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This thread are some of my notes from last weeks workshop titled:
'Future Paths for a Public Interest Internet Infrastructure'
Held at the @harvardkennedyschool.
Disclaimer: it was organized by @beatricemartini @C___CS and myself (@nielstenoever)
'Future Paths for a Public Interest Internet Infrastructure'
Held at the @harvardkennedyschool.
Disclaimer: it was organized by @beatricemartini @C___CS and myself (@nielstenoever)
Politics in technology, such as standards and protocols, is often hidden. This is in part due to its complexity, but can also be an agenda to legitimize and protect a specific (capitalist) ordering of the network, industry, and society.
Contentious issues are moved from more obvious political spaces into Standards Development Organization in specific, and Internet governance in general, in order to obfuscate them.
Protocol engineers often regard networking as a solely machine-to-machine environment. This is one of the reasons considerations regarding end-users rights and freedoms are not taken into account. That protocols are largely hidden from users, does not mean they do not impact them
The hidden nature of infrastructures make it hard to convince end-users, policy-makers, and engineers of the importance of considering the public interest when designing protocols, and the processes and institutions through which they are designed, developed, and implemented.
The tendency to erase the user from the design and implementation of technology comes in fashion again through the Internet of Things, this is another reason why there are important lessons to be learned from the governance of the Internet infrastructure and architecture.
One can even ask whether effective governance of the Internet architecture even possible? It is a complicated environment with many different actors, technologies, and incentives. One should approach the issue with humility, and not expect one cannot reliably predict an outcome.
It is hard to sustain a long term, staying approach for civil society in Internet governance, especially since transnational corporations and govts from the 'global north' have far bigger budgets for engagement, and thus more time to move the needle. Staying power matters.
Global consensus on norms is crumbling, there is less and less support for universal rights. The legitimacy of human rights is undermined. This makes it even harder to implement them in Internet governance and standards.
Important to note that civil society is not a monolith: there are very different positions that are not always reconcilable. Example: the different between 'consent oriented' and 'do no harm'-design approaches.
Infrastructure crosses social contexts, makes applied ethics hard
Infrastructure crosses social contexts, makes applied ethics hard
It's possible to change incentive structures to increase deployment of rights respecting technology, this works best when interests are aligned across the stack. Protocol developers, implementers, and users should all be involved.
Working across the stack is more work, but it also translates into more deployments and less protocological hairsplitting.
It creates a feedback loop between the people who are impacted, who implement it, and those who design it. Then standards become a learning infrastructure.
It creates a feedback loop between the people who are impacted, who implement it, and those who design it. Then standards become a learning infrastructure.
The concept of 'the stack' and 'layering', is sometimes a productive and sometimes a prohibitive fiction.
One should always remember that the stack has never been real.
One should always remember that the stack has never been real.
Encrypting everything, while probably a good idea, also decreases transparency for researchers to spot discrimination, security, etc.)
We cannot encrypt the DNS and have it too!
Encryption also made sat comms more expensive for remote communities (because of caching issues)
We cannot encrypt the DNS and have it too!
Encryption also made sat comms more expensive for remote communities (because of caching issues)
Focus on technology might actually be counterproductive, and anti-trust and pro-competition measures might be more useful, especially now we see 5G creeping 'up' the stack, and DNS-over-HTTPS creeping 'down' the stack.
#economicjustice
#economicjustice
The role of patents in standard setting is still significant, not only in software, but also in hardware. Maybe even more so in the latter.
With the collapse of the lower parts of the stack in mobile networks, authentication and network access is no longer seperated. The Internet was never based on identification authentication, in mobile networks it is. This is a bad development for privacy, anonymity, and FoE.
Governmental regulation could enable specific settings or configurations by default - but would such regulation be on time, or would it be outdated by the time it gets enacted?
The threat of increasing regulation might move Internet governance and standards setting bodies to take the public interest and human rights into account, but it could also lead to the creation of more regulation and fora. The latter would make the infrastructure even more opaque
Interest for Internet governance, infrastructure and standards settings is dwindling, while its influence is still increasing as it permeates in nearly every process of society.
It might help to re-frame and formulate issues of the Internet architecture as part of more visible contemporary discussions such as power of tech giants and algorithms (cf @mckelveyf and @LauraDeNardis ).
@mckelveyf @LauraDeNardis Just saw @zielwasser also made a thread with her notes, so if you made it this far, just head over there for more fun!
