Off the Network:
Peoples Tribune Interview with Ulises Mejias, Associate Professor of communications studies at State University of New York, College at Oswego, and author of Off the Network: Disrupting the Digital World (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). The book can be purchased, and can also be read or downloaded at no cost in open access format, at http://blog.ulisesmejias.com.
Professor Mejias, what inspired you to write this book – anything in particular?
I’ve been working on this project for many years, and many things changed during that time, but one of the most noticeable transitions for me has been the transition from blogs (which allow you to personalize your web presence and retain ownership of your data) to social media (which reduce identity to a standardized profile, and which seize ownership of your information).
In the book, I call this the emergence of the monopsony, which in economic terms means a market structure where there is a single buyer. The Web was supposed to spell the end of monopolies, or single sellers. But instead, what we have is a funnel where everybody can be a producer, but our products must be sold to the only buyers in town: the Facebooks and Googles of our times. If companies own your data, then you are not the consumer; you are the product being sold (in this case, to advertisers, or worse).
What are some of the key ideas in your book about digital networks?
I focus on two key ideas. First, the network has become a digital template that greatly shapes the way we organize and even think about society. Networks make some social transactions possible and others impossible. For instance, you can “friend” someone you haven’t seen since high school, but you can’t “friend” your parents if they are not part of the same network.
The second idea is that we need to question the logic of the network. Yes, the network increases opportunities and ways of participating in society, but it also increases some forms of inequality. In recent times, we have seen that the question of who controls and monitors the flow of information in digital networks is a question that has repercussions for people’s human rights, privacy, and welfare. That is why in the book I explore the notion of the “paranodal:” the space between the nodes of a network. This space is not empty, but populated by multitudes that do not conform to the logic of the network. These might be alternative networks, or simply new and old social formations that resist being integrated into the digital network. I think to the extent that we approach an age when dissent might only be safely expressed outside the network, these paranodal spaces will become increasingly important.
Your book was published before Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) is spying on the American peoples’ digital communication, yet is worded such that it presumes that the U.S. government is conducing surveillance.
Well, I am by no means an oracle, but I think for many people the writing was clearly on the wall. I think that for many of us doing research in this field, Snowden’s revelations simply confirmed what we knew was already possible to do. And since we knew it was possible, it wasn’t perhaps that surprising to learn that the temptation to do it was too hard to resist, especially in the wake of post 9/11 paranoia.
