Participation: the most important, underlying theme

In the first half of the semester we were introduced to Susan Delagrange’s “Wunderkammer,” – and more importantly, her essay about the revision process for that piece. 

Her essay, “When Revision is Redesign,” taught us about a heuristic process – Enabling us to discover or learn something for ourselves.

She said, “...a key to innovative thinking and problem-solving is maintaining ambiguity for as long as possible. Designers must preserve ambiguity so as not to exclude avenues of thought or experiment that might later prove productive. Learners too must preserve ambiguity, as premature certainty shuts down the process of inquiry and exploration that often leads to more sophisticated, more interesting, more generative knowledge." 

She used the visual effect of the Wunderkammer as a physical place, creating what she called a “richly furnished imaginative space” – something that would get us to wander and explore. 

And that was something I carried into my midterm. 

-----> For the midterm project, I posted a series of images laid together with quotes from our readings. And when I wrote about them, it kind of came out as slam poetry. I wrote it as I spoke it, and practiced it out loud – hoping that when someone read it, they would be able to hear my voice, or that they’d be inclined to read it out loud to feel the words. 

TO PARTICIPATE. 

I was learning by doing the project –– and the revision process – rewording and editing – helped me fine-tune not just my words on the page, but all of my thoughts around the pieces we’d read so far this semester. Finishing the midterm gave me a product I could be proud of, and helped me really digest what we’d been learning.

***

The theme I’m getting at concerns internalizing in our memories. To embed our personal knowledge into culture to have some effect – it requires participation. 

Nowhere did that seem more important to me as in the legal issues surrounding copyright infringement and information, which we touched on with John Barlow’s “The Economy of Ideas.” 

He taught us the difference between INFORMATION and DATA:

-----> “Even when it has been encapsulated in some static form like a book or a hard disk, information is still something that happens to you as you mentally decompress it from its storage code. But, whether it's running at gigabits per second or words per minute, the actual decoding is a process that must be performed by and upon a mind, a process that must take place in time.”

We are the ones who give life to data, turning it into information. And we are the ones who must carry that burden into culture if we want to see change. 

So for my final project, I am creating a website that will become an action center – a hub for a collection of organizations that fight with and against lawmakers and lobbyists who are addressing Internet Freedom and cyber security. 

-----> Organizations like:

The American Civil Liberties Union

Electric Frontier Foundation

The Internet Defense League

Demand Progress 

As Barlow said, “Law adapts by continuous increments and at a pace second only to geology. Technology advances in lunging jerks......real-world conditions will continue to change at a blinding pace, and the law will lag further behind... This mismatch may prove impossible to overcome.”

But is my hope that by creating this website, where people can learn to participate, I will be able to provide a useful tool for those like myself who want to be part of the movement to help the law catch up to real world technology and culture.

AMA (ask-me-anything) chat about the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act happening on Reddit NOW!

Check it out!

AMAs are "Ask me anything"s where people field questions from Redditors. 
The panel includes Demand Progress, Aaron Swartz's partner Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Free Press, Orin Kerr, Jennifer Granick, Lawrence Lessig, Marvin Ammori, Tim Berners Lee.

Jay Cox of the EFF said this is what they're ultimately trying to accomplish by raising awareness about the CFAA reform

"We want to reform a vague, overly-expansive law that was originally intended to only deal with malicious computer trespass of a very small subset of computers. The law has been used in an aggressive manner by the DOJ, which believes that violating a terms of service should be punishable under the CFAA. For a great example of why reform is needed check out our blog post on the terms of service on news sites--some of which say if you're under 18 you can't access their website. The law was recently used in the aggressive prosecution of Aaron Swartz. Even before Aaron's death, we were fighting in the courts to narrow, and curtail, the law.

Common sense reform to the CFAA is needed to curtail aggressive prosecution by the DOJ and to ensure that companies can thrive. Large companies have all used the CFAA as a way to stop startups and innovators from creating innovative new products and services. That's why we're asking people to tell their Congressmen to reform the CFAA.

We're trying to: *) Make sure the CFAA doesn't criminalize simple terms of service violations *) Make sure that security, researchers, engineers, and innovators can create addons, new products, and new services without the threat of a criminal prosecution *) Decrease some of the penalties in the law so that low-level offenses aren't punished by an overbearing heavy-handed regime."

David Segal of Demand Progress on why the CFAA is bad (in its current state and with the potential new amendments):

"The biggest issue: Law enforcement asserts that it's a crime for you to violate a terms of service agreement on a website. Meaning that if Facebook says don't share your password with your friend, but you do anyway, then you're a federal criminal.

If Stephen Colbert starts a Twitter account for Bill Clinton, he's a federal criminal:https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130409/08525322632/did-stephen-colbert-president-bill-clinton-violate-cfaa.shtml?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

This means almost all of us are criminals, which is a hallmark of an authoritarian society and means that we're all susceptible to prosecution if we do something that steps on the wrong persons toes. It also creates a chilling effect on innovation, because if you're trying to build a device or platform that's inter-operable with other devices/platforms, it's easy to violate terms of use agreements."

CFAA "Reforms" Discussed in Congress Fail to Improve

As early as April 10, Congress may vote on amendments to reform the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act – basically, the legislation used to punish cyber "criminals." Not that they don't already, but the reforms may make criminals out of almost every Internet user in the country.

"Over the weekend, they (Congress) began circulating a "draft" of a "cyber-security" bill that is so bad that it almost feels like the Judiciary Committee is doing it on purpose as a dig at online activists who have fought back against things like SOPA, CISPA and the CFAA. Rather than fix the CFAA, it expands it. Rather than rein in the worst parts of the bill, it makes them worse. And, from what we've heard, the goal is to try to push this through quickly, with a big effort underway for a "cyberweek" in the middle of April that will force through a bunch of related bills." –Mike Masnick, "Rather Than Fix The CFAA, House Judiciary Committee Planning To Make It Worse... Way Worse."

[[Check out Congress' discussion draft of the cyber security bill (primary source).]]

Reform is crucial, as the letter of the law so heinously does not reflect the spirit of the "crimes" defined in the policy. There is a huge disconnect between what is socially acceptable and legally acceptable when it comes to online activities.

All websites and online services require users to agree to a "terms and conditions" agreement. The CFAA (with its new amendments) would state that a violation of said agreements are punishable by law.

• Making a Facebook account for your pet? Violation.
• Checking your family airline miles on your husband or wife's account? Violation. 
• "Exceeding authorized access," one of the new amendments, means even if you are allowed to obtain information from the site, you can be violating the agreement if you misuse it. Felony.

The CFAA originally passed in 1984, before the Dot Com Boom and the advances in digital technologies which are now so imbedded in our culture. Though it has been amended several times – most recently in 2008 – Congress is now taking backward steps to make the CFAA worse.
______

Fix the CFAA: get involved by telling Congress that their expansions of the CFAA are not acceptable and demand better reform.

Demand Progress, the organization Aaron Swartz worked for before he committed suicide earlier this year, is also trying to amend the CFAA and pass "Aaron's Law."

Johnson vs. Morozov: Internet-Centrism and Cyber-Utopianism

Johnson (Future Perfect) and Morozov (The New Republic)

Morozov also against the ideas of what he calls 

cyber-utopianism: the inability to see the Internet's 'darker' side, that is, the capabilities for information control and manipulation of new media space 

and 

Internet-centrism: the growing propensity ["quasi religion"] to view all political and social change through the prism of the Internet   (from Wiki)

Morozov claims Johnson (and Clay Shirky, author of "Here Comes Everybody") are Internet-Centrists, while Johnson claims not to be an Internet-Centrist; he calls IC "naive techno-determinism."

To this, Morozov counters: "The kind of naive determinism that views the “Internet” as a "positive force" and that Johnson seeks to distance himself from has nothing to do with Internet-centrism; it's a feature more commonly attributed to cyber-utopianism, as I clearly state at the very beginning of the review. That Johnson is not a starry-eyed techno-determinist doesn't make him less of an Internet-centrist."

I would argue against Morozov's claim about Shirky being an Internet-Centrist, who has obviously focused his lens through the idea that the Internet is effecting change in social and political developments but does not attribute those changes exclusively to the Internet. In "Here Comes Everybody," (which is the only work of his I've read) Shirky explains that the degree to which information is now spreading on the Internet is so different that we can call it a difference in type. And that the breakdown of barriers like time and distance reduce the gap between action and intention when it comes to political and social moves. But I did not get the impression that he was giving exclusive credit for these changes to the Internet. Still, I have only read a small portion of Shirky's body of work. 

Morozov: "Perhaps it was a mistake to treat the Internet as a deterministic one-directional force for either global liberation or oppression, for cosmopolitanism or xenophobia. The reality is that the Internet will enable all of these forces—as well as many others—simultaneously. But as far as laws of the Internet go, this is all we know. Which of the numerous forces unleashed by the Web will prevail in a particular social and political context is impossible to tell without first getting a thorough theoretical understanding of that context."

Johnson: "The point I tried to make explicit in Future Perfect is one that I’ve been implicitly making for more than a decade now: that peer collaboration is an ancient tradition, with a history as rich and illustrious as the more commonly celebrated histories of states or markets. The Internet happens to be the most visible recent achievement in that tradition, but it is hardly the basis of my worldview. And there is nothing in Future Perfect (or any of these other works) that claims that decentralized, peer-network approaches will always outperform top-down approaches. It’s simply a question of emphasis."

"Liberals can still believe in the power and utility of markets, even if they tend to emphasize big government solutions; all but the most radical libertarians think that there are some important roles for government in our lives. Peer progressives are no different. We don’t think that everything in modern life should be re-engineered to follow the “logic of the Internet.” We just think that society has long benefited from non-market forms of open collaboration, and that they’re aren’t enough voices in the current political conversation reminding us of those benefits. For peer progressives, the Internet is a case-study and a role model, yes, but hardly a deity. We would be making the same argument had the Internet never been invented."

Morozov: "An Internet-centrist asks the question: “What does the Internet want?” as if that question made sense. An Internet-utopian doesn't even ask that question, assuming that the Internet wants democracy and freedom. I don't know if Johnson is an Internet utopian but he is certainly an Internet-centrist.... It it might be useful to step back and ask whether the very fact of bringing “the Internet” in our explanatory accounts is enhancing or impoverishing our understanding of the technological world that we inhabit. Are we gaining anything by lumping thealgorithms used in high-frequency trading with a very different set of algorithms that Twitter uses to decide on its “popular trends” while using the sexy but highly elusive label of “the Internet” to do all that lumping? I don't think so—which is why I've been calling for a highly particularized approach to studying digital technologies—one that would treat each of them on their own terms without having to smuggle in some abstract, macro-level concept such as “the Internet” to smooth over the rough empirical and theoretical edges"

Johnson promotes the ideology of “peer progressivism.” 

Morozov: "What, one might ask, is new about this political ideology? According to Johnson, at least two things. First, its adherents believe that there are some areas of expertise where the public—or the crowd—are more knowledgeable than the experts. Second, “peer progressives”— unlike all those pre-peer progressives—don't have to choose between the state and the market; the two can co-exist, tapping into networks of crowd expertise along the way....
>>>Johnson, comfortably ensconced in his Internetcentric bubble, seems to sincerely believe that no one had ever thought about ways to make democratic politics more participatory before the onset of blogs, chats, and social networks. This, of course, is nonsense. The most unfortunate consequence of Johnson's project might be that, in his half-baked efforts to make a case for “peer progressivism,” he might undermine public support for more serious government reforms that are not as excited about “the Internet” but have developed sophisticated theories about involving crowds and networks in both deliberative and participatory processes."

It seems like Morozov is simply trying to direct the attention of people he perceives to be Internet-Centrists back to the subtleties of the real world which require more context-sensitive thinking. He is reminding us that there are other forces at work besides the Internet in current affairs, and that lumping together complicated phenomena under the umbrella of "the Internet" is actually hindering critical thinking.