Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Internet

Rousseau’s social contract theory is as relevant today as it was in the eighteenth century. Social contracts are not formal contracts signed by all citizens; they are more philosophical answers to some core dilemmas of human society. Rousseau, Hobbes, Hume, Grotius, among other philosophers, proposed their “drafts” of social contracts.

Today, we are in the process of renegotiating various social contracts in politics and economics. The Internet is no exception. The old Internet social contract, which facilitated the amazing growth of the Internet, is also being questioned. Do we need to amend it or do we need to draft a new one?

Two main parties of the old Internet social contract, developed in the 1980s, were the Internet pioneers, mainly academic and technical people who invented the Internet, and the US government. According to this arrangement, the Internet pioneers received funding and support from the US government. In exchange, the US government received – according to one urban legend – a communication infrastructure that could survive a nuclear attack, or more plausibly, they just disbursed research funds smartly and served the public interest, something governments should do at least occasionally.

Although the Internet’s social contract is not written and signed on the dotted line, it contains rules and principles that have shaped the Internet’s development, including transparency, open standards, and rough consensus decision-making. The US government took the role of benevolent guardian; it was close enough to create a space for the Internet to grow and far enough away not to interfere with its operational management. The Internet’s social contract was a great success in facilitating the unprecedented growth of the Internet.

The early idyllic phase of the Internet’s social contract was challenged by three main developments: first in the early 1990s when, through the commercialisation of the domain name system, businesses entered a previously non-profit space (ultimately leading towards the establishment of ICANN); secondly, in the early 2000s when the Internet’s global growth attracted the attention of governments for managing the Internet (the WSIS process and the IGF); and thirdly, over the last few years when the Internet became part of the critical infrastructure for business and governments.

Each of these developments introduced new players and put additional pressure on managing the Internet.  The more critical the Internet has become in modern society, the louder the voices for revising the ‘Internet social contract’ have gotten.

This tension is behind most of the controversies addressed in ICANN, WSIS, the ITU, the IGF and other policy spaces where Internet politics is being discussed.

Would Rousseau use the Internet? It would seem so. He was a prolific publisher of his ideas and had many problems with censorship in his day. Being able to publicize his ideas freely would be a great boon for him. Even more so would be easy access to information and to ideas of others.

Would he have a website? Probably. He might even open a blog page.

Would he join social networks? Certainly not. Rousseau was a very self-centered person, cherishing his privacy. He would not expose himself to contacts with unknown outsiders. In his day he quarreled with nearly all his acquaintances and even close friends. He also suffered from persecution mania, especially as he grew older. While he often criticized the ideas of others, he did not respond positively to criticism of his own views.

Rousseau might not react very positively to mass movements launched over the Internet. His view of the intellectual capacities of ordinary people was rather dim. The cult he enjoyed during the early days of the French Revolution would already have shocked him.