Algorithm of Working Together
The algorithm causes the division of netizens into two poles: pros and cons, supporting and opposing, us and them, like and hate.
It is unimaginable to envision the human journey in cyberspace without a gateway called the World Wide Web, commonly abbreviated as www.
That is the starting point for all wanderings in the digital world, with all its usefulness and complexities.
Not many know who deserves the award for finding that entry point. He is Tim Berners-Lee, a man born in London on June 8, 1955. In 1980, when he worked as a freelance contractor for the Conseil EuropÉene pour la Recherche NuclÉaire (CERN) — a council formed to discuss the construction of a nuclear physics research facility in Europe — Berners-Lee proposed a hypertext-based project to facilitate the sharing and updating of information among researchers. With the help of Robert Cailliau, he created a prototype system called Enquire.
In 1984, Berners-Lee used an idea similar to what he used in Enquire to create the World Wide Web. Then he created a network site with the address www.http://info.cern.ch, the first web server in the world, which launched on Aug. 6, 1991. Berners-Lee’s great contribution initiated the connectedness among the billions of people from the eight corners of the world through a limitless space called cyberspace.
Now 62, Berners-Lee lives modestly. He was unwilling to patent his invention, so it could be used freely up to this moment. For his great service, the top graduate of the School of Physics at Queen’s College, Oxford University, was awarded the Order of Merit (2007), a prestigious, personal award from the Queen of England herself, which she decides to bestow without any external advice. Berners-Lee’s example is also found in Blake Ross, the software developer who created Mozilla, the internet browser. The young boy, born on June 12, 1985 in Miami, Florida, created his first website at the age of 10.
When the Mozilla Web Browser was launched in 2004, Lee was still 11 years old. Mozilla was later combined with Firefox, a program created with Dave Hyatt, and became Mozilla Firefox. Mozilla Firefox was quickly adopted by internet users because it was considered to be more secure and easier to use, and it grabbed a share of the internet browser market, which was previously dominated by Microsoft Internet Explorer.
‘Network society’
Like the virtual gateway invented by Berners-Lee, Mozilla Firefox – which was developed by the Mozilla Foundation and hundreds of volunteers – can also be used free of charge. From the work of volunteers, starting with Ross\'s own hands, netizens can explore the cyber world and interact socially in what is called – to use the term coined by Manuel Castells (2010) — the network society. You cannot enter social media sites without Mozilla Firefox. Because of the World Wide Web and Mozilla Firefox, millions of people from various countries, diverse academic backgrounds, ethnicities and religions, are able to exchange information, so that the multitude culminates in what Castells calls “mass self communication”; namely individuals who use various social media tools to send messages that can be accessed by many people.
However, what Berners-Lee and Ross created for humanity was later welcomed by the economic interests that beat behind the pages of social media. In the increasingly popular digital communication platform is a smart machine called the algorithm. In plain language, Maulida Sri Handayani (2016) explained how it works. If you are thirsty at a bus shelter and there happens to a beverage machine, you insert a coin into the machine. Within seconds, out comes the beverage you want.
Of course, it is no genie that makes the beverage appear. Without money, the beverage will not come out. The machine has a set of rules that allows the beverage to come out when you insert a coin. That set of rules or formulas is the algorithm. This term is derived from the name of Persian mathematician Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khawarizmi (780-850 A.D.).
Social media platforms such as Facebook uses an algorithm based on uniformity. The latest news in your Timeline are results compiled from your digital behavior and preferences: the books, music, films, sports you like, topics of conversation you enjoy, friends you like to talk to, and the like. Therefore, it can only bring you closer to those people who have something in common with you.
This uniformity – as Aulia Adam (2017) showed – can threaten the intellectual climate. People who are exposed to information on the danger of thoughts on a daily basis will develop an “allergy” to new ideas that come from outside their group, thereby leading to the emergence of blind fanaticism.
Adam pointed to the concerns of Eli Pariser, an internet observer, over the term Filter Bubble. "A world that is built from similarity is a place where we learn nothing,” Pariser said.
Division of netizens
The algorithm causes the division of netizens into two poles: pros and cons, supporting and opposing, us and them, like and hate. It is difficult to get alternative variants to the two poles, which continue to be in clashes. This is the way algorithm shapes our way of thinking; then the millions of people at the two poles are targeted by the advertising industry.
If we still expect wide-ranging joint benefits for the virtual world, through open source software as has been initiated by Berners-Lee, Ross and others, the dangerous algorithm has to be changed into a social algorithm for working together. In the context of Indonesia, the development of co-working spaces in Bandung, Jakarta and other cities in the last two years can give hope. Co-working is a collaboration of young people who initiate start-ups and part-time workers with open space or transparency concepts, so that every individual interacts actively without restriction.
The intense encounter of creative beings allows them to form networks at work for the benefit of many. Undeniably, it is a business, but designing, let alone operating, a digital app cannot be done alone. It takes many different skills and must uphold the ethics of cooperation.
The need for mutual cooperation can give birth to a social algorithm without consequence of splitting or division. Therefore, mutual cooperation, which has been embedded in the DNA of Pancasila, will breathe new life in cyberspace.
Damhuri Muhammad
Writer; Philosophy Lecturer at Darma Persada University, Jakarta