In the wake of the election, Matt Hindman, author of The Myth of Digital Democracy, analyzes the effect of the internet on electoral politics.
According to Hindman, the internet had a large—but indirect—effect on the 2012 elections. Particularly important was microtargeting to identify supporters and get out the vote, says Hindman. Data and measurements—two things that the GOP was once ahead in, but which they have ceded to the Democrats in the past 8 years—played a key role in determining the winner of the presidential election, according to Hindman.
Hindman also takes a critical look at the blogosphere, comparing it to the traditional media that some argue it is superseding, and he delineates the respective roles played by Facebook and Twitter within the electoral framework.
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Perry Keller, Senior Lecturer at the Dickson Poon School of Law at King’s College London, and author of the recently released paper “Sovereignty and Liberty in the Internet Era,” discusses how the internet affects the relationship between the state and the media. According to Keller, media has played a formative role in the development of the modern state and, as it evolves, the way in which the state governs must change as well. However, that does not mean that there is a one-size-fits-all solution. In fact, as Keller demonstrates using real-world examples in the U.S., U.K., E.U., and China, the ways in which new media is governed can differ radically based upon the local legal and cultural environment.
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Scott Shackelford, assistant professor of business law and ethics at Indiana University, and author of the soon-to-be-published book Managing Cyber Attacks in International Law, Business, and Relations: In Search of Cyber Peace, explains how polycentric governance could be the answer to modern cybersecurity concerns.
Shackelford originally began researching collective action problems in physical commons, including Antarctica, the deep sea bed, and outer space, where he discovered the efficacy of polycentric governance in addressing these issues. Noting the similarities between these communally owned resources and the Internet, Shackelford was drawn to the idea of polycentric governance as a solution to the collective action problems he identified in the online realm, particularly when it came to cybersecurity.
Shackelford contrasts the bottom-up form of governance characterized by self-organization and networking regulations at multiple levels to the increasingly state-centric approach prevailing in forums like the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Analyzing the debate between Internet sovereignty and Internet freedom through the lens of polycentric regulation, Shackelford reconceptualizes both cybersecurity and the future of Internet governance.
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Designer Dan Provost, co-founder of the indie hardware and software company Studio Neat, and co-author of It Will Be Exhilarating: Indie Capitalism and Design Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century, discusses how technological innovation helped him build his business. Provost explains how he and his co-founder Tom Gerhardt were able to rely on crowdfunding to finance their business. Avoiding loans or investors, he says, has allowed them to more freely experiment and innovate. Provost also credits 3D printing for his company’s success, saying their hardware designs–very popular tripod mounts for the iPhone and a stylus for the iPad–would not have been possible without the quick-prototyping technology.
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Ryan Radia, associate director of technology studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, discusses the amicus brief he helped author in the case of Verizon v. Federal Communications Commission now before the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. Radia analyzes the case, which will determine the fate of the FCC’s net neutrality rule. While Verizon is arguing that the FCC does not have the authority to issue suce rules, Radia says that the constitutional implications of the net neutrality rule are more important. He explains that the amicus brief outlines both First and Fifth Amendment arguments against the rule, stating that net neutrality impinges on the speech of Internet service providers and constitutes an illegal taking of their private property.
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Christopher Steiner, author of Automate This: How Algorithms Came to Rule the World, discusses his new book. Steiner originally set about studying the prevalence of algorithms in Wall Street stock trading but soon found they were everywhere. Stock traders were the first to use algorithms as a substitute for human judgment to make trades automatically, allowing for much faster trading. But now algorithms are used to diagnose illnesses, interpret legal documents, analyze foreign policy, and write newspaper articles. Algorithms have even been used to look at how people form sentences to determine that person’s personality and mental state so that customer service agents can deal with upset customers better. Steiner discusses the benefits–and risks–of algorithmic automation and how it will change the world.
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Adam Thierer, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, discuses recent calls for nationalizing Facebook or at least regulating it as a public utility. Thierer argues that Facebook is not a public good in any formal economic sense, and nationalizing the social network would be a big step in the wrong direction. He argues that nationalizing the network is neither the only nor the most effective means of solving privacy concerns that surround Facebook and other social networks. Nor is Facebook is a monopoly, he says, arguing that customers have many other choices. Thierer also points out that regulation is not without its problems including the potential that a regulator will be captured by the regulated network thus making monopoly a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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Nicolas Christin, Associate Director of the Information Networking Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, discuses the Silk Road anonymous online marketplace. Silk Road is a site where buyers and sellers can exchange goods much like eBay and Craigslist. The difference is that the identity of both the buyers and sellers is anonymous and goods are exchanged for bitcoins rather than traditional currencies. The site has developed a reputation of being a popular online portal for buying and selling drugs because of this anonymity, which has caused some politicians to call for the site to be investigated and closed by law enforcement. Despite all of this, the Silk Road remains a very stable marketplace with a very good track record of consumer satisfaction. Christin conducted an extensive empirical study of the site, which he discusses.
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Stefan Krappitz, writer of the book Troll Culture: A Comprehensive Guide, discusses the phenomenon of internet trolling. For Krappitz trolling is disrupting people for personal amusement. Trolling is largely a positive phenomenon argues Krappitz. While it can become very negative in some cases, for the most part trolling is simply an amusing practice that is no different than playing practical jokes. Krappitz believes that trolling has been around since before the age of the internet. He notes that the behavior of Socrates is reminiscent of trolling because he pretended to be a student and then used his questioning to mock people who did not know what they were talking about. Krappitz also discusses anonymity and how it contributes and takes away from trolling as well as discussing where the line is between good trolling and cyber-bullying.
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Parmy Olson, London Bureau chief for Forbes, discusses her new book We are Anonymous: Inside the Hacker World of Lulzsec, Anonymous and the Global Cyber Insurgency. The book is an inside look at the people behind Anonymous, explaining the movement’s origins as a group of online pranksters, and how they developed into the best known hacktivist organization in the world. Olson discusses the tension that has existed between those that would rather just engage in pranks and those that want to use Annoymous to protest different groups they see as trying to clamp down on internet freedom, as well as some of the group’s most famous campaigns like the attacks against the Church of Scientology and the campaign against Paypal and Mastercard. Olson also describes the development of LulzSec which became famous for a series of attacks in 2011 on high profile websites including Fox, PBS, Sony, and the CIA.
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.