Technology Policy

What are we to make of Anonymous, the collective of technologically savvy individuals whose accelerating campaign of hacktivism has targeted everything from Scientologists to defense contractors?

One of the most common labels for this phenomenon is that of “anarchy” and in a recent article, NYU’s Biella Coleman deftly analyzes the relationship between Anonymous and anarchy along three axes: black bloc protest tactics, the everyday usage of “anarchy” to mean the absence of rules, and what she calls contemporary political anarchism (drawing heavily on David Graeber’s work). For each axis, she finds the fit for Anonymous to be imperfect.

I would like to follow her by putting Anonymous under the lens of another scholar of anarchy: Yale’s James C. Scott. Specifically, Scott’s most recent book, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, gives insight into the activities of Anonymous.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Most people consider the trajectory of history to be from hunter gathering, through rudimentary agriculture, ending at sedentary, sophisticated civilizations. Scott provides a radical reinterpretation of this linear approach where nomads and tribal populations are not premodern remnants, but instead are groups that have consciously chosen to remain outside the control of the state. Because the state is a relatively new phenomenon, existence outside the state is, in fact, the predominant historical form of society, even though today it is relatively rare. As the scope of the state expanded, certain populations sought “anarchy”, meaning the absence of state-rule; these groups are considere uncivilized barbarians, but, in reality, they are only called that because they exist outside the confines of those who write history: the state.

In order to exist, a state must have a population from which it can extract forced labor, conscripts and taxes. His analysis focuses on the hill people of South East Asia who have resisted the practices that make state appropriation possible (such as sedentary agriculture, hierarchical organization, and fixed identities). Scott finds that,

“Virtually everything about [the hill] people’s livelihoods, social organization, ideologies, and (more controversially) even their largely oral cultures, can be read as strategic positionings designed to keep the state at arm’s length. Their physical dispersion in rugged terrain, their mobility, their cropping practices, their kinship structure, their pliable ethnic identities, and their devotion to prophetic, millenarian leaders effectively serve to avoid incorporation into states and to prevent states from springing up among them.”

He provides a convincing theory of anarchy in which the expansion of state power drives some people to adapt their lives to avoid its reach.¹ Historically this has been the case in diverse episodes, such as the Berbers, runaway slaves, and much of the Balkans, but today, Scott believes his “analysis largely ceases to be useful.” This is because “the power of the state to deploy distance-demolishing technologies – railroads, all-weather roads, telephone, telegraph, airpower, helicopters, and now information technology – so changed the strategic balance of power between self-governing peoples and nation-states” that living outside the power of the state is now exceedingly difficult. Because of this, “the future of our freedom lies in the daunting task of taming Leviathan, not evading it.”

It is into this tension – between taming and evading state power – which Anonymous falls and where Scott’s analysis does prove useful.

Anonymous’s Imperfect Anarchy

In his previous book, Seeing Like a State, Scott explains how in order for states to exert their will upon their territory and populace, they must first render them ‘legible’ through rearranging and labeling them in uniform ways. One historical manifestation of  this was through fixing identities, including mandatory secondary names so that people were tied to their father. In the case of Anonymous, their distaste for this means of state appropriation is self-evident. Other tactics – from encryption to one-time use websites for releasing information – can be understood as strategies through which Anonymous has attempted to render themselves and their activities illegible to the state.

Another significant tactic that helps Anonymous exist outside the confines of the state are the relatively egalitarian social structure that they – and other hacker organizations – have. Scott notes that “a highly egalitarian social structure” makes it hard for the state to appropriate groups. This can be accomplished through “open and equal access” to resources such as through “common-property”. It is no coincidence that hackers, and others who believe that “Governments of the Industrial World… have no sovereignty” in cyberspace – have these values at their core.²

So, like the nomadic tribes whose identity evolved to fit their political goals of autonomy in South East Asia, Anonymous has adopted organizational and technological approaches that enhance autonomy. In this way, they can be understood as anarchic in ways that are broadly analogous to the tribes Scott studies. In contrast to the everyday usage of anarchy to mean the absence of rules (which Coleman finds to be misleading), Anonymous is anarchy in that it is designed to exist outside the power of the state.

But, the fit here is imperfect, as well. As Scott warns, the current power of the state is enormous, and the alleged Anonymous members who have been arrested around the globe are learning this painfully. Even as the Anonymous members pursue their autonomy at their computers, we do not have evidence that they rejected fundamental state appropriations such as taxes.

The Paradox of Anonymous’s Imperfect Anarchy

Beyond this imperfect model of anarchy, Anonymous embodies a paradox due to a tension between their ends and means. Although their activity can be roughly understood as analogous to people who have sought to avoid state control throughout history, their ends seem to necessitate the state.

To what end does Anonymous strive? They “can be difficult to ideologically pin down” but one consistent goal seems to be the defense of free speech (“as one Anon had put it, ‘free speech is non-negotiable’”). As Coleman notes, though, this is less of an emphasis in Anarchism than it is in classical liberalism.

One of the reasons Anarchism does not emphasize free speech is because it is a negative liberty, meaning it arises in the absence of constraints. Negative liberties, such as freedom of speech, are “most commonly assumed in liberal defences of the constitutional liberties typical of liberal-democratic societies”  - that is, those operating under the power of the state. A long history of 1^st Amendment jurisprudence in the United States is evidence that the state is needed to protect free speech (albeit, sometimes against itself).

To take a recent example, Anonymous has launched a campaign against San Francisco’s BART for shutting down cell phone coverage, but in order to enable free speech in this scenario, they would realistically need the state to intervene. It is possible that their illegible activities could bring attention to an unknown problem, thus spurring a state response, but thus far that has not been the case. If anything, the tactics of Anonymous have spurred authorities to render the members legible through intense investigations and, ultimately, arrest.³

Anonymous, then, shows that in the modern world, it is difficult (if not impossible) to achieve ends which require the state’s support through means which exist outside the power of the state to understand and act. Taming Leviathan requires confronting, not evading, it.⁴

–

1. Scott understands ungoverned populations as “an effect of state-making and state expansion,” not unincorporated residue. In Anonymous, as well as the writings of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, it is clear that their ‘anarchic’ activities are motivated by what they deem to be illegitimate state expansion. On a similar note, it would also be useful to consider how the expansion of the market (as enforced by the state) drives individuals to oppose it. On this avenue, the case of Sealand seems particularly promising. [↩]
2. After all, Yochai Benkler, one of the sharpest theorists of this general area, does follow the tradition of the Pyotr Kropotkin, a philosopher of Anarchism. [↩]
3. Of course, this is not to suggest that anonymity cannot support negative liberties. The case of Watergate and Deepthroat is an obvious example of it doing so, but it took the work of very mainstream, non-anarchic entities (namely the Washington Post) to engender change. [↩]
4. In defending DDoS as a form of political disobedience, Morozov notes that under a Rawlsian reading, activism by Anonymous is only legitimate if they are willing to accept the consequences meted out by the state. Anonymous’s approach seems to suggest otherwise. [↩]

During my senior year in Georgetown’s Science, Technology & International Affairs program I worked on a thesis on the political economy of M-PESA. I’m currently editing a much shorter version for publication, but thought I would post the longer, pre-publication version. It is available for download here.

Abstract

The role of information and communication technologies in development is contested between those who believe it will facilitate broad-based human development and those who believe it is at most, impotent, and at worst, counterproductive. This paper takes a meso-level approach to specify the impact of a large-scale mobile phone-based financial service in Kenya, M-PESA. When analyzed through the related theories of freedom of Amartya Sen and Philip Pettit, the impact of M-PESA is of a dual nature. In many ways, new forms of empowerment are possible through mobile money, but adoption of the standard also leads to limitations on choice and new forms of dominance. Institutional arrangements that are most likely to minimize the trade-offs of mobile money are recommended.

Your feedback would be very welcome.

Below is the prospectus for my senior thesis. It should be finished in the coming months. In the meantime, feedback and comments are more than welcome.

Information and communication technologies have enmeshed the globe in networks, and none is as widespread as the mobile phone, a technology that has billions of users. Development practitioners are increasingly looking to the pervasive device as a facilitator of broad-based human improvement. This project seeks to add to our understanding of the role that ICTs have in the development process through the study of a particularly promising application, the use of mobile phones to deliver financial services or, more simply, mobile money.

The effectiveness of ICT for development is widely disputed. Both those who believe ICT will lead to development and those who disagree can marshal theory and empirics to their side. For example, sophisticated regression analysis identifies relations between rates of mobile telephony and the rate of economic growth, and other studies show individual incomes rising with the introduction of mobile coverage. Others demur, arguing that local contexts and global inequalities can stymie, or even reverse, the benefits of ICT. These competing claims may be mapped:

	Utopians	Dystopians
Macro	E-development, information society and knowledge economy literature	Castells’s “Black holes of informational capitalism”
Micro	Individual income improvements (e.g. Kerala fisherman)	“Social shaping” of technology

Method

The field of technology assessment is wrought with such disputes, often divided between those who look at “broad causal patterns” and those who examine a “tightly focused story [of] complexity and diversity.” In surveying this debate, Thomas Misa argues that understanding the complicated interplay between technology and society requires moving beyond, or, more accurately, in between the macro and micro framings.[1] He argues that meso-level approaches that examine the actors, institutions and processes that intermediate between micro (e.g. firm or individual) and macro (e.g. market or state) are the most promising methods towards resolving disputes such as those plaguing the ICT4D research and policy-making. Similarly, Brey writes of specification where an abstract phenomenon is examined through the study of a specific type.[2]

Meso-Level Case Study: M-PESA

Taking this methodological cue, my thesis will focus on M-PESA, a popular mobile money service in Kenya that serves as a mediator between individual economic experiences and national financial happenings. Kenya’s largest mobile network operator, Safaricom, formally launched M-PESA in March 2007. Users visit authorized M-PESA retail agents to deposit cash that is credited to their personal SIM card. This “e-float” is then transferable via SMS to any other mobile phone, whereby cash can then be received at another agent. Safaricom initially aimed this at the large domestic remittance market, and these peer-to-peer transfers remain its primary use, but with more than 70 percent of Kenyan households using it, it has subsequently expanded to a formal savings account and a payment application for services as varied as school fees and electricity bills. M-PESA is not the first mobile money application, but by scale and prominence, it is by far the most successful and the subject of widespread study and imitation.

Development practitioners are particularly excited about the opportunity M-PESA represents. There is a robust literature that formal financial inclusion, instead of informal lending and savings, can lead to accelerated growth and increased social protections and opportunities. Reducing transaction costs, facilitating remittances, increasing financial security, and accelerating money circulation are all tied to development. Even more basically, Safaricom is a profitable and innovative firm experiencing rapid growth.

The above is important and promising. The challenges facing developing countries are profound and difficult. Innovative solutions are a necessary component of success. But could there be reason to worry? Could mobile money such as M-PESA have drawbacks to the development process?

Development as Freedom + Network Power

For the purposes of this project, the admittedly amorphous, contested term ‘development’ will be defined in the tradition of Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach. Sen conceptualizes of development as enhanced human freedom. As a substantive good unto itself, as well as a useful instrument, it is both the primary goal and means of development. Through expanding economic opportunities, providing additional protective securities, and enabling more effective social opportunities, M-PESA might seem, prima facie, to enhance human freedom.

Like other standards – TCP/IP or the English language – M-PESA facilitates the exchange of goods and ideas amongst users. Standards serve as a coordinating mechanism between disparate individuals and organizations. Further, through the phenomenon of network effects, standards become more valuable as they grow in membership. Grewal links this with the observation that as a given standard grows, it tends to progressively eliminate alternatives. After all, who today uses a fax machine, let alone telegraph?

He calls this “network power” and notes that it “pushes agents to converge on a single, dominant standard” such as the WTO trade rules or TCP/IP.[3] Although individuals may freely adopt a standard because it has inherent advantages (i.e. M-PESA is cheaper than alternative remittance services), once a network reaches a certain size, network power may induce people to give up an alternative standard and adopt the dominant one. For example, speakers of minority languages may choose to learn English, but if they do so because it is necessary for survival, they are not really choosing freely.

In addition to understanding the specific way M-PESA exhibits network power, my thesis will investigate how this promotes and hinders human freedom. As Grewal notes, countering network power is possible; specifically, he identifies three characteristics of a standard that are relevant:

• Compatibility: “acceptance of parallel or simultaneous standards to gain access to a given network.”
• Availability / Openness: “ease with which a network accepts new entrants desiring to adopt its standard.”
• Malleability: openness to piecemeal revision.

Depending on the goals of a network (and its users and operators), these three properties will be aligned and intersect in different manners at different times. As a commercial operation attempting to maximize profit, availability will likely be high (but only to the extent that marginal users are profitable). As a proprietary service that needs to be protective of privacy and security, malleability will likely be low. Compatibility will differ depending on the alternative standard: M-PESA needs to be compatible with cash, but what about competing mobile money services or financial institutions? Although at this stage it is not yet clear to what extent M-PESA exerts network power and its implications for development as freedom, it is possible that policy measures are warranted to ensure broad-based freedom in the networked society.

Different technologies, of course, have different relations with society. Understanding mobile money does not offer a holistic understanding of the role of ICTs in development; however, network power is a phenomenon present in many ICT4D interventions, and mobile money alone is an important trend, so lessons from this specific case will hopefully elucidate future work.

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[1] Misa, Thomas. “Retrieving Sociotechnical Change from Technological Determinism.”  In Merritt Roe Smith and Leo Marx, eds., Does Technology Drive History?  Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994, pp. 115-41.

[2] Brey, P. (2003). Theorizing modernity and technology. In T. Misa, et al. (Eds.), Modernity and technology (pp. 33–71). Cambridge: MIT Press.

[3] Grewal, David S. Network Power – The Social Dynamics of Globalization. New Haven: Yale UP, 2009

Tim Wu, the prominent Columbia Law Professor, has a new book out entitled The Master Switch in which he retraces the history of American media industries, arguing that although new technologies can radically disrupt the marketplace, the tendency is towards concentration and, in the most extreme cases, monopoly. I haven’t had a chance to read the book yet, but Professor Wu has an essay in the Wall Street Journal making the case that is worth reading:

Today’s Internet borders will probably change eventually, especially as new markets appear. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that we are living in an age of large information monopolies. Could it be that the free market on the Internet actually tends toward monopolies? Could it even be that demand, of all things, is actually winnowing the online free market—that Americans, so diverse and individualistic, actually love these monopolies?
Internet industries develop pretty much like any other industry that depends on a network: A single firm can dominate the market if the product becomes more valuable to each user as the number of users rises. Such networks have a natural tendency to grow, and that growth leads to dominance.

Adam Thierer, who has been highly critical of the book, responds in turn questioning the use of the term “monopoly”:

But the problem with his argument that “we are living in an age of large information monopolies” begins with the fact that he speaks of “monopolies” in a plural sense and apparently misses the irony of that entirely.  If so many “information monopolies” exist, then Wu’s thesis is undermined by the very fact that no one company dominates the Internet landscape.  What Wu is really suggesting is that the Digital Economy landscape is littered with dominant firms in industry sectors that he has defined extremely narrowly.

In arguing over semantics, though, we miss the point. Wu is, in essence, arguing that information companies are able to amass significant scale in short periods of time. This scale exerts power upon users, and to Wu, this is very troubling – he cares about freedom both from undue government and corporate power. Thierer, a staunch libertarian, is far more focused on government power, as it is the ultimate arbiter of force.

What we need, though, is a theory of power that can describe the trend towards dominant positions that Wu targets, while making room for the dynamism that Thierer observes.

In his 2008 book of the name, David Singh Grewal outlines a theory of “network power” which marries two rather unobjectionable observations:

1. As a standard – whether linguistic (e.g. English language), technological (e.g. TCP/IP) or otherwise (e.g. Facebook Connect) – scales, it grows in value (so-called network effects).
2. As a standard grows, it “can lead to the progressive elimination of the alternatives” (e.g. TCP/IP has done a good job displacing the use of faxes).

Grewal notes that standards are inherently tension-filled because although they are necessary for communication, cooperation and, therefore, creativity, they also require acceptance of a given set of protocols by many people. That is, to enable some diversity, some uniformity is necessary. In this theory, standardization can arise through three means: reason, force, or chance.

• Reason can be implicit, meaning that the given standard simply works better, or explicit, such as when a standard is attractive for the size of the network it unites;
• Force can be direct, as when there are costs, such as physical harm, for not using the standard, or indirect, when there is an opportunity cost to not joining a given standard;
• And sometimes a standard may be adopted through mere serendipity.

So, standards arise not through force, at first, but after a certain threshold, they take on a life of their own. Network power occurs after this threshold through the marriage of explicit reason with indirect force. When network power is in play, a user adopts a standard because its size will allow them to reach more people and not doing so means they are progressively sidelined. So, the speakers of minority languages will be left behind if they do not join larger networks. Similarly, a teenager hoping to socialize may feel network power in choosing to sign up for Facebook.

The reason this worries people like Grewal is that a choice is not truly free unless one has the freedom to choose freely amongst viable alternatives. That is, although, yes, I could sign up for Orkut or MySpace it is not a viable alternative because no one I desire to communicate with is there; network power pushes me towards Facebook despite personal disagreement with many of its policies. Certainly, this is not the same type of force as the government can wield but it is a form of power that acts on people. Wu, though he does not refer to the theory, is touching on it closely, and I believe that both Thierer and Wu, as people who care deeply about personal liberty, could benefit from understanding Grewal’s theory of how power can arise in a network society.

Furthermore, as Grewal explores in the final chapters of the book, network power is not definitive: strategies for counterpower exist. In today’s world, these might be antitrust regulation or new inventions (forces prominent in Wu’s thinking), but they could also be more varied, such as increased data portability or interoperability. A middle-ground amongst those worried about digital liberties would be to advocate for appropriate counterpower strategies in the diverse, dynamic contexts in which network power exists.

I like to think of it as a neighbourhood app store – and in many ways it’s the edges of the internet, where entrepreneurs are taking content online and offering it to local, offline and/or technologically illiterate customers. Also these corner shop app stores can be content editors for their community: they filter content they think their customers like, but they also guide what their customers might like as well.

Jan Chipchase writing about street-hacks.

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post about privacy protection in Africa, the launch of Facebook Zero – their free mobile services offered with more than 50 operators around the world – has some important implications for developing countries. I wanted to consolidate some comments I’ve made elsewhere about this development.

The Impact on Local Innovation

Let’s be blunt: barring some strange vagary, Facebook Zero is going to be a hit. Facebook is already popular in Africa, and in other developing countries, such as Indonesia, we know that usage is overwhelmingly through mobile devices. The success of MXit in South Africa, as well, is strong evidence of the viability of mobile-based social networking, and with free access to 0.facebook.com, the proposition is even stronger.

What does this mean for Africa’s burgeoning technology entrepreneurs? The mobile phone is an exciting, preexisting platform for services and applications. CellBazaar in Bangladesh and M-PESA in Kenya are standout examples of the value that can be created from building new mobile services. Competing with Facebook is going to be very difficult, especially when so many carriers are picking them and giving them the ability to not charge for data usage on 0.facebook.com. To be clear, I’m not opposed to Facebook competing in this regard. They are clearly doing good business.

But in the midst of doing good business, they could cannibalize African jobs. For example, Safaricom, who has not partnered with Facebook, just announced they are working with MXit to bring the South African service to Kenya. Erik Hersman sees this as a missed opportunity for local entrepreneurs. The real problem, though, is that the operators in Africa can choose winners and losers on their proprietary networks. New entrants (the proverbial “next Google or YouTube”) face very steep transaction costs that limit their scale.

A Caveat?

As Prabhas Pokharel of MobileActive points out, though, there is more to this story. Speaking recently at the GSMA World Congress, a Facebook representative showed that when Vodafone in the UK offered one week of free Facebook, not only did data usage shoot up, it stayed up: “the number of people paying and using data plans increased by 20% from the people that tried it.”

No wonder Facebook was able to partner with so many operators: in time, they will phase out the free access and will have convinced more users to sign up for the lucrative data plans. Is this a good thing? As Steve Song and others have argued, mobile usage costs in Africa can be very high. There might be reasons to worry that people are spending money recklessly on mobiles, to the detriment of savings or “better” consumption.

But there could be a silver lining. Data services provide more flexibility and capability. Oftentimes people do not even know their phone is capable of anything more than SMS and voice. If Facebook Zero encourages people to responsibly use the mobile Internet, there will be opportunities for many more entrepreneurs and delivery of richer services.

Facebook Zero as Africa’s Agora?

Steve Song is more bullish on Facebook Zero, despite having well-founded critics of both Facebook and African telcos. He says,

I think the potential for innovation with Facebook Zero is really about people having conversations, exchanging ideas about any and every aspect of their lives. Those conversations will spawn innovations. Right now, Facebook Zero only covers ten countries in Africa but supposing in covers all or most of them. Think of the scope for new ideas to find their way across the continent or across the road.

This is an interesting angle. Though it is starting to change, Africa lacks participatory media. Facebook, despite being used for plenty of inane purposes, does have the potential to encourage both innovative thinking and, perhaps more likely, political activity and awareness.

But, again, I think there are reasons to be pessimistic. Is Facebook really the platform we want for this? For one, it is another intermediary on which pressure can be placed. Even worse, it is an intermediary that does not have a good track record on safeguarding political speech within its bounds (see Rebecca MacKinnon’s recent post on the human rights implications of content moderation and account suspension). Frustratingly, Facebook has also not joined the Global Network Initiative, an effort by corporations and NGOs to promote self expression and privacy in a digital world through corporate best practices. Entering places like Tunisia with Facebook Zero demands thoughtful reflection on a company’s role in facilitating political activity.

So, it is, of course, too early to tell the implications of what was certainly a big week for mobile and development, but for this specific initiative, there are plenty of reasons to be concerned.

[As always, I'm speaking only for myself on this blog.]

Facebook recently unveiled a new mobile version of their site aimed at developing markets called 0.facebook.com. The site is optimized for mobile networks and devices, but the real coup is that Facebook has partnered with more than 50 mobile operators to offer the service for free. Leaving aside increased fragmentation of the Internet and what this means for local entrepreneurs trying to build the next MXit (both important issues), I wanted to consider the privacy implications of this.

Unless you’ve been under a rock, you’ve probably heard that Facebook has an abhorrent record on privacy protection. Stemming from its founder’s quixotic views and a financial incentive to expose user information, Facebook has used frequent policy changes, byzantine controls and double-speak to push the nearly 500 million users to a situation where they have far less ability to control who has access to their personal information. In the U.S., and even more so in Europe, there are institutional manners in which this is partially combated. Regulatory agencies can direct behavior, advocacy organizations can promote change, and the media can raise awareness. While we are certainly not in a perfect situation, I fear the developing world is in far worse shape.

Facebook is already popular in much of Africa. Users already access it from their mobile phones. But free mobile access is likely to even further drive adoption and use throughout the continent. Over the years, Facebook has made its lack of commitment to privacy clear; 0.facebook.com is not going to change that. But do African nations have sufficiently capable consumer protection agencies? Do they have NGOs focused on the emerging issues of digital life? Is the media providing informative commentary on the implications of the Internet? More fundamentally, are there African researchers examining privacy from a local context? And do users of new media have the literacies they need?

It is essential that Africa takes on this issue on its own terms. Privacy norms, practices and expectations may differ between Nigeria and Nebraska; tackling privacy policy should, too. That being said, international NGOs, and even wealthier countries or donor agencies can play a role.

Take, as a comparison, the issue of gay rights. Homosexuality is illegal in at least 37 African countries and two men were just sentenced to 14 years in Malawi. Amnesty International has taken up the case and is drawing public attention to it globally, the independent Center for the Development of People was formed by Malawians to promote change, and the government is fearful of losing donor funding over the issue.

This is the type of confluence of forces that are likely needed for positive change, whether on gay rights or privacy protection. Will Africa reach it for the latter?

[*Apologies, as always, for grouping "Africa" together as one entity. It's not. I know; I'm guilty.]

Studying for a evolutionary biology test, I read:

“Scientists discovered the first antibiotics, made by bacteria and fungi, in the mid-1900s, and they soon ushered in a new chapter in the history of medicine. Infections that once almost certainly would have been lethal simply disappeared in a matter of days. Some optimists declared that infectious diseases would soon be a thing of the past. But not long after antibiotics first became available, doctors began reporting that they sometimes failed. In the 1950s, Japanese doctors used antibiotics to battle outbreaks of dysentery caused by E. coli, only to watch the bacteria develop resistance to one drug after another.”

Compare to Evgeny Morozov writing in Foreign Policy:

“In the days when the Internet was young, our hopes were high. As with any budding love affair, we wanted to believe our newfound object of fascination could change the world. The Internet was lauded as the ultimate tool to foster tolerance, destroy nationalism, and transform the planet into one great wired global village… But just as earlier generations were disappointed to see that neither the telegraph nor the radio delivered on the world-changing promises made by their most ardent cheerleaders, we haven’t seen an Internet-powered rise in global peace, love, and liberty. And we’re not likely to. Many of the transnational networks fostered by the Internet arguably worsen — rather than improve — the world as we know it… Sadly enough, a networked world is not inherently a more just world.”

Yet, unlike with the Interwebs, we have clear-cut case of successful strategic use of technology and tactics to fight microbial infections: Norway.

Look closer, however, at a microscopic level, and this place is pristine. There is no sign of a dangerous and contagious staph infection that killed tens of thousands of patients in the most sophisticated hospitals of Europe, North America and Asia this year, soaring virtually unchecked.

The reason: Norwegians stopped taking so many drugs.

Twenty-five years ago, Norwegians were also losing their lives to this bacteria. But Norway’s public health system fought back with an aggressive program that made it the most infection-free country in the world. A key part of that program was cutting back severely on the use of antibiotics.

Throwing more of something – money, technology or rhetoric – at a problem rarely solves it; instead, strategic, tactical responses are needed. What are those to realize the hopes of digital utopians?

This post originally appeared on Techdirt.

Much has been made about the iPad as a consumptive, rather than creative, device. Some, including law professor Tim Wu at a recent New America event, have voiced concern that it heralds the end of a golden era of user-generated content. But to truly understand the importance and impact of user-generated content – including on the traditional media that Clay Shirky has recently argued are fatally too complex to survive – we must have better measurement of the phenomenon. Without reliable data and sensible comparative metrics, it is impossible to say if we have even experienced a golden age of open creative possibility.

For example, nearly two years ago in response to Shirky, Nick Carr bristled at the idea that the Web was the necessary component for creative production, participation and sharing. According to Carr, the people he knew back before the Web were also creating – writing, photographing, drawing, constructing and volunteering. This is undoubtedly true, but because technology did not enable the inexpensive recording, archiving, sharing and finding of this creativity, it went largely unnoticed. Of course, cheaper technology almost certainly does enable more creative production, but how much is hard to say.

When Shirky notes that an amateur video of two children has garnered more views than American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, and the Superbowl combined, it is comparing apples and oranges. A minute video hardly competes with the Superbowl for eyeballs; certainly the Internet has opened opportunities to competitors to the Superbowl, but let’s compare those. The problem is, we don’t currently have the categories and metrics necessary to make sense of the rise (and potential fall) of creation. Some people are trying to create quantify the impact of blogs on the news cycle, but in regards to other media types, we seem to be ignoring the problem and living off anecdotes. So, how can we move ahead with better metrics for user-generated content and what should those metrics be?

The arrival of broadband Internet in Africa via the undersea cables is widely hailed as an opportunity for economic advancement due to the power of ICT-enabled businesses. The hopeful look at India’s success in software and services as a model for African growth, but a new meme is emerging that see the interconnections of Africans as a threat to global security. While it is an interesting, and perhaps fruitful, exercise to think through the potential downsides of the Internet in Africa, the way the issue is being framed, largely by Westerners promoting cybersecurity services, strikes me as overwrought and misplaced.

The argument has two versions:

In one, detailed by cybersecurity consultant and author Jeffrey Carr, there is a dangerous fusion of anti-American forces who do, or will soon have, the means, motive and opportunity to unleash cyberwarfare upon American critical infrastructure and commerce. Looking at Somalia, where piracy and terrorism seem to be mixing, Carr argues that the arrival of the EASSy cable will present a dangerous new challenge to international security:

Once Somalia goes digital, it will create a never-before-seen opportunity for local gangs to move their strategic alliances with Al Shabaab onto the Internet. Their twin exports – extortion and terrorism will have unlimited opportunities for profit and mayhem, particularly if they are directed against critical infrastructure such as energy, water, and transportation facilities.

The second version, which is probably a more likely one, is that the combination of broadband connectivity and poor virus protections in Africa will make African computers prime targets for botnet herders who will use them to “paralyze the network infrastructure of a major western nation.” Writing in Foreign Policy, an organizer of a major cybersecurity summit, Franz-Stefan Gady, argues

“[T]he continent is home to the world’s most vulnerable computers. About 80 percent of the African population lacks even rudimentary knowledge of information technologies, according to a recent World Bank survey. Though Internet cafes are widespread, providers often cannot afford proper antivirus software, making computers very easy targets for skilled botnet operators and hackers.”

Moreover, he says, African countries, by and large, lack the legal wherewithal to prosecute cyber-criminals.

As a final datapoint, consider a recent report by the cybersecurity firm Symantec which says South Africa is in the “unenviable” position of receiving better connectivity right when it is hosting the World Cup; this, they say, is a recipe for accelerated cybercrime.

It should be noted at the outset that the people we are not hearing from on this are Africans. Cybersecurity demands international cooperation, but the views of African regulators, businessmen and civil society – who likely have a more nuanced views of the upsides of connectivity – are missing.

I suspect this voice would add context to the above worries. For example, in countries where basic literacy is a challenge yet to be overcome, worrying about the next Kevin Mitnick rising from Mogadishu seems a little silly. Recall that the most sophisticated cyber attacks come from Russia, a country with a long history of technological prowess, and China, where top-notch technical schools are likely the source of the recent Google hacks. In addition to infrastructure, you need computer skills, and as anyone who works to promote ICTs in Africa knows, this is a tough job.

The obvious response to this is that the Somali terrorist-pirates could purchase hacking services. This are widely available and, as I understand it, fairly affordable (though likely much more than a few AK-47s and a boat). But this is also nothing new. Al-Qaeda, an organization which is far more anti-American, far more well-funded, and has far more access to broadband Internet, does not seem to be a fan of cyberattacks. As far as I know, there is no evidence that Al-Qaeda has established offensive cyber capabilities, despite having operatives in broadband-saturated locations.

There are some hints that affiliated people have considered hacking as a means to their end – manuals, for example – but terrorists rely on shock factor to, umm, terrorize. When effective cyberwar is as theoretical as it, risk-averse groups are likely to stick to IEDs and suicide bombers.

Furthermore, the view of the Somali pirates and “terrorists” is ahistorical. It misses the reprehensible waste dumping and illegal fishing that have decimated the Somali economy (of course enabled by the absence of a functioning government). Writing frantic articles about cyber WMDs arising from this position is reckless. Somalia instead needs state-building, legal protection of its sovereignty and job opportunities.

ICTs are a great opportunity and although they do have potential downsides, the whole framing of these African cyberwar (!!!!) pieces leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Update: For a hilarious and spot-on treatment of this subject, see this:

I think that Africans have more to fear from older technology outside their continent than the rest of the world fearing Africa. It would be ironic if at some point in the near future, Nigeria had to block IP addresses from the United States.

He’s right. When Franz-Stefan writes that “skillful cybercriminals operating out of an unregulated Internet café in the slums of Addis Ababa, Lagos, or Maputo” will create the world’s biggest botnets, he shows that he has little understanding of those “slums” – for starters, electricity is a little intermittent to power a cyberwar.

Update 2: A new bill in the US Senate would require punishment for governments who do not control cybercrime allegedly occurring in their country. It would create a list of bad states and could cut aid to them if they don’t align their cyber-policies with American desires. Imagine, if you will, that this ends up like the USTR’s Special 301 list which coerces developing countries to enforce more draconian intellectual property regimes. If, as Jonathan Zittrain argues, innovative networks (“generative” in his parlance) are under threat from cybercrime, then it won’t be long until America is coercing African countries to lock down their networks, perhaps at the behest of the same security consultants who are arguing we need to re-engineer our networks to be more locked down. I don’t like where this is heading.