Written as a discussion paper for PUBPOL707 – Architectures of Digital Ecosystems for the McMaster University Master of Public Policy in Digital Society
The Internet and the modern digital age has fundamentally changed who we are and the human connections we have with one another. As Marshall McLuhan theorized, media – or in our case, modern digital technology – becomes extensions of ourselves and our bodies. The Internet is no longer just a tool or a “hammer” as Mark Poster argued in 2001 – we are no longer just “users.” In an idealistic way, we are digital citizens, our politics transformed from national geographies bounded by socially constructed demarcations of space to a digital sphere untethered to physical geography but increasingly governed by corporate interests. In this dimension, “code is law,” as Lawrence Lessig proclaims. And in today’s Internet, far removed from the idealistic anarcho-libertarian freedom dreamed of by the early hackers, social media platforms and the emerging “Internet of Things” (IoT) have made us the product and unpaid labour of the big tech companies, collecting our data and using our created content to sell to advertisers and generate profit. As a result, the Internet has transfigured our humanity. Who have we become in the Internet age – our current era of domineering social media platforms, big data, algorithms, and AI? And how will policymakers respond to the potential harms that these technologies impose?
Digital Citizens
We now belong to the Digital Agora, a new “public sphere,” a new “social space.” We are beyond “content” and “mastery” of the Internet as a “hammer.” The Internet has radically transformed our relationships and interactions with one another, which has affected our role as political individuals and the constitution of power. Darin Barney reflects on this “radical citizenship” and our political judgment. The concept of “Citizenship” asks us: what is our relationship to the State and to one another? There are the usual ideological traditions, including a civic-republican tradition that conceives of citizenship as an “act” or “performance” and a liberal tradition of natural rights affirmed by and constraining the State. But I also think of citizenship as “who belongs” and “who is excluded.” I think of sharing a “collective memory” – and conversely, a “collective amnesia” – that makes one a citizen. Or the “imagined communities” of Benedict Anderson that unites a nation. Or the “public sphere” of Jürgen Habermas.
In the digital public sphere, Barney criticizes the liberal order that has come to underpin the Internet. I agree that we are rarely pursuing the collective “good,” instead arguing for individual digital “rights.” We should question whether social media platforms create individual harms that should be remedied or collective harms as Martin Tisné argues. Moreover, I would argue that it is not true that technology has “allowed freedom to flourish” as the collection of data and the emergence of algorithms have ceded our power to the tech companies who sell our behaviour and attention to advertisers. The Internet is not a part of the liberal order because the Internet and liberalism are naturally aligned in a deterministic approach, but because their connection is socially constructed by liberal capitalist interests who have turned our “citizenship” into profit.
The Internet is no longer a “tool” to master. As Langdon Winner argues, “the devices, techniques, and systems we adopt shed their tool-like qualities to become part of our very humanity.” And it is not just a “medium” for our IRL politics, as will happen in the looming Canadian Federal election with political ads, organizing, and fundraisers on social media platforms. The Internet is a contested battleground for political judgment and democracy in the public sphere. As Barney argues, “it is intimately bound up in the establishment and enforcement of prohibitions and permissions, the distribution of power and resources, and the structure of human practices and relationships… justice is at stake in the design, development, regulation and governance of technological devices and systems.”
“All Politics is Local” – The effect of algorithms on the IRL public sphere
Digital technology has transformed the public sphere and the way that we connect with one another. Yet the public sphere is still material and IRL. It exists through people’s livelihoods in a concrete way, through infrastructure and services provided by the State. And just as digital technology has changed the way we communicate online, it has also had a significant effect on people’s lives IRL.
As the saying goes, “All Politics is Local.” And as per Winner, we imbue technology with politics and in turn, it transforms our own politics. And thus, digital technology must also restructure the local. Sara Safransky looks at “algorithmic violence,” where algorithms impose collective harm on marginalized people through the process of neighbourhood assessments. Through ideologies such as the Floridean “Creative Cities” concept in recent decades, urban planners have focused on (re-)development of certain neighbourhoods, at the expense of gentrification and the relegation of marginalized people to the periphery. Algorithms have accelerated the process in how the State assigns or withdraws economic resources, often greatly impacting marginalized communities.
Again, “Code is law,” and code and data that contains racialized biases further imposes power imbalances. The argument for algorithmic decision-making for political decisions is that it is more “neutral.” It is the dominant argument for “evidence-based policymaking.” And as governments and corporations continue to adopt algorithms to pursue “neutral” “evidence-based policymaking,” we are moving towards “path dependency.” Thus, as biased data against marginalized communities affect algorithms, it perpetuates structural harms in policymaking – code is affecting “law.”
Is Safransky’s study generalizable and has external validity? Perhaps. However, algorithms and machine learning have helped make decision-making more efficient by analyzing greater sources of data, which could help make policies more effective. Further case studies could explore the use of algorithms in other government jurisdictions and find that there are real benefits – including for marginalized communities. What Safransky offers us is that algorithms can affect us as humans in the local sphere, take away our agency – the “social mortgage” that Ursula Franklin conceptualizes – and centralizes power, which will further pre-existing political, economic, and social harms.
How should policymakers respond to our transformation as digital humans?
I have “smart”-ified my life. I use Google Assistant on my Google Pixel. I have a Google Nest Hub and Google Nest Mini that will control my smart lights, smart blinds, and smart plug that controls my fan. I do so fully understanding that my data is being collected, which is being sold to others. Yes, I am afraid of the future harm that this might create for me. But I recognize that I have cognitive dissonance, prioritizing the benefit and enjoyment that the IoT has contributed to my life. As Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Apple Siri continue to improve through greater input data and new features, more people will adopt these technologies creating “network effects.”
As we “smart”-ify our lives and continue to use social media, we have become products for platform companies to sell to external parties, especially advertisers. And in providing our data, creating content online, and concentrating our attention to our apps, a Marxist perspective would argue that we have become “unpaid labour,” turning ourselves into both the product and worker for the companies to create profit, without individuals being paid for our contributions. We are beyond being a “user.” We are human products and unpaid labour.
We should recognize that this is the new future. “Path dependency” – though its deterministic nature has its flaws – believes there will not be a return to a pre-digital technology age. Policymakers should recognize this and focus on mitigating the harm of these emerging technologies rather than rebelling against it.
Smith et al. explores avenues for the “development of a cybersecurity public policy for the IoT” through the study of “user values.” This study is useful as an approach for exploring the development of other tech policy, especially for technology that imposes significant social harms. I continue to argue that a primary question we should ask ourselves in the development of policies that recognize our digital future is “What are our values?” and apply those to a digital constitution. However, Smith et al. has key flaws in its assumptions behind the research method, especially that the definition of values are rarely “rational” and I am skeptical of the emphasis of “rational choice theory.” As a constructivist, I believe our values are socially constructed, not the static nature of “rational choice theory.” Furthermore, the study continues to assume the subject of observation is the “user,” which Barney and Winter argue is no longer the case.
The study assumes that the framework for policymaking of IoT would be at the national level. However, the Internet is “global” and tech policies should be considered at the multilateral level in order to be effective. However, the study shows that individuals do prefer government intervention. Yet, they also prefer a public-private partnership to collectively govern the Internet, which I argue would be more effective because the dominant governance of the Internet is not the State – it is the individual platform companies.
The Internet as a Contested Battleground for Governance of Digital Individuals
We are fundamentally changed by modern digital technology that traditional policy frameworks are insufficient and ineffective in preventing and mitigating individual and collective harms. Political judgment and power relationships have been synthesized in the digital dimension so that the digital public sphere is just a part of the same IRL public sphere. It is repetitive but important: “Code is Law” and digital policy impacts every part of our lives – including where we live, as per Safransky, and how we live, as per Smith et al. The Internet and digital technology are a contested battleground for our lives, our freedom, our democracy, and our power. Thus, governance of these technologies requires a re-conceptualization of our policy frameworks to address their harms on humans – not just “users.”
Bibliography
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