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Of Digital Information Networks: a Reply to 'The Politics of Bandwidth'

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Of Digital Information Networks: a Reply to 'The Politics of Bandwidth' Review of International Studies (2003), 29, 139–143 Copyright © British International Studies Association DOI: 10.1017/S0260210503000081 The political ‘complications’ of digital information networks: a reply to ‘The Politics of Bandwidth’ GIAMPIERO GIACOMELLO Abstract. In ‘The Politics of Bandwidth’, Geoffrey Herrera examines the relationship between the information revolution and international affairs. His main point is that the evolution and ultimate shape of a mature digital information network will be decided by a three-way political struggle between states, firms and individuals. This short essay intends to expand and refine some of Herrera’s assumptions. More importantly, however, the essay draws attention to the factor that Herrera neglects, namely the difference that being a democracy makes when determining the outcome of the three-way struggle. Scholars and scientists alike have long recognised that studying the connections between international politics and technology is an undertaking crucial to under- standing the world’s dynamics. Information technology is a new addition, but it has already attracted a large following.1 Social scientists, however, have a harder time investigating the social implications of modern technologies than, say, lawyers or engineers, because the latter can, to a larger extent, discount the human factor, while the former cannot. Deprived of the neat and tidier categorisations of law and engineering, social scientists are mostly left to ‘the margins’ to sort out the untidy and the messy. Geoffrey Herrera’s article,2 ‘The Politics of Bandwidth’, undoubtedly contributes to offering a more precise (or at least, less messy) framework for the analysis of political implications of global information networks.3 I find his approach very convincing, and few among academics, politicians and business leaders and the 1 For a valuable list see fn.2 in Geoffrey Herrera, ‘The Politics of Bandwidth: International Political Implications of a Global Digital information Network’, Review of International Studies, 28 (2002), pp. 93–122. Other examples may include Karl Deutsch, ‘The Impact of Communications Upon the Theory of International Relations ,’ in A. S. Abdul, Theory of International Relations (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1968), pp. 74–92, Howard H. Frederick, Global Communications and International Relations (Celmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1993), Amid Mowlana Global Information and World Communication (London: Sage, 1997), and Jerry Everard, Virtual States. The Internet and Boundaries of the Nation-State (London and New York: Routledge, 2000). 2 Herrera, ‘The Politics of Bandwidth’. 3 Herrera stresses the uniqueness and integration of a single information network, composed of different infrastructures, media and protocols, but unified by universal digitalisation. I prefer to maintain the emphasis on multiplicity and lack of true inter-operability as more correct from the technical point of view, and thus will use ‘networks’ as plural. Furthermore, the degree of integration apparently assumed by Herrera is still several years away. 139 140 Giampiero Giacomello public opinion would doubt the growing economic and social importance of ‘electronic prowess’.4 But I also believe that, given the complexity and novelty of the topic, it also demands more accuracy (we are left with the messy and the untidy, do not forget that). In this reply to his article, I will begin with reviewing the shared assumptions, and then proceed to analyse the issue that Herrera did not tackle in detail, namely the implications of being a democratic state. This crucial differen- tiation may have tremendous influence on the three-player structure, and hence deeply affect the evolution of digital information networks. The primacy of politics and the three-player structure First and foremost, most of the time, politics guides technology and not vice versa. When the state decides to put enough resources behind a scientific project, the outcome can be as remarkable as putting men on the moon or splitting the atom.5 The leading position of politics, however, does not mean that policymakers and other elected officials are swift at understanding the political implications of technological transformations. Furthermore, politics may be in command, but its implementation is always done via national legal structures (that is, by voting bills into laws), which are also slow to reflect changes. In this respect, a case such as cloning technology, where governments have to react constantly to new scientific developments, is rather telling. The consequence of this situation, namely an image of the slowness of the state (both as apparatus and entity), certainly does not enhance the perception of the state’s centrality in technological development in the eyes of public opinion. If this is the case, then modern technologies (not only mature information networks) will indeed hinder the state’s economic and political control, and then trigger that transformation of the international system that Herrera describes.6 Second, Herrera’s identification of the three-way political struggle between states, firms and individuals instead of the standard (and sometimes futile) ‘opposing pairs of possibilities’ (for example, strong or weak state, wealth or poverty, and so on), as the key to appreciating the effects of modern information networks is certainly convincing.7 Yet, this predicament requires greater analytical efforts on the part of scholars of international politics, and makes forecasting even more difficult.8 Game 4 On the ‘Electronic National Prowess’ (ENP) measure to replace GNP as indicator of national status see Daniel Franklin, ‘The Next Measure of National Machismo’, The World in 2001 (The Economist Publications, 2001), pp. 116–19. 5 For an analysis of the rise of the ‘scientific state’ see Susan Strange, States and Markets (London: Pinter Publishers, 1988). 6 Herrera, ‘The Politics of Bandwidth’, p. 96. 7 Ibid., p. 95. This trilateral approach has been used by other authors. See for instance Giampiero Giacomello, ‘The Digital Challenge: National Governments and the Control of the Internet’, (unpublished Ph.D thesis, European University Institute Fiesole, 2001). Herrera (p. 95) distinguishes individuals as ‘consumers’ and ‘citizens’. 8 Forecasting and predicaments have long been demonstrated to be out of reach for scholars of international relations, but the development of a few more ‘quasi-laws’ would certainly increase the credibility of the field as a whole. For an in-depth investigation of this issue, see John Lewis Gaddis, ‘International Relations Theory and the End of the Cold War’, in Sean M. Lynn-Jones and Steven E. Miller (eds.) The Cold War and After: Prospect for Peace, expanded edition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993). A reply to ‘The Politics of Bandwidth’ 141 Theory demonstrates that charting the number of available strategies in a three- player game is a demanding task.9 Moreover, mathematicians and physicians in celestial mechanics have tried for centuries to measure the simultaneous, interlocking effects of three objects.10 Calculating the odds of all the possible combinations of interest coalitions under circumstances of shifting alliances (that is, with more than one move in the game) is certainly a challenging endeavour. Yet, there is another, more disturbing effect of the three-player structure, namely when one player, under the proper circumstances, can significantly influence the evolution of digital information networks, much more than the other two would like to see. Individuals can be consumers, citizens or civil liberties activists, legally defending their rights, but if individuals ‘jump across the fence’ into illegality and develop a structure, they become organised crime, a would- be fourth player that is far more dangerous for the international system than any of the others. Unsurprisingly, Susan Strange considered organised crime as the major threat to the world system,11 while states and firms still seem reluctant to give this phenomenon its proper consideration. Globalisation? Why not ‘OECD-isation’? Thirdly, digital information networks are undoubtedly one of the critical factors of globalisation, as Herrera correctly points out.12 Globalisation, however, is a label that can be applied almost to any phenomena that, even mildly, exceed locality. Moreover, the concept behind the catchword is equally undetermined to the point that scholars have long given up agreeing on a common definition, and the term is now used as freely and frequently as words like ‘progress’ or ‘civic society’.13 Since 9 Avinash Dixit and Susan Skeath notes that the most obvious difference between the two- and three- player game is the complexity of the game tree. Avinash Dixit and Susan Skeath, Games of Strategy, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), p. 58. If the ‘three players’ are further subdivided, for example firms competing for certain standards and consumers as spoilers or supporters of different technologies, the complexity of the game equally increases. 10 This riddle is know as the ‘three-bodies problem’. In addition to Newton, mathematicians such as Eulero, Lagrange, and Poincaré studied the problem and contributed to its resolution, but it was the Finnish astronomer Karl Frithiof Sundman (1873–1949) who produced a definitive and general solution in the early 20th century. Sundman’s infinite series solution can now be simply modelled by modern computers. For an introduction to the three-bodies problem see <http://www.geom.umn.edu/ ~megraw/CR3BP_html/cr3bp.html>.
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