Tech lingo transfers into the everyday vocabulary almost like osmosis. Whenever there is big news or debate over one digital technology or another, there is a new phrase for the public to pick up. You could argue language is part of how tech experts maintain their status, much like doctors and lawyers. British free-lance writer Duncan Campbell popularised one such term when Prismgate broke, namely “deep packet inspection,” a surveillance method the NSA used to “wiretap” email and other online communications. Before Prism, it was often used by digital activists as a nightmare vision of what sort of internet monitoring would be the norm if copyright owners and other such enemies of the so-called free internet had their way. Prism proved that the threat of surveillance was with governments more than entertainment companies, but deep packet inspection sounded just as frightening. Something to scare the kids with if they won’t finish that Subway Surfers session and come to supper. On closer inspection (pun intended), it turns out, however, that deep packet inspection is common practice with telecom carriers. Here is how one system supplier presents its latest product:

Market-leading equipment makers, specialized software vendors and cloud service providers embed Qosmos in telco and enterprise solutions where real-time Layer 7* intelligence is critical, such as traffic optimization, policy management, quality of experience, analytics, firewalls, cyber defense and more

No limit to the opportunity, it seems. Now, does anyone still think the carriers are just like the post office?

*) Layer 7 is yet another such piece of tech lingo we are sure to become familiar with before long, like it or not.

American writer Seth Godin is a good candidate for what Evgeny Morozov calls “digital utopian”. Jaron Lanier uses the term “cybernetic totalist” for the same view: that the digital revolution is a force of good with little or no shades of gray and that the main conflict is between those who embrace the digital future and those digital reactionaries who are not yet convinced. Godin is one of the more interesting digital proponents, granted. Now it seems even Godin thinks Google has gone too far with the new “shared recommendations” on Google+. On his blog, he takes a page from television history to illustrate the point where integrity is sold out. Godin argues that the new user terms is that juncture for Google where profits become more important than idealism. If those words sound familiar, that is because it’s exactly what Morozov predicted in his first book The Net Delusion, except it discussed Silicon Valley’s business with authoritarian regimes.

Who wouldn’t want to be a model? To have your face all over town, promoting the new car, razor or anti-aging creme? With Google’s announcement this can be a dream come true, at least on a small scale. Google+ users faces will appear next to ads for services or products they recommended, in Google-lingo “shared recommendations”. In advertising it’s “tapping into the social graph”. That’s right, when ad buyers present their offers to your Google+ connections yours could be the face of it. Not so different from Brad Pitt’s Chanel N:o 5-adverts (just picking one example, no particular reason for singling out Mr Pitt). When Andy Warhol coined that celebrated phrase about fifteen minutes of fame for each and everyone in the future, was it something like this he had in mind?

Brad Pitt probably got paid a lot better than you and I will, though.

“Dude, it’s code – we can do anything!” That line has stayed in my head for years, I heard it at a games conference five or six years ago. It was a panel on emotions in games and one programmer* elaborated on the obsession with simulation, as opposed to literature or drama where emotions are central. His example was the key scene in Lord of the Rings where Sam holds a rope for Frodo to climb. The drama is that Frodo has to trust Sam to not let go, but in a video game the focus would be on the rope itself: How much weight can it carry? How long is it? Does it break suddenly or a little at a time? But, the algorithms of trust are just as possible to program as those of rope physics. Another panelist agreed and quoted a colleague that said to any development challenge “Dude, it’s code – we can do anything!”.  There only limit is our own imagination and it is for us to decide whether to make the suspense around the rope itself or the people on its ends.

I remind myself of this phrase every time I hear this or that is not possible, or when somebody tells me we have to accept how technology changes society. We decide, not technology. Dude, it’s code – we can do anything!

*) whose name is sadly lost to me, if you read this let me know – I want to thank you!

I meant to change topics, but Morozov published another thought-worthy column in Germany today, this time in the Süd-Deutsche Zeitung, where he discusses techno-centrism (or techno-utopianism) as a cover for neo-liberalism, making things like health an issue for the individual rather than society. This is the intelligent critique of the technology discourse. Morozov also expresses some frustration with the futile clashes of technophobes and technophiles—the conflict is not about technology as such but how it is implemented.

One fine example of a technophobe who spends lots of pixels criticising technology but little energy looking at the implications in terms of power, money, and democracy is American novelist Jonathan Franzen. Yes, Freedom and The Corrections deserve all the praise, but in this piece regrettably Franzen lends himself to the artificial conflict on whether technology is good or bad, precisely the debate Silicon Valley wants because it’s one they will always win. Technology is of course neutral, but it can be applied in different ways for better or worse.

Now, on a different topic—following up on yesterday’s post about Lukashenka’s despot regime in Belarus (the only country in Europe that still practices the death penalty—400 executed since Lukashenka came to power—another dictator that has been a focus of Netopia’s is Mubarak and the events that led to his downfall in the so-called “twitter revolution.”. Regular Netopia readers will recall Mariam Kirollos’s story on the myth of this Twitter revolution. Today Kirollos posted a link to this Reuter’s analysis on the Egyptian power nodes: the army, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Ministry of the Interior. Essential reading for anyone who wants to better understand the background to the on-going bloodbath in Egypt (fifty killed only last Sunday).

It’s Europe’s last dictatorship, run for almost two decades by Alexander Lukashenka. No free media, opposition leaders in prison (and often beaten), leader cult surrounding the dictator… simply put, it bears all the hallmarks of an authoritarian regime. I’m talking, of course, of Belarus, the native country of the writer Evgeny Morozov, on whom I focused the two latest blog posts.

At the recent Gothenburg book fair (see separate story), I met the poet and opposition leader Uladzimir Njakljajeu, who was assaulted and beaten severely on election night 2010, tthenkidnapped from the intensive care ward of the hospital and ended up in prison for two and a half years, found guilty of “organising rriots.”. nly in July this year was he released from his iimprisonment.  Or,as Uladzimir Njakljajeu put it hhimself, “transferredfrom his cell to the general ward where all of Belarus is hheld..

A different perspective on freedom of speech in Belarus was introduced by guerilla marketing agency Studio Total, who flew a single-engine aaeroplaneon low altitude and para-dropped thousands of tteddybears !) on the outskirts of Belarusian capital Minsk, each holding a card with a freedom of sspeech message. hey managed to escape from Belarusian airspace unnoticed by the airforce. To the further humiliation of dictator Lukashenka, there existed an agreement with Russia that Belarus guarantee the integrity of this particular part of the border (so Russia can focus its military attention elsewhere). Not only did the teddybear paradrop bring a message of democracy to Belarus’s citizens, it also got their dictator in trouble with the powerful next-door neighbour. Lukashenko requested Studio Total’s presence in Minsk for questioning, but they responded by inviting him to SSweden—n invite he did not aaccept;iinstead,he declared the Swedish ambassador Stefan Eriksson persona non grata.

“What has this got to do with NNetopia?”you ask. First of all, the idea of freedom of expression is too often abused in relation to digital networks. These examples remind us of what it really means. Also, there is sometimes an expectation that digital communications like mobile phones and ithe internethave the potential to bring democracy. But in the case of Belarus, Sweden’s main telecom ccarrier,TeliaSonera (part-owned by the Swedish sstate),operated the main telecom network and worked closely with the Belarusian security service to monitor dissidents. Which was the main point of Evgeny Morozov’s first bbook, TheNet Delusion (Penguin, 22011)—freeinformation does not mean free people, and the tech companies’ first loyalty will always be to the sshareholdersrather than democratic ideals. These examples from his native country pprovehim right.

Following up on yesterday’s post on the work of Evgeny Morozov, in his most recent book To Save Everything, Click Here, the writer digs deeper into some of the concepts discussed in the Die Zeit column. The main criticism, however, is another: what Morozov calls “solutionism”—the” obsession that technology can solve society’s problems. This is often focused on specific solutions rather than analysing the problem itself. In part, this solutionism takes metaphysical proportions, like when Google launches a start-up to fix the problem of mortality. In a different way, the solutions may create new problems that can be far worse than the original problem. Morozov’s example is a cooking technology that monitors the chef’s moves and alerts to deviations from the recipe and pre-defined procedures. This clinical take on cooking might take away a big part of the joy and creativity (yes, innovation) in preparing food, and the use of monitor technology can invite malign interests into our kitchens. Another example could be the hype around e-health, which has a promise to make healthcare more efficient but raises questions about responsibility, patient-doctor confidentiality, and the importance of human interaction for recovery.

This video (a couple of years old, granted, but still worth a view) gives a good and beautifully animated introduction to Morozov and his criticism of techno-utopianism (the idea that technology is the ultimate answer to all of mankind’s problems).

Also, do read Morozov’s critique of Jaron Lanier’s most recent book, Who Owns the Future?. Two of Netopia’s favourite thinkers clash in a both enlightening and entertaining way.

Is “virtual reality” coming back into fashion? This technology involves replacing sensory input from the outside world with synthetic digital signals through goggles, ear plugs, gloves and similar. It was all the rage in the early Nineties and even inspired Hollywood blockbuster The Lawnmower Man. It has since been considered passé by most, even a joke at times. But recently, virtual reality – and its cousin “augmented reality” (adding to reality rather than replacing it) – is turning up in new places: digital spectacles like the Google Glass (augmented reality) and Oculus Rift (VR) have been in the spotlight of tech blogs and conferences recently. Today Netopia took part in a video games conference where the virtual reality game console Project Holodeck was featured and in an audience vote more than 9 out of 10 believed virtual reality will be the next hit technology for games.

American author Jaron Lanier is a favourite of Netopia’s for his insightful books on online economy, democracy and the influence of cloud computing on Western civilization. Ironically, he is also one of the early visionaries of virtual reality, is often called the “father of virtual reality” and is said to have inspired the scientist in The Lawnmower Man (played by Kyle MacLachlan). If the vote at today’s conference has any weight, it seems Lanier might have a point about this too.