The Commercial Monopoly in Enclosure 3.0

Having read the concerns of the cloud service in the Cloud: Boundless Digital Potential or Enclosure 3.0? , I find myself fall into the same negative angle of viewing the flourishing cloud service, especially in the commercial monopoly respect. As I plan to discuss in my final research paper, the development of new type of technology might be an exciting progression for large companies, but for most small struggling companies whose budgets are relatively limited, it is no doubt another drawback comparing to the upgraded companies.

Many large companies distribute their apps on IOS and Android platforms. For example, Wechat, the largest standalone-messaging app in China, initial released in January 2011 and speedily occupied a large market share. One of the most important reason is it’s produced by Tencent, the forth-largest Internet company in the world, which promises it sufficient budget of the development of app, the purchase of server and the maintenance fee. However, it is unaffordable for small companies. Even though they do have developed their apps, the expensive developing and advertising fee excludes them from being excellent and well known, which makes them impossible to compete with large Internet companies like Tencent.

From Internet era to Cloud era, the surviving possibilities diminish for small companies also because of the different characteristics of Internet and Cloud. Comparing to Internet era, Cloud era stresses more on convenient information stream rather than the share of information. People are more likely to upload and download things from a certain server instead of browsing around the Cloud, which decreases their chances of encountering something new. It is not hard to imagine that very soon, several large companies would divide the whole Cloud up and provide us information only profitable to them.

Participatory Panopticon

I like the concept of ‘participatory panopticon’ for it clearly suggests the well-developed pattern of interpersonal communications in the ubiquitous media era. Participatory panopticon, according to Mark Andrejevic in Ispy, means ‘a form of consensual submission to surveillance in part because the watched are also doing the watching.’ It could be widely adapted to various aspects of our daily life.

Social media platforms are apparently good study objects for lateral monitoring. It is interesting to observe some common but unspoken social psychologies there. For example, there’s a function on Renren.com, a Chinese social networking service, called ‘invisible visit’. It enables us to set up a list of people who will not find our visits in their ‘Recently visitors’ list. Therefore, we can go to his or her personal page, view every texts, pictures and even others’ comments on them, without leaving a trace. It delicately reveals our desires of surveillance without being found out. However, it is also part of ‘participatory panopticon’, because while you invisibly monitor someone, the others are watching you in the same way.

Part of reason why people spend so much time on social media, as for me, is the mutual lateral monitoring. Before social media gets popular, the way people get to know each other is based on face-to-face communication. They did google someone when they want to have a better idea of him, but what they can get are his fragmentary traces online. However, social media save this situation. Take Facebook as an example. For the first time, up to 1 billion people with their true identities are gathered in one communication platform, carefully building up their virtual images by posting words and pictures of their lifestyle frequently. It greatly satisfies our voyeurism. When we are interested in someone, we are likely to ask for his Facebook account and look through every posts of his page.

What Singularity Point May Bring About?

Reading Alone Together, the thing interests me most is the definition of being alive. There’s a vivid story in the article that after a 12-year-old tamagotchi ‘past way’, its owner wrote a poem in memory of it. It might sound funny when thinking people mourn for a black and white pixel game in the shape of an egg, but if you regard it as a companion for quite a long time who would ask for your care and concerns day and night, you might find it reasonable.

As is mentioned in the article, the characteristics exclusively possessed by human being have disappeared. After 1990s, artificial intelligences are thought to have both feelings and needs, which were once considered unique to human beings comparing to animals and computers. It blurs the boundary between being alive or not. In the film A.I. by Steven Spielberg, a robot boy David is designed to be nurtured by families who lose their children or desperately want one. Monika’s son Martin is seriously sick in hospital and in great grief, Monika takes David home for accompanies. He completely rely on Monika because he is ordered to love her for his whole life. He cries when mom doesn’t love him, stand out to protect her when he senses danger, and he feels jealous when Martin comes back home and win back mom’s heart. He’s such a real boy, but also he’s consisted of rubber skins, electronic components and steel bones. The question is shall we consider him alive?

The thing may even gets more sophisticated when taking in the imagination of ‘singularity point’. As is described by the author, singularity point is when artificial intelligence gets the critical moment between they are limited-functioned and they are omnipotent. There’s a guess that after we get that point, we may merge with the robotic and achieve immortality, which again raises the unsolved issue concerning the definition is being alive. To think boldly, there’s going to be a various forms of the human-robot merging, like a disabled human with steel leg, or a physically dead person with wires connected to his brain, which keep him conscious. The latter one might seems reluctant to be considered alive, since we are not used to keep relationships with a brain soaking in nutrient solution, but how can I say he’s not alive, I mean, there isn’t any crucial difference between him and the guy with an artificial limb, is there?

Therefore, what singularity point may bring about, as for me, is a series of philosophical problems and following moral issues, like the legislation of the protection of A.I., or the social status of human being and A.I. or new rules of the distribution of recourses. Apart from being ‘technological rapture’, as is described by the author, it may also be an ethical disaster.