Digital Modernity

Digital Modernity

 

“Modernity” is a social, cultural, or historical descriptor for a certain type of society or set of social arrangements. It is a contentious and disputed term, often understood implicitly. It is a way of describing and classifying highly complex, dynamic, and emergent aggregate social phenomena, and so dramatically simplifies such contexts. However, the language of modernity remains attractive to commentators, academics, and policymakers.

In this monograph, the author reviews the literature that characterises what is called digital modernity. Digital modernity narratives focus on the possibilities of the data gathered by an ambient data infrastructure, enabled by ubiquitous devices such as the smartphone, and activities such as social networking and e-commerce. It is characterised by (1) a subjunctive outlook where people’s choices can be anticipated and improved upon, (2) the valorisation of disruptive innovation on demand, and (3) control provided by data analysis within a virtual realm that can be extended and applied to the physical world. The author explored the synergies and tensions between these three aspects as well as the opportunities for and dilemmas posed by misinformation. The author identifies five principles that emerge from the study of relevant texts and business models and concludes by contrasting digital modernity with other theories of the 21st century information society.

Narratives of digital modernity are useful because they help explain the development of technology. It matters because many influential people accept, and often generate, the digital modernity narrative. Given digital modernity’s strong association with the Web, it is a central topic for Web Science as the interdisciplinary study of the World Wide Web from the technological, social, and individual points of view.

Publication Date: 17 Nov 2022

© 2022 K. O’Hara

DOI:10.1561/1800000031

Web3 – the promise and the reality

Web3 describes a group of technologies for managing collective interactions on the internet while avoiding centralised control, granting users agency over access to their data, and managing distribution of value as digital assets. The technologies are distributed ledgers including blockchain, cryptocurrencies, distributed autonomous organisations, decentralised finance, and non-fungible tokens. Web3 technologies offer technical solutions to problems of trust and verifiability online. Their open source basis makes them available to developers globally and across sectors and communities. Some of these technologies are already in use across many sectors and have been proposed as applicable to a much greater range of uses in the future. If the technologies prove successful sustainably at scale for a very wide range of functions, they might change and expand what the internet delivers for a high proportion of users, and genuinely warrant the description Web3.

WST White Paper on Privacy

Law has granted individuals some rights over the use of data about them, but data protection rights have not redressed the balance between the individual and the tech giants. A number of approaches aim to augment personal rights to allow individuals to police their own information space, facilitating informational self-determination. This reports reviews this approach to privacy protection, explaining how controls have generally been conceived either as the use of technology to aid individuals in this policing task, or the creation of further legal instruments to augment their powers. It focuses on two recent attempts to secure or support data protection rights, one using technology and the other the law. The former is called Solid, a decentralised platform for linked data, while the latter is a novel application of trust law to develop data trusts in which individuals’ data is managed by a trustee with the individuals as beneficiaries. The report argues that structural impediments make it hard for thriving, diverse ecosystems of Solid apps or data trusts to achieve critical mass – a problem that has traditionally haunted this empowering approach.