I really don't think he is. I would say it's an incomplete position (not because Mike's wrong but because you can't fit a whole book in a single article). It's not just any protocols and not just with any architectural properties. Some protocols are easier to capture and harder to govern.
But a protocol like AT has the right kind of properties (in a way that AP does not) to create unbundled governance and to support democratic systems. You also need infrastructure and funding. But protocols are key to eliminating chokepoints and integrating unbundled governance.
Are we not importing an American habit of thought that elevates code over law? Law is the tool of messy politics (in all its disorder), which ironically both crypto libertarians and the American left seek to bypass with technological fixes.
It's not an American habit to know that the built environment has governance properties and influences institutional arrangements (formal or informal) in ways that enable and constrain laws. Working with the fact that artefacts have politics isn't to be against other forms of governance too.
Agree. But we must remember that artefacts themselves are not beyond politics; they can be shaped through it. Through politics we can decide where a highway runs—or whether it is built at all. Through politics we can determine how, to what extent, privacy is protected (Con) bsky.app/profile/wild...
In the United States, many cling to guns as a substitute for collective solutions. It is a vivid example of how private fixes can crowd out political ones. Something similar risks happening in the digital sphere.
When we rely only on protocols to shield our social media presence from corporate capture—by making it easy to migrate elsewhere—we may come to neglect the harder task of demanding laws that impose accountability for the spread of misinformation.
Technical safeguards and legal frameworks need not be opposed, but when technical fixes become the default escape, they can sap the energy for politics. And without politics, there is no universal settlement of the rules that govern us - solutions are then up to individual choice & resources?