacted, according to most experts in the
field, by the applications of artificial intelligence (Holmes & Tuomi,
2022), understood as the programming of algorithms to refine existing
86 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

knowledge and imitate forms of reasoning and decision making used

by humans. In recent years these algorithms have shown a giant leap in
performance, expressed for instance by Google's AlphaGo beating the
human world Go champion in October 2021. However, the apparent sim-
plicity of this conception of Al is contested by Kate Crawford, one of the
leading analysts of Al, who argues in a powerful book that "Al is neither
artificial nor intelligent" (Crawford, 2021: 7). Because it is a human
production, generated and applied in specific social contexts, "each way
of defining artificial intelligence is doing work, setting a frame for how it
will be understood, measured, valued, and governed" (Crawford, 2021: 7).
Accepting this perspective, I will be focusing here on the implications of
specific algorithms deployed in the process of learning, which ultimately
amounts to asserting the potential of machine learning on human learn-
ing, that is, understanding by machine learning the use of algorithms
that enable computers to make predictions or decisions based on a large
amount of data without the need for explicit programming.

Machine learning operates in two different modalities: supervised and

unsupervised learning. In the first case, humans guide the computer
through a process of pattern recognition and decision making. In the
case of unsupervised learning, computers are provided with programs
able to identify patterns within large collections of data through which
they develop rules toward interpreting future data without direct human
intervention. I emphasize that the critica! foundation of this technology is
the datasets that provide the raw material with which the algorithm can be
trained. And these data are not neutral; they are collected and organized
according to interests, values, and purposes that the machine cannot
evaluate unless instructed to do so.

At the forefront of the discussion on Al in education at the time of writing

is the use of LLMs that are powered by massive databases of text from
which they manage to extract very intricate patterns, such as the rules
underlying human language. Perhaps the most popular of these models,
as I mentioned in the Introduction, is ChatGPT (short for Generative
Pre-Trained Transformer). Although the operating principie is the same,
their training may induce substantial differences. For instance, in the
case of a ChatGPT competitor, Claude GPT (designed by Anthropic), the
company claims that a distinctive characteristic that might give it a com-
petitive edge is that it is "much less likely to produce harmful outputs"
(Edwards, 2023). This is achieved through the process of cleaning datasets
 HUMAN LEARNING, COMPUTER LEARNING, Al LEARNING 87

of harmful content and through training, where the values of program-

mers can constrain the way in which the machine will create outputs.

The term Generative refers to the capacity of the machine to generate new
patterns and new arguments that were not included in the instructions of
the program or present within the training datasets that it was exposed
to. It is this feature that triggers all kinds of human hallucinations about
the potential autonomy of the machines, and thus the social alarm that
accompanies the rise of what has been labeled as the "algorithmic culture."
In this chapter I will focus on the issues surrounding Al in learning, as the
broader discussion on the ethical and political implications of artificial
intelligence is treated elsewhere in this volume. Before considering the
specific impact of ChatGPT, it is worth noting the wide uses of Al in
education in programs such as adaptive learning, smart campus, teacher
evaluation, intelligent tutoring assistants, and virtual classrooms. Much of
the reliable research concludes that "Al has a beneficia! effect on both the
quality of instruction provided by teachers and on learning outcomes of
students" (Alam, 2022: 395-406), although the jury is still out as this field
of study evolves at a fast pace.

As for ChatGPT, examining the limited evidence on the uses of ChatGPT

in education available at the time of writing, it appears that it offers a wide
range of possibilities: it can provide a platform of information on available
data and analyses on a given topic, or it can construct one or several argu-
ments depending on the purpose of the request. In this case it is a useful
tool for teaching, learning, and research. The guidance of teachers in ali
cases seems to be essential.

This may explain why, at least in the US in 2023, 22% of students and
40% of teachers reported to use it regularly. And the vast majority of
them think that schools should bring themselves up to date in the use
of new technologies (Walton Family Foundation, 2023). On the other
hand, a majority of teachers complain that they have little guidance from
the school, 43% consider that these tools make their jobs more difficult,
and half of them have experienced the problem of students cheating in
their assignments (USA Today, 2023). Of adult students, 89% have used
ChatGPT to do their homework, including 48% who reported using it
to perform a test. Others admitted to using it to write essays or to create
a paper outline. However, in multiple instances, they use ChatGPT as an
88 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

assistant, for instance for translation, which helps advance their academic
skills (Zhang et al., 2023).

In spite of the diversity of uses, sorne of them highly beneficia! for the
students, secondary schools in the US have reacted very negatively,
emphasizing the risk of cheating as the main implication of ChatGPT.
Key school districts like New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Virginia
have banned its use (Johnson, 2023).

In the case of higher education, there is an array of policies: sorne aim at

completely banning GPTs; others allow their use for certain tasks; others
require permission and citing or acknowledging ChatGPT as a source of
information (Caulfield, 2023). Overall, institutional distrust of students
seems to be the most prevalent reaction to technological change. This
shows the conditioning of Al uses by the values inherent to the context
in which it is used. Most educational institutions are very conservative in
their pedagogy, and emphasize control and authority over the students,
ultimately implemented in the sacred nature of exams. In many cases
these exams are based on repeating memorized information. In an age in
which all information is accessible on the Internet this seems outdated,
and so the most important educational outcome is to develop the ability
of students to think critically and to recombine information in the pro-
duction and expression of their own understanding.

This gap between the digital culture and traditional values creates
a tension in sorne school systems because it means more work for the
teachers and less authority for the school. There is an obvious need to
experiment with a new pedagogy adapted to the culture and technology
of our time. To be sure, within the current pedagogical structures, the use
of ChatGPT has the risk of cheating in assignments, which is a problem
beca use it is unfair for other students and could lead to a lack of incentives
for learning.

It is worth noting that AI-powered systems also provide tools to detect

the origin of a text. Detectors of plagiarism have been in place for a long
time and disciplinary actions to sanction plagiarism are widely enforced.
It may be the same case in the near future with GPT programs. GPTZero
and Originality.AI are among the most used detector programs in 2023.
With the safeguard of Al control of Al uses, educational institutions could
allow teachers and students to experiment freely with Al assistance while
 HUMAN LEARNING, COMPUTER LEARNING, Al LEARNING 89

keeping their autonomy to take their thinking above and beyond tasks
that have or can be automated. This is a frequent practice in a number
of private companies with their employees. Sorne studies already point
toward the academic advantages of using the new machine learning con-
tributions by making them complementary and not substitutive ofhuman
learning (Dwivedi et al., 2023).

The virtual classroom

Looming on the horizon of educational transformation, the "virtual

classroom" merges physical and virtual worlds, by using virtual reality
and augmented reality, and combining in-presence communication and
Internet-based interaction. Students benefit from graphic displays of sim-
ulation models in science, or from guided visits to distant museums, or
from experimentation of their own ideas in interaction with GPT models.

Assisted learning and tutoring robots mediate between teachers and stu-
dents, and among student groups, while exploring the hypertext of images
and text that display the stock of human knowledge. In this context, and
under proper supervision, entertainment video games could be a positive
factor in the learning process (Martinez et al., 2022).

These virtual classrooms do exist in a few elite institutions. It would seem

out of touch with the real world to build these new techno-pedagogical
systems in a world in which at least half a billion children cannot connect
to any external source of information and most of the schools barely
survive with the indispensable help of textbooks. Yet, these images of
a new learning environment are not just a futuristic fantasy, but a blue-
print of what human learning could be if people, properly assisted by
machines, really mattered.

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Alam, A. (2022) "Employing adaptive learning and intelligent tutoring robots

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7 Digital divides: territory,
gender, age, class,
ethnicity, cultures

The digitalization of society has spread globally at a fast pace, and it is

projected to expand further in the short term (2030), as I documented in
the Introduction to this volume. However, the diffusion of technological
affordances and users' access and capabilities vary in step with the sources
of inequality around the world. Moreover, the United Nations Agenda
2030 redefined its goals for digitalization from aiming for "universal
access" to "universal and meaningful access," a distinction that we aim to
make more precise when examining the empirical record in this chapter. 1

Territorial divides

In the age of globalization and Internet networking, digital inequality

between countries remains, largely associated with the wealth of the
country. The percentage of Internet users over the global population
in 2022 was 66%, but it reached 92% in the high-income countries,
79% in the upper-middle-income countries, falling to 56% for the
lower-middle-income group, and to 26% for the low-income countries.
There is also a difference of penetration for smartphones, although there
is a high proportion of users of smartphones everywhere, the highest
percentage being in Europe, with 92%, the same percentage as in the US.
Mobile cellular subscriptions reach 86% in Africa and over 100% in most
regions of the world, with 121 % the figure in Europe, illustrating the
unequal distribution, whereby sorne people have severa! subscriptions
while others, even if they are a small minority, have none. Territorial

Por simplicity, references for statistics on ICT use will be omitted in the
text. They are included in the references section, and are typically from ITU
when it comes to aggregates. Exceptionally, data is sourced from Statista or
the Pew Research Center.

93
94 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

inequality extends, in every country, to the sharp disparity between urban

and rural areas, while the need for broadband connectivity is more acute
for rural localities. Indeed, a study by Galperin et al. (2022) on rural
Ecuador in 2011-19 illustrates this. The researchers found substantial
gains in income, and a modest improvement in employment, associated
with the introduction of high-speed broadband that facilitated access
to critical market information, and helped to diversify employment. In
a larger context, a statistical analysis of 24 Latin American countries in
2020 calculated that an increase of 1% in fixed broadband penetration
yields an increase of 0.08% of GDP, and a 1% increase in mobile con-
nectivity increases GDP by 0.15% (Ziegler et al., 2020). And yet, in Latin
America, where rural poverty is double that of urban poverty, Internet
penetration in rural areas stood at 37% in 2020 in contrast to 71 % in
urban areas. However, this is somewhat compensated by the penetration
of smartphones in rural areas, which reached 71 % in 2020 (Ziegler et al.,
2020). Worldwide, while urban areas displayed an 82% Internet penetra-
tion in 2022, rural areas lagged behind at 46%. The rural-urban cleavage
persists everywhere, but is less pronounced in highly developed countries:
in the US in 2021, Internet use in urban areas was 95%, and in rural areas
90% (Statista, 2021). In the UK in 2020, Internet penetration in urban
areas was 98% and in rural areas 94% (Statista, 2020a; 20206), although
here again mobile phone penetration at 130% ensures communication in
most of the country. China presents an intermediate situation, with 77%
urban penetration and 46% rural access to the Internet in 2020 (ESGN,
2021). In all cases the gap in quality of the connection is substantial, as
the rural infrastructure lags behind the networks deployed in the main
urban centers.

There is a second territorial divide, namely the location of the infrastruc-

ture for digital communication, tantamount to a differential access to the
"cloud," because the cloud materializes in servers that store and direct
data traffic originated anywhere. As of 2018, the large majority of inter-
national traffic from Latin American countries went to servers in North
America (73%) and Europe (10%). In the case of African countries, 56%
of the international traffic went to North American servers and 32% to
Europe. Even Europe is not self-sufficient in its servers, as 43% of traffic
used North American servers, while 56% of international traffic went to
another European country. China relies on its own servers for domestic
traffic, but its global access may also be dependent on North American
servers that manage 49% of international traffic from Asia-Pacific, which
 DIGITAL DIVIDES 95

includes Chinese data. The hubs of international traffic are located in

a few areas to serve entire regions of the world: four of the five highest
capacity international routes in Latin America are connected in Miami
(Telegeography, 2018). The disparities in infrastructure location and
control are accentuated by the ownership of exclusive undersea cables
by major digital companies such as Google, Facebook, Amazon, and
Microsoft that account for the largest share of the increase in global band-
width in recent years (Satariano, 2019). Preferential location to the hubs
of the global infrastructure has substantial consequences for the design
of national technology policies, and obvious implications for national
security, thus decreasing sovereignty in the majority of countries as we
transition to a more digital environment (Ortiz Freuler, 2020).

The deployment of advanced telecommunications infrastructure is also

differential between countries, as illustrated by the global distribu-
tion of SG networks (Statista, 2023). With the significant exception of
sub-Saharan Africa, by 2020 most countries had launched, deployed, or
invested in SG. For instance, most ofSouth America had already launched
the networks and the remaining countries had deployed the technology.
China is among the most developed users of SG because Huawei was crit-
ical in the design of the technology, and set up 70% of the base stations in
the world as of2023 (Parzyan, 2023). But Indonesia also is in the leading
group while Russia is in an earlier phase of development. The geography
of telecom networks is a major indicator of the extent of inequality in the
process of digitalization worldwide.

The gender gap

The gender gap in the digital world goes beyond the difference between
men and women in Internet access. Indeed, in 2022, the gap was limited in
terms of global statistics: 70% of men were daily users, a somewhat higher
proportion than 63% of women. But this difference masks substantial
variation among countries, depending on the geography of patriarchal-
ism. In the UK in 2020, men were more likely to use the Internet daily
(90% versus 89%; ONS, 2021), while the figures reported for the US in
2023 were similar (94% formen and 93% for women). In Spain in 2021,
the percentages of users were close (77% for men, 75% for women)
(Garín-Muñoz et al., 2022). But the differences are greater in certain
96 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

regions of the world. The proportions of Internet use for men and for
women were respectively 83% and 83% for the Americas, 89% and 90%
in Europe. However, the gap was larger in other regions, with 67% and
61 % in Asia-Pacific, 75% and 65% in the Arab States, and 46% and 34%
in Africa, respectively.

Furthermore, the world's Internet use among women in high-income

countries was 92%, in sharp contrast with the low-income countries
where only 21 % of women use the Internet. Even in China, now a rather
developed country widely using mobile phones, in 2020 74% of men
owned smartphones but only 54% of women did. In sum, the level of
development of countries specifies the digital divide: the more developed
the country is, the greater the trend toward shrinking the gender gap. And
vice versa. This is clearly related to the condition of women in most of the
Global South, widely submitted to patriarchal domination.

However, access is not the only dimension of the gender gap in the
digital age. Pay in the digital industries is substantially lower for women,
controlling by the type of occupation: it is 20% lower than men in the
US, and 33% lower in less developed countries (ILO, 2019). The leading
companies in the digital industry employ a minority of women: only 17%
of Facebook's employees are women, 19% for Google, 23% for Apple
(Chakravorti, 2017). This is largely the result of the low proportion of
women graduating in science, math, engineering, and technology, about
25% of all graduates in the US. One of the leading researchers in this field,
Cecilia Castano has thoroughly examined in a series of studies the roots
of this low presence of women in technology occupations, and found it
in the triage operated in high schools toward learning for gendered labor
markets, and in the discriminatory culture prevalent in a number of engi-
neering schools (Castano, 2005a, 2005b, 2015, 2021; Castano et al., 2010;
Castano & Webster, 2011, 2014).

Furthermore, women attempting entrepreneurship in the digital industry

face considerable difficulties. According to OECD (2018) studies, women
receive 23% less funding than their male counterparts to start a company.
There are more subtle, and more damaging, differences in gender access
to social media. In general, around the world, more women than men use
social media. An internal study commissioned by Instagram found that
social media made teens feel worse about their bodies and that they blame
the platform for anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts (Wetsman,
 DIGITAL DIVIDES 97

2021). Sorne studies in the UK have shown that young girls (11-13) are
facing greater emotional challenges than their male classmates (Fink et al.,
2015). Large-scale surveys in the US report teen girls being subjected to
online bullying and aggression more often than their male counterparts
(Pew Research, 2022). Meanwhile, a growing number of studies support
the association between loneliness, depression, and suicidal thoughts with
the use of smartphones and social media (Shensa et al., 2018; Allcott et al.,
2020; Twenge, 2023). Furthermore, the deficit in the presence of women in
digital design (e.g., video games) tilts the content toward a predominantly
male, and often violent, culture that appeals to young high-testosterone
males and excludes other habits and visions of the world produced by
women's specific experience. In my conversation in 2019 in Shenzhen
with Mr. Ma, founder and CEO of Tencent, the Chinese company with
the largest market share of video games in the world, he expressed openly
his concern for this gender bias, and his desire to gradually change the
content of the games.

In sum, the digital gender gap and its unwanted consequences result
from the differential levels of development of societies, the systemic dis-
crimination against females, their cultural apartheid in certain roles and
occupations, and the still sharply contrasted geography of patriarchalism,
with its multiple sexist corollaries.

The grey divide

Differential use, access, and quality of Internet connection depending

on age is the most significant divide in this early digital society, because
it is likely that as the people in the age cohorts over 65 and 75 years, who
grew up before the advent of the Internet, pass away, the overall digital
divide in terms of access will dwindle. Indeed, the proportion of the world
population over 60 years old in 2021 was 12%, while the proportion of
persons older than 65 in the population oflnternet users was 6% (Statista,
2021). On the other hand, the proportion of the population under 20 years
is 33%, while the percentage oflnternet users in the group 25-34 is about
one-third of ali Internet users, and in the group 18-24 was 18%. However,
this demographic trend <loes not imply that the digital divide will dis-
appear by biological law, because in 2022, while the percent of Internet
users in the age group 15-24 reached almost 100% in the high-income
98 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

countries, in the low-income countries it was still under 40%. The wealth
of countries and the uneven distribution of technological capacity will
still translate into a digital divide for the years to come. The situation is
increasingly different in developed countries, yet a grey divide still exists.
Thus, in the US, in 2021 in the group 18-29 years old, 99% are Internet
users, while among 65 years and older, the proportion is 75%.

Indeed, a significant number of seniors have not joined the digital age:
in the UK, 26% of peo ple 65-74 and 61 % of those older than 75, do
not regularly use the Internet. In the US, 25% of people older than 65
are not Internet users. In the European Union, the use of the Internet,
in spite of its availability, varies considerably for the age group 65-74,
from 90% in Denmark and 70% in Spain, to 40% in Portugal and 25%
in Croatia. Furthermore, the stream of studies conducted over the
years by Mireia Fernández-Ardevol and her international network of
researchers have questioned the linearity of the relationship between age,
use, and meaning of mobile Internet for the older groups of the popu-
lation (Fernández-Ardevol et al., 2017; 2023; Fernández-Ardevol, 2020;
Beneito-Montagut et al., 2022). They have shown the key role of smart-
phones in the communicative practices of the elderly, mainly because
of the multimodality of the devices. On the basis of qualitative studies,
they emphasized what they call techno-diversities, in terms of the use
of communication devices over the life cycle, particularly the significant
change of use and meaning after 75 years, what they call the "fourth age"
group. For many elderly, the nonuse or the selective use of Internet and
smartphones is not necessarily due to lack of digital capabilities, but to
a mechanism of empowerment, by deciding what, with whom, and how to
communicate. In other words, the inclusion/exclusion in the networks of
digital communication is not the result of unilateral policies of companies
(such as the pricing out of low-income elderlies) but of an interaction
between life histories, and adaptation to a disadvantaged position, wors-
ened by hyper digitization, ultimately resulting in the affirmation of the
right to decide their own life, in spite of physical and cultural disabilities.
The right to be left alone, although not excluded from society, is becom-
ing the new frontier of digital rights, beyond the strategies and interests to
expand markets for telecommunication business.
 DIGITAL DIVIDES 99

Digital divide by class

Class, as usually defined in stratification analysis, refers to the differentia-

tion of people in terms of their wealth (income, assets), level of education,
and occupational status. In fact, these three categories correlate. In all
countries, there is a direct relationship between the high ranking in each
one of these categories, and access to and use of the Internet (Mubarak et
al., 2020). Moreover, even in contexts where social hierarchies are defined
in cultural and institutional terms, as in the case of caste in Indian society,
income and education remain the key factors in explaining the caste strat-
ification in Internet use (Rajam et al., 2021).

The educational background of the family reproduces the social differ-

entiation of their children in their Internet access, both at home and at
school. In the US, for instance, in 2021, 98% of children in the group
13-18 years old with parents with college education or higher have home
Internet access, while among those children with parents with an educa-
tional level ofhigh school, 79% have home Internet access (NCES, 2021).
In low-income countries, the difference in access according to family
background is much larger.

However, as smartphone ownership spreads around the world, it is

necessary to update the understanding of digital inequality. Indeed,
in 2023, 86% of people in the world had a smartphone, and 91 % had
a mobile phone. Considering that 94% of global Internet users accessed
the Internet from their smartphones (it should be noted that the region
where the proportion of access to the Internet by mobile/smartphone is
highest is Africa), statistics based on home or school access to the Internet
have to be complemented by including the use of smartphones. Granted,
however, that learning by smartphones offers, in theory, fewer possibili-
ties than using a dedicated school computer. Yet, in the US in 2022, 55%
ofhigh school students used their smartphones for schoolwork. Since the
technological affordances of smartphones grow exponentially, the real
divide may be less in access to the Internet from home or school than
access to broadband and quality (and price) of smartphone technology,
therefore increasing the relevance of income, education, and infrastruc-
ture in the construction of digital inequality.

In sum, since inequality in the distribution of resources (be it economic

or cultural) is prevalent around the world, and increasingly so (Piketty
100 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

& Rendall, 2022), it is not surprising that inequality is also a defining

feature of the distribution of digital communication use and capacity at
the global level. However, the question remains of the extent of digital
inequality compared to other sources of inequality. There is scant
quantitative research on the matter. Nonetheless, one indication in this
regard comes from the study I directed on the diffusion, uses, and impact
of mobile communication in Latin America (Fernández-Ardevol et al.,
2011). Comparing inequality between countries according to income
and inequality according to the penetration of mobile communication,
we observed that income inequality was more pronounced than mobile
communication inequality. We ventured sorne hypothetical explana-
tion for the reasons for the spread of mobile telephony throughout all
of the social groups using ethnographic analysis. While higher-income
groups obviously benefitted from better equipment and infrastructure,
most low-income people (including the urban poor and farmers) felt
the importance of using mobile communication, both for their working
needs and their personal lives, including to keep emotional and financial
ties with their family migrants.

Furthermore, a well-established literature has provided evidence of the

correlation between the deployment of digital infrastructure and skills
level, and the economic growth of countries (Vu et al., 2020). While
it may appear that the most pressing needs are to remedy the lack of
electricity, water, amenities, and public services, the capacity to finance
those social investments depends on economic growth that, in the current
global economy, is partly a function of the technological modernization
of economies and societies. Ortiz Freuler has analyzed the relationship
between inequality in countries and their level of Internet access, which
shows a strong relationship between inequality levels as measured by
the Gini index and Internet access between countries, where the lower
the inequality, the higher the Internet access (see Figure 7.1). In-depth
research analyzing 86 countries has found that results are varied across
countries, but within low-income countries an increase in Internet access
is associated with a reduction in poverty, and access to broadband with
a reduction in income inequality (Afzal et al., 2022).
 DIGITAL DIVIDES 101

o
,..
o
l;'<A 0
o 1::.11:
'"' o
o
')l<l:IITA "
"º
o o o
PMC 1.,11,1 H~'/

Source: By Ortiz Freuler using ITU data.

Figure 7.1 Scatterplot comparing Internet use and Gini score

Ethnicity divide

It is generally assumed that ethnic minorities are disadvantaged in

terms of Internet access. W e do not really know beca use many countries
(France and Germany, for instance) do not include race or ethnicity in
their Census categories, a dubious symbol of calling for citizens' equality
beyond ethnicity. The US <loes have ethnically differentiated statistics,
both in the Census andina number of surveys (US Census Bureau, 2021).
The story the data tell is nuanced. Counting the proportion of Internet
users within each ethnic group, in 2019, the highest group, at 99%, were
the Chinese-Americans. In 2021, a survey of adults of a representative
sample of recent users of the Internet published by Pew showed sorne
unexpected findings: while 93% of whites were users of the Internet,
Hispanics had a higher proportion (95%) with African Americans not
too far behind at 91 % (Pew Research, 2021a). On the other hand, in 2021,
there were significant differences in terms of home broadband: 80% of
white homes have access, in contrast to 71 % of African Americans, and
102 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

67% for Hispanics. One possible explanation for this discrepancy could
be that the proportion of ownership of smartphones (with Internet access
potential) was very similar: 85% for whites, 85% for Hispanics, and 83%
for African Americans (Pew Research, 20216). Much of the perceived
gap between whites and other ethnic minorities results from differences
in income, education, territory, and lack of infrastructure that dispro-
portionately hit ethnic minorities. Rural African Americans, particularly
in the Southern states, were nearly twice as often excluded than white
Americans in the same areas (Asher-Schapiro & Sherfinski, 2021).

A new form of ethnic discrimination has appeared in the digital environ-

ment: sorne social media platforms allow their advertisers to discriminate
against groups protected by civil rights laws. After the intervention of the
Department ofJustice, in 2019 Facebook settled a lawsuit by civil rights
groups by creating a special portal for ads related to credit, housing,
and employment, to ensure targeting techniques would not be used to
discriminate against disadvantaged groups (Tobin & Kofman, 2022).
This is probably only the tip of the iceberg of a new form of digital
discrimination.

In sum, historically disadvantaged ethnic minorities suffer from a multi-

plicity of sources of inequality (income, assets, education, infrastructure)
whose combined effect challenges the optimistic notion of equalization of
opportunities in the digital age.

Cultural divides

W e live in a multicultural world. And yet, while cultures are ali born
equal, history has not treated them equally, both within each country
and in the global realm. Cultures are codified in language. Although lan-
guage is not the only component of a given culture, it is the decisive one
because it is what allows communication among those identifying with
the culture. And yet, when we express ourselves and communicate in the
global agora, which is what the Internet is supposed to be, most people
have to use a language, thus a cultural construct, that is not theirs. Indeed,
English is the Internet's universal language (Statista, 2022). According
to UN statistics, about 1.5 billion people speak English (this of course
includes part of the population of India), of which 1.2 billion are Internet
 DIGITAL DIVIDES 103

users. This represents approximately 30% of the world's Internet users.

A critica! observation is that 70% of Internet users may speak English
but are not native English speakers. This is largely due to Chinese, other
Asians, Russians, Germans, Spanish speaking, Portuguese speaking, and
Arabs, Iranians, and Africans that interact on the Internet within their
language/cultural community. It is important to dispel the notion that
communication on the Internet is in English. In its large majority it is
not. But, global, intercultural communication is in English, as is, in fact,
most international communication. The imbalance has consequences in
the uneven access to resources on the World Wide Web. Figure 7.2 shows
the relationship between the language of websites and the languages of
Internet users, as of2021/22 .

..
..
20

·-
Note: Websites as of February 2022; Internet users as of 2021.
Source: Statista, W3CTechs, Internet World Stats.

Figure 7.2 Share of websites using selected languages compared

to estimated share of Internet users speaking those
languages

The gap becomes more significant when considering the relationship

between the language distribution of the website and the share of Internet
users speaking a given language. Overall, it means that 70% of users are
unable to use their language on 60% of ali websites. Since the knowl-
edge of English is skewed toward the most privileged groups in every
104 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

non-English-speaking country, a fundamental cultural divide is intro-

duced in a digitized world.

Granted, substantial progress in automated translation operated by Al

allows us to overcome sorne of the language barriers. But this creates
an additional inequality in terms of the skills necessary to operate and
interpret IA programs.

The latest developments on Al build upon LLMs trained on massive

datasets containing the text collected from the open web. As a result,
applications like ChatGPT perform better with languages for which more
websites are available. ChatGPT operates on databases that are mainly in
English. For example, although it is estimated that there are 7,000 spoken
languages and approximately 300 writing systems (UNESCO, 2018),
ChatGPT claims it can respond in English, Spanish, French, German,
Chinese, Japanese, "and many more," but cannot establish a number to
what others have estimated to be 95 languages (SEO Al, 2023 ). As a result,
those who can speak popular languages will get access to state-of-the-art
technologies, while others will be excluded from being able to take advan-
tage of them. On the flipside, like the excluded proles of Orwell's 1984,
they might be the only ones left with the ability to engage online freely,
while those whose languages have been studied by machines will find
their expressions constantly monitored and moderated by automated
systems. During the world wars, the US leveraged their unique indige-
nous languages as part of a codification system the Japanese and Germans
would not be able to break (CIA, 2008). Perhaps in the cyberwars of the
future, the languages unknown to the machines will play a similar role.

Furthermore, languages are produced by culture, and our brains use lan-
guage categories for their codification of experience. Therefore, beyond
language translation we have to engage in a cultural decoding of our
global communication capabilities, emphasizing the fact that we live in
a global world, but we do not have, and will not have, a homogeneous
global identity. "Citizens of the world" is just the self-aggrandizing defini-
tion of the global gentry (Castells, 1997).
 DIGITAL DIVIDES 105

Meaningful access to the Internet

The United Nations 2030 Agenda proposes that Internet access should
be universal and meaningful. The aim is 100% access for all adults, all
schools, all businesses, with a mobile network of the latest technology,
and universal ownership of a mobile phone by the adult population.
Gender parity should be achieved, 70% of adults should have basic
digital skills, 100% of fixed broadband subscriptions should be 10 Mb/s
or faster, and 20 Mb/s should be the mínimum download speed at every
school. Entry-level broadband subscription should cost less than 2% of
the average national income. The data presented in this chapter show
how far most of the world still is from these targets. However, there is
an even more fundamental question: what is the meaning of an Internet
connection for people at large? A number of studies (Blank, 2013; Pew
Research, 2013) have investigated the factors that lead people not to
access the Internet. Old age is the most important factor. Indeed, in the
US in 2021, 25% of people over 65 never go online. Low level in educa-
tion deters potential users. Intensity of bonding and social capital also
diminishes interest for Internet use, as <loes satisfaction with one's health
condition. Gender, income, and occupation do not seem to predispose
to this withdrawal from digital life. Thus, a potential portrait of the
voluntary nonuser of the Internet emerges: individuals whose life cycle
invites a retreat to their world of intimacy, and free from work-related
pressures, most of them being retired; people in good health with strong
social bonds who prefer selective person-to-person sociability, in other
words, their meaningful communication is built outside the digital
environment. On the opposite side of the spectrum, people with low
education lack skills to find casual navigation of the Internet rewarding.
Between the educationally excluded and those able to live life as it used to
be, the overwhelming majority of the population needs digital networks
to learn, work, and live, as citizens-netizens. It is out of the question not
to use the Internet. So, they inhabit the Internet galaxy, where they meet
the traditional sources of social inequality, and the uncertain quest for
the meaning of their lives. The meaningfulness of the Internet <loes not
result from any technological affordance. It depends on the meaning that
everybody gives to their experience, thus adapting the new technologies to
the fulfillment of their needs and desires.
106 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

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8 Networked social
movements

Social movements have always been the primary agents of social change.
They aim at transforming what we think and what we value. Thus, they
are cultural movements rather than political movements, those seeking
to alter power relations in the State, although they often induce political
effects as a result of the new values they put forward. They are formed
by communication between people challenging the dominant norms
enforced by institutions of society. Frequently they result from outrage
provoked by acts of powerful actors that are perceived as unjust. Social
mobilization follows as a protest against those acts. From these collective
actions emerge ideas that are elaborated and debated in the movement,
and ultimately may induce projects of social transformation, whose fate
depends on the conflictive interaction between social movements and the
institutions of society. Sorne movements become formal organizations.
Most of them exist as loose forms of cooperation structured and focused
in a communication process. How communication is established and
which are the technologies of communication evolve historically and
ultimately frame the social movements. In the twenty-first century, the
advent of digital networked communication, as analyzed in Chapter
2, has induced a form of social movements characteristic of our time:
networked social movements, whose features and dynamics I will present
in this chapter. Networked social movements are not the result of digital
communication. They respond to perceived oppression and injustice that
are rooted in the dominant values and interests in a given society. Yet, the
form they take, and their practices, are enabled by digital communication
technologies. They evolve with technological change in interaction with
cultural and political change.

110
 NETWORKED SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 111

The early twenty-first century: a time of global

change 1

The sudden rise of networked social movements took place in the second
decade ofthe twenty-first century, particularly after 2010, although before
this date there were a number of powerful mobilizations facilitated by
digital mobile phones in countries as different as South Korea (2002),
Spain (2004), and Iran (2009).

However, the spread of these movements picked up in 2010 and sub-

sequent years. In December 2010 similar movements first started on
the Internet and then occupying urban space took place in countries as
different as Iceland and Tunisia. The Tunisian revolution sparked what
was labeled the Arab Spring in January 2011, with hundreds of thou-
sands of people following calls on the Internet, motivated by outrageous
behavior of the ruling elites. They occupied squares in the main cities in
Egypt (Cairo's Tahrir Square became a symbol all over the world), Syria,
Bahrain, Morocco, and smaller movements in other Arab countries. In
Spain, the May-15th 2011 movement, protesting the management ofthe
financial crisis and calling for "real democracy," started on the Internet
and went on to occupy squares for over a month in most Spanish cities.
Similar movements, with diverse intensity, took place in other European
cities: París Debout, Lisbon, Athens, London, Amsterdam, Berlin. In
Istanbul the Gezi Park movement challenged the municipal authorities.
In Kiev, thousands of protesters opposed to the pro-Russian Government
occupied Maidan square and prompted the Orange revolution in Ukraine,
leading, years later, to a major impact on global geopolitics.

In the US, the Occupy W all Street movement, started in September 2011,
denounced the practices of financial speculation, and the protection of
corporations by the government using public funds ata time when thou-
sands of families were losing their homes because of mortgage defaults.
The movement made the country aware of extreme inequality, with

Detailed empirical studies and sources on networked social movements

2010-15 are presented in Castells (2015). Subsequent Internet-based social
movements in 2016-23 as recorded by academic research and limited eth-
nographic observation by this author have reproduced a similar pattern in
their social practice, confirming the main lines of the analysis presented in
this chapter.
112 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

1% of people controlling most of the wealth. "We are the 99%" was the
slogan of the movement. From New York, occupations extended to Los
Angeles, Oakland, Chicago, Atlanta, and to over 1,000 American cities
with variable intensity. In Brazil, in June 2013 the youth movement for
free transportation triggered a series of demonstrations against political
corruption that shook up the Brazilian institutions. New movements in
2015 and 2016 showed that the elites had learned the new form of poli-
tics and mobilized the middle class to elect as president the ultrarightist
Bolsonaro. However, in 2022, left-wing activists regained influence in the
Brazilian digital networks and succeeded in just electing Lula, ousting
Bolsonaro. In Chile, the student movement that started in 2012 was able
to mobilize other segments of the population, leading in October 2019
to a series of occupations and demonstrations in defense of Dignity. As
a direct outcome of this movement, in November 2021, Gabriel Boric,
a young leader of the movement, was elected president. In Colombia,
in April 2021, the "estallido social" (social explosion) took place against
the mishandling of the health measures against the Covid-19 pandemic,
and against murderous police violence on the demonstrators. In 2022,
largely as a result of the "estallido social," left-wing leader Gustavo Petro
was elected president of Colombia and engaged in a determined peace
process by negotiating with the guerrillas. In Mexico, social movements
in the Internet, such as "#Yo soy 132" in 2012, were paramount in the
defense of human rights and the exposure of corruption in the State. It
paved the way for the election of populist president López Obrador. Less
followed by the Western media, there were significant movements in
other countries, in fact in over 100 countries. In Nigeria in 2020, the "End
SARS" movement mobilized the population against a brutal special police
unit. The government repressed the demonstrators and closed Twitter for
7 months as social networks had played a key role in mobilization. The
youth activists of this movement carne very close to electing president
Peter Obi (Labour Party) in the 2023 election, although the usual political
tricks derailed his probable victory.

In Hong Kong in 2014, the Umbrella Movement fought for democracy

and was able to call massive demonstrations in spite of heavy-handed
police repression. Even in China, a country where these movements had
not appeared until then, in 2022 there were significant protests organized
on the Internet in Shanghai and other cities against the confinement pol-
icies of the government during the resurgence of the Covid-19 pandemic.
 NETWORKED SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 113

In fact, these movements were able to reverse government policies, arare

case in China

In Iran in 2022, thousands of Iranian women, connected around mobile

social networks, and supported by men, protested against the assassina-
tion of Mahsa Amini at the hands of the religious police. The movement
was savagely repressed and sorne activists were hanged. Yet, the seeds of
protest and the affirmation of new values remain in the minds of Iranian
women. In Israel in 2023, hundreds of thousands marched against the
violation of the constitution by the Netanyahu government. In France in
June 2023, the French "banlieues," where ethnic minorities are segregated
on the periphery of major cities, revolted violently for over one week, pro-
testing the assassination by the police of 17-year-old Nahel, and calling for
an end to institutional racism, prevalent in the police.

Thus, networked social movements cut across ideologies, issues, or insti-

tutions, as they become the global form of social change in our time.

Anatomy of networked social movements

Networked social movements are highly diverse around the world. Yet,
they share sorne fundamental characteristics in spite of substantial dif-
ferences between the cultural and institutional contexts in which they
happen. Indeed, it is because of this similarity in spite of contextual
differences that I suggest that we are in the presence of a distinctive
form of social movement that emerges from the organizational features
and communication technologies underlying our social structure on
a global scale: the network society (Castells, 2000). Observation of these
social movements by a plurality of researchers, including myself, shows
a recurrent pattern, with slight variations depending on specific settings
(van de Donk et al., 2004; Earl & Kimpost, 2011; Castells, 2015; Carty,
2018; Jackson, 2018; Brown et al., 2022). I will summarize below the main
components of this common pattern and the conditions of its interaction
with the social structure and institutions where collective action aimed at
social change takes place in contemporary societies.

First of ali, their organizational form and their practices are based on
networks: social networks and communication networks usually enabled
114 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

by digital communication technologies, particularly mobile commu-

nication devices connected by the Internet. Since the smartphone was
first introduced in 2007, it appears probable that this technology made
possible an exponential increase of social networks in the practice of
social movements at the same time that the networking logic diffused in
all domains of human communication and organization. Indeed, while
mobile phones played a significant role prior to 2007 in sorne social pro-
tests, the growth oflnternet-based communication networks allowed the
explosion of these movements after 2010.

Second, although the large majority of these movements formed through

interactions on the Internet, they became socially meaningful by net-
working people in the urban space, be it in street demonstrations, as
in Brazil, Syria, and Iran, or by occupying squares and buildings for
a period of time, as in Egypt, Spain, the US, and Ukraine. The spatial
expression of the movement, regardless of its duration in time, is essential
to make it visible to the entire society, beyond those connected on the
Internet. Furthermore, the physical connection enhances the feeling of
togetherness that is a source of strength necessary to face the fierce police
repression that will inevitably hit the movement. In fact, the simple fact of
illegally occupying space challenges the powers that be, and materializes
the protest in a form that makes it easy for people to join the move-
ment, just by going to the occupied space without requiring a formal
membership.

Thirdly, the combination of networked interaction both in cyberspace

and in urban space constructs materially and culturally a space of auton-
omy, an essential feature of social movements in all historical instances,
as this autonomy is required to freely socialize, deliberate, and decide
outside the reach of the established procedures of the society that are
being challenged. Looking back in history, the industrial working-class
movement in Britain emerged from the togetherness felt in the large fac-
tories, in combination with spaces of autonomy such as the British pubs
(Thompson, 1963). The Commune of París in 1871 and multiple move-
ments of alternative projects of common life, in the utopian or anarchist
traditions, played a similar role (Castells, 1983). The space of autonomy
in the network society is built around the Internet networks and in the
occupation of urban space, however brief this may be.
 NETWORKED SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 115

This form of autonomy explains the fourth and most essential feature of
these movements: they are rhizomatic. When the institutions of society
(judicial authorities, police, and the like) force the movement to retreat,
overwhelmed by coercion, more often than not they do not disappear:
their values, their projects, as well as many of their actors take refuge in
the Internet, and they surge again when the reproduction of social injus-
tice at the roots of the outrage that gave birth to the movement recur. The
rhizomatic feature of these movements helps their survivability. While
Internet networks can be surveilled, and sorne rare times even shut clown,
our societies cannot operate without the Internet and digital communica-
tion networks, and so any dormant seed of resistance can be activated at
any time, although with different themes and projects.

Fifth, networked movements do not need formal organization or estab-

lished leadership. The network is the message. Its nodes and their relative
hierarchy evolve with the movement and its interaction with the institu-
tions. Membership is loose, discipline absent, replaced by influence and
self-organization. When the movement evolves to involve political actors
with specific programs, then formal organization and leadership become
essential. But this is a different kind of social actor whose origins may be
in the social movements but whose logic and practice are substantially
different. They are political actors, seeking political power by acting on
the State. Social movements, in contrast, explore and propose values,
blueprints oflife, acting on the minds of the peo ple.

Lastly, social movements are rarely programmatic. They put forward

demands and refer to values and principles, but they do not propose
a realistic set of institutional measures. In fact, in many cases the move-
ment anticipates in its practice what would constitute its desirable forms
of institutional organization. For instance, the frequent goal of achieving
"real democracy" is exemplified in the practice of deliberative democracy,
debating and deciding in open assemblies in the squares and in consul-
tations on the Internet. In other instances, social revolts propose values
in their practice without making them explicit. For instance, the Black
Lives Matter movement in the US in 2021, or the violent protests in the
French "banlieues" in 2023, shifted from denouncing police profiling and
unchecked brutality to the ideal of eradicating racism from the institu-
tions. This is a fundamental value to ensure peaceful coexistence in our
multiethnic societies that is implicit in the insurgency against the systemic
police repression that targets ethnic minorities. To end racism would be
116 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

a major cultural and political revolution. However, while movements

are not programmatic stricto sensu, there are certain values that appear
consistently in the discourse of many movements. The most important
of these common values, across cultures and countries, is the defense
of Dignity, a term repeated in different languages, from Madrid to New
York, and from Kiev to Santiago de Chile. People mobilized to be rec-
ognized and respected as human beings, regardless of their gender, age,
ethnicity, education, income, or legal status. It would appear that beyond
the specific sources of the pro test and the goals of the mobilization, most
of these actions are movements for human rights, encompassing all
the claims for equal treatment to people by the institutions beyond the
narrow definition of citizen rights. Dignity is the value claimed over the
entire world by movements that aspire to expand equality and liberty to
all domains ofhuman experience.

Social movements always fade away, either obliterated by repression

(including cultural repression in and by the mass media), or co-opted
and institutionalized in their values and in their actors. Yet, the forms of
their death are not irrelevant. They may die in an apparently useless effort
to erode the fortresses of society. But also, in many cases, they survive
and blossom in terms of the ideas and ideals that they project, out of the
outrage that prompted their existence. They can induce hope for a better
life and a better world in the minds of people, ultimately enshrined in the
institutions. This is why they are so deeply misunderstood by media and
politicians, always obsessed with tangible results. In fact, their potential
outcome is the transformation of values and institutions of society. They
are the salt of the Earth.

Social movements and communication technologies

Social movements are a permanent feature ofhuman history. They display

multiple forms, but are always based on a process of communication by
which outrage is shared, demands and values bring people together, and
collective action is organized. This is why the control of information and
communication was always paramount to preserve power. Consequently,
only by breaking the hold of the powerful elites over communication
could social change occur. This could be the work of prophets, of oral
diffusion of criticism and new ideas, of communicable texts, and ulti-
 NETWORKED SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 117

mately of pamphlets, books, and the print press. This is why books were
banned or burned, and reading and writing was confined to the elites for
centuries, and censorship, by religious or political authorities, was and
is a decisive lever of power making (Castells, 2009). With the advent of
digital social networks communicated over the Internet, the monopoly of
mass communication was challenged. Not that power dissolves, because
it is present in the interaction in the social networks, and because cor-
porations own the networks and governments retain regulatory powers,
as I have analyzed in previous chapters of this volume. Yet, full control
of information becomes more difficult, and the communicating actors
have a fighting chance to connect, share outrage, counteract manipulative
messages, and elaborate alternative projects.

Social protests, eventually developing into social movements, are not the
result of digital networks of communication. They surge from the pits of
suffering of everyday life. But because our society is largely based on these
networks, in every domain, their logic and their affordances extend to all
human practices, including social movements. This is why in the network
society social movements take the form of networked social movements.
They could not exist in their current form without the digital communi-
cation paradigm. Technological foundations of collective action do not
prejudge the values or projects of the networked actors. Social mobiliza-
tions aiming at the restoration of the traditional social order coexist with
movements seeking social change. In both cases their logic is shaped by
the specific characteristics of digital technologies.

Digital communication is based on networks, and this is the form that

practically all social protests and social movements take in our time. What
follows is the increasing survivability of networked social movements, in
terms of their rhizomatic dynamics and their resilience to targeted repres-
sion. They often become instant "communities of practice," without the
need for formal organization and leadership, because their coordination
and deliberation can always happen over the Internet. Communities of
practice are increasingly important forms of social organization in all
domains of society, from business to science and education (Hughes et
al., 2013). They also characterize social movements, transforming their
dynamics and making possible horizontal patterns of coordination and
guidance.
118 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

Outrage at an action by a powerful social actor has always been the most
frequent stimulus to spontaneous protests that often overwhelm the
repressive capacity of the established institutions, forcing at least a nego-
tiation to preserve social order under new regulations. Shared outrage
continues to be the spark that lights the fire of social revolts in our society.
The specificity of our contexts is the capacity to visualize and distribute
images of the outrageous behavior. The intluence of images in our minds
is the most important trigger of emotions. And emotions are the main
determinant of collective action. YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and
TikTok, among other social networks, have been the most decisive tools
to ignite social protests. Furthermore, the pervasiveness of smartphones
makes it possible for anyone to record an outrageous act (such asan arbi-
trary killing by a police officer or the torture of animals) and immediately
upload it to the Internet.

Virality is a fundamental feature of Internet communication (Nahon &

Hemsley, 2013). Virality makes possible the almost immediate distribu-
tion of a message to a very large audience. The quasi-simultaneity of the
reception of the message helps the spontaneity of the protest, by easy, fast
feedback between communicating subjects who, in their interaction, scale
up from individual emotion to collective mobilization. The new technol-
ogies of connectivity (SG, 6G), besides increasing the speed of communi-
cation, reduce the latency of the response, facilitating the interaction of
outraged individuals in real time.

In sum, digital communication technologies, combined with imaging

techniques, and the uses of artificial intelligence in constructing images,
shape social movements caused by reactions against perceived social
injustice in ways that empower considerably the new actors of the process
of social change.

Networked social movements and political change

While the fundamental outcome of social movements refers to changes

in our way of thinking and being, with different timing depending on
contexts, the most immediate traces of their potential as agents of change
appear to be in their impact on the State, as the direct expression of
power relations. The empirical record on this issue shows a wide range
 NETWORKED SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 119

of outcomes. In most cases of the observed practices in the second decade

of the twenty-first century, the political outcomes have been highly
significan t. However, not necessarily by fulfilling the goals of the move-
ment. In fact, in many instances the powers that be reacted with extreme
brutality and crushed the movements, sending dark waves of despair
across the world. The Arab Spring <lid topple decades-old dictatorships in
Tunisia and Egypt, and challenged Assad in Syria. Yet, Tunisia ultimately
became a corrupt pseudo democracy, the Army took control over Egypt,
supported by the US, and Russia carne to the rescue of Assad. Then, Al
Qaeda, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, and the Western powers joined the fray,
triggering an atrocious war in Syria with hundreds of thousands of deaths
and millions of refugees.

Social movements disappeared because they are always the first victims of
wars. Ideas may prevail in the long term. But missiles, tanks, and terror
overwhelm ideals in the short term. Nonetheless, I dare to consider these
catastrophic political effects as being induced by the social movements of
the Arab Spring. Negative effects are, analytically speaking, as important
as positive ones. In the US, the Occupy Wall Street movements planted
seeds for the crisis of elite legitimacy in the minds of millions of citizens.
For instance, they became fully aware of the extent of social inequal-
ity contradicting the American dream. Institutions were delegitimized,
including political parties, financial elites, and the media. Paradoxically,
the main political outcome was the rise of right-wing populism, exem-
plified by Trump and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideology
reaching the presidency against ali odds, thus changing American politics
and ultimately endangering democracy. This is because the challenges
that emerge from social movements have to be processed in the political
system, and when there is no relay between alternative projects for society
and the political actors, opportunistic demagogues tap on the nostalgia
of better times that never were, instead of exploring new forms of living
together.

However, in several countries sorne social reforms and political democra-

tization were implemented as a partial response to social movements. In
Latin America, social movements resulted in major progressive political
changes in Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, in spite of the limitations of
left-wing populism. Spain offered perhaps the most direct example of
how powerful social movements led to the emergence of a new political
actor (Podemos) and to a new left-wing orientation of the powerful Social
120 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

Democratic Party. Together they formed the only center-left coalition

government in Europe, coming to power in 2020, at the very time that
the Covid-19 pandemic hit the world and the country. They success-
fully managed the health situation and the economy, and they enacted
a number of progressive environmental, feminist, and social policies.
Only to be hit again, in 2022, by the Ukraine war and the war-induced
inflation. Yet, they were reelected in 2023 in alliance with Catalan, Basque,
and Galician nationalists, making possible a multinational coalition in the
Spanish State for the first time in history.

This is to say that social movements, by bringing new values to the public
agenda, may change the political scene and government policies, but
political outcomes will depend on the interplay between political actors
and political dynamics in society at large. And societies are usually pris-
oners of fear and averse to profound changes. So, from outrage to hope to
political change, there are a number of intermediate institutional layers,
specific to each society, that refract and modify any new project of life
created by the social movements. In this interplay between social change
and social resistance to change, communication networks are essential
as they process the ideas and will that configure the minds of citizens.
Networked social movements interact with networked informational
politics (Castells, 2017).

References

Brown, N., Block, R., & Stout, C. (2022) The Politics of Protest: Readings on the
Black Lives Matter Movement. London: Routledge.
Carty, V. (2018) Social Movements and New Technology. London: Taylor &
Francis
Castells, M. (1983) The City and the Grassroots. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
Castells, M. (2000) The Rise of the Network Society. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Castells, M. (2009) Communication Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Castells, M. (2015) Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the
Internet Age. Cambridge: Polity.
Castells, M. (2017) Rupture: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy. Cambridge: Polity.
Earl, J., & Kimpost, K. (2011) Digital/y Enabled Social Activism. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.
Hughes, J., Jewson, N., & Unwin, L. (2013) Communities of Practice: Critica/
Perspectives. London: Routledge.
 NETWORKED SOCIAL MOVEMENTS 121

Jackson, S. (2018) "Progressive social movements and the Internet," Research

paper, Philadelphia, Annenberg School of Communication, University of
Pennsylvania.
Nahon, K., & Hemsley, J. (2013) Going Viral. Cambridge: Polity.
Thompson, E.P. (1963) The Making of the English Working Class. London:
Penguin Books.
van de Donk, W., Loader, B.D., Nixon, P.G., & Rucht, D. (eds) (2004) Cyberprotest:
New Media, Citizens and Social Movements. London: Routledge.
9 Social media and political
polarization 1

In all societies and throughout history, power relationships are the pro-
ducers of norms and institutions of governance. Power relationships are
by and large played out in the realm of communication (Castells, 2009).
This is beca use the neural networks of human brains communicate with
the brains of other humans and with the networks of their natural and
social environment. Humans are social animals; thus, they live and act
by their communication networks (Lakoff, 2008). From this interaction
results the forms of social organization and institutions in which power
relationships are embedded. The stable reproduction of these relation-
ships takes place in the political process, which frames the competition
for power positions in society. Institutional stability depends on the
acquiescence of subjects of a given social system to respect the interests
and values of actors who occupy power positions in the institutions. In
this case, the institutional system is perceived as legitimate, or inevitable,
by a sufficient majority of citizens. Yet, all institutions are in flux as actors,
values, and interests that are in a subordinate position try to improve their
standing by negotiating or challenging the norms enforced by the State.
When the challenge from social actors reaches a certain level of intensity,
the political institutions and their smooth operation suffer a crisis oflegit-
imacy. Namely, large segments of society reject their authority.

A key factor in this potential crisis of legitimacy is the social dynamics

taking place in the space of mass communication-a space that, as
I explained in Chapter 2, depends on the characteristics of the senders
of messages that could reach a mass audience, and on the technological
medium they use. This space is organized and regulated, and becomes
a critical component for the assertion of political legitimacy as well as for
its potential crisis.

The analysis presented in this chapter <loes not apply to the use of social
media in authoritarian regimes, as polarization is suppressed by political
censorship.

122
 SOCIAL MEDIA ANO POLITICAL POLARIZATION 123

For most of human history, the technology of mass communication

made possible the formation of organizations and institutions that were
in control of the communication process, be it by the State, by economic
organizations (e.g., corporate business), or by ideological apparatuses
(e.g., churches or religious institutions at large). With the rise of net-
worked digital communication technologies, this control is weakened.
People-to-people networks can now reach an interactive, horizontal form
of mass communication, disintermediating the powers that be. However,
this techno-utopia is somewhat belied by the appropriation of these new
platforms of digital communication by the new forms of capital and the
State, the old nemeses of unfettered communication.

Yet, since communication controls are more difficult to enact in the

digital paradigm, and since the new masters of communication have
vested interests in stimulating communication within their proprietary
networks, the scale and diversity of horizontal communications is such
that relative communicative autonomy may challenge the systemic dom-
ination of established values and interests. This is why the traditional
political institutions usually blame the vitality and diversity of social
media communication, in spite of their oligopolistic appropriation, as
the source of the crisis of legitimacy they suffer all around the world. In
their view, this new trend results in an increasing ideological and political
polarization that shakes institutional stability, ultimately threatening the
very survival of liberal democracy.

Society is increasingly polarized. This polarization occurs in multiple

domains of social life as major contlicts shake out the common ground of
beliefs. This can be seen in the prevalence of sexism, homophobia, racism,
xenophobia, religious fanaticism, radical nationalism, ethnic hatred,
according to data from reliable sources (Achiume, 2018; OHCHR, 2019;
Khan, 2021; World Health Organization, 2021; Sardinha et al., 2022).

Each one of the expressions of nonnegotiable antagonism has specific

historical, cultural, and social roots. But what characterizes the current
polarization is the fading away of trust in the institutions and leaders
of all countries. Without trusted mediating institutions able to manage
contlicts, the clash in values and interests appears to be irreconcilable. The
end of trust ushers in an era of uncertainty. But what is the specific role of
social media in the process of polarization?
124 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

A stream of scholarly research in recent years shows a complex picture

of the ideological transformation underway. There is no doubt that the
legitimacy of established institutions has been substantially eroded in
the twenty-first century (Castells, 2009, 2015, 2017), not just concerning
the State, the political system, and the political actors. It also refers to the
mainstream media, the main economic actors (particularly the financia!
system) as well as traditional religions, official culture, and even science-
as apparent by significant resistance to the vaccines that saved our lives
during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In my book Rupture: The Crisis of Liberal Democracy (2017), I docu-

mented the extent of the legitimacy crisis worldwide, starting with the
lack of trust of two-thirds or more of citizens in political parties and
political leaders that govern their societies. Distrust of the elites and of
their messages has dramatically increased since then in democratic coun-
tries (Edelman, 2022), partly as a consequence of the anger provoked by
the confinement measures imposed to control the pandemic. Key factors
in inducing the crisis of legitimacy appear to be the feeling of unfairness
derived from rampant social and economic inequality, the resentment of
government's systemic support of oligopolistic corporations, the wide-
spread bureaucratization and perceived corruption of political parties
and their leaders, and the shrinkage of the welfare state after the policies
of austerity that followed the 2008-12 financia! crisis.

Other factors contribute to the downfall of public trust: fear of fast,

uncontrolled technological change, the backlash against the challenge
to patriarchal domination, and their corollary: pervasive violence in
women's everyday lives. Moreover, the growing awareness that climate
change threatens the survivability of humans on the blue planet deepens
uncertainty about our future.

Altogether, a perfect storm is forming with nobody at the helm of

our fragile vessel of survival because of the distrust of institutions
and elites. Collective uncertainty and individual anxiety populate the
Internet, spreading rumors, disinformation, and misinformation under
multiple disguises. We live in a post-truth age, and a key component
of this misinformed bewilderment is the distortion of reality in a mass
self-communication system with little regulation. Because the mass
self-communication sphere that comprises billions of daily users is
largely in the hands of private oligopolies whose business model is based
 SOCIAL MEDIA ANO POLITICAL POLARIZATION 125

on increasing traffic and generating data that they can capture with little
government or judicial control (Taplin, 2023). Data capitalism is one
of the most dynamic sectors of informational capitalism, as I analyzed
in Chapter 3. The outcome of such a multidimensional transformation
of communication is an immense cacophony of segmented, mass com-
munication that mixes truth, lies, and partial lies, in a cloud of special
effects and symbolic manipulation operating at light speed, saturating
our lifetime, colonizing our personal space, thus blurring time, space, and
experience.

Yet there is something else: is our daily practice of social media and their
pervasiveness the primary source of the ideological and political polari-
zation that is making it increasingly difficult to live together (Touraine,
2012)? These are the kinds of questions for which social science could
provide sorne answers without yielding to the temptation of just asserting
a subjective preference. The answer, that I will try to support empirically,
is yes and no at the same time.

The bulk of political and ideological expressions in social media chat

and publishing outlets are definitely polarized. However, what we would
normally classify as political and ideological exchanges are relatively few
in number when considering the scale of people participating within these
sites. True, anyone with an opinion can post practically anything without
yielding to any social norms of respect vis-a-vis dissenting opinions
(Persily & Tucker, 2020).

Furthermore, most people gravitate to social networking sites, which

includes specific groups within a platform, that retlect their own views,
and toward mass media broadcasters that will confirm their views.
This is because our brains tend to discard information that challenges
any deep-seated perceptions and opinions (Castells, 2009: 167-169).
A number of studies have shown, for instance, that, in the US, the audi-
ences of Fox News and of National Public Radio do not overlap at all
(Arsenault & Castells, 2008). In fact, the business model of Fox News
aims at controlling the audience of ultraconservative viewers. The same
logic applies within social media. 2 Groups within social media platforms
are formed by affective affinity (Bakshy et al., 2015). The formation of

It is interesting to look at the ideology of people who financially supported

Elon Musk in his bid to take over Twitter, a company playing a role in
126 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

attitudes and the projection of behavior take place in what is known

as "echo chambers," where the interacting subjects are rewarded by
confirming their opinions and elaborating their views on a shared value
system (Barbera, 2020). Thus, the polarization that exists in society deter-
mines the polarization in the mass media and in the media.

What is the role of media interaction with these pre-established opin-

ions? It depends on how social media sites construct the interaction. The
seminal work by Tucker et al., analyzing the empirical evidence on the
matter, highlights three fundamental findings (2018):

l. Increased media fragmentation that mirrors the cultural and political

fragmentation of society, replacing political news with entertainment,
which ultimately lowers the quality of the political information
received in the media space.
2. On the other hand, those people who do consume political informa-
tion in the social media at large are exposed to a greater diversity of
opinions, which may increase their civic engagement.
3. The exchange of explicitly political views in social media sites is
frequently negative and uncivil, contributing to affective political
polarization.

Therefore, the use of social media for ali kinds of purposes may in fact
increase civic consciousness and tolerance, while participation in partisan
social media sites and conversations exacerbates polarization. Barbera,
discussing a substantial body of research on the matter, finds that: "It is
criticism of partisan identities, and not necessarily online opinions on
specific issues that drives polarization" (2020: 45). In this regard, I would
like to point out a crucial observation that has influenced the conclusions
of many researchers: according to the study by Boxell et al. (2017) "greater
Internet use is not associated with faster growth of political polarization
among US demographic groups." Indeed, while between 1996 and 2016
political polarization increased substantialiy in ali age groups, it increased
twice as much among people older than 65, than among those aged
18-39, while the younger population is the most active group in using
the Internet. As they write: "We find that polarization has increased the

a sector where most CEOs and employees are more aligned with the values
professed by the Democratic Party.
 SOCIAL MEDIA ANO POLITICAL POLARIZATION 127

most among the groups least likely to use the Internet and social media"
(p. 10612).

However, for people who are already politically polarized, the use of par-
tisan platforms and social media groups exacerbates their radicalization,
particularly among those on the extreme right. It deepens polarization
and intolerance in society at large because they are the most visible in
the communication space (Nielsen & Fletcher, 2020). Four mechanisms
seem to be operating to induce the polarization effect. The first is the
addictive quality of intense engagement in social media controversies.
As mentioned in Chapter 2, social media platforms are designed to keep
users on their platforms for as long as possible. The timing of the delivery
of "likes" and comments from followers and users sharing the same views,
as well as the negative reaction to comments from opposite views, is
leveraged and manipulated to produce a rush of dopamine, rewarding the
brain with a feeling of excitement and satisfaction. Thus, the more people
are engaged in social media activity, the more the dopamine neurons are
active. And the anticipation of pleasurable effects increases participation
in the social media that support this activity in a recurrent feedback loop
(Burhan & Moradzadeh, 2020).

Secondly, the bias toward (mis)information that fits the position of the
most engaged people contributes to the spread of such misinformation
(Wittenberg & Berensky, 2020).

Thirdly, virality speeds up the diffusion of misinformation that is accepted

uncritically by the users that are predisposed to believe certain contents,
and so they quickly forward the messages.

Fourthly, in the case of targeted social media campaigns seeking to impact

opinions, the massive use of programmed (ro )bots allows the distribution
of the message to be amplified exponentially and reach a vast audience
that could easily be overwhelmed by exposure to a myriad of messages
tailored to the characteristics of the receivers.

Under such conditions, any attempt to counter the misinformation by

posting reminders of basic facts is disadvantaged by the sheer size of the
mass of misinformation. Subjectivity cancels objectivity. The massive
use of bots in the forwarding of the messages is widely considered to
have been a critical factor in the electoral victories of Trump in the US
128 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

(2016), Bolsonaro in Brazil (2018), the Brexit campaign in the UK (2016),

Meloni in Italy (2022), as well as in the growing influence of such extreme
right groups as Front National in France, Vox in Spain, and the Swedish
Democrats.

It needs to be emphasized that these campaigns are very expensive and

require resources and sophistication that only major business groups or
powerful governments have at their disposal. Such was the case with the
support of the American Koch brothers for Bolsonaro and of the Russian
Government for Trump, and probably also for Le Pen and Meloni. In
other words, this is nota blind automated process enacted by social media
platforms, but a political strategy that skillfully uses the potential of social
media and the vulnerability of the active users. The more people are
engaged and the more they are susceptible to messages that they "like,"
then the more social media is influential.

The media platforms have an incentive to stimulate a polarized debate

since it increases the traffic. The more users become active in the defense
of their ideas and perceptions, and the more they are mobilized, positively
or negatively, in the social media networks, the more data that can be
captured or created.

When companies yield to the pressures of governments or of public

opinion, they moderate sorne of the most extreme expressions of uncivil-
ity and misinformation through removal or a downranking of visibility
in the algorithmically curated feeds. Complete removal through content
takedown is extremely limited. For instance, in 2022, TikTok announced
it removed over 110 million videos during April to June 2022, which
accounts for less than 1% of the total number of videos posted during that
period (TikTok, 2022). We should always keep in mind that the business
model of most companies managing the digital platforms is based on
increasing traffic in the networks, any kind of traffic. For this reason,
they tend to prefer relying on curation that manages what content is most
visible and for whom rather than full removal. 3

For example, in 2018 Zuckerberg released a blueprint on content moder-

ation where he acknowledges the conflicting incentives Facebook is sub-
jected to: "One of the biggest issues social networks face is that, when left
unchecked, people will engage disproportionately with more sensationalist
and provocative con ten t. This is nota new phenomenon. It is widespread on
 SOCIAL MEDIA ANO POLITICAL POLARIZATION 129

And so the loop is closed: ideological and political polarization in society

is concentrated in the activity of vocal minorities that hold on to their
beliefs in dedicated spaces and relentlessly fight opposing views. In so
doing, they contribute to further polarization in society, while enhancing
the power and gains of the platforms by increasing user activity and
providing a wealth of data that are appropriated and marketed by the
owners of the networks. The technology masters of the world link up
with oligopolistic business groups to establish profitable alliances with
the political leaders of society, very often regardless of their ideological
positions. There are, however, new instances of resistance to alternative
projects and values enacted by social actors that are increasingly active in
the public debate. Yet, by doing so, they increase further interaction and
traffic, helping the accumulation of data for capitalism. At the same time,
they broaden and intensify public debate, which often includes misinfor-
mation, that may undermine the political legitimacy of the power holders
across the political spectrum. The political actors that are winners and
losers in the debate may vary, but over time the legitimacy of the political
system as a whole is eroded.

In sum: social media do not create political and ideological polarization,

which has its roots in the conflicts within society. But they exacerbate and
broaden polarization, using the digital public sphere as an amplifier of
uncivil ideological confrontation.

References

Achiume, T. (2018) "Contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination,

xenophobia and related intolerance," A/73/305. United Nations. Available
at: https:// documents-dds-ny.un.org/ doc/UNDOC/ GEN /N 18/251/48/PD F/
N1825148.pdf?OpenElement (accessed on 4 February 2023).

cable news today and has been a staple of tabloids for more than a century.
[... ] Our research suggests that no matter where we draw the lines for what
is allowed, as a piece of content gets close to that line, people will engage
with it more on average-even when they tell us afterwards they don't like
the content. [... ] This is a basic incentive problem that we can address by
penalizing borderline content so it gets less distribution and engagement"
(2018).
130 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

Arsenault, A.H., & Castells, M. (2008) "The structure and dynamics of global
multi-media business networks," International Journal of Communication, 2,
pp. 707-748.
Bakshy, E., Messing, S., & Adamic, L.A. (2015) "Exposure to ideological diverse
news and opinion on Facebook," Science, 348 (6239), pp. 1130-1132.
Barbera, P. (2020) "Social media, echo chambers, and political polarization," in N.
Persily & J.A. Tucker (eds), Social Media and Democracy: The State of the Field
and Prospect far Reform. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 34-55.
Boxell, L., Gentzkow, M., & Shapiro, J.M. (2017) "Greater Internet use is not
associated with faster growth of political polarization among US demo-
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10 War and peace in the time
of digital machines

War and technology have always been closely interrelated throughout

history. Every major war, cold or hot, most significantly World W ar 11,
has introduced a wave of technological innovations that sometimes dif-
fused into the entire realm ofhuman activities. Yet, at the heart of ali soci-
eties, power relationships are the determining factor. Power is ultimately
institutionalized in the State. And the State, following the widely accepted
concept proposed by Max Weber, is defined by its monopoly of violence.
I would add: legitimate or not. Thus, regardless of the claims about the
goodness of technology for humankind, a less kind humanity has always
privileged the potential military applications in the advancement of tech-
nology. With the acceleration of innovation in digital technologies and
the pervasiveness of computerized communication networking, a new
form of warfare has emerged in the twenty-first century, and is already
practiced in Ukraine at the time of writing. More, much more looms
on the horizon. Other technologies of war-making are still current, be it
massacres by machete or the threat of nuclear or biological extermina-
tion. However, ali forms of mutual destruction are now incorporated in
a digital environment that profoundly modifies and amplifies the imple-
mentation of our collective death wish.

There are different applications under the generic term "digital war," such
as automated war-making operations, semiautonomous surveillance and
kiliing machines, military planning facilitated by artificial intelligence,
missiles and precision munition, electronic warfare (disabling commu-
nications), cyberwar (disrupting the digital and physical infrastructure
on which societies are based), and disinformation and manipulation of
public perception.

But ali modalities of this kind of war are based on a vast system of
digital communication networks that is expanding at an exponential
rate. Without this networking capability between command-and-control
centers and operatives on the ground, none of these sophisticated weap-
onry and disruption mechanisms could function.

132
 WAR ANO PEACE IN THE TIME OF DIGITAL MACHINES 133

Digital communication networks

The skies of our planet are now populated by thousands of satellites, both
in low orbits and in outer space, that connect every activity on Earth. The
depths of our oceans harbor thousands ofkilometers of fiber-optic cables
that keep the beat of the global flow of information upon which we rely.
Together they provide the fundamental infrastructure of our societies,
both for peace and for war.

In 2022, about 6,000 human-made objects were orbiting the planet. Their
number increases exponentially. Governments used to be the agencies in
charge oflaunching and operating satellites; however, most ofthe industry
is now being privatized. Of the 6,000 objects, 4,047 were for commercial
use, while the military accounted for 424 and government 520. The US
is by far the leader in the ownership of satellites, with 3,145, while China
controls 535, Russia 170, and multinational consortia 180 (Statista, 2023).
The privatization of the satellite launching and operating activity is exem-
plified by Elon Musk's SpaceX, which in 2022 owned 1,919 satellites, and
in 2022-23 added Internet satellites, so increasing in number by 185%,
a rate that has most likely accelerated since the Ukraine war. Many of the
Starlink satellites (the SpaceX system) have been contracted for service
by NASA and the US Government. Japan has also engaged the company
to launch a similar collaboration (Reuters, 2023). The SpaceX Starlink
system provided support to the Ukrainian troops on the ground, as well
as maintaining the infrastructure of the country under Russian bombard-
ments. Although in the early stages of the war Musk tried to refrain from
open hostility toward Russia, refusing to provide service for drone attacks
(BBC, 2023), later on the US Government appears to have contracted
Starlink's services to guide the Ukrainian drones on the front lines and in
attacks on Russian territory. The strategic importance of satellite-based
communication for surveillance, guidance, and coordination in military
operations obviously opens the possibility for attacks on the satellite
system. Sorne attacks could be direct hits by missiles or collisions, others
by falling debris from a destroyed satellite (Shepherd, 2022). Satellites
are also submitted to electronic warfare by jamming communication or
corrupting their software. Starlink has accused Russia of conducting such
operations in the context of the Ukraine war.

While satellite communication appears at the forefront of global commu-

nication networks, in fact undersea cables are much more important in
134 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

this regard. Ninety-five percent of traffic on the global Internet is carried

by about 200 undersea fiber-optic cables. Both governments and compa-
nies own and operate these cables. Because of their critical role in keeping
everything working in a globally networked economy, their vulnerability
has become a major security concern (Ratiu, 2021). This is because, in
addition to the possible physical damage they can suffer, they can also be
tapped for spying or disinformation. Thus, governments have engaged
in developing a new form of submarine warfare to attack and protect the
cable system (Garret, 2018; Long, 2023). The USS Jimmy Carter has been
operating since 2005, acting as a mothership for unmanned submarine
vehicles to perform diverse tasks. It will be followed by the most expensive
nuclear submarine ever built, costing $5 billion, which is already under
construction in Groton, Connecticut, with a wide array of capabilities that
include offensive action as well as the preservation of the cable network
(Meyer, 2023). Russia has responded to these challenges by introducing
in July 2022 the Belgorod, the longest nuclear submarine in the world,
fully equipped with electronic warfare equipment, as well as armed with
two megaton nuclear torpedoes that can be launched from long distances
without being detected. China is following the same track.

On the basis of this dense system of global-local communication net-

works, new technologies of war-making have been introduced into the
military operations currently underway and projected for the near future.

Orones

Drones became the weapons of choice in the Middle Eastern wars and in
the Ukraine war, both for reconnaissance tasks and for strikes. Originally,
in the late 1960s, Israel introduced drones as an instrument of surveil-
lance and electronic warfare, becoming decisive in the air battles with
Syrian MiGs in 1982. The US soon adopted the Israel-made Pioneer
unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and generalized the use of drones after
9/11 to locate targets and conduct assassinations in the Middle East and
Afghanistan. The US deployed the Predator, armed with Hellfire missiles.
The diffusion of drone technologies has already reached most countries
and for a variety of uses, particularly in agriculture, transportation, and
disaster relief. Turkey and Iran have developed large export markets. As
<lid China thereafter. The US developed new models under the generic
 WAR ANO PEACE IN THE TIME OF DIGITAL MACHINES 135

name of MALE (Middle Altitude Long Endurance), supplying France

among other countries. In the Ukraine war, highly sophisticated drones
have been introduced by the warring parties. Ukraine successfully used
the Turkish-made Baryaktar TB2 to destroy tank columns at the onset
of the Russian invasion. Russia countered by focusing on low altitude
air defenses and electronic jamming, ultimately forcing the Ukrainians
to withdraw this model. Similarly, Russia introduced two very advanced
drones in the first months of the war, the Forpost and the Orion, that
became vulnerable to the Ukrainian air defenses and were also side-
lined later on. Their vulnerability is linked to their need to fly low to be
effective and to the insufficient defense against electronic warfare. Thus,
both armies adopted new tactics, using large numbers of simple-purpose
drones, monikers, or suicide drones used as flying bombs (DeVore, 2023).
Indeed, cost has been a major consideration for the wide use of drones,
together with the effort to save pilots' lives. The use of cheap drones meant
that it often became more expensive to shoot one clown than the cost of
the drone itself. Ukraine relied on the reconnaissance capability of drones
to support the tactical advance of small fighting units across the dense
Russian defense systems. It was also able to attempt long-distance drone
attacks in Russian territory, including Moscow. Russia used drones in
large groups, trying to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, often perform-
ing missile attacks under the cover of the drones. Russia has been using,
and losing, hundreds of a relatively simple Iranian drone, the Shahed
(Witness)-136, now being mass produced in Russia under a license from
Iran.

A more advanced form of drone attack is swarming, which implies not

only large groups of drones, but their capability to communicate among
themselves and make semiautonomous decisions based on Al technology
(Jankowicz, 2023). This technology exists already in the experimental
stage, as developed by Raytheon for the US Department ofDefense. A new
generation of air drones is being developed by the US N avy in cooperation
with the leading aviation/missile companies, including the X-47B UCAS,
the Sea Ghost, the Phantom Ray, and the Predator C Avenger.

Drones are not limited to air operations. In fact, their fastest development
is in naval and submarine warfare. Ukrainians, advised by British experts,
and with the support of NATO satellite surveillance, have successfully
used marine suicide drones against Russia warships and port infrastruc-
ture in Crimea.
136 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

A number of misrepresentations have surrounded the generalization

of drone warfare. One of them is that operations are fully conducted
by remote control. In fact, to be effective, drone operators have to be
connected to ground personnel on the front line or in nearby air bases
(Jeangene Vilmer, 2023). For instance, for a 24-hour shift operating the
American MQ-9 Reaper, 250 personnel are required, of which 61 are
forward deployed in the area of operation. Another, and more sensitive,
debate concerns the faceless killings performed with this new weapon.
True, many of the drone assassinations have been conducted at distance
from air force bases in the Nevada Desert. However, those operating the
drones and sending in the missiles have a very clear vision of what they
are doing, which sometimes requires recognizing the face of the target.
To be sure, collateral damage, in terms of killing innocent people, often
results from the attack. But this destruction is also witnessed vividly by
the perpetrators. In fact, fighter pilots exchanging missile fire hundreds
of miles from their targets have a more abstract experience of war than
the very real virtuality of drone operators. Much of the negative public
opinion against the use of drones derives from their use in extraterritorial
clandestine attacks, which are taking place without any kind of regulation
or judicial oversight.

The vision of an automated, robotic war has materialized. But it is

not taking the shape of humanoids marching in battalions. It is being
conducted by flying or swimming objects that search and destroy on
command in real time.

Al warriors

The extraordinary improvements in artificial intelligence, as noted in

the Introduction of this volume, have deeply impacted warfare as they
have all other domains of human life. Nonetheless, to put matters into
perspective we should consider that artificial intelligence operates on the
basis of available data. While the recombining and analytical capacity
of Al programs improves the capability of processing information and
modeling complex systems in an operational form that can be useful for
decision making, Al is only as good as the data that it is exposed to, both
in training and in action. So, network connectivity and computing power
will determine its actual impact in real life, as in real death, when applied
 WAR ANO PEACE IN THE TIME OF DIGITAL MACHINES 137

to war, ultimately a death machine. In fact, the influence of Al in military

practice varies depending on the realm of its application.

A major focus concerns the pursuit of autonomous or semiautonomous

reconnaissance and fighting machines. Orones are the most direct man-
ifestation of this goal. Stimulated by the Ukraine war, Russia and the US
are investing major resources in designing and operating semiautono-
mous machines that can be air-, water-, or land-based. Russia announced
that its Lancet technology is operational, and so <lid the US, with its own
program, named Switchblade. Yet, these machines will be working under
human control for the foreseeable future.

More powerful Al programs will perfect the embedded navigation

systems in ammunition (dubbed "smart bombs") that have been used
since the Gulf war and filtered clown to the wide diffusion of GPS naviga-
tion systems that are used daily by civilians. Powerful, mobile artillery is
having a new life in the Ukraine war, thanks to the capacity to target the
enemy effectively, by relying on timely drone and satellite information
combined with high-speed decision-making assistance from Al. The US
Himars long-distance rockets have overwhelmed the traditional mass
bombardment tactics of the Russian Grads multi-rocket systems inherited
from World War 11. Long-distance, high-precision missiles have shifted
much of the firepower to exchange of missiles and anti-missile defense.
A generation of cruise missiles, and particularly Russian hypersonic
missiles, are able to search for their targets, select their routes, and evade
defenses. However, the high cost of the weapon has limited its use by
Russia and has kept it mostly in reserve by NATO for the time being.
The capability to fire at distance with accuracy is transforming the role
of helicopters in combat. The defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan
was facilitated by the introduction of American Stinger portable missiles
that, in the hands of the Mujahidin, decimated the fearsome Soviet flying
machines when they intervened in close fighting. Something similar
took place in the early stages of the Ukraine war, when the Stingers again
repelled the attacks of Russian helicopters. One year into the war, Russia
introduced a new model of attack helicopter, the Alligator, capable of
firing powerful missiles with great precision at a distance of severa! miles,
out of the range of Stingers.

Yet, perhaps the most significant changes linked to military Al are related
to analyzing at high speed in real time options of military tactics, be it
138 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

at the level of the battlefield or on specific small-scale operations. The

decentralization of data and decision-making capability is allowing the
development of a network model of armed forces, in which small, agile
units with considerable firepower, coordinate their action and evolve
depending on changing circumstances. Vertical command-and-control,
characteristic of the Russian tradition, is being seriously challenged by the
versatility and autonomy of networked military forces, able to combine in
real time multiple forms of action, including reconnaissance, and air and
artillery support (Leitzel & Hillebrand, 2022).

Strategic military planning is hugely benefitting from the different options

offered by Al models to guide the course of action on different timescales.
W ar games beco me practica! tools when provided with the flexibility
to adapt to the flow of data coming from experiences on the ground.
However, good decision making ultimately depends on the accuracy of
the information on which Al operates. Here there is a major transforma-
tion in the information-gathering process in and around the battlefield:
what has been labeled as "participatory information warfare."

Participatory information, war, and digital networks

People are now capable of appropriating for their practices a variety of

communication networks. This empowerment allows them to participate
in the retrieval and distribution of information on the ongoing fighting.
For those closest to the front line, this includes relaying information of
what they can directly observe to the fighting units they support, as has
often been the case in Ukraine. It is a form of mass spying in and around
the battlefields, with a lesser risk ofbeing detected at the time of action. It
certainly depends on the empathy between the population and the armed
forces. Thus, it gives the edge to the invaded over the invaders. This is
a most traditional form of resistance to superior force that has always
been essential in partisan and guerrilla warfare. Now it can be multiplied
and sharpened by the widespread use of social networks. The massive
use ofTelegram for this purpose during the Ukraine war exemplifies this
significant development of the connection between war and society.

Participatory information warfare can also be enacted at distance. In the

Ukraine war, there was a flurry of both Russian and Ukrainian military
 WAR ANO PEACE IN THE TIME OF DIGITAL MACHINES 139

bloggers who were often the only sources of information on what was
actually happening in the war. Indeed, both governments imposed a news
blackout that made it extremely difficult for traditional mass media to
inform about the reality of war. Embedded journalism became the only
way to report, and propaganda often took over the content of the broad-
cast. While bloggers were also partisan in most cases, they also tried to
report what was happening, particularly in the Russian case, to serve the
public in such a crucial situation. Obviously, information and disinforma-
tion are mixed in varying proportions depending on sources and themes.
However, both forms of intervention became important factors in the for-
mation of public opinion, ultimately conditioning the conduct of the war.

Cyberwar

Cyberwar refers to intrusion in or disruption of computer networks and

computers themselves. It is often conducted through malware, that is
software that destroys or corrupts files and programs. It can be silent, for
the purpose of spying, or it can involve a full-tledged attack that disables
the networks that run essential activities in every domain. Although
the military is mainly concerned about hacking into their computer
systems, a greater concern is the overall cyber-infrastructure on which
everything depends in our digital societies, including electricity, water,
transportation, health, hospitals, schools, government, banks, business,
entertainment, and science. Attacks can be performed by hostile gov-
ernments, but also by anonymous hacktivists of diverse ideologies and
different purposes, as well as common criminals focused on stealing or
locking data and demanding ransom from institutions and companies.
It is in fact a pervasive practice that has led to a constant deployment
of electronic defenses in all networks. Yet, sorne of the most powerful
information systems, be it the Defense Department or Microsoft, have
seen their defenses penetrated. The reason is very simple. Protection is
as vulnerable as the weakest point in the network. Thus, both companies
and the government have been hacked by breaking the electronic defense
of a contractor or employee connecting at distance with the core comput-
ers in order to do their work. Firewalls and encrypted access keys have
become increasingly sophisticated and redundant. No stable solution
has been found. The better the defenses, the better the technologies of
disruption and the talent of the disruptors. In fact, it is surprising that
140 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

no major catastrophes have been recorded to date given the breadth of

critica! infrastructure vulnerable to attacks and the many choke points.
It is a matter of time until airports will crash at a high traffic moment, or
blackouts of entire regions will recur with greater frequency than in the
accidental events of the past. For those geopolitical actors engaging in
asymmetrical confrontation, cyber terror-targeting the networks sus-
taining our lives-provides a major opportunity. Sorne catastrophes have
already been averted at the last minute, although there is a necessaryveil of
discretion on the matter. We must be aware that one of the most dramatic
hidden forms of warfare in our time is being fought daily between security
agencies, digital safety experts, and crackers and counter-crackers (note:
hackers are not crackers). Most countries actively participate in this form
of conflict, with different goals and effectiveness, as shown in Tables 10.1
and 10.2, which show information from Harvard's Belfer Center (2020).

Table10.1 National Cyberpower lndex, Top 1O

Capability
Position Country Overall score ranking lntent ranking

Un ited States 50.24 2

2 China 41.47 2

3 United Kingdom 35.57 3 3

4 Russia 28.38 10 4

5 Netherlands 24.18 9 5

6 France 23.43 5 11

7 Germany 22.42 4 12

8 Canada 21.5 11 9

9 Japan 21.03 8 14

10 Australia 20.03 16 8

Note: The overall NCPI assessment measures the "comprehensiveness" of

a country as a cyber actor. Comprehensiveness, in the context of NCPI, refers to
a country's use of cyber to achieve multiple objectives as opposed to a few. The
most comprehensive cyber power is the country that has (1 l the intent to pursue
multiple national objectives using cyber means and (2) the capabilities to achieve
those objective(sl.
Source: Designed by Juan Ortiz Freuler based on information from the
Harvard Belger National Cyber Power lndex, published in 2020 by the China
Cyber-Policy Initiative.
 WAR AND PEACE IN THE TIME OF DIGITAL MACHINES 141

Table 10.2 Ranking of cyber-intent, by objective

Surveillance Defense Control 1ntelligence Offense Norms

Russia UK us UK UK UK
2 China Netherlands China us us Germany

3 Vietnam France Russia Spain Israel us

4 Saudi Arabia us Vietnam Netherlands Spain Japan

5 UK China Israel Israel Russia France

6 Estonia Japan lran Russia lran Switzerland

7 Netherlands Canada UK New Zealand China Netherlands

8 Australia Sweden Germany Canada Netherlands China

New
9 us Estonia Zealand Australia Estonia Canada

10 Switzerland Australia France China Australia Australia

Russia (#17! Russia (#14!

Note: The objectives are surveilling and monitoring domestic groups;

strengthening and enhancing national cyber-defenses; controlling and
manipulating the information environment; foreign intelligence collection
for national cybersecurity; commercial gain or enhancing domestic industry
growth; destroying an adversary's infrastructure and capabilities; and defining
international cyber-norms and technical standards.
Source: Designed by Juan Ortiz Freuler based on information from the
Harvard Belger National Cyber Power lndex, published in 2020 by the China
Cyber-Policy lnitiative.

Quantum war

Digital war in its different manifestations ultimately depends on comput-

ing power. Throughout this volume, I have underlined the significance of
quantum computing for a complete transformation of the process of dig-
itization, albeit mature applications are forecasted only for the 2030-40
timeframe. Military strategists are investing heavily in accelerating the
applications of quantum computing to warfare and strategic planning
(Krelina, 2021; USNI, 2021), particularly China. According to the US
Defense Department, the following appear to be the most direct appli-
cations of quantum computing for military activities (van Amerongen,
2021).
142 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

The first is the development of quantum sensors capable of detecting

objects invisible to radar until now, such as nuclear submarines and
stealth airplanes. This capability extends to the development of"Position,
Navigation, Timing" (PNT) that allows navigation without relying on
external references such as GPS.

The second breakthrough eventually made possible by quantum comput-

ing concerns the ability to decipher highly sophisticated encryption, such
as the widely used RSA algorithm, through efficient factorization and
solving the complex mathematical equations that underlie state-of-the-art
encryption that protects our online communication. In fact, there is
already an algorithm able to perform this task: the Shor's algorithm,
discovered in 1994, can efficiently factorize large numbers. However,
the algorithm has been waiting for the advent of quantum computing,
as calculations of the computational complexity involved have remained
a challenge until now.

The third major application is the design of secure networking for the
transfer of data through "Quantum Key Distribution" (QKD) technology.
China has targeted this technology as a priority, and has already laid out
an experimental network based on this principle.

Furthermore, quantum computing can greatly enhance any Al applica-

tion based on computation capacity, therefore improving Al applications
in the whole realm of warfare needs and strategies. Particularly important
in this regard is the improvement of machine learning, and the acceler-
ation of autonomous war-making machines and information systems.
Indeed, any major technological innovation is bound to affect and inter-
act with the entire landscape of digital warfare.

Change and continuity in warfare

The reality of war mixes ali the forms of digital war outlined in this
chapter. It is what sorne experts label "hybrid war." But the actual conduct
of violent conflict includes the modalities of another time, low tech and
high tech. The Ukraine war has seen the return of war in the trenches
along hundreds of miles of front line, with thousands of casualties
involved in moving the line just a few meters. World W ar I and digital
 WAR AND PEACE IN THE TIME OF DIGITAL MACHINES 143

war merge in the daily routine of killing. The battle for Bakhmut made
no strategic sense for either of the fighting factions. The declared purpose
on both sides was to weaken the enemy by intlicting the largest losses
possible, alongside the traditional macho bravado of planting a flag on the
ruins of a devastated city.

Precision bombardments, particularly those performed by Russia, did not

spare civilian lives, which were lost by the thousands, be it as collateral
damage or deliberate terror strategy. In fact, this war, which cannot be
fully won by either side, served as a testing ground for the new digital
weapons and tactics of our age, both for Russia and for NATO, while
keeping in the background the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons,
and the possibility of an out-of-control escalation. War, in ali ages,
has always been death, destruction, and horror. The more technology
advances, the more destructive and cruel war becomes.

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Leitzel, B.C., & Hillebrand, G. (2022) Strategic Cyberspace Operations Cuide.
Carlisle, PA: US Army, Center for Strategic Leadership. Available at: https://
csl.armywarcollege.edu/USACSL/Publications/Strategic_Cyberspace
_Operations_Guide.pdf.
144 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

Long, M.L. (2023) "Information warfare in the depths: An analysis of global

undersea cable networks," U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 149(5), 1443.
https://www.usni.org/ magazines/proceedings/2023/ may/information -warfare
-depths-analysis-global-undersea-cable-networks (accessed on 30 June 2023).
Meyer, J. (2023) "Under the sea and ready for war? US wants to spend billions on
spy submarine to fend off ocean-deep China, Russia advances," USA Today,
23 May. Available at: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/politics/2023/
05/23/ seabed-warfare-new-combat-us-russia-china/70208034007/ (accessed
on 30 June 2023).
Ratiu, A. (2021) "Cyber defense across the ocean floor: The geopolitics of subma-
rine cable security," Atlantic Council, 13 September. Available at: https://www
.atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/cyber-defense-across
-the-ocean-floor-the-geopolitics-of-submarine-cable-security/ (accessed on 30
June 2023).
Reuters (2023) "Japan's military considers adopting Musk's Starlink satellite
service, Yomiuri newspaper reports," Reuters, 25 June. Available at: https://
www.reuters.com/technology/japans-military-considers-adopting-musks
-starlink-satellite-service-media-2023-06-25/ (accessed on 30 June 2023).
Shepherd, T. (2022) '"Life no longer as we know it': War in space would have dev-
astating effects, military experts say," The Guardian, 28 November. Available
at: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/nov/29 /life-no-longer-as-we
-know-it-war-in -space-would-have-immediate-effects-expert-says (accessed
on 29 June 2023).
Statista (2023) "Infographic: The countries with the most satellites in space,"
Statista Infographics. Available at: https://www.statista.com/chart/l 7107 /
countries-with-the-most-satellites-in-space (accessed on 29 June 2023).
Tucker, J.A., Guess, A., Barbera, P., Vaccari, C., Siegel, A., Sanovich, S., Stukal, D.,
& Nyhan, B. (2018) "Social media, political polarization, and political disinfor-
mation: A review ofthe scientific literature." Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi
.org/10.2139/ssrn.3144139.
USNI (2021) "Report on military applications for quantum computing," USNI
News, 27 May. Available at: https://news.usni.org/2021/05/27/report-on
-military-applications-for-quantum-computing (accessed on 30 June 2023).
van Amerongen, M. (2021) "Quantum technologies in defence & security," NATO
Review, 3 June. Available at: https://www.nato.int/docu/review/articles/2021/
06/03/quantum-technologies-in-defence-security/index.html (accessed on 30
June 2023).
11 Conclusion: the digital
society and the network
society

The digital society is the socio-technological form that underlies the

coming of age of the network society while, in return, being shaped by the
dynamics of the network society.

In the twenty-first century, a new social structure has emerged world-

wide as the prevalent form of organization in ali domains of human life.
I conceptualized this social structure, sorne time ago, as the network
society because its defining feature is that all core activities are organized
in networks, whose logic permeates the en tire realm of human practices.
Although networks have always existed, the strategically important con-
temporary networks that articulate the social structure are powered by
digital communication technologies, which increase exponentially the
flexibility, scalability, and resilience of these networks. At the source
of the network society, there are several economic, social, cultural, and
institutional processes that interacted and ultimately converged in the
genesis of this new form of human existence. A global economy, whose
sources of productivity are primarily dependent on knowledge, informa-
tion, and communication. A culture of individuation that emphasizes
autonomy of the subjects. Networked social movements oriented toward
a transformation of social values in opposition to hierarchical forms of
social organization. The challenge to patriarchal gender relations. The
holistic view ofhuman life as interdependent with nature, giving priority
to the preservation of a planet that can sustain life, in direct contradiction
to the one-sided productivist logic of the industrial age, thus asserting
inter-generational solidarity. New time/space configurations as support
of social practices: space of flows and timeless time (Castells, 2000
[1996]; 2004). These transformations relied on the networking form of
organization as an appropriate foundation for their materialization. The
deployment of the multidimensional network structure was made possi-
ble by the socio-technological platforms that resulted from the revolution
in ICTs.

145
146 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

I conceptualized the new technological paradigm originated by this

revolution as informationalism, because it was characterized by new
capacities in processing and distributing information, everywhere and
in everything, in similar ways to what had been defined as industrialism,
resulting from the technological revolution in the capacity to generate
and diffuse energy (Touraine, 1969; Bell, 1973). Neither the sociocultural
factors nor the technological transformations were the producers of the
network society. The genesis of the new social structure carne from the
interaction of both transformative processes. Their coincidence was the
result of differential histories that happened to converge in a given time.
However, as in the case of the industrial society, it took sorne time before
digital technologies would evolve and diffuse to reach a critical point that
supported the full deployment of the networking form of social organiza-
tion. Nowadays our society is characterized by a digital DNA (Cowhey &
Aronson, 2017).

The digital society: dawn or doom?

The network society and its socio-technological platform, the digital

society, process values and institutions that are the result of human
action. The prevalence of certain values is a function of power relation-
ships in each society. As industrial societies carne in different institutional
forms, such as capitalism(s) or statism(s), with diverse effects on human
experience, the network society manifests itself in distinct social organ-
izations, according to the history and culture of each country and to
its specific position within the global networks that organize life on the
planet. Similarly, the digital society, in its wide array of new technologies,
has different, and even opposite, effects on humans and nature, depend-
ing on who uses each technology and for what it is used. For instance,
the exponential growth of artificial intelligence, enabling machines to
identify emergent properties for analysis, communication, and decision
making, has been shown to result in diverging outcomes depending on
the social practices that embody the technology (Crawford, 2021; Ferrara,
2024). There is widespread concern among the public concerning the
fast diffusion of powerful technologies that can change our existence
without knowing the actual effects of the forces we have unleashed. Thus,
the urgent calls coming from many quarters, including from those who
invented and provided the technology, for a moratorium on their use,
 THE DIGITAL SOCIETY ANO THE NETWORK SOCIETY 147

until we have enough knowledge and policy guidelines to govern techno-

logical transformation, before the promise of a new dawn turns into the
unforeseen doom of our species. The intellectual project underlying this
book is an attempt to move from disinformed bewilderment to informed
consciousness of our new human experience.

References

Bell, D. ( 1973) The Coming of the Postindustrial Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
U niversity Press.
Castells, M. (2000 [1996]) The Rise of the Network Society, 2nd edn. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Castells, M. (2004) "Informationalism, networks, and the network society: A the-
oretical blueprint," in M. Castells (ed.), The Network Society: A Cross-Cultural
Perspective. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar
Publishing, pp. 3-45.
Cowhey, P., & Aronson, J. (2017) Digital DNA. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Crawford, K. (2021) Atlas of AJ. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Ferrara, E. (forthcoming in 2024) "GenAI against humanity: Nefarious applica-
tions of generative artificial intelligence and large language models," ACM.
Touraine, A. (1969) La société post-industrielle. Paris: Denoel.
lndex

5G 6, 95 diversification 44
new21-4
advertising 36-7
age, and digital divide 97-8, 105 cables 133-4
Alphabet 36 Cambridge Analytica 39
Amazon 17, 18, 19, 20, 37 capitalism 55
American Civil Liberties Union data capitalism 37-8, 125
(ACLU) 40 informational capitalism 31, 32,
Android 18 37-8
Ant 61-2 Castells, M. 14-15, 54,111,113,124
Apple 18, 19, 20, 37, 44, 96 Central Bank digital currencies
Arab Spring 111, 119 (CBDCs) 54-5, 62
artificial intelligence (Al) 5, 19-20, 23 centralization of information 31
drones 135 ChatGPT 23, 25, 43, 86, 87-8, 104
and employment 6-7 Chaum, David 56
and fake news 25 Citizen Lab 45
financial markets 54 class, and digital divide 99-101
learning and education 85-9 Claude GPT 86-7
self-driving cars 43 cloud 3-4, 94
translation 104 collaboration 19
war 135, 136-8, 142 communication 9-11
Assange, Julian 39 decreasing monopoly over 31
autonomy 14-15, 114-15 social dynamics in mass
communication 122-3
Bezos, Jeff 45-6 'communication society' 11
'big tech' 20 communities of practice 117
bin Salman, Mohammed 46 connectivity 5-6, 94
Bitcoin 56-9, 61, 62 Covid-19 pandemic 26, 67, 68, 73-5
blockchain technology 57-8, 60-61 credit default swaps (CDS) 52-4
books (print) 21, 22 crisis oflegitimacy 122, 124
bots 127-8 cross-collaboration 19
Boxell, L. 126-7 crypto culture 56
boyd, d.m. 15 crypto-wars 39
broadband 94, 101-2, 105 cryptocurrencies 55-60, 61-2
business models cultural digital divides 102-4
based on users' information 36-8 currencies 54-62

148
 INDEX 149

cyber-intent 141 employment 6-7

cyberwar 139-41 encryption 39, 40, 41-2, 44-5, 142
cypherpunks 56-7 English language, use of 102-4
Ethereum60
data capitalism 37-8, 125 ethnicity, and digital divide 101-2
dating 13-14
'deep fake' 25 Facebook 15-16, 17, 18, 20, 21-2, 44,
derivatives 52-4 96, 102, 128-9
digital currencies 54-62 fake identities 13
digital divides 93 fake news 24-7, 83, 124-5
age 97-8 Fernández-Ardevol, M. 98, 100
class 99-101 Financia! Automaton 54
cultural 102-4 financia! crisis 2008-10; 53, 54
ethnicity 101-2 financia! markets, digitalization of
gender 95-7 blockchain platforms, digital
meaningful access to the Internet currencies, and smart
105 contracts 60-61
territorial 93-5 cryptocurrencies 55-60
digital military technologies see war securitization 52-5
digital nomads 71-3 State and cryptocurrencies 61-2
digital social networks 15-16, 17 Five Eyes cooperation program 32-3
digital society and network society Fourteen Eyes cooperation program
145-7 33
digital tokens 60-61 Freuler, Ortiz 100, 101
digital trading see financia! markets,
digitalization of Gaetz, Matt 42
digitization 1 gender gap 95-7
Dignity 116 Giddens, A. 15
discrimination 102 gold 55
disinformation and misinformation Google 17, 18, 20, 41-2, 44, 96
25,26-7,83, 124-5, 127-8
Disney 19 Hansen, S. 68, 69
distance learning 84-5 Hayden, Michael 33
dopamine 127 helicopters 137
drones 134-6, 137 high frequency trading (HFT) 54
Hughes, Eric 57
e-books 22 Hulu 19
'echo chambers' 126 human rights 116
economies of scale 66
education individuation 15
level of, and acceptance of fake inequality99-101, 111-12, 124
news 26 information
see also learning collection, commodification, and
educational background of family 80, processing of 36-8
99 disinformation and
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) misinformation 25, 26-7,
40 83, 124-5, 127-8
Ellison, N.B. 15
150 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

informational capitalism 31, 32, 37-8 military tactics and planning 137-8
infrastructure 4, 94-5, 100 millennials 70
Instagram 17, 96-7 mining 58-9, 61
Internet misinformation and disinformation
adventof9 25,26-7,83, 124-5, 127-8
expansion of 1-2 mis siles 13 7
gender gap 95-6 mobile phones 1, 2, 99, 105
languages used on 16, 102-4 see also smartphones
meaningful access to 105 money 55, 61
penetration 1, 2, 93, 94 multimedia business networks 16-21
and sociability 11-15 Musk, Elon 22-3, 24, 43, 133
Internet ofThings (IoT) 2-3
intra-metropolitan decentralization National Cyberpower Index 140
66, 71, 74 National Security Agency (NSA) (US)
iOS 18 32,33-5,38-9,40-41
negative news 25-6
Koo, Nahoi 12-13 network society and digital society
145-7
L3Harris 46 'networked individualism' 14
languages used on Internet 16, 102-4 networked social movements 110
Large Language Models (LLMs) 5, 20, anatomyofll3-16
86,104 communication technologies
latency 6 116-18
learning 79 early twenty-first century 111-13
academic performance, factors and political change 118-20
favoring 79-80 networks
artificial intelligence (Al) and digital communication 133-4
machine learning 85-9 digital social 15-16, 17
computers in education 79-84 metropolitan regions 66-7
distance learning 84-5 multimedia business 16-21
use of smartphones 99 newspapers 20-21
virtual classroom 89 Nine Eyes cooperation program 32-3
legitimacy, crisis of 122, 124 NSO 45, 46
libertarians 39, 45, 55
life satisfaction 12-13 Occupy Wall Street movement
low orbit space 43 111-12, 119
OECD studies 81-3, 96
machine learning 86-9 Onion Router (TOR) 39-40
market capitalization 19, 20 online dating 13-14
marriage 14 OpenAI 19-20, 23, 43
mass self-communication 9, 31 outmigration 70, 73-4
Meta 16, 19, 36, 44
metropolitan decentralization 66, 70, Palantir 42
71, 74 participatory information warfare
metropolitan region 65-7, 70-71 138-9
Microsoft 19-20, 23, 37, 43 pay in digital industries, gender gap 96
military bloggers 138-9 'PayPal mafia' 22-3
 INDEX 151

Pegasus 45-6 strong ties 11-12

plagiarism 88 submarine warfare 134
political change, and networked social surveillance/State surveillance 31-2,
movements 118-20 47
political polarization 13, 122-9 battle over privacy 38-41
power relationships 122, 132 new technologies and business
PRISM program 34, 35 models 44-6
privacy see surveillance/State resetting cooperation between
surveillance governments and
Project Maven 42 information technology
companies 41-4
quantum computing 6, 141-2 rise of'global Big Brother' 32-6
swarming (drones) 135
Randazzo, Marley 13-14 synergy 65-6
remote work see teleworking and
remotework teachers 80, 81, 83-4, 87, 88-9
Reset the Net 41 techno-crypto libertarians SS
rhizomatic social movements 115 techno-libertarians 39, 45
rumors 24-5 techno-rebels 56
teleworking and remote work 65,
satellites 133 67-9,70-71
'Satoshi Nakamoto' 57 and cities, global perspective 73-5
Saudi Arabian intelligence 46 digital nomads 71-3
Second Life 22 territorial divides 93-5
securitization 52-5 terrorist threat 33
sex 14 Thiel, Peter 22, 23, 24
Signal 40 TikTok 16, 17, 36-7, 44, 128
smart contracts 60-61 traditional media, time spent with per
smartphones 10-11, 45-6, 93, 94, 96, <lay 10
97,98,99, 102,114,118 Trump, Donald 25, 119
Snowden, Edward 34-5, 38 Tucker, J.A. 126
sociability 11-15
social autonomy 14-15 Ukraine war 133, 135, 137, 138-9,
social media 142-3
and discrimination 102 undersea cables 133-4
and gender 96- 7 United Nations 2030 Agenda 105
and political polarization 122-9 urbanization 65-7
time spent with per <lay 10
use ofterm 10, 15 value SS, 56, 58-9, 59-60
social movements see networked social video games 82, 97
movements virality 118, 127
social networks, digital 15-16, 17 virtual classroom 89
SpaceX 133
spatial concentration 65-6, 70-71 war 132
spatial structure, emerging 70-71 artificial intelligence (Al) 136-8,
stable coins 61 142
State, and cryptocurrencies 61-2 change and continuity 142-3
152 ADVANCED INTRODUCTION TO DIGITAL SOCIETY

cyberwar 139-41 Edward Snowden 34-5, 38

digital communication networks Wikileaks 39
133-4 Wylie, Christopher 39
drones 134-6, 137
quantum computing 141-2 YouTube 17, 18
weak ties 11, 12
WhatsApp 17, 46 Zuckerberg, Mark21-2, 24, 128-9
whistleblowers 38-9
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