Politics and Technology of Control: Introduction

January 25

The Net has great potential for “good” (e.g. innovation, economic growth, education, and access to information), and likewise is a great platform for the bawdy, tawdry and illegal. Is this platform about fundamental social, political and economic change, or about easier access to pornography, cheap pharmaceuticals, free music and poker at home? This question leads us to a host of interesting issues that weave their way through the course related to openness, access, regulatory control, free speech, anonymity, intellectual property rights, democracy, transparency, norms and values, economic and cultural change, and cyber-terrorism, as well as scamsters and thieves.

Preparation (Assignment "Zero")

Part I

To frame the issues we will be talking about in this class and to get the discussion going, we'll start with the recent controversy involving Wikileaks. Take some time to read through the articles below. Come to class prepared to answer the following questions and to pose some questions of your own.

• What is Wikileaks? Is it a journalism organization? A terrorist organization? A criminal syndicate?
• Do we need an organization like Wikileaks?
• What kind of arguments would you make to support your position one way or the other?
• What was the U.S.'s (and the world's) response to Wikileaks' disclosure of diplomatic cables?
• What are the legal and/or free speech implications involved in the decision by Amazon to stop hosting the Wikileaks site?
• What do you think the debate concerning Wikileaks shows about the nature of the Internet?

Part II

• What are the most significant changes associated with the spread of digital technologies?

In a few sentences, please offer 2-3 examples in the Class Discussion section below.

Readings

• MIT Technology Review: Everything You Need to Know About Wikileaks
• Wall Street Journal: To Publish Leaks Or Not to Publish?
• Salon: Online, the censors are scoring big wins
• GigaOm: Like It or Not, WikiLeaks is a Media Entity
• Guardian: Live with the WikiLeakable world or shut down the net. It's your choice

Optional Readings

• EFF: Amazon and WikiLeaks - Online Speech is Only as Strong as the Weakest Intermediary
• Wired: Lieberman Introduces Anti-WikiLeaks Legislation
• Salon: WikiLeaks reveals more than just government secrets
• Clay Shirky: Wikileaks and the Long Haul
• Citizen Media Law Project: Julius Baer Bank and Trust v. Wikileaks
• MediaBerkman: Wikileaks and the Information Wars
• Coverage of the cables themselves by the NYT [1], Guardian [2], Der Spiegel [3]

Class Discussion

The most significant changes and challenges brought on by digital technologies.

- Your ideas here...

One of the most significant challenges is defining what constitutes privacy of users. Facebook continually redefines the concept of what information is private for its users. As we get more social and increases in attempts by online organizations to bring a more personal experience to the user, this will continue to be a challenge. ---dreed07 03:35, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

• Google Flu Trends

Google has stuck into out lives quite firmly. I mean, than Google predict something better than government entities (CDC) just by running an algorithm and analyzing few searches... On some level that is the best example of how dependent on the Internet we became. I am not saying that's a bad thing, people before me told the same thing about electricity. Times are changing and that is a progress none the less. But shouldn't we be a little more careful, stop for a second and have a look on what we were actually doing for the last 20 years? Can the Internet be our own Frankenstein monster? :) --Jastify 00:28, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Please use this space for comments/discussion you would like to share with the rest of the class.

• The World's First Stateless News Organization
• Russia's Own WikiLeaks Takes Off

The idea of "Stateless News Organizations" seems to be getting around... In my country though it's a little less sophisticated... --Jastify 15:45, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Sadly, Rosen’s prediction of the public’s reaction to the release of the Afghanistan War logs was spot on. These logs, in my opinion, did not receive enough attention or create the amount of outrage they deserved. Because they exposed a distasteful problem, an uncomfortable public chose to turn a blind eye. --Jedmonds 20:38, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

---

“Is Wikileaks a journalism organization? A terrorist organization? A criminal syndicate?” IMO Wikileaks is none of the above. What Wikileaks can be described as is one of several recent examples of the ways in which communications technologies are fundamentally changing the nature of life on the planet. It’s part of an incomplete definition that will be building in complexity for some time into the future.

We live in an environment today in which the sum total of human experience virtually floats in the air around us. Need directions, google it. Want to see what it will look like when you turn the corner at the next intersection, click to a 360 degree view. Wish to know what historical figure may have lived in that ancient building by the park, if there isn’t today, sometime in the near future there will be a website, wiki, webcam, historical archive, building plans, public utility schematics, images of deeds, mortgage documents, tax information, holographic immersive experiences …

Piece by piece we are collectively constructing a virtual copy of the world. More than a copy, it contains layers from this moment stretching into the past and other contextual information impossible to obtain a mere few years ago.

I worry when it is said that Assange is not "about letting sunlight into the room so much as about throwing grit in the machine." [4]. With that kind of philosophy it seems the opportunity to cause harm is far greater than that for good.

If on the other hand Wikileaks becomes or spawns places of free and open communications where transparency reigns and people of conviction can become free to disclose information that brings light into what today are dark crevices, we’ll all be better off. If not, we need to worry.

We need also worry about as Brandon Palmen says, “an incomplete and skewed portrayal of fact.” [5] Actions that result from reliance on the incomplete picture will have unintended consequences. This is true whether a skewed view is intentional or as a function of where we are with respect to construction of the new virtual copy of our world.

Do we need an organization like Wikileaks? The truth is that there will soon be many versions of Wikileaks with many different degrees of completeness ranging along a spectrum from purely altruistic to undeniably evil. It will be up to the individual and the establishment to decide on which version of reality we each choose to believe and act upon. --Gclinch 02:53, 25 January 2011 (UTC)