The Aporias of Liberalism in the Digital Age

This chapter discusses liberalism’s aporias in the digital age. It addresses the levels of the individual (Sects. 8.2–8.5), the platform (Sects. 8.6–8.7), and international relations (Sects. 8.8–8.10). Section 8.2 reconstructs algorithmic ontologies using PageRank and the Ant Colony Optimization Algorithm as ideal-types. Section 8.3 addresses algorithmic misrecognition. Section 8.4 discusses algorithmic optimization, including the proliferation of disinformation. Section 8.5 addresses algorithmic discrimination, including price discrimination. Section 8.6 addresses digital accumulation. Section 8.7 discusses Big Tech’s construction of a ‘private government’ by moving into areas relevant to security, such as health, agriculture, weather forecasting, and humanitarianism. Section 8.8 emphasizes the security challenges of the digitally entangled post-Westphalian order, which could lead to cross-domain conflict escalation. Section 8.9 reconstructs the proliferation of digital authoritarian practices since 9/11 in the US, Russia, China, and India. Section 8.10 discusses the legitimacy of national digital disentanglement, following the NWICO’s ‘cultural sovereignty’ concept.