Re: Fwd: Digital Sovereignty - was: Co-Immunology and the Web

Hi Henry - 

Thanks for bearing with us and apologies for not getting a reply to you sooner. As you may glean from the level of traffic on this list, we have moved much of our workflow out of email in favour of GitHub issues registries, such as in our Design Principles repository. We also publish a guide of working with the TAG which goes into more detail on that. We did discuss your email in one of our recent video calls, and you can read those minutes. One question that came up in discussion: last year in our Ethical Web Principles finding we said “When we are adding new web technologies and platforms, we will build them to cross regional and national boundaries.” In other words, the web should not be built to reinforce national or territorial boundaries. This seems to be at tension with the notion of “weaving the law into the web.” We also have some mixed experience with "weaving the law into the web" stemming from the Do Not Track work – and privacy-related work in general where we have struggled to build bridges between how web technology works and the patchwork of legislation that covers tracking, personal data storage and use.

To some degree, we are wondering what you are looking for from the TAG in this instance, but this sounds like a topic that might be appropriate for a future W3C workshop?

Thanks,Dan

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

> Dear Technical Architecture Group,
> 

>    Lucian Floridi, Professor at the Oxford Internet Institute
> recently published a short paper [1]
> 

> "The Fight for Digital Sovereignty: What It Is, and
>   Why It Matters, Especially for the EU"
> 

> In my view, this problem of sovereignty has arisen in the tension
> between the extraterritoriality of the Web/Internet and the
> territoriality of law. Prof Mireille Hildebrandt gave a detailed
> history of sovereignty and territoriality 7 years ago [2].
> 

> Dame Wendy Hall and Kieron O’Hara have written about
> the 4 internets as a reality [3]. 
> We have seen the rise 4 years ago of the theme of borders
> and walls transforming politics in the US and the UK.
> The problem won’t subside and the fracturing only worsen
> until this is addressed.
> 

> Luckily we can use the web to heal this wound, weaving
> the law into the web. This is what I call the Web of
> Nations
> 

> https://co-operating.systems/2020/06/01/WoN.pdf
> 

> That paper puts the emphasis on nations, but the proposed
> architecture is completely flexible, allowing supranational
> as well as regional participation as suggested by Floridi.
> As it happens most of the technical pieces to build this
> have already been standardised by the W3C. But as a coordination
> institution the W3C is well positioned to help bring together
> the right players and help this become a reality.
> 

> Henry Story
> 

> [1] https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s13347-020-00423-6
> [2] https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/utlj.1119
> [3] https://www.cigionline.org/publications/four-internets-geopolitics-digital-governance
> 

> > On 1 Apr 2020, at 20:39, Henry Story <henry.story@bblfish.net> wrote:
> >
> > Dear TAG,
> >
> >  I wrote a short essay that looks at the internet and the web from
> > an immunological perspective.
> >
> > It starts like this:
> >
> > [[
> > The Covid-19 global pandemic has taught us that immunology is not just
> > a biological phenomenon, but a personal one requiring us to adopt hygienic
> > practices, a social one and indeed with the closing of frontiers a
> > geopolitical one. But it also breaks into the space of technology with
> > requirements that we learn hygiene rules about reposting content, to limit
> > transmission of false information about the virus.
> >
> > I will show how the concept of co-immunity developed by Peter Sloterdijk
> > can give us a framework to understand this. The essay ends by developing
> > an analysis of the immunological features of the internet and locate pieces
> > that we need to make a healthier World Wide Web. 
> > ]]
> >
> > https://medium.com/@bblfish/co-immunology-and-the-web-43379b46688e
> >
> > There are a number of references there that could be useful
> > to inform web architecture.
> >
> > All the best,
> >
> > Henry Story
> >
> > https://co-operating.systems
> > @bblfish
> 

> Henry Story
> 

> https://co-operating.systems
> WhatsApp, Signal, Tel: +33 6 38 32 69 84‬
> Twitter: @bblfish