by David Brin
To some who have pondered this, the analogy with a medieval commons falls short of describing the blithe chaos of today’s burgeoning dataways. After all, information can be duplicated endlessly and at no cost, a trait not shared by pasture or farmland. According to futurist Bruce Sterling: The Internet’s “anarchy” may seem strange or unnatural, but it makes a certain deep sense. It’s rather like the “anarchy” of the English language. Nobody rents English, and nobody owns English. As an English-speaking person, it’s up to you to learn how to speak English properly and make whatever use you please of it (though the government provides certain subsidies to help you learn to read and write a bit). Otherwise, everybody just sort of pitches in, and somehow the thing evolves on its own, and somehow turns out workable. And interesting. Fascinating even. Though a lot of people earn their living from using and exploiting and teaching English, “English” as an institution is public property, a public good. Much the same goes for the Internet. Would English be improved if “The English Language, Inc.” had a board of directors and a chief executive officer, or a President and a Congress? There’d probably be a lot fewer new words in English, and a lot fewer new ideas.
While Sterling’s allegory is enthralling, it implies that the networks consist only of information—abstractions, words, and data. Equally important, and binding this new realm to the real world, is the hardware—fibers, cables, switching yards, and nexus points of silicon memory. These are the equivalent of gates, fences, and flowing streams—points of high value that stand out from the rest of the landscape. Today, a kind of chaos does reign across fields of throbbing electrons, letting individuals ramble across worldwide databases almost free of regulation. But will this last long when vital pieces can be owned? Here the parallel with language breaks down.
Like its medieval counterpart, the electronic commons emerged from step-by-step evolution of makeshift techniques among a small number of neighbors—from “goofy, Jolt cola—swilling UNIX freaks” to generals, foundation heads, and Nobel laureates. There is a mythology that the Internet took everybody by surprise, springing like Athena from the brow of Zeus. But surely some of these people realized that the routes they laid down would be used for more than exchanging research data. From the start, engineers fiddled ways for the embryonic Internet to be even more wild and free.
Today it is a truly international commons, growing at phenomenal rates. The eager millions signing up are no longer intellectuals. They come from all walks of life. Many of the trends people worry about—flame wars, spamming, child pornography, chaotic and unverified rumors—are symptoms of the centrifugal forces sundering contemporary society at large. Already there are widespread calls for order, for organization and structure, for legislation and a bureaucracy to enforce rules of the road for the Infobahn. Some topics discussed in other chapters—the Communications Decency Act and the Clipper chip controversy—relate to this trend.
No wonder the netizens are frightened. Above all, they denounce anything they see as a threat to one of the great emancipatory events of modern life, the opening of an untamed frontier with possibilities as fertile and hope-filled for its settlers as the old West seemed to a prior generation. So what if this independence, this precious sovereignty, is newer than the youngest Net user, a surprise gift few dreamed of as recently as ten years ago? It is a fact of life that any liberty, once enjoyed, swiftly becomes essential, a requisite as vital to happiness as food and air.
Are we about to see another “tragedy of the commons”? Ask the dour pessimists who haunt many electronic discussion forums, unsurprised by any depths society might plumb, the way cynics from Molière to Kerouac used to mutter warily in smoky coffee houses. To them, Garrett Hardin’s scenario is already unfolding, only this time over a span of months, rather than centuries. Indeed, popular “cyberpunk” books and films often project tomorrows that have more in common with the nightmares of Dickens and Orwell than the fabled innocence of a Saxon village—bleak tales of stalwart individuals struggling for niches between gray mansions of faceless, unassailable power. The twenty-first-century worlds depicted by authors like William Gibson, Pat Cadigan, and Walter Jon Williams are dominated by vast corporate entities that have parceled out the cybernetic realm, erecting razor-sharp fences and for-profit channels that only a few brave hackers dare infiltrate, at great peril.
We will revisit these disturbing visions later. Some may come true, if history is our guide.
On the other hand, I see no reason why history must recapitulate. Making analogies to long-ago events in feudal England may be apt as a thoughtful warning, but our civilization already has traits that go far beyond simple parables about medieval farming villages. And we are more knowing, far mightier folk than our ancestors were, as they would surely have wanted us to be. It should be possible at this date to think, argue, innovate, and compromise until we find ways to make this dream greater and more startling than ever. Something diverse, free, and immune to the tragedies that ruined other “commons” in the past.
I see no way around our predicament; neither the quest for a spartan “sustainable” existence nor reliance on the forces of the marketplace will release us.... I am not arguing against change, but for a modest, tentative and skeptical acceptance of it.
EDWARD TENNER, WHY THINGS BITE BACK: TECHNOLOGY AND
THE REVENGE OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
THE RISKS PEOPLE WILL ENDURE
Sometimes it can be hard to get a clear image of the wants and fears that worry denizens of the modern era. Contradictions abound. For instance, although a 1993 Harris poll found that 83 percent of Americans were concerned about privacy, Steven E. Miller, author of Civilizing Cyberspace: Policy, Power and the Information Superhighway, concedes that “there are those who feel that the public’s concern for privacy is like the River Platte, a mile wide but only an inch deep.” Though his book vigorously promotes strong privacy, Miller notes that people routinely trade personal information for convenience or a few dollars of savings, even offering names of “friends and families” to commercial users, if it benefits them.
How can we explain this ambivalence between expressions of deep concern and a reality in which so many individuals seem cavalier about releasing details of their personal lives?
One way that academics and pundits often handle such discrepancies is with contempt—by assuming that people are too lazy or stupid to behave as active and knowing players in the social drama. They view citizens as puppets, jerking to strings pulled by dark forces, an attitude typified by the following statement: “Shorn of the ability to enter into relationships of responsibility and trust, individuals will tend to gravitate towards a safe average, suppressing their individuality and creativity in favor of a thoroughgoing orientation to the demands of an omniscient observer.” In this example, the authors were specifically arguing that surveillance systems (like “smart” highways that speed traffic along while tracking vehicle locations via transponder) contribute to a corrosive atmosphere of distrust, fatalism, conformity, and declining citizenship skills. But the same attitude—a convention of portraying people as sheeplike and craven—pervades countless other social commentaries. (We explored some roots of this habit in chapter 5.)
For the sake of argument, I will stipulate that the above statement can be true, under certain conditions. People probably do shrink inward when surveillance is pervasive and relentlessly “top down” in orientation, such as in a true dictatorship, or in oppressive corporations that spy on their employees. Conformity is a classic survival reaction when people live in an ambience of terror and observation by unaccountable authorities. Chapter 9 illustrates several scenarios showing how high-tech repression may invade our future. On the other hand, we shall see in this section that feelings of distrust and fatalism do not tend to dominate when transparency is reciprocal, nor when people retain a sense of participation and control.
Scorn is both unnecessary and inadequate to explain the contradictions that modern people e
xhibit in daily life. Rather, such incongruities of attitude and behavior reflect the dynamic way in which citizens are trying to strike a balance amid tectonic shifts that may presage a new society. Science has shed light on this process through the fascinating field of risk analysis.
For many years, actuaries and officials at insurance companies and government regulatory agencies have tried to appraise danger in all corners of society, from airlines and automobiles to food safety and prescription packaging. In a sense, this is fine T-cell activity, since our institutions should endeavor to help us all thrive safely. And it is easy to see the success that some efforts have achieved, such as delivering clean water supplies, providing safer cars, and reducing pollution in our rivers and skies. We live longer and travel with more confidence, because many varied hazards are sniffed out by those with the expertise to find them.
Some may object in principle that we should not be coddled by bureaucrats, or that the free market (caveat emptor) could protect us better still. But contentious issues of paternalism will be dealt with later. (See the section on “public feedback regulation” in chapter 8.) Right now we should focus on the evolving way in which researchers have come to view the concept of risk and how people respond to it.
Until recently, most models were based on classical decision theory, supplemented by the later game theory that John Von Neumann developed after World War II. These are essentially mathematical approaches to betting—calculating odds for success or failure when contributing factors are either well known, or partly unknown. For instance, a problem called “the prisoners’ dilemma” explores how two parties might behave when each can make a quick, temporary score by betraying the other, or else both might prosper, moderately but indefinitely, by deciding to cooperate. Over the years, many institutional leaders have studied various aspects of game theory, hoping to optimize everything from war scenarios to business plans.
Only there remained a mystery—how to make risk analysis fit the behavior of normal people! It seemed that men and women on the street were acting only partly according to principles of game theory when making decisions about investments, travel, or whether to take that chancy new job on the coast. A good example is flying. Everyone knows the well-publicized, reassuring statistic that traveling on regularly scheduled airlines is much safer, on a per-mile basis, than riding in an automobile. Yet countless people feel more nervous on planes. Some researchers condescendingly dismissed such deviations from theory, calling them irrational or psychological, as if that made them any less relevant. Finally, fresh studies found the answer, and it turned out not to be so unreasonable after all.
It seems that people internalize the perceived risk in any situation—whether through prim statistics or overheard anecdotes—and then multiply in a factor having to do with how much control they have over the situation. In other words, folks are willing to experience greater risk behind the wheel of a car, because their destiny remains partly subject to their own will. Personal action might adjust the risk, upward or downward, even in an accident that is someone else’s fault. In contrast, passengers have a sense of powerlessness on an airplane, relying on the skill and professionalism of many strangers, from pilots to mechanics to the manufacturers of critical components on which their lives will depend for several hours, until the wheels touch down. It is all very well to advertise how well that chain of competence seems to work—the safety record of air travel is emblematic of a marvelous and ingenious civilization, filled with adults who take pride in their work—but that doesn’t completely erase the creepy feeling that comes from surrendering command over one’s fate to others.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s risk summary, other factors that are known to affect public perception of risk include “certainty and severity of the risk; the reversibility of any health effect; the knowledge or familiarity of the risk; whether the risk is voluntarily accepted or involuntarily imposed; whether individuals are compensated for their exposure to the risk; the advantages of the activity; and the risks and advantages for any alternatives.” Above all, people hate being exposed to dangers that might strike out of nowhere, without warning. They will accept much greater risks from other activities in which they feel they have some sense of control. An example is athletics, in which amateur participants knowingly pit their dexterity and pride against very real odds of injury, and sometimes even death.
Factoring in this insight, new models of risk assessment correlate much better with the value and/or dread that members of the public assign to certain dangers. It explains why citizens who refuse to tolerate even statistically insignificant perils from contaminated food deeply resent bureaucrats for overregulating the design of ski equipment and motorcycle helmets, or blocking access to fad vitamins, or interfering in the “extreme sports” craze, since (they argue) people should be able to risk their own necks, if they know the danger and proceed with open eyes.
What the risk assessment experts have concluded—and this should be obvious to anyone with common sense—is that people feel better when they can see what’s going on, and have some sovereign mastery over decisions that affect their lives. They want information, and the power to act on it. That is the very essence of accountability.
This reaction to lack of control is especially clear when it comes to crime. Despite declining rates of serious felonies, gated communities and guarded buildings are proliferating. Private security forces in the United States now outnumber public police officers, while people increasingly seek diversion in “home entertainment centers” instead of clubs or cinemas. Although most citizens of the neo-West arguably live more secure against violence than members of almost any other mass polity in history, this statistical reassurance does not comfort as much as it should, because so much crime today happens by surprise. Although many felons do know their victims, it is the anonymous assailant who creates the most widespread general unease. The stranger who might jump out of nowhere and turn a life upside down in moments. This is why mugging, carjacking, child snatching, and terrorism rank so high on lists of public concerns. This unease has been amplified by mass media, which exploit fear of surprise attack in both dramas and news shows, so that many people living in low crime areas feel they can maintain a sense of control only by keeping their kids indoors, putting bars on the windows, and seldom venturing out after dark.
Strong privacy advocates—especially those promoting encryption and anonymity—may deny that this phenomenon is a direct physical corollary of their message, so I will let the reader decide whether a philosophy that relies on cybernetic gates, walls, and coded locks is any different in its underlying basis—fear.
I do not mean to ridicule those who have alarms in their homes, or who take reasonable precautions in a society awash with guns. (If things really are inexorably heading that way, I will do the same!) Yet, one can ask whether it would not be better for citizens to reclaim their neighborhoods, their cities, and even the night. To do this, they don’t have to chase all the buskers and bikers and panhandlers and colorful weirdos off the streets. God forbid! If the aim is simply to regain a sense of safety, all we need is a means to distinguish real villains from harmless freaks. And the way to do that is not by stereotyping people according to their appearance. It is by knowing their names.
And if they want to know yours in return? So what?
We will continue with the subject of crime, and its opponents, in the next section. But first let us reiterate: there is no inherent incongruity in the fact that people are both concerned about privacy and at the same time blithely willing to reveal lots of information about themselves. Esther Dyson, author of Release 2.0, draws a parallel with evolving twentieth-century attitudes toward the acceptability of body exposure in fashion, pointing out that it used to be indecent to reveal a navel, or even an ankle, in public. Today, twenty-year-old men skim past ubiquitous lingerie ads in the newspaper with barely a flicker of their eyes. So it may be with personal data, according to Dyson, in
the electronic age to come.
“As people feel more secure in general on the Net, they will
become accustomed to seeing their words recorded and
replaced. They will no longer feel uneomfortable being on
display, since everyone around them is on display too.”
A key element in the coming years will not be the extent of information flow (or vision, or even surveillance) as much as the degree of powerlessness that people may feel at any moment, in any given situation. Humans certainly do get depressed in situations where they lack feelings of involvement and control. On the other hand, we can soundly reject the contempt expressed by those commentators and academics who depict their fellow citizens as sheep, incapable of grasping the reins of their own destiny.
The overwhelming counterexample—again—is us. No other populace has ever had so much known about them, both in groups and as individuals—and no populace has ever been so cantankerously individualistic or free. We have done this by assertively retaining the sovereign powers of sight and control. Such a society is a long way from deserving anyone’s contempt.
We need to calibrate our idealism for what is possible. So I do not propose that corruption, confusion, or deception can be eliminated, but merely that they can be controlled so that they aren’t catastrophic.
JARON LANIER
GUARDING THE GUARDIANS
We can illustrate how tools of accountability may offer most citizens increased confidence and control by applying those tools to the gritty world of crime and law enforcement.