The New Modes and Orders of Disruption: Web 3.0 and Republican Resilience
by
Abstract
The 2016 US Presidential election highlighted certain negative manifestations of Web 3.0 that points to sustained efforts at disruption as a political tool and a new kind of arbitrary interference aimed at undermining the prevailing culture and traditions of modern democratic nation-states. The growing importance of social media and the weaponization of big data and fake news signal that new forms of domination will be a significant challenge to democratic practices going forward. This paper explores these developments through the lens of republicanism and asks if this approach can offer an attractive way to address these threats. In particular, I argue that republicanism’s focus on minimizing domination through its alternative conception of liberty contains a certain resilient form of antipower that serves to counter some of the arbitrary interferences that have emerged in the shift from Web 2.0 to 3.0.
Published in
Licensing Information
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non–Commercial No Derivatives License which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of the Publisher must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
