Dedicated to Ray:

You are cosmic.

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**How would one design ‘a public sphere’?**

Before one may design, one must specify a working definition of what ‘a public sphere’ is. The notion is the ‘one great thought’ of the German theorist Habermas and was developed by him throughout his professional life. Here, we will primarily be working with the notion as it was re-developed in Volume 1 of *Theory of Communicative Action* (1984), while maintaining fidelity to Volume 2 (1987) in a more implicit manner. Occasional references will be peppered in from the early dissertation *The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere* (1962) and subsequent developments by other theorists.

The working definition must be formulated in relation to the most dexterous, most powerful theoretical construction possible to render adequate scope for impactful design. Castell's grounded theory largely concerns such a construction: ‘the network’. Castell's works with an ontology of breaks and flows between nodes. What flows between nodes (the vertex) is conceived by him as the ‘scape’ of the network, i.e., infoscape, information; finscape, money, etc. This is developed throughout his body of work, but here we will be drawing mainly from *Communication Power* (2009).

Such a formulation of Habermas' conception is given by Singh (2023) in rather more succinct language than the German is accustomed to use: a public sphere is “a network for communicating information and points of view” (pp. 634), situated in a society between “the realm of [the] private sphere and the sphere of public authority, as a sphere of mediating between them” (pp. 633).

To approximate ‘a public sphere,’ the other side of the equation, now formulated in terms of the network, an exploratory narrative shall be built up through a complementary fusion of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) and Design Fiction. More will be said of that methodology in a moment when the subject's preamble is out of the way.

Do we not already have a public sphere? Not in any strong systemic sense. Habermas' initial formulation was also an account of its diminishing. Later criticism from historians, as referenced by Singh, has disputed his historical account as being “inadequate,” flipping the question to the opposite pole: did we ever have a public sphere? In terms of overarching sociolectal systems, there is something that occupies the structural position between the private sphere and public authority, but it's not the public sphere, it’s the media.

Only at this far-out level of resolution could the media be confused with the public sphere. In terms of the specification of network relationships, the media broadly are not described by the ideal of the public sphere at all. Rather, in specification, they are best described by the functionalist, empirically bulletproof ‘propaganda model’ of Herman and Chomsky (1988). Particularly relevant for the study of network relationships is Herman and Chomsky’s focus on concentration of ownership as it relates to power over the flow of information. Note that concentrated ownership is a point of continuity that extends into contemporary developments such as social media, vis-à-vis Fuchs (2018).

Habermas' conception requires relative power equality between nodes. Concentration in ownership is demonstrated by Herman and Chomsky, through their study of worthy and unworthy victims, to produce media output that reflects almost always the interests of powerful nodes. This would indicate a severe disparity in power.

In terms of network relationships, the media by and large demonstrate unidirectional connections in an infoscape, flowing from/through power centres to assorted structural positions. Subsequently, the task at hand is one of network relationship(s) approximation and transfer, to build into a media infrastructure features and flows that would produce information transfer of a similar vein to what a robust public sphere would produce.

More could be said on the extent to which the media fail as a public sphere, but why waste the ink? The general problem has already been broadly described, and the specifics change so fast that in attempting to capture them perfectly, this work would be rendered obsolete by the time of its publication. The author has no interest whatsoever in splitting hairs of historicity, factuality, or degree. Through radical design, the author intends to put forth a positive contribution that would (a) hedge between theorists, therefore being explainable within a plurality of theoretical positions, and (b) hold a genuinely viable germ for future germination.

Now is not a moment of definition of the past; it is one of design and thereby contention in the shape of the future.

It is in this light that the author offers this current attempt. Here will be laid out the digital infrastructure/architecture for an infoscape network for carrying critique. This notion of critique is fundamentally developed from Baudrillard's conception of seduction as the potential energy of reversibility and his identification of the field of the imaginary as the site of plausible resistance. Design here allows yet another reversal of Baudrillard's method. Rather than critique as weapon, as demonstrated in *Forget Foucault* (2007) as—in mode and content—an intensification of Foucauldianism into its death, this work is concerned inversely with the weapon as critique. As that weapon is a network, where Baudrillard shoots a rifle, this work builds a bomb.

Note here that the implied sharp temporal shock of physical violence does not carry into the plane of symbolic violence. Baudrillard's rifle supplants as much as it kills. For such a bomb to be built, critique—as detonator—needs to be emancipated from its subaltern position to mediums incorporated into capital. Capital's incorporation of the therein produced forms into content is inevitable. However, that will serve as the secondary charge (i.e., distribution).

Such an emancipated form is suggested by Land and Murphy (2019) and demanded in response to Land (2018). Relevant here is the relationship of the blockchain to time. Afforded by the technology is a unified sequencing that would facilitate the application of protocols for the facilitation of a digital game. Furthermore, that blockchain itself offers the possibility of a novel route around procedures. Due to its historical isomorphism with a distributed network of redundant nodes designed to withstand nuclear attack, it is perfect! Land is operating with a definition of critique that is different (yet eerily similar) to the author's. Yet his analysis is cutting.

Towards the end of the conversation between Land and Murphy, Murphy posits one final unlikely possibility for the future: “for those who still hold on to the left-wing tradition,” that blockchain could be leveraged for a sort of “communist patch,” to circumvent Land's apocalyptic vision. Land is, of course, sceptical but in principle supportive of such a possibility.

What we have in the blockchain is a way to program networks with potentially radically discontinuous logics that can route around traditional gatekeepers. It allows the possibility to design a network where the network's relationship to users is more critical to its functioning than its relationship to any pre-existing powerful stakeholders.

In that line, at the level of the individual, this project must fundamentally offer them a ‘convivial’ (Illich, 1973) tool for knowing the truth about wickedly complex post-modernity, as well as expressing correct information that is insoluble to flow along channels whose solvent is capital.

Given all this, the domain can be summarized as follows: Is there the possibility of a Truth Machine? Defining a Truth Machine as a digital approximation of the required network relationships for Habermas' conception of a public sphere. The body of this work will detail the core structures of such a machine. The standard that this work hopes to reach with its design is that set by Petroski (1997):

“A new artefact will displace an existing one only if there is a clear advantage that the new holds over the old. The most direct and successful means for establishing an advantage is to point out [through supplanting design] the shortcomings and failings of existing technology and show how the new device serves to remove objections to the old” (pp. 15).

This is a form of critique intensified by McLuhanism: the message of this work is a new medium itself, whose form is a critique of the current media ecosystem. The end goal of such critique is to supplant, alter, and forget.

The rest could be found on a hosted PDF file via [link to document](https://revolutionaryresearch-my.sharepoint.com/:b:/g/personal/naamveersingh_revolutionaryresearch_onmicrosoft_com/ETUO0xwHJLpClL6TkVIqQ5QBoVjYWOYhW24Ycm5eMKgalg?e=ZnDoyI).