Technology and the Promise of Decentralization. Origins, Development, Patterns of Arguments

Abstract

Digitalization has long been associated with the promise of a technology-enabled decentralization of social conditions. Although such expectations have regularly fallen short, their underlying generic vision has proven to be astonishingly stable. This paper strives to trace the origin of the notion of decentralizing socioeconomic forms of coordination through technological means-from the do-it-yourself scene of the late 1960s, the computer counterculture of the 1970s and the 1980s, and the debates on cyberspace and Web 2.0 in the 1990s and 2000s to present day ideas of decentralized and distributed forms of production and economic systems. An elaboration of the basic patterns of arguments behind technology-based promises of decentralization and their communicative functions then follows. Zusammenfassung Mit der Digitalisierung geht seit jeher das Versprechen einer technikinduzierten Dezentralisierung gesellschaftlicher Verhältnisse einher. Obgleich die daran geknüpften konkreten Erwartungen bislang von den empirischen Entwicklungen regelmäßig enttäuscht worden sind, erweist sich das dahinterliegende allgemeine Zukunftsbild als erstaunlich stabil. Vor diesem Hintergrund verfolgt dieses Papier zum ersten das Ziel, die Entstehungsgeschichte der Vorstellung einer Dezentralisierung sozioökonomischer Koordinationsweisen durch technische Strukturen zu rekonstruieren-von der Do-it-yourself-Szene der späten 1960er-Jahre über die Computer-Gegenkultur der 1970er-und 1980er-Jahre, die Diskussionen um das Web (2.0) in den 1990er-und 2000er-Jahren bis hin zu gegenwärtigen Ideen distribuierter Wirtschaftsweisen. Daran anknüpfend werden zum zweiten die argumentativen Grundmuster und kommunikativen Funktionen technikorientierter Dezentralisierungsthesen herausgearbeitet.

Digitalization in Vulnerable Populations: A Systematic Review in Latin America

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