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Networking Democracy: IT and Radical InfrastructuresDrew WhitworthPage 1 ¦ Page 2 ¦ Page 3 ¦ Page 4 ¦ Printer-friendly version Why no radical IT infrastructure?To state that there were no links between Internet pioneers and countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s is to oversimplify matters. It also does an injustice to men such as Jon Postel, or Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (designers of the operating system UNIX). Nevertheless, despite some postings to the Human-Nets discussion group in the 1970s advocating political action to expand the Net’s openness and accessibility, there was little outright political activism on the developing network. (References from the CYHIST archives.) The democratic moments mentioned above remained relatively exclusive, taking place not within countercultural movements or actual outbreaks of democracy, but in computer labs and research symposia, inaccessible to the ‘general public’. To an extent, the ‘hacker’ culture compensated for this, but this remained a rather individualised world, with a sense that hacking took place merely for the fun of it—or for profit—rather than to some political end. In any case this was a mainly US phenomenon. In Europe, the IT subculture made almost no inroads into the radical infrastructures which existed at the time. Even when popular political ‘manuals’ of the period were sympathetic towards technology, IT’s impact (for good or bad) was not specifically mentioned [20]. Significant decisions were being taken to shape the current form of IT and the Net as early as the mid-1960s. Why were they considered of little import by activism and political analysis? There are several possible reasons. First, computers were (and remain) expensive to acquire and demand non-intuitive skills from users. These skills are transient, requiring frequent updates to cope with new hardware or software. Radical groups would be less likely to have the time or funds to repeatedly invest in equipment and skills and especially in IT’s earlier days, people with such skills were in high demand from business. Landry et al note how the radical sector is often used as an ‘…unpaid “Research and Development” department for the major commercial companies—who then siphon off the “best”, thus continually draining the sector of those elements which could otherwise provide the financial return which would strengthen its own development.’ [21]. Absorption of key personnel from democratic outbreaks, whether because of skills or a high media profile, is common. This can also happen if and when the ‘outbreak’ achieves some kind of political or commercial success. Linux, mentioned earlier as an example of democratic action, teeters on the edge of co-option. Partly, this is due to its impressive growth; a system adopted by large, bureaucratic organisations the size of the government of München, Germany is a commercial force to be reckoned with. But there are other reasons. An interview with the originator of Linux, Linus Torvalds (Wired Nov. 2003) leaves one in little doubt that he views Linux not as an element in a radical infrastructure, but a direct competitor to Microsoft, albeit with a different approach to systems development. It may seem idealistic, even dictatorial, to state that the Linux community should simply reject commercialisation. If the history of democracy suggests anything it is that such pressures are almost inevitable. Nevertheless if the ‘open source’ model of software development (whether with Linux as a standard-bearer, or some other system) disappears altogether, then an important aspect of democracy may disappear along with it —- the ability of the users of a network or system to collaborate on an egalitarian basis in its construction. The second potential reason for the lack of a radical IT infrastructure is a history of mistrust of or disdain for IT. Radical politics has often identified technology with control or oppression and IT is no different [22]. US Government involvement in the early Internet did not help. For example, Hafner and Lyon [23] mention the public outcry in 1975 when it was suggested that ARPANET had been used to store files on US anti-war activists in defiance of agreements to destroy them. Although the accusation was false, it did not dispel Orwellian fears of the early Internet. As mentioned, the systems were obscure. Any group or network may close up behind boundaries based not on ideology but obscuring jargon, social or academic credentials and qualifications. Rather than productively contributing to a network, the subculture may constitute a clique, a block on the transfer of information or skills. The IT community cannot avoid such criticisms. Computing technology has become both more affordable and accessible in the last twenty years. But I do not believe that these developments have removed the third and last suggested reason why IT and activism struggled to connect. That is the prevalent, but false, belief that with the Internet a public space has been created. The following [24] displays some of the confusions here: ‘…although the internet has been viewed as a public space, [as] for much of the time it was funded and controlled by government, university and research entities, it was actually in effect a private network of networks with public aspirations and public-good characteristics. Until the mid-1990s, the general, non-technically literate public was not involved in policy-making about the internet and the internet itself, for all its public significance and use, did not feature in public debate on communications policy as an important infrastructure alongside other media. Before this time, the public had a latent stake in the internet, but in reality much decision-making on the internet took place in specialized forums, albeit in reasonably democratic, decentralized and innovative ways.’ Goggin correctly notes that Internet-related decision making was exclusive at the same time as being democratic, on its own terms. But it is not the case that something’s being ‘funded and controlled by government, university and research entities’ constitutes the creation of ‘public’ space. And what happened in the mid-1990s to make Goggin suggest that at that time the ‘non-technically literate public’ became involved in IT policy-making? Increased access to the technology is not the same as increased access to decisions taken about the use of that technology. Habermas’s ‘public sphere’ [25] is often cited here but unfortunately it is rare to see proper discussion of Habermas’s central thesis. Precisely because of the activities of centralised, bureaucratic state/corporate institutions, the public sphere is under threat as a place where the activities of such organisations can be subjected to public scrutiny. Governments do have policies to improve ‘access’ to the technologies and products of the information age. But thinking only in terms of ‘access’ will lead IT’s development in ways akin to television’s. Few now suggest that TV retains real potential to democratise. Despite near-universal access TV has become a means by which information, decided upon by others and usually with commercial intent, is pumped indiscriminately into homes. Governments may publish information online, but this is far from constituting an improvement in their ‘democratic’ credentials as this is the same sort of information that might once have been supplied to public and university libraries for free. Even if fees are not directly levied, one still needs access to the expensive consumer good that is the computer to see the information (see Roszak 1994: chapter 9). Observing that an increasing proportion of the population has home Internet access misses the point; the Internet does not represent an expansion of the public information sphere, but its privatisation. [26] We have already suggested that spontaneous communication, education and organisation at the grass-roots level is threatening to institutionalised power. Why then should government or business have an interest in maintaining the Internet as a space where such activities freely occur? Exerting control over the Net is difficult for such organisations, true—but not impossible, as the recent arrest of webmaster Sherman Austin demonstrates. Al Gore was more responsible than any other politician for popularising the Internet after becoming US Vice-President. In a speech to the International Telecommunications Union he suggested that the ‘Global Information Infrastructure’ would ‘spread participatory democracy’ by allowing universal access to relevant information. It would also add to world economic growth through providing new commercial opportunities. The latter has occurred: we still await the former. Reasons why may lie in Gore’s suggestion that this new sphere be regulated by the Federal Communications Commission. Familiarity with the history of ‘free radio’ movements in the US suggests that the FCC’s remit is to ‘silence all the small voices’ to restore ‘order to what they called ‘chaos of the airwaves’ [27]. McChesney [28] is in little doubt that the FCC is merely the tip of an ingrained will-to-control under which genuine ‘free speech’ struggles to survive: ‘The extent to which there is non-elite participation into communication policymaking may be a barometer for the level of democracy in a society. As a rule of thumb, if certain forces thoroughly dominate a society’s political economy they will thoroughly dominate its communication system, and the fundamental questions of how the communication system should be organized and for what purposes are not even subject to debate.’ I believe that quote succinctly summarises this paper's key arguments. To what extent is there genuine, grass-roots participation in the construction of computer networks? Democrats should be fully aware of the long series of compromises and outright battles they will face if and when commercial and bureaucratic interests are permitted ‘free and equal’ access to any network [29], and decisions which underpin the construction of that network. Familiarity with democratic theory sheds light on how institutions like these innately work against environments where genuinely autonomous, activist democracy can be practiced. Grass-roots participation in communications networks is never something granted ‘from above’ by bureaucratic institutions, and it is naïve to imagine that with the Internet this no longer applies. Footnotes20. Examples being Schumacher, E. F. (1973) Small is Beautiful: A study of economics as if people mattered, London: Vintage: Pirsig, R. (1974) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Enquiry into Value, London: Vintage: The Ecologist (1972) A Blueprint for Survival, Harmondsworth: Penguin. return 21. Landry et al, op cit., p. 97. return 22. for example, Barker, J. and Downing, H. (1985) "Word processing and the transformation of patriarchal relations of control in the office", in D. Mackenzie and J. Wajcman (eds) The Social Shaping of Technology, Buckingham: Open University Press. return 23. Hafner and Lyon, op cit., p. 231. return 24. Goggin, G. (2000) "Pay Per Browse? The Web’s Commercial Futures", in D. Gauntlett (ed.) web.studies: Rewiring media studies for the digital age, London: Arnold, pp. 110. return 25. Habermas, J. (1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Cambridge MA: MIT Press. return 26. See Webster, op cit., chapter 7: Roszak, T. (1994) The Cult of Information: A Neo-Luddite Treatise on High Tech, Artificial Intelligence and the True Art of Thinking, 2nd ed., Berkeley: University of California Press, chapter 9. return 27. Dunifer, S. (1998) "Free Speech: A Fable", in R. Sakolsky and S. Dunifer (eds): Seizing the Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook, Edinburgh: AK Press, pp. 1-5. return 28. McChesney, R. (1998) "The Political Economy of Radio", in R. Sakolsky and S. Dunifer (eds): Seizing the Airwaves: A Free Radio Handbook, Edinburgh: AK Press, p. 17. return 29. compare with Berners-Lee, op cit., p. 115. return | |