Why 2.0 citizen needs the hacker thought | Gabriele Giacomini | TEDxUdine

New digital communication technologies are changing the realities of the public sphere and democracy.

After the discovery of movable-type printing, new opportunities are opening up.
Great powers, such as those of Facebook or Google, are also emerging, and they exert some kind of subtle but pervasive vertical “influence”.

We know that platforms’ algorithms create so-called “echo chambers” - in which users are strategically exposed just to news they like and repost, and they do so mainly for commercial purposes.

In order for this “revolution” to become a political “evolution” - and not an “involution”, citizens 2.0 must turn into hackers, and “hack” their freedom and the infinite possibilities of IT.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community.

Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

There are concepts that we use mindlessly,

a bit out of laziness
and a bit because they are fashionable.

One is the concept of resilience.

Resilience is the propriety of a metal

of going back to its initial status
after undergoing a shock.

So after the economic crisis,
in particular the Italian one,

all of us desperately needed
to be "resilient":

we went to congresses
of entrepreneurs and associations

and a desire was palpable
of being more resilient.

It was a "willing thought",

we all wanted to go back
to the pre-crisis status.

The problem is, however,
that individuals and masses of people

are never resilient.

Because after crises, shocks,

they either "involve" or "evolve".

They are never resilient, by definition.

A similar concept
is that of "disintermediation".

In fact, the concept of disintermediation

captures some critical aspects of reality:

I don't book a travel anymore
through at travel agency,

I do it on my own, online;

I don't go physically to the bank,
I use my home banking;

I don't need to go
to a politician's meeting,

I can hear it live,
for example on Facebook.

Let's take a closer look
to the case of home banking:

until 10 or 20 years ago
we went to the bank,

filled with counters,

we withdrew cash and filled in forms.

We could safely say, now,

that the figure of the teller

has partly been disintermediated:

we go to the home banking
and do everything.

But the home banking is a filter:

it isn't nothing,
it's something, a Medium.

something standing between us
and what we want to do

or what we want to be informed about.

It is not neutral,

and those who build websites
know it very well:

the architecture of a website is made in a

way that stimulate some decisions,
some behaviours and not others.

And so yes, there is a disintermediation,

but also a "neo-intermediation":

an intermediation which is
unlike the traditional one.

But it is not inexistent:
it's just different.

Let's shift from the economic example

to the political one
of "Occupy Wall Street".

I guess you remember it,

it was a youth movement
of protesters, some years ago

against what they considered the abuses
and excesses of financial capitalism.

They were young people
mostly from New York,

many other towns, urban backgrounds.

They wanted to make
their political message clear,

so they twitted, twitted and twitted

but they couldn't end up on the "Trends".

The "Trends" is a section
of the Twitter website

where Twitter says:

"Well these tweets, these hashtags
are interesting, they are trending "

So if you end up on the trends
your message is even stronger.

But they twitted and twitted
and couldn't go up,

to the point that a voice spread out:
"maybe they are censoring us".

Let's take for granted
that this hasn't happened,

in fact we can't be sure

because the algorithms
of private companies are, well, private.

But the point is another:
there's been an editor's choice

which says that probably, in that period,

Twitter preferred hashtags

that were spread larger
all over the country,

and socially also.

These were all young people

from the so-called
"creative" social class,

they were all coming
from urban backgrounds

and they couldn't communicate
as they wanted to.

This is "neo-intermediation".

It's all about new power centres

which play a role
in shaping the public sphere.

What are the effects?

One is called "the paradox of pluralism".

Now, with Internet, available voices
have increased exponentially.

There is no doubt about it.

Think about Gutenberg's printing press:

it was on innovation
which led to many books,

many pamphlets, newspapers and articles

and became very relevant

because it built the public sphere
and the public debate

modern and contemporary democracies
were then based on.

And now this public sphere
is reinforced by internet.

Internet offers, quantitatively speaking,
more and more information.

However, pluralism is not an easy concept.

Giovanni Sartori, a prominent
Italian political scientist,

says that capitalism
is not only quantitative

(the number of the sources),

but also qualitative.

And he explains with an example:

the difference between Medieval factions
and the modern political parties.

The Medieval factions were many

(White Guelphs, Black Guelphs,
Ghibellines, etc.),

but during the electoral competition

they beated each other hardly

and often the loser ended up in exile.

Something similar also happened
to Dante Alighieri, the poet.

Modern political parties
are also abundant, we know them,

but the fundamental difference is,

if you loose the elections
you don't end up cast away:

you have the right to speak,

the confrontation goes on.

And this is the authentic pluralism:

it's not really about
"many sources of information",

or better, it's not the real point.

The point is, there are many voices

which are not auto-referential monads:

they debate and confront
each other, at least partially.

So there a paradoxical pluralism,
probably, on the Internet.

Because quantity skyrockets on the web.

But quality?

Quality was discussed

by many American and Italian
researchers and scholars.

They have talked about "Echo Chambers":

when I'm on the Internet,
on the social media, on the platforms,

my voice is emitted and comes back to me
in a stronger, higher tone,

as if I were in an empty room.

And why does this happen?

Well, humans tend to haemophilia.

What does this mean?

That we are attracted to people or ideas
that are akin to us,

and that is natural.

But on the Internet there is
something more,

because first of all
the platforms are interested

in making the users stay in that context,

because it means more advertising,

more data to sell, maybe aggregated,
to other companies.

So the goal is, people must stay there
as much as possible.

So what should they be given?

What they like:

if you like dogs
I give you dogs, not cats.

That's why we give our profiles
and we are studied, also through big data.

And the offer we're given is taylor made:

a search of mine on Google
about a specific word

is different from that done
by someone else.

This is in a sense
really nice and convenient,

but in the public sphere
it can create some problems.

What is the problem?

It reduces the casual encounter:

bear in mind, things in reality
are fairly different.

Because if I am a public employee
and I go to work every morning

and I find colleagues

who have been selected
for their administrative abilities

and so I can be centre-left

and I can meet with a colleague
from centre-right

or a Five Stars supporter.

Maybe I won't have a beer with them,
and won't friend them on Facebook

but we still stay eight hours together.

Pluralism is also about quality,
while on the Internet it's not like that.

Therefore neo-intermediation
and paradox of pluralism

are concepts that suggest

that there are powers
that we have to cope with

which have consequences
on our sense of citizenship.

So what should we do?

First of all, I think,

we shouldn't forget the lessons
of the political philosophy of the past.

It says something easy:

power changes, but it still remains;

horizontal forces are countered

with centralised vertical forces.

Pretending that this doesn't exist

doesn't automatically mean

leaving in a freer,
prettier, happier world:

it simply means

not having the keys to interpret
the new flows of power.

Flows of power are relevant:

they are private,
such as platforms, big companies,

but also public ones,

because countries and governments

also have tools to manipulate

and manage masses and individuals

which are more and more powerful
and sophisticated.

However, once again
the past can lend us a hand,

it can give us a reading key
and a way of looking at the problem.

What I suggest you today
is the concept of habeas corpus.

Let me start by saying this: habeas corpus
has been the milestone of our freedom,

and of our rights as citizens.

Centuries ago, the English sovereign

tried to impose an absolute power,

a power of life or death on his subjects,

an arbitrary power not subjugated to laws.

But nobles and bourgeois didn't like this,

so they forced the sovereign
to grant "habeas corpus".

Have your body.

Habeas corpus

means that everyone of us is free,
can move freely and is autonomous:

he or she can only be held
in justified, non-arbitrary situations.

But when habeas corpus was created,
power was mainly physical:

the most of the treasury of monarchies

was spent in army
and repression instruments.

Power nowadays,

even more so with digital technologies,

is not only physical

but also mental, symbolical,
linguistic and cultural.

For this reason we need to shift

from habeas corpus, which still remains
important and fundamental,

to "habeas mentem": have your mind.

We need to try and understand

what institutional mechanisms,
weights, counterweights, rights are

which allow citizens

to be the most free and autonomous

in their assessments and decisions.

We have a lot to do.

Up until ten years ago,

the fundamental right about the Internet

was the right to connection,
to connectivity.

The "digital divide", the digital gap:

some have access to internet, some don't,

so we bring Internet to everyone.

This is something important,
which is still true today,

but it is somehow obsolete
because with the smartphone

everyone of us has a cheap,
high quality connection.

Nowadays the challenge is different

and it's about the right to be forgotten,
the right to privacy,

the right to digital identity
and the portability of that identity,

it concerns rights
as the one to cryptography.

The latter leads us to hackers:

something a little obscure,

but in the end it is hackers
who know operative systems,

who are conscious

and know what to do
when we need them to do something.

Cryptography is interesting

because it is now absent by default
in many communication systems

and this causes a new inequalities:

it's not the inequality of digital divide.

It is a new inequality based on the fact

that some are in power,
like big companies CEOs,

and consultants who grant them
secured communications;

and then there are housewives,
workers and students

who maybe agree the first time
to the social network EULA,

then forget about it.

And this is a problem, really.

And we could still say,
we have nothing to hide, after all.

This could be true,

but now it would be curious

to run an experiment,
call that woman on the first row,

ask her to come here

and show us her last searches on Google.

Maybe she wouldn't totally agree.

But I'll take this concept to the extreme,

because to understand a concept
you need to take it to the extreme.

Jewish people, in the last centuries,

roamed across Europe,
moved from city to city

leaving data, information
when they moved on,

or when they made an offer in a synagogue.

Everything was alright

until the devil, the real devil

with moustache and goose steps, came in.

And I'll let you imagine
what the nazi officials looked for,

when they conquered a new city.

Of course this is taken to the extreme.

But it shows us the fundamental,
most important point:

when we design institutions, rights,
weights and counterweights

we shouldn't design them

with a good, nice
and generous power in mind.

Because in that case
we wouldn't need laws.

We need to design institutions,
weights and counterweights, rights

with a potentially evil power in mind,

one that could take advantage
of its position of power.

I'm not saying with this,

we should all be in favour
of privacy and cryptography.

I'm not saying that:
I say we should think about it,

that it is something
different and important.

I think that the higher form of freedom,

consciousness and autonomy

is to have the consciousness

of the frailty of your own
freedom and autonomy.

It's not a paradox, it's true.

That's why I think
we should inspire to hacker thought:

we should be conscious

and we should know what to do
in case of need.

We need to start this journey,

that's all for us to build.

So let's turn the big potential
of digital technologies

not into a force for involution,
but most of all an evolution

and let them be for all of us
an opportunity for progress.

Thank you.

(Applause)