Summary: Unspun - Chapter 7 (Governance)

Chapter 7 – Governance

Communications through computers worldwide is changing the perception of “individual political agency and collective government structure.” The Web provides a place for new meetings and new groups that are akin to a new culture altogether. The Web births “political movements”, “social interactions”, and helps give a rise to economic “demands”. The sites give themselves to a new type of “governance” in trying to figure out how to maintain and “patrol” “virtual spaces”. Because it is the World Wide Web, there is dissent over the methods with which to police them, especially given the differences in cultural and societal norms. Legalities are also difficult to deal with, as there is not one specific country that owns the Web.

Manuel Castells is quoted as saying that he believed that “a new world is taking shape in the end of [the] millennium” through technological, economical, and cultural breakthroughs. Even so, “this new world is greatly affected by older existing worlds in terms of its shape and substance, especially the dictates of capitalist exchange, nationalistic governance, and urbanized community.” The information networks changes society as a whole. The author states that Castells tends to overemphasize in his explanation of “real virtuality”, but the author concedes that daily life is subtly changed by it. “The proliferation of informatic networks becomes the background condition by which we explain how ‘real virtualities’ are able to occupy the popular imagination of a cybernetic society”. Castillo points out that in the time vacuum that is the internet, “dominant values and interests are constructed without reference to either past or future”. Content from both time periods are mixed in with sound clips, video clips, and hypertext.

When individuals and groups choose to maintain a site at a “digital domain”, “this domain turns into the central setting for the conduct of individual human life”. Cyberspace is more than a collection of code. It is the means to share life with others. Dizard claims that it is “paradoxical” in that it is both a uniter and a divider, concentrating on the physical “nuts and bolts” of the network. This view and the view of it as a community both need governance.

Castells makes a second appearance, saying that the changes in society and the economics of those societies is due to the ever-improving technology of the computer network. However, cyberspace is still thought of in spatial terms. In this way, it “mutates into a new plane of cultural reality with its own rules of postmodern embodiment, extraterritorial engagement, and hyperreal enlightenment”. In cyber-society, the rules are completely changed. Thus, how to govern it should be just as different. However, governance on the Web still thinks in terms of “judicial assumptions of off-line sovereignty over living bodies occupying physical territories”. There are no real rules for cyberspace, just as there was no ruler at its inception. This leads to openness that leads to people connected and also gives it a sense of autonomy. Online etiquette, called Nettiquette, still rules in its earthly form, as does earthly economics.

Those who believe in a cyber utopia believe that the “technics of computer mediated communication are simultaneously technological and political mechanisms suitable for redirecting individual collective behavior in preparation” for cyberspace. Also, these people believe that “the certainties of ordinary reality” will fade into the world of cyberspace. Bill Gates foretold his own technology and outlined in 1995 the very community-driven innovations that exist today. Indeed, computers adapt to us and mature alongside us, as well as interact in those networks that connect us to the rest of the world. He suggests that computers have become such a part of us that they are even part of our politics in civil life. He wishes for true free trade and a “perfect market”. Gates wishes the world to explore global markets, which, through the internet, becomes an entirely new “market space”. This is an innovation for the business world akin to the invention of the cargo system.

The author opens the next section with a great statement: “While political philosophers often see elements of the common good running through public projects underpinning the territorial polis, different agendas tied to private power sustain what might be called the “informatic subpolis”, which lies between politics and non-politics. The Internet is described as a “third entity”, “sub-politics”. Technology and business take on new dimensions because of this and politics and non-politics switch. As this “sub-polis” develops, it may take on the “polis” and take it over. The standard political system may be left in the dust as the internet challenges rule-making in the formal sense. Off-line democracy has the capacity to become obsolete due to the new technology of the web. The “alternate society” is to come from an online government. This is emulated by the complex network of companies that make one capable of going online. Networks aren’t tangible, but they are as important as a tangible home.

In technological terms, cyberspace is “a place of pure governance”, with its orderly system of ones and zeroes. The codes and programs enforce a lax, but still effective rule structure. “Cyberspace now constitutes another kind of built environment online within familiar built environments off-line amidst the natural environment.” Getting online involves proprietary rights especially involving the process. “Network connectivity requires, then remediates, governmentality effects in its tools, technics, and techniques of operation.” Foucault “introduces a rational economy about the management of things into… political practices”. People become tangled in the “normalizing power” and that power organizes the population and the political environments.

“Because governmentalizing techniques are always the central focus of political struggle… the interactions of populations… compel regimes to redefine what is within their admininistrative competence…” The net is, in itself, a “governmentality” machine, whose politics transcends all. In this online governmentality, software and hardware set standards for humans to follow online. Online becomes a social “project”, thus freeing the company to concentrate on “the conduct of conduct”. Cyber domains are under “self-policing”. The promise of internet wealth would not be possible without this “governmentality”. The digital politics would not be able to exist without the hardware and software.

Telecracy is not an immediate problem. Even though the Net is filled with people, there is still the urge to own it. Telecracy is evident in Microsoft, at least at the publication of this text. Microsoft had become so monopolistic that it had to be split up. This problem with whether Microsoft is a trust or a trust-breaker lies at the heart of governance. People are worried about “governance issues that arise from subpolitical choices”. The subpolis “develops with each new corporate move”.

Through domains, knowledge becomes power. This fight for knowledge is at the heart of the struggle to rule cyberspace. “Online governance now works through protocols for the processing and reprocessing of data” in a form of “exchange”. Negroponte points out a change in the norms of life and could possibly result in new tensions. Performativity is key.

Castells states that information technologies are essential to socio-economic restructuring. Networks are classified as both the “most basic means of economic production” and “cultural sophistication”. The base of the technology is “needed to police real-life places from the virtuality of cyberspace”. Castells sees it as technology shutting out those societies deemed inferior economically. “On one level, the Internet is neither governed nor governable.” Cyberspace exists separately from actual reality. The author calls it a “very good example of a working ‘anarchy’” whose governance is due to the protocols. Everyone and anyone can use the internet, thus, the internet is hard to control. The technical means of communication are policed by governments and corporations, however. The Internet is divided between those who want more freedom and those who want to experiment with less freedom and more restrictions. There is a lean towards both self-governance and “more closed expert social control”. Because telecracy is technically a way to rule, the companies that own the networks and the digital environments, which lend itself to governance. Most decisions are done for all kinds of reasons other than pure criteria. These reasons shape the media. Telecrats’ feelings on certain subjects rule cyberspace by shaping the online environment.