Politics and the Web's Future

As the world is codified one schema at a time, what are the political consequences and implications for the future of the Web?



Politics and the Web's Future
URL: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/01/31/politics.html
By Kendall Clark


   Monkeyfist sells an admixture of leftist political perspective and
   Web-geek interest. The intersection of our interests and
   perspectives is often an independent left view of the politics of
   technology. If Monkeyfist is unique it isn't because we're a group
   of leftie Web geeks. After all a group of leftie Web geeks is
   responsible for the daily care and feeding of [1]IndyMedia, the most
   important cluster of left-leaning sites on the Web. What's different
   about Monkeyfist it's the difference between leftie geeks building
   web sites and leftie geeks writing (about) them.
   
   Given who we are, it shouldn't surprise anyone that we regularly
   talk and think about the future of the Web: how it should change,
   how it will; to whom it should answer, to whom it does; what it
   might serve, what it might master. To that end, I've been thinking
   off and on for two years about what [2]XML -- the new-seeming
   technology upon which the Web will be built for the next 10 to 15
   years -- means for the future of the Web. Does it shift any balances
   of power? Does it aid or impede the commercialization of the Web?
   Does it increase the control of corporations over the Web?
   
   This confluence of politics and technology led me to reflect on the
   future of the Web, its promise and its threat; what thinkers used to
   call its political economy. Of course the Web is political; just
   about everything is in one sense or another. But I began to wonder
   about the political aspects of the Web's technical infrastructure;
   that is, is the technology that will be used to build the Web for
   the next 20 years neutral, as most people believe, or is it
   essentially political? And if it is political, what should be done
   about it?
   
   Most analysts and politicians seem to think the political questions
   about the future of the Web are privacy and the "digital divide" --
   an ideologically and aesthetically loathsome term. The digital
   divide is just poverty + technological change, which is to say, it's
   nothing new. That doesn't mean I'm not in favor of closing it up;
   it's just that I favor closing the food, housing, health care
   divides first. (For those whom the digital divide is the only one
   that's animating, they're either woefully confused about the
   constituents of basic human flourishing, or, as is the case with
   most technology CEOs, their concern is little more than an elaborate
   sales shuffle.)
   
   With nearly all attention focused on privacy and the digital divide,
   there's very little attention left for fundamentally important
   issues like the politics of public schemas, corporatization of the
   Web, and so on. Such divided attention aids the institutions that
   want to control the Web.
   
   In another sense, however, the control over public schemas just is
   the digital divide shifted to another register. If one assumes the
   best possible resolution of the digital divide -- free, universal,
   quality access to the Internet -- and the problems I describe are
   left completely untouched. The divide will have simply moved from
   between those who have and don't have access to between those who
   have and don't have the institutional power to determine what access
   can mean.
   
   After two years of piecemeal conversation, I'd figured out what I
   wanted to say, and I'd found, as much by accident as design, a
   suitable place to say it. I published the results in two parts at
   [3]XML.com under the title, "[4]The Politics of Schemas". I owe
   debts of gratitude to the Monkeyfist crew, most of whom at one time
   or another have taught me about XML, schemas, the Semantic Web, and
   related issues. I especially thank Bijan Parsia for having a
   sympathetic and discerning ear and Edd Dumbill for taking a chance.

References

   1. http://www.indymedia.org/
   2. http://www.w3c.org/XML
   3. http://www.xml.com/
   4. http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/01/31/politics.html


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Posted on Monkeyfist at http://monkeyfist.com/articles/743