2003-10-04T17:41:00.000-07:00

T183 law, the Internet and Society: OU - Lindsay McKenzie

Well hope this works...we'll soon see.

The online lecture notes for T182 mention that a blog should be created to record personal thoughts with reference to the course.

We are asked to comment on "Why is this subject important?";

a) For Me
b) For Society

So here goes.

Why is the internet important to me?

Why is this subject important for me?. Well it's probably a little too early in the course to give a definitive answer to this question because I've formed initial opinions and reevaluated them several times thanks to some of the very persuasive reflections I've read on the T182 forum.

Of course, the future of ideas has enormous impact on us all because the internet has created a new dimension; the fabric of which we all can reach through at will and connect to forces that can have tremendous influence on our personal lives.

For me personally I see the internet as positive force and primarily as a source of information and communication. I don't share luscious concept of a commons and have never viewed the internet that way. Even after reading his description I find it (at least at this stage in the course) fundamentally flawed. The advances of technology, while undoubtedly commercially controlled and orientate, has helped to make it what it is today. The control that has developed through its architectural infrastructure is a manifestation of the innovation involved in that growth. As new technologies evolved those involved in creating the internet backbone have had to ensure that everyone "invited to the party" so to speak can participate.

So we servers running Unix that must be able to communicate with Operating Systems based on DOS, Windows NTFS or Linux variants sharing applications based C++, Java, Visual Basic, Pascal and numerous other languages. Common Gateway Interfaces becomes universal translation servers that far surpasses our ability to communicate between different languages, cultures and races within our everyday human interactions.

So for me, far for being a restrictive network it is an immensely liberating one which has forged collaborative commerce between large companies hoping to develop innovative equipment and applications unlike any other great technological wave in history.

The standards developed between the collaborative efforts of these industrial giants are heading towards one neutral, seamless platform when all technology can plug into the internet without compatibility problems. This destination makes commercial sense and for individuals it mean I can access information on the internet through my desktop computer, television set, mobile phone and hand held devices. I've talked personally to people who believe their lives had been saved by the accuracy of GPS positioning systems linked through what is essentially hand held computers. Yes, I know that this latter comparison isn't truly the internet but satellite navigation but this technology too is being absorbed into that massive new intelligent network called the internet.

Lessig describes the internet as a revolution. I see it as an evolution, and as it evolves it will, like all things must in the natural order of things, return to a neutral platform independent of conflict. Compatibility for all things wiring into the network must end up the final goal. The commons Lessig talks of hasn't arrived yet but is visible on the horizon of the future of the internet.

For me the internet gives me choices. I look forward to the day when my fridge scans my fresh produce and warns me via a reminder through my television set that I need to order more milk and gives me the choice to "press the red button to order now" and five minutes later have someone knock at my door with my pint of milk!

Sure that technology is with us now but still the domain of the exclusively wealthy but I'm encouraged because I know that within a matter of a year or two that same technology will be deliverable to me. Unlike other technological developments in the past the internet creates more than it destroys. I'm filled with hope for the future when I see new companies flourish through online businesses in rural areas without traditional support infrastructures such as airports, rail and road networks. I'm optimistic when I see private carriers spring up in these areas fuelled by enterprising innovative individuals spotting an opportunity or adverts appearing for warehouse staff required to fulfill orders in these new businesses many emerging from a spare bedroom.

The internet has changes the way we do business and we'd all be the worse without it. Innovation springs from the human spirit not from a network of wires, steel and silicon.

Of course, we are all concerned with restriction of freedom, human rights and violation of personal freedom but that's not a condition of the internet, merely reflected within it as the internet reflects all of society. I'm more concerned at this moment in time about proposals to carry personal identification cards and what information will be included on them that any fears on the internet. At least currently the internet still gives me a choice.

If anything the internet can expose violations of personal freedom in a way it never could before. The former Soviet Union could build an immense wall and silence their publishing presses by governmental order but even they couldn't stop the power of the internet when dissidents or activists could self publish their views and images with the stroke of keyboard. Perhaps the internet played a much wider role than ever accredited to demolishing that wall in Berlin.

So this is what the internet means to me personally. It's just a tool, but perhaps the most exciting and powerful tool ever placed in common hands. Like that spectacular opening sequence to Stanley Kubrick's visionary materpiece "2001: A Space Odyssey" called the "Dawn of Man" it is our black monolith. It is the dawning of a new form of intelligence and like that ape in the film "moonwatcher" I too gaze at the future with hope armed with this new form of intelligence. Like that sequence also I understand it must be used responsibly less it work against us all.

Unlike Lessig, I look and look hard but the landscape he describes is not the one I see before me. The internet is but a conduit to which we each channel out own consciousness and as for those egotistical powerful companies he sees casting a giant spectre over its future I see a the proud parents of an off spring they developed; the manifestation of their creativity, their innovation. Its ours and ours to use. Companies and governments for that matter will come and go but the internet will remain with us the legacy of those visionaries who saw a way to reach across nations, cultures and boundaries and provide an truly integrated global community for the first time in the history of the world without the use of mass destruction and conquest.

For the first time the power lies with us. Any company now trying to restrict that power will find themselves abandoned and with no real commercial presence because they rely on us for their very existence. Like HAL 9000 in 2001 megalomaniacal control will end up with their disconnection as they are starved first of individual subscriptions resulting in low commercial presence ending up like a TV station with no viewers. This will snuff out the financial life blood of commercial interests as investors sell stocks and banks loose interest until the company itself is laid to rest.

No for the first time the power I feel firmly with us. The internet is a part of all our future and one I embrace with hopeful optimism.

Why is the Internet important for Society?

The internet, I feel, is often taken out of context to what it actually is. Even as I write this blog (October 2003) still only around 40% of the world's population is currently connected to the internet. That the internet has had a tremendous impact on the modern world is undoubtedly true but this impact is relative to the impact that the printing press first had on the peoples of that era. Not everyone could read or write when the first commercial printing presses started rolling and today the internet, probably more than any other significant development in the history of computing has introduced legions of the world's population to a new level of computer literacy hitherto unforeseen.

That great intinsic communication channel we call the internet is still with us today and provides a unique channel for the expression of free world. In fact, it has aided in the destruction of more natural barriers to censorship or control than probably anything that has gone before it.

Do governments try to control it?, of course they do. The Korean government have banned the use of digital cameras or mobile telephones with photographic capabilities in all their factories or in any area of subjective sensitivity not because digital photographic technology is a bad thing but because anyone can run a link straight from a camera and into a computer and publish over the internet. No longer will film and other human rights documents need to be smuggles through physical barriers. This type of control is nothing new however and it applies to the postal service, the telephone network and even to the popular press. Of course these powers are often misused because they are governed by human judgment which is often flawed but that is why we have a legal system so that those who feel aggrieved can find a channel for recourse.

The architectural infrastructure of the internet has created a free market of the kind not previously seen by trading blocks belonging to any continental land mass. There are no embargoes, no restrictions and no quotas on the internet as there are in conventional trade blocks, it is truly a global environment without borders.

Prof Lawrence Lessig would have us believe that the internet is being controlled by corporate giants bent on imposing restrictions. It suits his argument to establish this because he makes his money in a new area of legal practice which specialises in the internet.

These great corporate giants he described don't restrict access to the internet indeed they are the manifestations of innovation and creativity.

What these corporations have done is to create products and services to make access to the internet easier and they have done with such success that many users don't understand where the distinctions lie between online service products and the internet on which they run. How these corporations envisage the development of these products and services doesn't necessarily restrict access to the internet or its underlying protocols. Many of the leaders of these corporations are in themselves great visionaries and innovators which is why they have driven their corporations to the positions they are in the current marketplace. Indeed, these captains of industry have a moral and legal obligation to their shareholders and customers to ensure that they create a corporation and a product that people want to use and in a manner that is safe to do so.

These corporations are not exempt from the laws of the countries (or the global community as a whole it could be argued) in which they exist. They must observe company laws, taxation laws and other conditions that exists in the real world. The internet cannot change that because whether they are trading through a virtual company or not they are still trading in the real world and must observe its legislation.

The same is true of global citizens using the internet. If they break laws, should they be exempt from prosecution simply because they broke that law on the internet? Of course not, that would be absurd and irresponsible to suggest this.

To date however, I haven't heard of a single person being prosecuted for inappropriate use of the internet. Yes, there have been prosecutions for illegal use of a telephone line, prosecutions for promoting racism and illicit material and even prosecutions for intellectual property theft but these same crimes had they been perpetrated in the real world would still be subject to similar prosecution.

The legal system has had to change to accommodate people perpetrating criminal activity, the sources of which they gain access through the internet and over the particular telecommunications hardware they use to implement that access. This is what happens when new technology comes along but these laws are not a detriment to accessing the internet but merely a redress to criminal activity.

The architectural structure of the internet still exists unchanged. The world wide web has developed, it has had to. As more and more computers use it some order has to be introduced simply to allow users to continue to be able to use it. Domain Name servers have had to be introduced to store databases of WWW network servers and intelligent hardware such as routers are necessary within the midst of this technology to allow it to function. No longer does the WWW connect a few academic networks that it can function by simple end to end hardware. The WWW is not the internet however, rather it is a part of it and all the legacy protocols still exist albeit many are falling out of use simply because something more exciting is available. This is progress. The same kind of progress that took us from black & white silent movies to the glorious technicoloured surround sound systems we enjoy today. The black and white movies are still there and we can still enjoy them but general demand will always be toward the latter.

Many of the most critical restrictive technology is still used on the periphery of the internet. Firewalls and anti-virus software are generally employed either on the perimeter of the internet or within an intranet infrastructure attached to it. Corporation could not function without these safeguards but this is not the same as restricting access to the internet.

Innovation as a force has always been the exclusitivity of the pioneer. It is the product of those who have looked toward the horizon of the future and envisioned something spectacular. Many of these early internet pioneers had the extra ordinary vision and courage to create the future and the products and services they alone have produced are the fruits of that labour and theirs alone to develop and enhance true to that original vision. Behind those great pioneers will always be a wave of decreased innovation until another great visionary sees a new way to create something.

The internet still exists as it always done - perhaps it is the human spirit that lacks further innovation rather than some insidious Machiavellian conspiracy to limit the efforts of human innovation.

The internet is with us and will serve society in whichever way it uses it. It will become restrictive if we restrict our imagination, it will remain free if we use it freely.

In the end it is simply a collection of connections, wires, fibre optic cabling, satellite dishes and computers. A neural network that carries impulses and as such it cannot be policed, controlled or the electrical impulses that move along it censored in any significant way as long as a connection has been made.

The internet will serve a materialistic society materialistically, a criminal society criminally and a free society freely. No one corporation, government or society have a monopoly on innovation or creativity that belongs as a condition to the human spirit and the internet of the future is the internet we will collectively create.

For society therefore, the internet represents an opportunity. An opportunity for greater global interaction, an opportunity for a new way to do business and an opportunity to channel creativity and innovation and it will simply reflect the values of the society that use it. It will do this due to the extensive and intricate nature of its interconnectivity which no one can wholly own, control or restrict. Yes access can be controlled and restricted but unless we start dismantling some of those connection it by the very sum of its total parts will always remain free. Any such restriction, control or dismantling whatever it will be will no longer be the internet.

T182 & The Future of Ideas