A future where every region of the world has its own net, except Europe.

Synopsis of this future

By 2030, the digital world has become “balkanised”: it has logically followed the fragmentation of the geopolitical landscape, divided according to political interests. The era is one of so-called “continental” networks and “sovereign” solutions, enclosed behind digital borders and forming digital spaces fully controlled by a coalition of strong states and regional digital companies. European users find themselves caught between these different sovereign Nets, left vulnerable. Inequalities in access to digital services and rights are both reinforced and redefined.

Fragments of f·r·iction

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The time has come for the re-territorialisation of the internet, from servers to cables: the net has never been so tangible or physical, driven by geopolitical and geostrategic stakes and a race for sovereignty, fuelled by nationalist populism from all sides. The connected, digital world is now divided into three macro-nets, each broken down into meso-nets and micro-nets. Rather than nested dolls, they are networks of different sizes and sociological compositions that intersect within a macro-net.
Each macro-net constitutes a digital sphere composed of state/private actors and users aligned with a political doctrine and/or regional dominant ideology:

• The Russian macro-net: encompassing Eastern European countries and a few from Asia Minor/Middle East.
• The U.S. macro-net: isolationist, but offering near-total access to users from Five Eyes countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK, and the U.S.) and restricted access to South American countries.
• The Sino-African macro-net: the largest, covering most of the two most populous continents, Central and East Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Each macro-net (a region dominated by a “strong” nation) is made up of meso-nets (country/coalition-level) themselves composed of micro-nets (community/interest-based, e.g. by sexual orientation or worldview), all operating in silos, representing the height of filter bubbles and self-indoctrination.
This phenomenon has been reinforced by the territorialisation of macro-nets and the advent of geofencing (access restricted by location) and ideofencing (access restricted by ideology or value system) for online services. Users have similarly adapted their behaviour, selectively sharing personal information/data within their micro-net(s) and meso-net(s).

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Europe failed to adapt to this major shift, paralysed by deliberative processes and lack of investment in building European digital “champions”. As a result, the European population – especially the French – must navigate between the three macro-nets to access digital services. This requires juggling multiple subscriptions and contracts, identities, and authorisations, making internet navigation cumbersome and exhausting.
Technosocial inequalities have deepened, and European users are now disadvantaged and vulnerable compared to others, lacking their own macro-net. Social inequality fractures also persist within individual countries as it has become increasingly complex to exercise digital rights, with each macro-net and meso-net having its own laws and jurisdiction, inaccessible to extraterritorial users.
However, the French possess an unexpected comparative advantage due to their colonial legacy: the new lingua franca is French (due to Sub-Saharan Africa’s demographics). The Sino-African macro-net, the most developed, offers bilingual services in simplified French and Mandarin.

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Gaining access to a macro-net where one is not geographically based is difficult: users must pay an “entry fee” or duty in “datarrifs” (personal data), along with providing authenticated personal identification, akin to a digital passport. To evade these restrictions, European users increasingly resort to grey-market techniques and practices to bypass digital borders (obfuscation, fake profiles, VPNs, etc.).
Geographical migrants – climate and political refugees – are the “minor winners” of this balkanisation, as they have honed expertise in crossing digital borders, having navigated multiple macro-nets throughout their journeys from their home countries. They exploit this skillset commercially or humanitarily, reversing the power dynamic somewhat and mitigating inequalities for European populations.

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The internet as we know it in 2020 still exists, albeit in a diminished, outdated form, nicknamed Oldnet. It is a network-archive, disconnected from real-time updates. Accessing it requires downgrading or retrofitting one’s hardware. Like Second Life in 2020, these “vestige” platforms serve as niche refuges for certain communities, but their disconnect from the macro-nets makes them unattractive to the general population.
These forgotten spaces are gradually being reclaimed, allowing experimentation with new approaches to personal data and its management through terms of service bending (a reference to circuit bending in maker culture), exploiting loopholes in contracts that are no longer updated. In Europe, particularly in France, there has also been a rise in a “disconnected” digital world – operating outside the networks or existing only through occasional, localised connections.