cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (06/21/91)
The following paper was prepared for the "Civilizing Cyberspace" meeting on law and cyberspace hosted by the CPSR and ACLU (with support from the EFF, I believe), to be held in Washington, DC, on June 26-27, 1991. ___________________________________________________________________________ Reciprocity in Cyberspace Robert Jacobson June 1991 Cyberspace is the term used to express the evolving and expanding electronic/photonic/neuronic network of computers and similar communication devices that encircles the globe. In cyberspace, one or many persons can exchange ideas, in many forms, with correspondents around the world. But despite the appearance of autonomous action that such communications, on their face, might suggest, in fact cyberspace is a designed medium -- and the designers' criteria may differ substantially and significantly from the expectations of those who travel cyberspace. In this short paper, I argue that the concept of "reciprocity," which Webster's defines as "a mutual or cooperative exchange of favors or priviliges," must become the rallying cry of those who hold for personal and collective freedom in cyberspace. An analogy can be suggested by air travel. One can plan to visit anyplace, at anytime, to conduct whatever business or take whatever pleasure one has in mind. But in fact, one's plans are literally at the mercy of those who build aircraft and those who operate them. What appears at first to be a tremendous freedom, the ability to jet off to distant realms, is in fact highly constrained by the offerings of aircraft manufacturers and airlines. These purveyors of air travel are organized into oligopolies and the operations of the individual firms are largely determined by the formal and informal codes of the oligopolies. Prices for travel, selection of destinations, and modes of transport are less at the command of the traveller than of the sellers of travel. These factors select who can travel by air, at what time, and to where. The permutations of these factors can appear manifold, but in fact there are a relatively few combinations and the air traveler must accept them, buy his or her own plane, or take a bus. So it may be with cyberspace. Large entities, manufacturers of computer and communications equipment, network operators, and information-service vendors pretty well define the possibilities for travelers in this new ether. It doesn't always appear so -- the rogue traveler, whom some would call a bandit, makes his or her presence known, or is revealed, to a wide public. This is the cracker/hacker phenomenon, aided and abetted by the forces of law and order, including the press, in the service of those who otherwise control the means of telecomputing. We mistake the occasional lapse in the order as a sign of freedom. But the lapse is very infrequent and usually gets turned around, one way or another (as law or calls for "ethics") into a defense of the order. The notion that "interactivity," which simply means (again according to Webster) "the ability to act on each other," somehow equates with freedom is nonsense. I can interact with the U.S. government, Exxon, or more to the point, an ATM terminal standing in for my bank, but no one believes that our dealings are in any way equal or that I am necessarily going to get a square deal. Moreover, if I am wronged, my chances of righting that wrong are slim to none. It is an ill-founded idea, too freely propagated on the nets and in the press, that interactive media are also equitable media. As Vincent Mosco has illustrated in The Pay-Per Society (Ablex, 1989), my interaction with the electronic machinery of domination is act of submission. In contrast, I would like to propose that _reciprocity_ is an essential criterion that should be incorporated into cyberspace, and the sooner the better. Reciprocity requires that not only can I interact with and through the network, but that I be fully apprised of the who operates the network and how it functions Q and that I, or we (including my correspondents), be involved in its design and be able to alter its workings. I know this is a tall order in a social order that values (perhaps too greatly) the role of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur's inheritor, the corporate manager, in making design decisions unilaterally. Unilateral power to design, we are taught, fosters originality and system alternatives. Autonomous decisionmaking, otherwise known as democracy, gets lip service in our schools but is seldom acted on in the real world of economic and political power. Those who enjoy the freedom to design for others seldom give it away. The more enlightened among the owners may make token offerings of involvement: they have learned that there is greater power (as, for example, the Pacific Northwest Indian chief knew) in appearing to surrender power in a way that ultimately buys compliance. But genuinely sharing design responsibilities? This is a real threat to the hegemony that determines our cyberspace possibilities, and the owners of the means know it. Still, this principal is one that the rest of us, who do not own the networks and the technology (machinery and organization) behind the networks, cannot cease to invoke. It is our one way out of a technological trap that otherwise binds us tighter and tighter to the perogatives of the already powerful. If we have to sing the song, at least let us write the lyrics. --
ian@airs.com (Ian Lance Taylor) (06/23/91)
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) writes: >Reciprocity in Cyberspace >Robert Jacobson >June 1991 This is an interesting paper (I'm not going to quote it; look it up yourself), but I'm not quite sure what it means. Let's take Usenet as a sample network. It's interesting to compare this request to the ``What is Usenet'' argument going on in news.admin. Currently the readers of Usenet mostly have the ability to determine which newsgroups are propagated, by voting on them. Is this what you're asking for? Since Usenet is a distributed network, it's not really possible for a single person to control much of it. For example, you might decide that binary attachments to news would be a good idea, and you might even implement it on your system, but there's nobody you could call to get it implemented world-wide. On the other hand, if you do a good implementation and yell about it loudly, then after a few years about half the Usenet sites will be able to receive your binary attachments. Is this what you're asking for? All networks are based on some underlying physical implementation. This is probably just a case of techno-elite snobbery, but if somebody who doesn't understand the technical requirements of the system makes impossible suggestions, why should anybody listen to them? Perhaps closer to home, if somebody asks for a new feature that is difficult to implement, but cannot implement it themselves, why should anybody listen to them? A true-blue free market enthusiast would say that if a network doesn't do what you want, and enough people agree with you, somebody else will start a network that does do what you want. -- Ian Taylor ian@airs.com uunet!airs!ian First person to identify this quote wins a free e-mail message: ``If he could have moved, he would have gotten up and gone after the man to thank him for wearing something so marvelously interesting.''
cyberoid@milton.u.washington.edu (Robert Jacobson) (06/23/91)
Clearly I'm not the free marketeer that Ian Taylor would hope me to be. The free market is a clever little term used for disguising a system that permits choices to be made by those with the most resources to begin with. Then the smaller buyers get in line. I believe that USENET is about as close as we have come so far to a reciprocity-based conferencing system. It doesn't permit me to pay my bills by wire, of course, but otherwise it does allow me a chance not only to see into the workings of the beast but also propose changes to them, and implement them if I can, with the agreement of others. The WELL offers similar and perhaps greater reciprocity, although one does not set the price of service or have an absolute choice over conference hosts. The systems that absolutely bore me and also cause me qualms, considering the lessons they're teaching hundreds of thousands of users, are the big commercial systems, about which no one knows very much and about which absolutely no one is asked. Neither a capitalist nor a communist, I'm just a rawbone democrat. --