In my last post, I described the problem facing all online communities and the freedom of information to exist online: it happens only as long as the interests that control the pipes want it to continue.

Oddly enough the solution to this problem came from reading a science fiction book that pointed me towards another science fiction book. The Phoenix Lander’s recent success on Mars steered me towards Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy, a series I’ve been meaning to read for years but never got around to. In the middle of the second book, Mars is firmly in the control of ‘Transnationals’ and ‘Metanationals’ – giant megacorporations that are exploiting the planet for natural resources to send back to a horribly mismanaged Earth to fuel what one character describes as ‘outward growth capitalism.’ One of the companies and the Martian underground movement want a free Mars and a different economic model based instead of sustainable, ‘inward growth capitalism.’ As the characters debate how to create a free Mars, they discuss hauntingly familiar topics: the megacorporations own all the materials on Mars. They own the tents that protect them in the harsh Martian environment, they own the oxygen and the food and everything else. One character directly indicates that as long as this is the case, Mars will never be free because the corporations could (like in the movie Total Recall) simply shut off the oxygen and win any kind of conflict or struggle. The underground, comprised largely of small, voluntary, temporary and functional communities, exists only because the transnats don’t have any need to expend resources to annihilate them – yet.

Sound familiar? The debate in Robinson’s book continues for a couple of chapters (and I’m not finished with the book yet, but I did skip ahead and read the back of the third book so I know their revolution eventually succeeds. But more to my point: as more and more people begin to pack the Internet, form communities, talk about brands, interact, converse and join the conversation – as technology continues to become cheaper and easier to use – are we simply enslaving ourselves to a handful of companies that can eventually just ‘pull the plug’ if they choose and regain control of the conversation?

The answer – and understand this is a first draft, not a final plan – actually springs from another sci-fi book, Neal Stephenson’s groundbreaking Cryptonomicon. In Cryptonomicon, one group of characters is attempting to create a ‘data haven’ in a small island nation. The idea of a data haven predates Stephenson’s book and has actually been tried before, most notably in Sealand by the company HavenCo, which may have inspired Stephenson’s novel.

HavenCo and its like are presently so small, opt-in and difficult to use that they barely make a dent on overall traffic – and many people are either completely ignorant of their existence or simply don’t care as they have no reason to be concerned about their privacy or online interaction. However if we are going to continue to advocate open conversation with online communities, digital PR professionals logically must support the creation of larger data havens to protect our investments in this space and the overall freedom of dialogue and authenticities we advocate for our clients.

The ironic outcome of all this may be that a major company is the first one to offer such a data haven. When Google announced its partnership with NASA, my very first thought was ‘massive, free WiFi supported by Google advertising.’ The irony isn’t just that Google is now as massive and profitable a company as the oldest in the tech sector, it’s that Google also hoards vast amount of personal information on all of its users and is inherently not to be trusted. But it has actively fought for privacy and data protection against, for example, Viacom (and lost) and may very well be the closest thing we could create to a mass data haven that would allow what we’ve built to flourish without the oppressive arm of the strangle-and-control communications model hanging over our shoulders.

On a more fundamental level, Google’s offering shifts away from traditional economic models in that it doesn’t actually charge for its products. Gmail, Google Reader, Google maps, the search engine itself: you do not have to pay to use these things. Rather, you kind of enter a deal whereby you agree to receive advertising as you use these free services, and to allow Google to take a look through your email so that the advertising you receive is ‘targeted.’

It would be foolish to think that Google offers the only solution, or that their free services based on ads are the best way to overcome the invisible barriers placed our data. As technology becomes cheaper and easier to use there may very well be a solution that circumvents the need for a Google Space Program altogether, and I certainly hope there will be. Until we stop breathing their air and working in their cloud, we must at least acknowledge that it can be shut off and work instead openly and transparently on a solution that protects the very communities technology has allowed to flourish.

I’ll close with this thought: personally I don’t believe that this solution is possible as much as it is inevitable. As communications professionals it is our responsibility to support the free flow of data and information in all directions, and to prepare for the inevitable corporate backlash against a system that is contrary to the dying manipulate-and-control model. We will be uniquely positioned to help our clients adapt to this system, when it comes. Kind of a fun place to be really.