Marseille edit
Such a Web we knew will not soon exist any more. Such is the prediction of scarecrows. If yes, this evolution would be disturbing. What is it like? The founding idea based on the Internet offering an experience unified worldwide is losing momentum. In other words, there would be no more an Internet but Internets: it is the splinternet, "splintering" means "explosion" in English. We also talk about cyber balkanization in reference to the process of States’ fragmentation of this part of Europe in the 1990s. To fully understand the phenomenon, it is advisable to briefly put into perspective.
Web and globalization
If the origin of Internet goes back to the 70s (with the American network Arpanet), its democratization takes place in the 90s further to the invention of Web in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee. It is inseparable of the period’s context: that of the "new world order" (President Georges H. Bush) succeeding in the period of confrontations and tensions (including nuclear powers) which was the Cold War. It is the era of the "happy globalization ", the "end of the History" and of the "end of human beings" the impassable horizon which was the " democracy of market" (Francis Fukuyama) and the respect for human rights.
Web is the illustration of this globalization connecting the individuals for the best and rejecting the synonymic States of nationalism and war as the 20th century showed it. There's nothing like to quote the beginning of the Declaration of Cyberspace independence by John P. Barlow (1996) to understand this spirit:
"governments of the industrial world, giants made you tired of flesh and steel, I come from the Cyberspace, the new place of residence of the spirit. In the future name, I ask you if the past makes us peaceful. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather".
The revenge of States
The insurance and the boldness with which Barlow expresses sound funny. Because States have made their return. The unipolarity has replaced the multilateralism. The sovereignty, whether it is under its "light" shape (deglobalization) or " hard " (isolationism, nationalism) gained the heart and the spirit of the populations.
Now the governments have the "sovereignty where we gather".
All around the world, barriers are set up to prevent the interventions outsides what did not arrange the revelations of the ex-agent of American National Security Agency (NSA) Edward Snowden on the surveillance scale of mass practiced by the United States.
The "digital Great Wall " of China in the Internet cutting in Egypt, Congo or Cameroon, via the establishment of a blacklist of sites located in Russia, the generalization of the filtering in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Iran and Turkey, the sorting of the contents in India or the Brazilian vague desires of local accommodation, no continent is saved. The United States and Europe are not outdone by the drift of legislations against the hacking or the terrorism and their achievements on personal freedoms. More generally, we note a will of the States to adapt Web to their legislation, in defiance of the expression freedom. Some people even talk about "legal race of armaments".
The role of big companies
The splinternet is also the fact of big companies. First of all, because they can be brought to collaborate with States as demonstrated Prism affair. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and NSA were able to reach the servers of Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo (among others) to watch the activity of people abroad.
Secondly, because they are stakeholders of this fragmentation. Now, the users do not surf any more on Web. They are "locked" into a such platform of social network, video sharing. They are obliged to use a specific product or a precise OS to benefit from certain services. In addition to contributing to the unification of Web, this tendency moves towards its "communitization".
And the individuals?
Also, the individuals participate in this "tribalisation". On blogs, forums or networks, we group together by affinity. Whether it is for the sport, the art, the religion, the politics, we have practiced ourselves. Studies demonstrated the theory of the "bubble of filter" according to which, on the Internet, we are only exposed to the information with which we agree. Like that, we are right. We are consolidated in our positions. And park in the attempts of transverse dialogues which can start violent reactions and bad buzz fed by a pack of trolls.
Finally, what does this tendency stand for? At the individual level, we can wonder if it is not inherent to Web. Therefore, five years after the Declaration of John Barlow, Clyde Wayne Crews Jr ., the manager of the studies of technology in Cato Institute has already pleaded for "splinternets" to know about "parallel internets which would work as different, private and autonomous universes". "Do people want to be really connected to everybody? I do not think of it?", he asserted in an Editorial to the magazine Forbes. Fundamentally, they want to be connected to the people like them". At the international level, the situation calls up to a regulation which seems to be improbable in both the interests and divergent. Europe could have a role to play in theemergence for the Internet decentralized and built a good property. It still needs to have the will.
Article written by Thierry Randretsa