The Fog of Freedom

Talk of freedom and liberty pervade the past and present of the digital computer and the Internet, from everyday " academic freedom " to the more specific notion of a " freedom to tinker " ; from the prestigious Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference to " net neutrality " ; from " Internet Freedom " in North Africa and the Middle East and the Occupy movement in the United States to the famous case of Free Software, which has articulated precise freedoms as well as a legally constituted commons in reusable technologies ; from the " FreedomBox " to the Freedom Fone to " Liberté Linux (see figure 10.1). 1 What kind of talk is this? Idle chatter? A rhetorical flourish? Serious busi-ness? Or perhaps it is more than talk? Freedom is associated with the digital computer and the Internet to a greater extent than it is to most other technologies. And the digital computer and the Internet are associated with freedom much more than with other ideals, like justice, well-being, health, or happiness. Further, arguments are made just as often that digital computers and the Internet restrict rather than enhance freedom, leading to a morass of claims about the powers—good and evil—of these new technologies that drape the globe and permeate our consciousness. There are many ways to dismiss this association as ideology or marketing hype, but there are fewer ways to take it seriously. Careful attention to the history and development of the digital computer and the Internet should be balanced with careful attention to the political theories of freedom and liberty if we want to make sense of the inflated claims associating freedom and computers. In this chapter I explore the relationship between the concept of freedom and the historical path that the design of computer technology has taken; to do this convincingly requires bringing the approaches of science and technology studies (STS) and media and communication studies (MCS) into closer dialogue with political theory. In particular, I will revisit here