Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/fade into you/being there/Newsletters/Network Observer 1-7

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Monday, 25 July 1994 12:05:00 PM CN CyberCulture Item From:           Michael Ney
Subject:        Network Observer 1-7 To:             CN CyberCulture T H E  N E T
W O R K  O B S E R V E R

VOLUME 1, NUMBER 7 - JULY 1994

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Welcome to TNO 1(7).

This issue includes an article by Barbara Welling Hall about the uses of the
Internet for encouraging democracy, with particular reference to a workshop about
networking in Russia. Her message is that the net itself does not dictate how it
will be used. Such views are known as "technological determinism", and they are
tremendously common in discussions of the net, which some people assume will
bring a decentralized world of liberty and others assume will bring a centralized
world of control. The answer is that neither outcome is necessary; what happens
depends on the uses we make of the net, and on how we help to shape the evolving
network culture.

The rest of this issue is devoted to a pair of articles by the editor on related
themes. The first is about the technological imagination of the wireless world,
that place where the boundaries between physical things and the digital ether
start to blur. The second explores this theme further with regard to the tracking
of human activities by computers. This particular article summarizes my
contribution to a special issue of _The Information Society_ entitled "The
Digital Individual". For further details about this issue, send a message that
looks like:

To: [e-mail] Subject: archive send tis-digital

And of course we have the usual departments, including several comments on my
discussion of telemarketing in TNO 1(6).

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Augmented reality and augmented fantasy.

Recently I spent a week driving around New Mexico. Even though I was supposed to
be on vacation, I kept finding myself thinking about computers. Not just any
computers -- I kept finding myself inventing new things for computers to do in
the wireless world of the near future. Reflection on a couple of these
"inventions" leads to some tentative insights about the kind of imagination that
produces them.

When you're driving in New Mexico it's hard to keep track of the police. For one
thing, at least a third of the cars on the road are white. (Is it to ward off the
sun or to make the paint last longer?  The natives disagree.)  My rental car was
one of them, and cars seemed to approach me from behind with extra caution and
deference before making a move to pass. But the cops actually drive a bewildering
variety of cars, with and without lights or roof-racks. Many drive
four-wheel-drive vehicles. Many vehicles (e.g., from the US Forest Service) have
lights and/or insignia without (so far as I know) being able to issue speeding
tickets. Many private cars have big whip antennas like the cops used to have;
most of the cops don't have them.

Something can be done about this confusing mess. It's called citizens' band
radio. Back in the tedious 1970's, the US had a craze for CB radios, as an
especially cryptic celebration of working-class solidarity during a time when
independent truckers' actual independence was really starting to erode. CB radios
allow truckers to maintain a kind of community and culture on the road, and most
particularly they let the truckers keep track of the cops. Reflecting on this, I
wondered what a cyberspace version of the same thing would add or subtract. See a
cop, enter a report into the system, and the system warns others who are plugged
into it.

Such a system, of course, would probably not work. The computer interface would
eliminate all of the social glue that holds the truckers together. Reporting a
cop isn't just a database entry; it's a tangible act of solidarity backed up with
a voice and a way of speaking and rituals of appreciation that reproduce the
sense of community while also decreasing the risks of driving the absurd
schedules that the trucking companies claim to regard as practical.

Okay, so cut to another thought experiment. I was pulling onto I-40 about an hour
west of Albuquerque on a Sunday morning when I thought I'd take a break from Rush
Limbaugh's show. Scanning across the AM dial, I came across a strange broadcast.
Ricardo Montalban, of all people, was giving a semi-dramatic lecture about the
history of western New Mexico, plainly addressed to tourists entering the state
on I-40. His speech went on for several minutes and then repeated, a tape loop
presumably set up by the state government to encourage people to visit the local
tourist attractions, namely the Acoma and Laguna Indian reservations. I found it
quite odd to be listening to this, since it is not normal for a radio broadcast
to use indexical terms ("here", "this area") that presume to know where the
listener is. In addition, Senor Montalban's speech rhythms were different from
anything normally heard on the radio. They were the speech rhythms of a tour
guide, or perhaps the narrator of a film or video documentary.

This set me to thinking. Suppose my car had a GPS device that knew its current
location and a wireless packet data system. Then it could download
location-specific audio programming -- such as an audio tour guide. Depending on
the resolution of the location system (which could be augmented by roadside RF
boxes), the tour guide could give a running narration of the scenery as I drove
along. Would anyone want this?  It's not far different from the tape-recorded
tours available in art galleries -- the ones where you rent a tape player and
headphones, pacing the tour as you walk along by turning the tape player on and
off.

Reflecting further on this, I realized that this session of almost compulsive
invention was part of a long series. Very often when I see something in a
landscape, or on a city street, or in a shop, and wonder "what's that?", I find
myself starting to invent a device that could tell me the answer. Some of these
inventions are scary, like the one that scans a license plate and uses widely
available databases to pull up large amounts of personal information about the
car's owner. My motivation in each case is simple curiosity, no different from
anyone else's. What the nearly-possible technology provides is a set of fantasies
about how my wishes for information could be answered, as if by magic my mind
could call out to the things of the world and have them answer back.

I doubt if I'm alone in thinking this way. To the contrary, I believe that such
thinking is basic to the technological imagination around computers in general
and "cyberspace" in particular. One concrete instantiation of this form of
imagination is something called "augmented reality". Imagine wearing goggles with
video displays in them that also allow you to see your surroundings, much as a
heads-up display provides for a pilot. Then imagine that those goggles are
attached to position-trackers, just the way that virtual reality goggles are, and
finally imagine that your computer contains a model of the visible world that
allows it to display annotations on the little video screens that overlay the
visible things. (Robots in the movies frequently employ these -- think of
Terminator.) The point of such systems is to close a gap between computer
representations and physical reality, and thereby, in intention at least, to
close a gap between *thought* and physical reality.

This kind of thinking has many distinctive qualities. One of them is a desire to
exhaustively list and catalog things, to achieve some kind of closure that
repairs the open-endedness of the world. I happen to have here a report in the
3/9/94 issue of the (San Francisco) SF Weekly (page 16) about a Hypercard product
called the "Digital Restaurant Guide", which is a directory of every single
restaurant in San Francisco. (To secure a copy for yourself, it says you can call
Apple at [phone].)  The guide is kept up to date by the programmer and
his friends, who have constituted themselves as the Precision Dining Association.
Priceless hacker humor or what?  I don't mean to disrespect these people; I
appreciate the joke as well as anyone. My point is that it is not *normal* to do
such things.

In a thousand ways, applied computing is erasing the boundaries between the
insides and the outsides of computers. Increasingly we encounter compound
entities, consisting of a physical object or activity and the "shadow" it casts
inside a computer. My next article will explore this theme in greater depth, with
particular reference to me "capture" of human activities.

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Privacy and computer-mediated activity.

Ideas about privacy are, among other things, cultural phenomena. They have
complicated histories, they affect the way we see things in the present day, and
they change. As I was reading the literature on privacy, I was struck at the
difference between legal theory, which focuses largely on cases involving single
individuals losing control of single items of information in encounters with
other individuals or organizations, and the literature on computers-and-privacy
issues, which draws heavily on images of Big Brother and the Panopticon. These
latter images -- visual metaphors for privacy -- are the most pervasive way of
formulating fears about privacy, at least in this country. They obviously draw on
literary symbols and on historical experiences, largely in other countries but to
a significant extent here as well, of the secret police and its network of
informants and listening devices.

Unfortunately, neither set of ideas about privacy has much to do with how
computers work. Computers work with large amounts of information, not just
isolated facts, and computers do not operate by looking at things. Instead, the
central metaphors of computational practice are linguistic. Computers use
"languages" to represent things. These aren't natural human languages, of course,
but they build on mathematical theories of syntax and semantics originally
invented for the study of natural languages (by Chomsky and others). Computers,
then, don't watch things; they *listen* to things -- they *parse* things. And if
a computer is going to support a human activity, according to the conventional
conception of computers and computing, it must be able to parse that activity.
This is the technical aspect of an important chapter in the history of ideas:
linguistic metaphors for human activity. Such metaphors are found in many areas,
for example in artificial intelligence and cognitive science, with their notions
of "planning" and of "plans" as sequences of instructions written in "plan
languages".

Linguistic metaphors for human activity show up over and over in the history of
automation. Frank Gilbreth and his associates, for example, invented elaborate
symbolic languages for the purpose of representing work-activities in terms of a
vocabulary of basic units. The systems analysts of the early days of applied
computing also employed such languages to map the information-flows in a work
setting -- with an eye to automating the work by reproducing those same
information-flows inside a computer. And when designing computers for people to
use, computer people begin by articulating what might be called a "grammar of
action" -- that is, a "vocabulary" of basic, simple actions and a
quasi-linguistic grammar of the ways in which those basic actions might be
assembled into sequences.

But two problems arise. First, such grammars are always idealizations of a more
complex reality. And second, simply programming such a grammar into a computer
does not mean that the computer can parse the human activities that go on around
it. Installing a computer within a human activity-system, then, frequently has an
element of social engineering to it: the activity must be *instrumented* in such
a way that the computer can "capture" each of the basic actions, thereby
maintaining, in real time, a representation of the activity. Such representations
need not be exhaustive -- indeed they could not be -- but a computer can only
compute with those aspects of an activity that it can represent, and it can only
represent those aspects of an activity that it can capture.

This phenomenon, whose roots run deep into the very constitution of computing as
a concept and a professional practice, is suddenly growing much more important. A
wide variety of emerging technologies allows human activities to be instrumented
in new ways, not necessarily tethered to a keyboard and video display. Wireless
data communication systems, for example, allow trucking companies to capture the
workings of their trucks while they are out on the road. Elaborate bar-code
schemes allow warehouse computers to automatically keep track of materials, or
else to log transactions relating to those materials that might take place
through human activities (for example, unloading a truck or acknowledging receipt
of a shipment). And Automatic Vehicle Identification systems make it possible to
collect truck and automobile tolls without stopping to hand over money: a radio
along the side of the road "pings" a transponder in a passing vehicle, learns the
identity of the transponder (or, in some proposals, the actual Vehicle
Identification Number), and debits an account.

As with many technological innovations, these new schemes can be used for both
good and ill. Privacy advocates are understandably concerned about the vast
amounts of data that such systems can collect. Understanding the intellectual
structure of these innovations permits us to understand the issues somewhat more
deeply. For example, whereas visual metaphors presuppose that activities under
surveillance are not affected by the surveillance as such (as opposed to measures
that people might take to avoid the surveillance), attention to the actual
professional practices of computer people draws our attention to the ways in
which computerization actually *reorganizes* those activities to enable computers
to track them. The reorganization of an activity may be as simple as attaching an
instrument to something or someone, or it may involve a large-scale restructuring
of the activity that divides it into discrete, identifiable, parseable pieces.

Research into the intellectual structure of computer work also makes plain how
difficult it will be to escape the trade-offs between computer support for
activities and threats to privacy. How else might computers work, and how else
might computer professionals work?  Alternative models are available in the
participatory design movement in Scandinavia, and in the Internet. In each case,
the strong evolutionary trend has been away from supporting an individual's
activity by tracking it, and in favor of supporting a community's activity by
providing a medium for communication, community memory, and the active, flexible
interpretation of the formal structures that a computer uses. These developments
have been driven by intuition and by computer users who happen to have the power
to reject systems they find too constraining. Future research into the
intellectual structure of computer work might help encourage these developments
in a more conscious and systematic way, with the ultimate goal of formulating a
democratic practice of technology -- not just a democratic practice of *choices*
about technologies, but a democratic practice of the devices themselves and of
the human activities within which they are embedded.

For more details on these ideas and their implications, see a forthcoming special
issue of _The Information Society_, volume 10 number 2, June 1994, entitled "The
Digital Individual".

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Electronic networking and democracy.

Barbara Welling Hall Department of Politics Earlham College [e-mail]

This article examines the relationship between electronic networking and
democracy by proceeding from the general to the specific. The "general" is an
examination of the assumption that the two (i.e. networking and democracy) are
more than compatible, indeed, synonymous. The "specific" is a recent
international symposium, involving primarily Russians and Americans, in
discussions and project-design in the area of gender relations and environmental
degradation.

Statements that electronic networking offers primarily, if not only, boons to
democracy are now as prolific as gophers. Previous issues of TNO have addressed
such assertions directly. It is worth elaborating that such technocratic faith is
not exclusively a phenomenon riding the cusp of the new millenium. The assumption
that electronic networking (or, more broadly, information technology) and
democracy are logical partners is a product of the modern belief that knowledge
is power.

In his trenchant examination of the origins of "the modern age", COSMOPOLIS: THE
HIDDEN AGENDA OF MODERNITY (University of Chicago Press: 1990), philosopher and
historian Stephen Toulmin notes that one of the most enduring quests of the early
moderns was to create a "universal system of characters" capable of expressing
"all our thoughts."  As Leibniz put it in 1677:

This language will be very difficult to construct, but very easy to learn. It
will be quickly accepted by everybody on account of its great utility and its
surprising facility, and it will serve wonderfully in communication among various
peoples (cited in Toulmin, 104).

The incentive to derive this universal language was based on the received
"lesson" of the 17th century that in the absence of a language that existed above
the fray of the oral, the particular, the local, and the timely, widespread
slaughter was the most likely result. A universal language exchanging generalized
and generalizable information would empower human beings to bring order and
harmony to the social world. After citing Leibniz, Toulmin suggests that his most
direct heirs are contemporary information engineers.

A corollary of the modern belief that "knowledge equals power" is a fundamental
precept of American freedom of speech, that in the marketplace of ideas, the
Truth will win out. Thus, by providing greater access to the marketplace, i.e.
electronic networking, information technology has been regarded not only a
midwife for new democratic processes, but a handmaiden of the Truth.

Finally, the assumed correlation between electronic networking and democracy may
be attributed to a byproduct of information technology that is quite visible to
this observer. Electronic networking provides heretofore unavailable (or
unattainable) social fora for the isolated individual, the introvert, and the
hyperliterate (and I include myself in each of these categories). Electronic
communication does indeed remove some of the barriers to public speech that are
known to intimidate many speakers. The ability to be a "writer" rather than a
"speaker" and still contribute to interactive public discourse must be counted
among the liberating characteristics of the new technology.

THE NETWORK OBSERVER is full of examples of the electronic birth of communities
and the successes of these communities in addressing the expressed needs of their
members. The organizing committee of the recent symposium, WOMEN, POLITICS, AND
ENVIRONMENTAL ACTION (Moscow, June 1-3, 1994) have similar stories to tell.
Virtually every aspect of the symposium was enhanced by the availability of
electronic networking. Calls for papers were distributed on listservs that have
(a few) members on several different continents. Participants were located via
electronic bulletin boards and conferences such as EcoNet. Advance information
and questions and answers about travel to Russia were handled by e-mail, for
those participants with access to it. The asynchronic nature of e-mail
communication enabled organizers in the United States and in Russia to stay in
constant communication with each other without losing any sleep. Given the
assistance of an electronic matchmaker, epidemiologists in a small Russian town
have made contact with researchers at the National Institute of Occupational
Safety and Health in Cincinnati. With some luck, they will be able to engage in
mutually beneficial projects studying the effects of PCBs on reproductive health.
The symposium has generated at least a dozen similar projects that will likely be
sustained by access to and participation in electronic communities. Members of
the organizing committee have decided to publish the symposium's proceedings
electronically rather than in hard copy since electronic publication will be (a)
quicker, and (b) subject to wider distribution and retrieval. While unimaginable
just a few years ago, it will now surprise few readers to learn that one of the
project directors and the program chair of the symposium did not meet in person
until the symposium opened in Moscow, although they were in daily e-mail contact
with each for the preceding eight months. In retrospect, I can scarcely remember
how, just seven years ago, I helped to organize an analogous international event
in England without access to either fax or e-mail.

That's the good news. Well, not quite all. Participants in the symposium, as
participants in other new projects in the CIS, have demonstrated that Russians
and other citizens of the former Soviet Union are hungry for access to electronic
communities. This hunger is understandable and it may, indeed, be grossly unfair
to write of the dangers of infoglut in an article that should highlight the
stultifying effects of the lack of information on the Russian populace and
Russian social movements. Nonetheless, despite understandable enthusiasm for new
technology and the tremendous achievements of GLASNET (a wonderful acronym that
collapses the correlation of networking and democracy into a single memorable
word), there are problems ahead that will be only aggravated if they are not
acknowledged.

Rather than outline the underside of electronic networking at length here, I'll
refer diehard readers to my article, "Information Technology and Global Learning
for Sustainable Development: Promise and Problems" in ALTERNATIVES 19 (1994),
99-132. In a nutshell, as I put it in that article, "[w]hile the interactive
aspects of new communication technologies facilitate a positional approach to
learning, inequitable access to these technologies at present and in the
foreseeable future profoundly diminishes the diversity of opinions that are
vetted electronically. Electronic communities may provide genuine benefits to
isolated individuals, but if these communities continue to be presented as
providing global rather than partial access to political discourse, this promise
may be squandered. Finally, although freedom of information may hamper some
dangerous actions, more information alone is not a substitute for the development
of critical or compassionate faculties. Data may reveal the existence of
injustice, but data alone rarely generate the political will either to make
difficult trade-offs or to discover creative solutions to perennial problems."
As an organizer of the symposium described above, I would be amiss not to note
that regardless of their hard work and innovative thinking, those participants
who lacked access to computer networks for either financial or linguistic reasons
have already been left behind (although not entirely abandoned) in follow-up
activities.

In other words, the correlation of knowledge with power may become even more
misleading in the electronic age as we literally unplug the technologically
underequipped from our information networks. The assumption that the Truth will
"win out" (aside from porting the notion that there is such a thing as
uncontestable single version of Truth) is based on a prior assumption of
equitable access to dialogue that does not withstand scrutiny. While electronic
networking does, indeed, enfranchise some individuals and groups who have not
contributed yet to the creation of democratic societies, these people are already
farily privileged when considered in a global context.

From all of this, I do not draw the conclusion that electronic networking is
either (a) an essential adjunct to democracy or (b) harmful to democracy. The
point, as others more eloquent than I have noted frequently, is that computers
are ambivalent tools of communication. At their best they are phronetic tools
that will make it easier to apply our collective wisdom to the solution of
practical problems. At their worst they are alluring instruments for trivial
pursuits. Obviously, democracy will be better served by the former.

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This month's recommendations.

JoAnne Yates, Control through Communication: The Rise of System in American
Management, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. A fascinating
account of information technology in the development of the modern corporation:
early copying technology, the evolution of desks, genres of documents, upward and
downward movement of standardized information, the management procedures used by
the early railroads, and all kinds of great stuff like that. It's very well
worthwhile.

Cynthia Cockburn, Machinery of Dominance: Women, Men, and Technical Know-How,
Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1988. A study of how the work associated
with various kinds of machines gets to being labeled as "men's work" and "women's
work". Cockburn argues that these labels are largely arbitrary, with no
underlying logic past gender-based competition for the more desirable jobs. She
observes jobs changing gender as the machines change, she observes new machines
provoking contests over their gendering, and she listens to the often incoherent
arguments about why certain jobs are men's work. I'd like to think we can do
better.

Philip Mirowski, More Heat Than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as
Nature's Economics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989.


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