The Governance of Cyberspace

Politics, Technology and Global Restructuring

Brian D Loader

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134755684
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Issues of surveillance, control and privacy in relation to the internet are coming to the fore as a result of state concern with security, crime and economic advantage. Through an exploration of emerging debates regarding the possible desirability, form and agencies responsible for the regulation of the internet and an analysis of issues of surveillance, control, rights and privacy, The Governance of Cyberspace develops contemporary theories and considers issues of access, equity and economic advancement.
The Governance of Cyberspace encourages a more informed discussion about the nature of the changes which the new information and communications technologies (ICTs) are heralding in and will be of considerable interest to all those who are concerned about the technological shaping of our political future.

Chapter 1
The governance of cyberspace
Politics, technology and global restructuring

Brian D. Loader

INTRODUCTION

Much of the burgeoning literature on the economic and social restructuring of the advanced capitalist societies is predicated upon the notion that such transformations are driven by the revolutionary developments in a range of information and communications technologies (ICTs). Through their potential capacity to transcend the time and space delimiters of modernist organisation and technique some commentators have suggested that ICTs are facilitating the emergence of new forms of human interaction in what is becoming known as cyberspace: a computer-generated public domain which has no territorial boundaries or physical attributes and is in perpetual use. To date its most potent manifestation is that matrix of electronic telecommunication and computer networks, usually referred to as the Internet, which links millions of people globally, is growing at a rapid rate daily, is taking new shape and direction as a consequence of the voluntary actions of its participants, and, it is claimed, is not controlled by any single authority.

What is becoming of increasing interest and forms the central focus of this collection is the possibility of cyberspace giving rise to new forms and expressions of governance: a paradigmatic change in the constellation of power relations between individuals, governments and social institutions. Such a contention arises from the transcending qualities of ICTs as a means to facilitate the demise of modernist forms of governance based upon territory, hierarchical managerial control of populations, and policing. Thus nation-state boundaries are said to be weakening both from the development of global economies where ‘cyberspace is where your money is’¹ and also from the lack of control by national governments over communications in cyberspace. Furthermore, the changing politics of identity characterised by the breakdown of social class, patriarchal and racial modes of political organisation and their replacement by a diverse range of movements championing social difference may also be finding expression in cyberspace. In this context cyberspace is regarded as the medium through which to explore concepts of emancipation, empowerment and the transcendence of physical subjugation (Haraway, 1985).

To some this disjuncture heralds a libertarian future of selfexpression freed from the impositions of government domination. Yet cyberspace is not an uncontested domain and stakeholders in the politics of the modern nation-state are not so easily displaced. Hence issues of surveillance, control and privacy in relation to the Internet have preoccupied the world’s media in recent years, ostensibly as a result of a renewed state concern with security, crime and economic advantage.

This chapter is intended to provide, albeit briefly, a contextualisation for the debates, issues and themes surrounding the governance of cyberspace and thereby further act as an introduction to the more detailed contributions which follow.

CONCEPTUALISING CYBERSPACE

One of the problems which besets analysis of this new technodomain is the difficulty of clarifying what exactly is being described when cyberspace is being talked about. Its antecedence is a curious mixture of science fiction literature in the cyberpunk genre most commonly epitomised by the work of William Gibson; those whom I will describe as cyber-libertarians, such as John Perry Barlow and Mitch Kapor; international commercial computer interests; and cyber-enthusiasts like Howard Rheingold. Thus it has been variously described as ‘the conceptual space where words, human relationships, data, wealth and power are manifested by people using CMC [computer-mediated communications] technology’ (Rheingold, 1994: 5). It is this interactivity between millions of people around the globe using email, Usenet newsgroups and BBSs which gives rise to Rheingold’s notion of the creation of ‘virtual communities’ on the Internet. Alternatively, as the originator of the term itself, William Gibson, has famously described it, cyberspace can be regarded as

a consensual hallucination…. A graphic representation of data abstracted from the bank of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights receding.

(1984:51)

It can be claimed that in at least two important respects William Gibson’s depiction of cyberspace in his novels such as Neuromancer (1984) and Virtual Light (1993) has acted to prefigure the debate about the governance of cyberspace. In the first place some commentators have suggested that his and other cyberpunk science fiction literature can be regarded as more insightful about the present condition of the world than more conventional social theory (Burrows, 1996; Kellner, 1995). Kellner, for example, asserts that

it is my contention that Gibson is mapping our present from the vantage point of his imagined future, demonstrating the possible consequences of present trends of development. In particular, he is charting the ways that new technologies are impacting on human life creating new individuals and new technological environments.

(1995:299)

As a cultural movement cyberpunk has probably been even more influential by evoking the use of technology for anti-authoritarian and libertarian stances. As Kellner remarks,

In Gibson’s work and other cyberpunk fiction, technology and communications systems are represented as a fundamental means of power and hence as something important for democratic control. There is thus a kind of populism in the cyberpunk movement which advocates individuals using technology for their own purposes and engaging in media and technological activism.

(1995:323)

In the hands of John Perry Barlow, who popularised Gibson’s term, it came to denote the emergence of an alternative virtual world, an ‘electronic frontier’ (Sterling, 1994:247). In this conception, cyberspace becomes something qualitatively more than a network of computer linked telephony. The matrix itself gives form to a virtual space behind the computer screen where physical presence is replaced by incorporeal relationships which take place increasingly in computer-simulated environments. Thus Barlow claims that what cyberspace heralds is nothing less than

the promise of a new social space, global and antisovereign, within which anybody, anywhere can express to the rest of humanity whatever he or she believes without fear. There is in these new media a foreshadowing of the intellectual and economic liberty that might undo all the authoritarian powers on earth.

(1996a)

John Perry Barlow has played a significant role both in the development of ‘on-line’ culture and the fight to defend free speech in cyberspace (Sterling, 1994:235–6). A former lyricist for the American band the Grateful Dead, a cattle rancher and Wyoming Republican, Barlow has been at the forefront of campaigning for civil liberties on the Internet.² He has thus been important for establishing some important perimeters of the debate concerning the governance of cyberspace. Given his fascinating history we should perhaps not be surprised that his depiction of the electronic frontier seems to draw upon the imagery of a virgin territory where all frontiers-people are free to roam, establish their own virtual communities, are all equal and are unimpeded by the agents of the state: a veritable digital Eden where politics needs no existence.

Barlow is particularly vehement in his castigation of nation-states. He rightly identifies that ‘the Internet is too widespread to be easily dominated by any single government. By creating a seamless global-economic zone, borderless and unregulatable, the Internet calls into question the very idea of a nation-state’ (1996a). In this new virtual world politics is replaced by self-policing using such activity as flaming and placing greater emphasis upon parental control; mutual self-help through virtual communities such as the WELL³ and the emancipation of the national subject by people choosing their own identities.

It is clear from Barlow’s ‘declaration of the independence of cyberspace’ (1996b), that he believes that an alternative civilisation of the mind is naturally evolving in cyberspace which will eventually replace the politics of the flesh, sovereignty, military force and national boundaries. Thus he proclaims to the old order that ‘our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge.’

DEMYSTIFYING THE ELECTRONIC FRONTIER

Such Utopian characterisations of cyberspace have and continue to be a powerful contribution to the debate about the governance of cyberspace. They have, however, been charged with mystifying CMC and thereby contributing to a more general misunderstanding of the relationship between ICTs and global restructuring (Bennahum, 1996; Brook and Boal, 1995; Robins, 1995). The very discourse of those proselytising about cyberspace can often be mistaken for a kind of exhortation to enter an alternative reality freed from the encumbrances of a decaying and discredited late modernist society (Rheingold, 1991). Such linguistic reverberating between the future and present often makes it difficult to distinguish between what is being claimed for current behavioural practice and what is prophesy for a future as yet unrealised. Such ambiguity demands further attempts at clarification.

In the first place cyberspace is frequently portrayed as a kind of homogenous virtual public or common space. But this is surely to cloak the multifarious usages of ICTs. More accurately cyberspace should perhaps be regarded as a collection of different multimedia technologies and networks which whilst they may be held together by standard computing protocol (TCP/IP) do not necessarily imply that visitors to cyberspace can access all of its domains. Thus whilst some usages of the Internet, such as encrypted person-to-person electronic mail, invited Internet relay chat or video conferencing and password protected file transfer protocol or World Wide Web (WWW) sites may be relatively private, others, such as electronic mail-based distribution lists, Usenet groups and WWW pages, are more public in orientation (Bennahum, 1996).

Moreover, since it is a defining feature of cyberspace that it is a global facility accessible to many millions of people from different countries, it is important to be clear about both the degree to which the Internet may act to homogenise the world’s historical cultures and the desirability of doing so. Herbert Schiller (1995) has alluded, for example, to the US government’s possible role in colonising global culture through the Global Information Infrastructure (GII). Whilst Barlow is eager to see the creation of wealth-producing marketplaces (1996b), he has little to say about his advocacy of free speech seemingly requiring the world to speak English on the electronic frontier. Yet, as we shall see later in the chapter, the ‘political’ struggle between competing cultural identities seems unlikely to diminish as we approach the next millennium.

The cyber-libertarians’ apolitical stance may be further limited by their preoccupation with what they regard as the authoritarian domination of nation-states. Governance is surely not simply authoritarian control by the nation-state over its subjects, as Barlow and his associates seem to imagine. Rather, it is concerned with a complex pattern of interrelationships between social institutions and individuals. By concentrating on what they regard as government control they also fail to consider the importance of free enterprise in restricting individual actions and thought. Yet an analysis of the disjuncture between the old world order and the rapidly emerging global economy has at its core the power of multinational corporations (MNCs) vis-à-vis nation-states and their citizens (Frieden, 1991; Held, 1995; O’Brien, 1992). It is perhaps instructive in this context that some of the contending organisations for MNC status are the very computer and software companies responsible for driving the visions of the information age.

A further weakness of the cyber-libertarian formulation of cyberspace is the notion that it comprises a virtual reality which is somehow alternative and unrelated to the ‘real’ world. Yet such an understanding is surely to ignore the fact that the very technologies enabling ‘virtuality’ have been developed for military, educational, public and increasingly commercial use. The Internet itself was the product of the United States’ desire to build a military communications system which would be secure from terrorist and nuclear attack. As a research and civilian communications network it continued to be funded directly by the US government through the National Science Foundation until April 1995, and although now privately operated it continues to be indirectly funded by public finance. The origins, development and co-operative ethos of cyberspace are therefore directly related to the real world of government policy-making and public expenditure.

Finally, it is necessary to address the cyber-libertarian assertion that they ‘are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth’ (Barlow, 1996b). Again, such sweeping assertions surely need to be embedded within the social context of access to the Internet. Although data on usage are at present limited, they do not indicate that anything more than a small percentage of the world’s population is on-line and that the majority probably come from affluent countries and have professional backgrounds. The degree to which a wider range of people may become ‘wired’ is likely to be heavily dependent upon public policy-making and corporate planning, which once more invokes the role of politics in the development of cyberspace.

The elucidation of such conceptual shortcomings is not intended to deny the significance that ICTs pose as a challenge to traditional models of governance but rather to contend that cyberspace can only be understood in relation to the technosocial restructuring which is occurring in the real world: ICTs are both driving that restructuring and responding to it; they are not creating an imagined realm separate from it.

POSTMODERNITY, IDENTITY AND GOVERNMENTALITY

The relationship between the dramatic changes occurring in contemporary societies and the transforming qualities of ICTs has been a recurrent theme in postmodernist literature. Whilst many commentators do not always wish to make the link between post-industrial society and postmodern cultural theory explicit, the two strands have been usefully merged in more recent accounts. David Harvey, for example, has been prepared to consider ‘the condition of postmodernity’ (1989) as a comprehensive social account of structural change, and Mark Poster’s ‘second media age’ synergises postmodern culture with wider political, economic and social change through the mediation of ICTs (1995a, 1995b).

Notorious for the difficulty of finding an analytical vantage point from which to clarify the notion of postmodernism, we shall none the less run the risk of drawing upon a selection of the more familiar contentions that its leading exponents postulate. To do so is to consider the idea that cyberspace is in some sense a manifestation of the postmodern world: a domain where postmodern cultural theories fuse with the post-industrial information society thesis.

‘Little narratives’, fragmentation and pluralism in cyberspace

One of the high priests of postmodernity, the French social critic Jean-François Lyotard, foregrounds the importance of information and computerisation in the development of what he describes as ‘the knowledge society’ (1984). A post-industrial context where knowledge becomes commodified through the use of ICTs. Distinct from such social transitions, but developing in tandem, are cultural transformations which Lyotard characterises as the discreditation of the ‘grand’ or ‘meta-narratives’ which define modernity. Universal proclamations of social progress based upon the elucidation of rational laws and rules of interaction associated with such movements as the Enlightenment are being increasingly discarded. Instead, according to Lyotard, they may be replaced by ‘little narratives’ which invoke the creative, playful and self-defining validation of local discourse which has no reference to claims of external scientific universality.

It is precisely these postmodernist little narratives which may be characteristic of discourse in cyberspace. As Poster remarks, ‘the Internet seems to encourage the proliferation of stories, local narratives without any totalising gestures and it places senders and addressees in symmetrical relations. Moreover, these stories and their performance consolidate the “social bond” of the Internet “community”…’ (1995b:92).

This view, the postmodernists would contend, is consistent with the growing disenchantment with political ideologies and the retreat from participation in mass political parties to be witnessed in all contemporary capitalist societies, and particularly amongst the younger generations (Wilkinson and Mulgan, 1995). Moreover, it may be that the emergence of ‘new social movements’, based not on modernist socio-economic groupings, but rather on the contingencies of lifestyles and ephemeral global issues, can find expression in cyberspace through little narratives.

However, while such discourse may reflect the fragmentation and pluralism of the postmodern political age it is not clear ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Governance of Cyberspace
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contributors
• Preface
• Chapter 1: The governance of cyberspace: Politics, technology and global restructuring
• Part I: Theorising cyberspace
• Part II: Nation-states, boundaries and regeneration
• Part III: Policing cyberspace privacy and surveillance
• Glossary
• Bibliography