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The Network Charters The Network Charters Three Perspectives to Computer-Mediated Data Networks YTM Jari Peltola Lisensiaatintutkielma Jyväskylän yliopisto Yhteiskuntatieteiden ja filosofian laitos/ valtio-opin yksikkö Lokakuu 2004 The Network Charters: Three Perspectives to Computer-Mediated Data Networks YTM Jari Peltola Lisensiaatintutkielma Jyväskylän yliopisto Yhteiskuntatieteiden ja filosofian laitos/valtio-opin yksikkö 140 sivua Englanninkielisessä tutkielmassa tarkastellaan tietokonevälitteisiä dataverkkoja ja niihin liittyvää vuosituhannen vaihteessa käytyä keskustelua politologian näkökulmasta angloamerikkalaisessa kontekstissa. Tutkielman taustaideana on G.W. Leibnizin hahmottama ajatus monadologiasta, jonka alaisia ”yksikköjä”, monadeja, käytetään tutkielmassa metaforana dataverkkojen toimijoita analysoidessa. Tutkielmassa Leibnizin monadologiaa tarkastellaankin ikään kuin se olisi verkostoteoria, ja tämän kautta analysoidaan vuosituhannen vaihteen eri dataverkkovisioita ja niiden poliittisia aspekteja. Tutkielmassa esitetään, että tietokonevälitteisiin dataverkkoihin kuten www-pohjaiseen Internetiin liittyvät visiot voidaan hahmottaa retoriikan näkökulmasta kolmen eri mallin kautta sillä perusteella, miten nämä mallit käsittävät data-termin. Ensimmäinen malli (the share model) perustuu käsitykseen dataverkoista ”vapaatilana”, missä data on kaikkien halukkaiden saatavilla maailmanlaajuisen avoimen tietoverkon välityksellä. Toinen, enemmän taloudellisesti orientoitunut malli (the trade model), pitää dataa vaihdon välineenä, mikä tekee dataverkkojen käyttäjistä enemmänkin ”asiakkaita” tai ”kuluttajia”. Kolmas malli (the control model) pitää dataverkkoja ”voimatyökaluna”, jonka avulla voidaan tarvittaessa yksipuolisesti joko kerätä tai levittää sitä dataa, jota kulloinkin pidetään tärkeänä. Vaikka nämä mallit voidaankin periaatteessa nähdä samaa tietoverkkoja koskevan angloamerikkalaisen keskustelun eri ajallisina vaiheina, tutkielmassa esitetään, että nämä mallit ovat saman keskustelun samanaikaisia tasoja siten, että ”päällimmäisen” tason ratkaisee se konteksti, jossa keskustelua käydään, sekä se, ketkä tätä keskustelua käyvät. Avainsanat: data networks, Leibniz, monadology. Contents 1. Introduction 1 1.1. On the Concept of Network 7 1.2. The Rule of Data 17 2. Musings on Methodology 29 2.1. Abduction and Rhetoric: Justifying the Hypothesis 35 3. Leibniz, Monadology, and Network 45 3.1. The Network of Monads 46 3.2. God as the Network Operator 52 3.3. The Inclusive Network of Alfred North Whitehead 54 3.4. Frank Ankersmit’s Political Monadology 60 4. The Network Charters 65 4.1. The Share Model 68 4.1.1. The Data Frontier of John Perry Barlow 74 4.2. The Trade Model 83 4.2.1. The Network Society of Manuel Castells 85 4.2.2. The Gates of Microsoft 93 4.3. The Control Model 101 4.3.1. The Information Bomb 103 4.3.2. The Cold War Machine 112 4.3.3. The Soft War Machine 115 4.3.4. The Enforcer 120 5. Conclusion 130 Bibliography 1. Introduction The argument often heard is that developed and developing socio-economies have been restructured from using information in industrial forms of production and consumption to information becoming both the central resource and the driving force of socio-economies. As a part of this transition, socio-economies have also become global in ways they were not previously. This is why “information soci- ety” is called by that name; not because previous societies did not utilize informa- tion but because information has become the central principle according to which production, consumption and, more generally, power, is distributed across the global socio-economy. This is also something that for example Mark Poster has defined as the “linguistic turn of capitalism”, describing a continuum from the “consumer capitalism” of the 1980s to the “digital economy” or “global econ- omy” of 1990s.1 Information technology has been applied by nation-states, governments, and public officials for decades in the form of different electronic registries and data- bases. For example IBM – the corporation often referred as manufacturing the first “personal computer” – was in the 1930s involved in developing components and system applications for the Nazis. With this technology, as Edwin Black ar- gues in his comprehensive study IBM and the Holocaust: The Strategic Alliance between Nazi Germany and America’s Most Powerful Corporation (2002), the Nazis were able to organize the logistics of their death camps more efficiently: 1 “When the Final Solution sought to efficiency transport Jews out of Euro- pean ghettos along railroad lines and into death camps, with timing so pre- cise the victims were able to walk right out of the boxcar and into a waiting gas chamber, the coordination was so complex a task, this…called for a computer. But in 1933, no computer existed. However, another invention did exist: the IBM punch card and card sorting system – a precursor to the computer. IBM Germany, using its own staff and equipment, designed, exe- cuted, and supplied the indispensable technologic assistance Hitler’s Third Reich needed to accomplish what had never been done before – the automa- tion of human destruction. Card sorting operations were established in every major concentration camp…IBM Germany…did not simply sell the Reich machines and then walk away. IBM’s subsidiary, with the knowledge of its New York headquarters, enthusiastically custom-designed the complex de- vices and specialized applications as an official corporate undertak- ing…IBM NY always understood – from the outset in 1933 – that it was courting and doing business with the upper echelon of the Nazi Party.”2 Many of those envisioning the computer-mediated information technology as a means for new kind of communicative interaction have also brought forward the question of “teledemocracy”, although one seldom takes into consideration the possibility for “teletyranny” or “teledictatorship”. On the other hand, from the instrumentalist viewpoint for example the Internet is often considered as some kind of “electronic agora” at which people around the world may meet each other virtually to discuss and change opinions about contemporary issues. However, as for example Martin Dodge & Rob Kitchin have noted, instead of “public sphere” the World Wide Web-based Internet is a compilation of more or less open net- works and intranets.3 Thus a major part of data on the Internet is not accessible for everyone. In many cases access to this data requires registering to some database as its user, and these services are also often commercial business so they are not necessarily free of charge to access. Most of the experiments concerning the networks of data and democratic process have been in geographical sense, as Roza Tsagarousianou argues, local or regional in their character, being more or less related to “territorially bounded urban and suburban communities”.4 Applying new information technology in de- mocratic processes has often been considered as a counter-force for a line of de- 1 Poster 2001, 41. 2 Black 2002, 8–9. 3 Dodge & Kitchin 1999, 2–5. 4 Tsagarousianou 1998, 168. 2 velopment including citizens’ abstention from national and regional elections. At the same time it has been argued that in addition to media-broadcasted politics there should be more deliberative arenas in which citizens would be able to con- template with each other. In this view information technology has been argued to enable for example citizens’ direct access to sources of information, at the same time removing the role of the allegedly distorting mediators of that information. According to Tsagarousianou, often left unsolved in these visions are the ques- tions of constructing and maintaining the networks, financing the information technology required by citizens to access the networks, and citizens’ inequality of skills in using computers.5 Although the pioneers of computer networks would rather see the computer- mediated networks of data as a state-free sphere, the present development is clearly taking steps into more restricted direction. Data networks are not such a Wild West-like frontier as they were considered only at the beginning of 1990s. One possible explanation for this is the increased economic significance of data network transactions; nowadays the data parcels of cyberspace are assumed to reach their destination safely and in time. The social and political climate defines considerably how and to what pur- poses information technology is applied. On the other hand computer-based in- formation technology has often been considered as such revolutionary a force that it is hard to find some sphere of life in which information technology would not have been considered as a ground-breaking entity. Therefore seeing data networks as an independent or a separate sphere for action is not necessarily relevant. The weakness in many visionaries’ theories is considering the computer-mediated networks of data as a sphere somehow unconnected with the rest of the world. As Brian D. Loader has noted, the adamant technovisionaries such as Nicholas Ne- groponte often consider data networks as “digital Eden” in where everything al- ready is in the best possible manner, similarly erasing the need for politics.6 What these visions mostly neglect is, as Timothy W. Luke has argued, the fact that this alleged new world brings “much of its content from older existing worlds”.7 5 Ibid., 171. 6 Loader 1997, 4. 7 Luke 2001, 117. 3 If the computer-mediated networks of data were considered as a melting-pot for
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