Compeerism solves modern internet infrastructure—the internet is a weapon for compeerism, not capital

Hannes, Professor of Geography at the University of West Georgia. “Democratizing Infrastructure.” From Capital to Commons: Exploring the Promise of a World Beyond Capitalism. University of Bristol. Pp 86-91. /LJS

The main takeaway from this brief review of the internet’s underlying infrastructure is that a small number of large corporations are using this materiality within internet storage, transmission, and delivery to gain control over, and profit from, its unwieldy content. In this way, what was originally conceived as a decentralized network of co-equal computers has been transformed into a centralized, client-server system aimed at imposing rent-seeking, access scarcity. It is a development, furthermore, that has directly fostered the demise of net neutrality and a widening digital divide between those with and without access to the internet as non-profitable communities remain unserviced. Faced with these realities the populace at large ultimately has a choice: either pay the rising price to access an internet increasingly curated by capital or, as compeerism advocates, to pursue avenues of immediate and longer-term exit. Seeking commons-based alternatives At this point, short of refusing to use the internet altogether, there are very few ways to fully avoid the large capital actors controlling the server cloud. At the same time, it is worth noting that the decentralized, peer-to-peer roots of the internet have not completely vanished. The so-called ‘dark web’, for example, apart from its shady content, still works mostly along the lines of the original internet concept, with direct communication between computers/ servers without a centralized middleman. P2P file sharing networks using protocols such as BitTorrent to interlink personal computers are also still very much alive, offering some guidance in how a more commons-based approach to the material management of digital storage and access could be achieved (Sandvine, 2018). Some peer-to-peer advocates are now also seeking to overcome the clientserver structure of the internet by using blockchain contracts to incentivize participants to lend out their free computing space, thus establishing capabilities based on a swarm of individual, decentralized machines as opposed to isolated, massive server farms. Currently these efforts are led by small startups, like Storj for crowdsourced online data storage or IEX and Golem for decentralized super-computing. While these examples are still run as capital-oriented platforms, they could also quite easily be based on compeerist-inspired platform cooperatives, as exist, for instance, with other forms of resource sharing, such as for cars (eGo CarShare) or household items (Peerby). In this way, users of the internet could once again become an integral part of the infrastructure instead of being made into mere consumers. One thing that nonetheless becomes abundantly clear in such an envisioned trajectory is the need for a massive increase in the small-scale ownership of more powerful computers/servers and less reliance on mobile, cloud-based devices (Losey and Meinrath, 2016). In line with this reasoning, yet even more far-reaching, is the idea behind the Holochain project, which aims to build a parallel, decentralized, commons-oriented internet that nonetheless offers much greater capabilities than what is possible in simple peer-to-peer connectivity. The project’s primary focus is establishing a blockchain-like code that would be capable of organizing the complexity entailed in managing the endless information and transactions that make up the internet without recourse to client-server systems. In doing so, the Holochain code also seeks to overcome many of blockchain’s various drawbacks, particularly the energy intensive ‘proof-ofwork’ verification system used (via mining) and the difficulties in upscaling applications to a much larger set of transactions. This is being done by developing a biomimicry-inspired ledger that replaces anonymous, ‘trustless’ networks (the basis of Bitcoin) with smaller interlinked groups where trust has been established, thereby enabling greater verification speed and the ability to significantly upscale the processing of transactions (Brock, 2016). Arthur Brock, co-founder and chief designer behind the Holochain project, explains that the foundational code works to establish a ‘method and reward structure for storing and accessing data and applications between users themselves’, thus creating the foundation for a people-run internet (Brock, 2021). This envisioned network would serve as the home of Holo applications, or Happs, which could then become increasingly interlinked and expansive, committed to the peer-to-peer, non-commercial nature of the network. Early examples of such Happs range from alternative social media platform initiatives, such as Junto, to energy monitoring and management systems such as RedGrid (Gerhardt, 2020). The material autonomy that Holochain seeks to achieve is then based on the adoption of prosumer-oriented HoloPorts, which are intended to serve as the hardware that hosts the Holochain-based internet. Investing in holoport capacity is incentivized by issuing HoloFuel, a unique cryptocurrency that is used in executing transactions within Holochain-based applications, similar to how the popular cryptocurrency Ether is used to run Ethereumbased ones. All in all, given the active reworking of both blockchain and the material infrastructure of the internet as a means to exit capital, the Holochain project is an exemplar of the abstract hacktivists’ call to re-engineer and repurpose existing and emerging digital technology as a way to pursue a new social and economic paradigm. Next, moving from storage to transmission and delivery, we must consider both long-distance interconnectivity (the internet backbone) and local access. With regard to the latter, and focusing particularly on the last-mile(s) of direct connection, there has been a surge of activity in finding alternatives to the large corporate internet service providers (ISPs), either because they show little interest in investing in broadband capability in certain areas or the services provided are considered subpar and overpriced due to monopolylike privileges. Not surprisingly, communities are therefore turning to the same options available with regard to electricity provision: municipalization and cooperativization. In the US there have been several examples of successful municipal interventions aimed at making broadband internet more accessible. The municipal Electric Power Board of Chattanooga in Tennessee, for instance, offers a fibre-optic network that was first in the nation to claim one gigabyte per second internet speeds for its customers (Koebler, 2016). Chattanooga’s fibre-optic infrastructure is also used to establish a smart energy grid in the city, leading to significant energy efficiencies. Most of the cooperative efforts in the US, in turn, have centred on rural parts of the country (providing 30 per cent of access there), often by building on the already existing infrastructure in place for cooperative electricity provision. There are now over a hundred electricity cooperatives across the country that have diversified into offering broadband (Trostle et al, 2022). A further critical task related to access pertains to expanding wireless connectivity. In less remote areas, one promising initiative has been through the use of mesh networks, where a large number of small-scale routing devices are shared within the network as a way to extend a direct line to the internet backbone (like a far reaching wi-fi network). Guifi.net, for example, is a community-based internet provider in the Basque region of Spain seeking to circumvent capital-oriented ISPs by establishing expansive mesh networks as a way to provide internet connectivity as a common good (Baig et al, 2015). Similarly, in Detroit, the Equitable Internet Initiative is using mesh networks to tackle ‘digital redlining’, which has contributed to 40 per cent of Detroit residents not having internet access (Kalischer-Coggins, 2021). In more isolated areas, in turn, where direct broadband linkages to the internet backbone are few and far between, commons-oriented projects have focused on establishing an independent infrastructure of cellular towers for radio-based wireless connectivity. One example can be found on Native American lands, which have long been on the losing side of the digital divide. Non-profits like the Tribal Digital Village, servicing tribes in southern California, have worked to address this problem by utilizing a small band of non-licensed spectrum as a way to deliver internet access to native homes via tribally-controlled transmission towers. Yet, one of the biggest challenges in this effort pertains to limits on the publicly available radio spectrum. Thus, the push to treat spectrum truly as a commons, with much greater access allotted to localized, non-capital interests, has become a central issue to native efforts seeking not only to reap the benefits of the digital revolution, but to achieve greater autonomy and self-determination (Duarte, 2017). In the end, however, any internet access system, whether through a direct cable connection or via some form of radio-based network, ends with a needed link to the internet backbone. This means there will always remain a certain dependence on what is ultimately a globalized infrastructure, which, as with the electricity macrogrid, raises some key questions from a compeerist perspective regarding how such a macroscaled resource should be organized. In approaching this question, it must first be acknowledged that the commons-oriented spirit associated with the original creation of the internet is still evident in its global management. To this day, the overarching governance arrangement of the internet’s backbone is characterized by a collaboration involving numerous actors representing civil society, business, government, and research (Radu, 2019). One influential organization in this management assemblage/apparatus is the well-endowed, nongovernmental Internet Society, which, among other things, aims to serve ‘as a focal point for cooperative efforts to promote the Internet as a positive tool to benefit all people throughout the world’ (IS, 2021, np). The commons-centric aim of the Internet Society is reflected in their promotion of open standards and protocols, the sharing of technical information, and the building of community networks. In pursuit of this latter goal, the Internet Society has been a strong advocate for increasing the numbers of internet exchange points (IXPs), especially commons-oriented ones, as these are critical in linking, smaller, lower-tiered networks to the internet backbone. Today many IXPs, including some of the largest ones, are established as non-profits with the singular drive to create a more effective and accessible internet. From a compeerist standpoint, with an eye to fully commonifying the internet backbone, the existing commons-centred principles still evident in the oversight and management of this trans-local and unwieldy infrastructure need to be sustained and extended. In particular, more participation and input should be sought from civil society, especially from those that have still largely been left out, either due to their remote location or their lack of wealth. Compeerism here fully embraces the view (broadly adopted by the United Nations), that internet access is a human right, and hence the priority animating any governance over the macroscaled infrastructure of the internet must be to expand service (Howell and West, 2022). This need is evidenced by the fact that significant chunks of the population in the Minority World still do not have access to the internet, let alone a broadband connection, while on the global scale roughly a third of humanity remains excluded (ITU, 2021). As these facts make evident, despite some collaborative governance arrangements, the pursuit of an expanded internet backbone to achieve highspeed access as a universal right remains fundamentally hobbled, primarily by big-capital interests that do not see adequate profit opportunities in such a development. At the same time, as with electricity, there is no alternative but to work with the existing macroscaled infrastructure and its overarching governance regime. Even a Holochain-based internet, which is primarily focused on achieving autonomy in the realm of data storage, would still need to rely on the transmission hardware currently in place. Given this scalar reality, compeerism must again acknowledge the need to engage macro-level governance actors, including, in particular, the state. Most discussions today around how the state can best be enlisted to pursue internet access as a human right, adopt either an accommodational or confrontational approach to capital. The accommodational position sees the state coaxing and incentivizing capital in order to garner the needed investments for internet expansion and upgrades. In Japan, which is often pointed to as a model for this approach, classic incentivizations offered to key IT linked industries include subsidies, low-interest credit, and tax incentives (Atkinson et al, 2008). The confrontational approach, in turn, has primarily focused on outright nationalization. Indeed, we can point again to the British Labour Party’s election platform in 2019, for which, along with electricity, the public takeover of internet provision was another key proposition. While compeerism remains deeply sceptical of the long-term desirability of seeking synergistic relations with capital as a tactic to grow the commons, nationalization, as noted with electricity, is also considered imperfect in its current proposed forms. The compeerist concern with a government takeover of the tier one backbone again revolves around the state’s hierarchical tendencies, which, in turn, are associated with excessive bureaucracy and uninventive management, largely because there are no mechanisms to allow for cross-sectional, democratic governance. Thus, following the main arguments made regarding electricity earlier, the alternative option would be the facilitation of a commons-oriented third way. While not well fleshed out, Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign platform in the US came close to such a vision in calling for ‘publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband networks’ (Bernie, 2017, np). It is the focus here on establishing an internet infrastructure that is not monopolized by capital or the state, but rather is owned and governed by the people via an assemblage of democratically managed entities, that resonates with compeerist principles. One promising option here would be the creation of so-called stakeholder cooperatives, or solidarity co-ops. More particularly, the internet’s infrastructure, from long distance broadband cables and exchange points to large-scaled server capacity and cellular networks, could be placed in the hands of cooperative federations comprised of representatives from a host of commons-oriented and collaborative stakeholders. Such stakeholders could include last-mile ISP co-ops, local/regional governments, workers, and user-members. Importantly, and reflecting this organizational shift, the charter of such macro-level cooperatives could then be rewritten to focus on operating the internet infrastructure as a commons, in line with its original intent as a resource sharing peer-to-peer network and building on the commons-oriented management regimes already in place.