Lawrence Lessig on the need to build protections for privacy and autonomy into the internet’s architecture. From CODE 2.0, p45 (emphasis mine):
[The end-to-end principle] has been a core principle of the Internet’s architecture, and, in my view, one of the most important reasons that the Internet produced the innovation and growth that it has enjoyed. But its consequences for purposes of identification and authentication make both extremely difficult with the basic protocols of the Internet alone. It is as if you were in a carnival funhouse with the lights dimmed to darkness and voices coming from around you, but from people you do not know and from places you cannot identify. The system knows that there are entities out there interacting with it, but it knows nothing about who those entities are. While in real space —and here is the important point—anonymity has to be created, in cyberspace anonymity is the given.
This difference in the architectures of real space and cyberspace makes a big difference in the regulability of behavior in each. The absence of relatively self-authenticating facts in cyberspace makes it extremely difficult to regulate behavior there … We ’re far enough into this history to see that the trend toward this authentication is unstoppable. The only question is whether we will build into this system of authentication the kinds of protections for privacy and autonomy that are needed.
From the article: In the shadow of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States finds itself facing a different threat from terrorists. Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Janet Napolitano recently stated that, “The U.S. has become ‘categorically safer’ since 9/11, but cyber-terrorism now tops the list of security concerns.”
From the article: In the shadow of the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the United States finds itself facing a different threat from terrorists. Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Janet Napolitano recently stated that, “The U.S. has become ‘categorically safer’ since 9/11, but cyber-terrorism now tops the list of security concerns.”
Web-based industry has already become a critical part of our economies. The UK’s industry is already worth £100 billion, accounting for 8% of our total GDP, and is forecast to grow at 10 percent over the next four years. Globally, e-commerce sees $8 trillion change hands each year …
Our reliance on cyber blurs geographical boundaries, breaks down traditional cultural and religious divides, brings families and friends closer together and enables contact between those who share common interests or concerns.
… the computer is a metaphysical machine. Children too are provoked. The computer creates new occasions for thinking through the fundamental questions to which childhood must give a response, among them the question “what is life?”
GTD is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies and an affiliate faculty member of the New Media and Digital Design Program at Fordham University. He is also a founding coordinator of the Fordham Digital Scholarship Consortium and co-chair of the Mapping (In)Justice Symposium: Digital Theory and Praxis for Critical Scholarship. Donovan’s […]
– “Mapping (In)Justice Symposium: Digital Theory and Praxis for Critical Scholarship” – Symposium schedule (Nov 7-9, 2019), participant bios, and proceedings of the symposium. – “Databite No. 78: Remixing Modes of Knowing and Belonging in the Urban Platform” – Recording of April 2016 Databite Talk at Data & Society Research Institute. – “Making the Dissertation […]
