[governance] Cerfing the Web, or Serfing the Web?
Aldo Matteucci
aldo.matteucci at gmail.com
Tue Jan 17 08:43:03 EST 2012
Hello
and thanks, Ginger,
for the introduction.
The concept of "access to internet as human right" is being used a bit too
loosely for my comfort:
The UNDHR has mothered two Conventions:
· UNICCPR of 1966: International Covenant on Civil and Political
Rights<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Civil_and_Political_Rights>,
and
· UNICESCR, also of 1966: International Covenant on Economic, Social
and Cultural Rights<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Economic,_Social_and_Cultural_Rights>
.
While the first obligates the signatories "respect and to ensure to all
individuals within its territory and subject to its jurisdiction" the
rights in that Convention, the second only demands “best efforts”:
*“Article 2* of the Covenant imposes a duty on all parties to
*take steps... to the maximum of its available resources, with a view to
achieving progressively the full realization of the rights recognized in
the present Covenant by all appropriate means, including particularly the
adoption of legislative measures*.
This is known as the principle of "progressive realisation". It
acknowledges that some of the rights (for example, the right to health) may
be difficult in practice to achieve in a short period of time, and that
states may be subject to resource constraints, but requires them to act as
best they can within their
means.”[1]<https://mail.google.com/mail/html/compose/static_files/blank_quirks.html#_ftn1>
This is what I meant by “Human Rights” are more akin to “aspirations” than
enforceable rights. Certainly UNICECSR is neither self-executing in a
country, nor judiciable.
The reason is materiality: as long as the law of scarcity is not repealed,
one needs to set priorities in fulfilling these aspirations.
So one core issue of any discussion on human rights is not whether the list
is exhaustive – it will never be and whether this or that further right
better be included; what is crucial is the ordering of priorities among all
these rights. Once these rights fall below the “line of scarcity”, any
discussion on them would be fatuous.
But one does not do policy by ranking alone. The real issue is one of
trade-offs: how much food vs. how much health or education; how much in the
North and how much in the South; and so on.
As Avishai MARGALIT points out – no one likes to talk
“compromises”[2]<https://mail.google.com/mail/html/compose/static_files/blank_quirks.html#_ftn2>.
Yet that’s the only real game in town, and any abstract discussion – gutted
of the material context – is whistling in the wind.
The last famine in India was Bengal, 1942. Democracies can’t afford
famines, and deal with them as a matter of priority. Mao was able to hide
30 million dead during the Great Leap Forward.
As A. K. SEN points out, life expectancy in India and China was about equal
in 1948. Today China ranks 80 in the list of nations, and its citizens
expect to live 73 years. India has a rank of 139, with an expectancy of
64.4. North Korea weighs in
67.3[3]<https://mail.google.com/mail/html/compose/static_files/blank_quirks.html#_ftn3>.
A matter of priorities, which translates as about 8 million Indians dying
prematurely every year.
Different priorities, different compromises, and different outcomes. Who
are we to judge, and overload the cart with “human rights” which, at best
are a distraction, and most likely will dilute priorities?
Now, and pragmatically: should internet access be a priority? I’d say yes,
and not for political reasons, but because internet is such a useful day to
day tool. People in India are voting with their pocket books when they buy
7 million mobile phones each month. Sure they use if for gossip, but
farmers learn where best to sell their crop. Internet could provide all
sorts of services to the villages, from health advice in emergencies,
education for children (the PC in the wall), to accounts for the *panchayat*.
There is no limit to the ways internet could transform daily life,
particularly in the rural areas. This is why, in genocide-scarred Rwanda,
providing every child with a PC is a priority.
Even a politically eunuch internet is transformative of the material world.
Of course internet should be both easily accessible (distribution + cost)
and protected from political interference (we’ll have to deal with its
“viral” aspects though). But, if push comes to shove, a rice bowl half full
for most, thanks to internet, might just be satisficing – in the short run.
------------------------------
[1]<https://mail.google.com/mail/html/compose/static_files/blank_quirks.html#_ftnref1>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Covenant_on_Economic,_Social_and_Cultural_Rights
[2]<https://mail.google.com/mail/html/compose/static_files/blank_quirks.html#_ftnref2>
Avishai MARGALIT (2009): *On compromises and rotten compromises*. Princeton
University Press.
[3]<https://mail.google.com/mail/html/compose/static_files/blank_quirks.html#_ftnref3>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
On 17 January 2012 14:33, Deirdre Williams <williams.deirdre at gmail.com>wrote:
> Hello :-)
> I've been following this discussion with fascination and amazement.
>
> When I was a little girl Saturday teatime was made glorious by the
> delicious frisson of terror produced by Dr Who and the Daleks. For the
> uninitiated a Dalek was a sort of upsidedown dustbin or ur-R2D2, with a
> nose-like arm sticking out of the front and a metallic voice which said
> 'I-am-a-Dalek-you-will-obey' Of course Dr Who didn't, and by association we
> didn't either, but it was fun.
>
> So is Google the Dalek of the 21st century? And have we lost our ability
> to disobey?
>
> Perhaps you don't know the Google game? I invented it to demonstrate to
> somebody that Google, like Big Brother, is in fact - watching you! I sent
> myself a message mentioning my intention to plant mistletoe in the garden.
> Google responded, instantly and obediently, with an advertisement for
> exotic seeds from somewhere in Louisiana. You should try it, it's quite
> entertaining.
>
> What Vint Cerf wrote in his article follows close upon what he said at
> several workshops at the IGF in Nairobi. Admittedly for me this all
> happened at an unholy hour of the morning (I was participating remotely)
> but I think I understood. And no one seemed to mind then.
>
> For me rights seem to be primarily about demand. As an analogy I would
> propose the 'rights of way' in England. If you don't use them you lose
> them. And to say that the Internet is not a human right is not the same
> thing as saying one has no right to the Internet.
>
> So perhaps capacity building needs to place plenty of emphasis on thinking
> for oneself, on resilience against 'social engineering'.
>
> Deirdre
>
>
> On 17 January 2012 04:16, Aldo Matteucci <aldo.matteucci at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Paul,
>>
>> you made such an intellectual somersault from "access to the net as human
>> right" to "Google wants to tell them what they should be doing next" - I
>> have a hard time following.
>>
>> Google's vision is "to organize information on the net and make it
>> accessible". It does it for free, hoping to satisfice the individual who
>> searches, the advertiser, and its shareholders.
>>
>> There is nothing in this vision about controlling the access - just
>> reshuffling the net information in way Google thinks is suitable to you.
>> Their vision is a virtual avatar of "all the news fit to print" that
>> graces the title side of the NYT.
>>
>> Google is the net version of the free-grab junk papers you get for free
>> at railway and bus stations.
>> These junk papers are destroying the staid daylies, by satisficing most
>> people's demand for news. The content is "tits and bits"
>> soudbites and soundtrites. 90% of social networking is gossip. "Noise"
>> rather than information.
>>
>> Is there a "human right to the NYT"? I doubt it.
>> Does Google's approach change society?
>> You bet.
>> What can we do about it?
>> Certainly not by elitistically clamoring "human rights".
>>
>> In fact, it is a case of "just deserts"
>> ever since Eve and Adam bit into the apple
>> the news were "elite-driven"
>> kings, battles, and big rites.
>> Now the masses, through their earning power and day-to-day decisions
>> decide also for themselves what's "fit to be on top of a google search".
>> you better get used to it.
>>
>> The political problem is "natural monopoly"
>> as more people google
>> google becomes the only game in town.
>>
>> Just as Windows DOS has exterminates alternatives
>> probably with methods akin to those of JDRockefeller as he built up
>> Standard Oil
>>
>> a "natural monopoly" might allow "natural populism" to emerge
>> as people graze of newsbits, rather than spend energy on thinking.
>>
>> So what else is new?
>> Most of our brain activities are unconscious, to save energy needed to
>> decide...
>> the world (not you and me maybe) may even think it's an improvement
>>
>> Aldo
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 17 January 2012 04:51, Paul Lehto <lehto.paul at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>> It would be odd for an evangelist of the Christian religion, or any
>>> other religion, to argue that people had no right of access to the
>>> "Technology" of the Christian religion - the book known as the Bible. But
>>> Vinton G. Cerf, official "chief Internet evangelist" for Google, Inc.,
>>> strangely argued an analogous proposition: That people have "no right to
>>> access the Internet" Mr. Cerf is paid to evangelise for by Google, Inc.
>>> Calling the Internet a mere tool or technology that enables "real" rights
>>> such as free speech, Mr. Cerf apparently considers anyone denied the
>>> Internet by arbitrary government action, for example, to have been deprived
>>> of nothing they have a right to access. Would a religious "evangelist"
>>> take the same attitude about accessing the Bible, and think that the right
>>> to freedom of religion did NOT encompass a right to access the Bible in
>>> either print or electronic form?
>>>
>>> I find Mr. Cerf's argument to be, frankly, nonsensical. At the
>>> same time, I can readily understand it as a coherent statement of Google's
>>> business position on the future of the Internet when Cerf's statements are
>>> considered side by side with Google CEO Eric Schmidt's famous statements to
>>> the Wall Street Journal in 2010 comparing Google's classic search engine
>>> business with its newer Android-based strategy, focused on giving Android
>>> away to cell phone companies for free, because of the extremely lucrative
>>> market thus made available to Google to sell targeted ads to cell phone
>>> users:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "I actually think most people don't want Google to answer their
>>>> questions," he elaborates. "*They want Google to tell them what they
>>>> should be doing next."*
>>>>
>>>> Let's say you're walking down the street. Because of the info Google
>>>> has collected about you, "we know roughly who you are, roughly what you
>>>> care about, roughly who your friends are." [And, thanks to Android GPS
>>>> capabilities, they know where you are, within a tolerance of about one
>>>> foot, if you carry an Android "smart"phone.]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Google's business vision for the future of the Internet is reasonably
>>> clear: They already have extremely detailed data on each user, and they
>>> want to use all of that data to push ads in front of users allegedly
>>> targeted to what Google "already knows" they want, and sell many "heads
>>> ups" to local restaurants and other "opportunities" in the physical
>>> vicinity of wherever the Android user may happen to be.
>>>
>>> If the above idea is even close to being correct (and it makes sense of
>>> Schmidt's bold claim that we "want Google to tell [us] what [to do] next")
>>> then we can understand why Google, via their official public face and
>>> Internet evangelist Vinton G. Cerf, would try to evangelize against
>>> Internet access rights in the January 4, 2012 New York Times: *Any
>>> such "right to access" the Internet is clearly a potential interference
>>> with Google's business plan to reconfigure the Internet based on what it
>>> thinks we want from the Internet*, in Google's sole discretion, based
>>> on the voluminous data Google routinely collects on users.
>>>
>>> You and I may prefer to make our own discoveries on the Internet, and do
>>> our own searches. But Google, quite literally, thinks it knows better than
>>> we do, and even goes so far as to claim that it's what we really want from
>>> Google, in the end: for Google to tell us all what to do.
>>>
>>> Many people object to Google's idea with fervor, and would much prefer
>>> to tell Google *where to go*, than to have Google tell them what to do.
>>>
>>> But imagine an aggressive, ad-selling, data-shaping future google that
>>> is choosing so much data for us and putting it in front of our faces that
>>> it can be said that the "Internet" as we now know it is no longer
>>> accessible to us, only an edited and targeted shadow of the Internet chosen
>>> by Google is accessible to us, as a practical matter, on our devices.
>>> This is not too hard to imagine at all, since most of it is already here.
>>> Such a "personalized" Internet is but a shadow, albeit an arguably
>>> personalized and targeted shadow, of the Internet we know today. Perhaps
>>> (and this is only a maybe) we could still get to the "full Internet" if we
>>> are committed to doing so and know what we are doing, but to do so we will
>>> have to wade past Google's paternalistic suggestions for what we should be
>>> doing next, and past Google's conclusion that people no longer want "Google
>>> to provide them with information, they want google to tell them what to do."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Clearly, a right to access the Internet is in tension with, if not in
>>> conflict with, Google's business vision for the future of the Internet.
>>> Mr. Cerf's many notable achievements related to the Internet aside, he
>>> indisputably owes a duty of loyalty to his employer, Google, and in this
>>> particular context, Mr. Cerf is not speaking as a true evangelist for the
>>> Internet, he is speaking out of loyalty to the forthcoming business vision
>>> and profitability of his employer, Google Inc.
>>>
>>> Perhaps Google's increasingly paternalistic vision of Internet users, in
>>> which they decide for us what we should do next, and presume that we don't
>>> really want Google to simply provide information at our choosing, will one
>>> day give new meaning to the phrase Cerfing the Net, which perhaps will be
>>> spelled Serfing the Net, in honor of Vinton G. Cerf's feudalistic
>>> exposition on their new internet reality in which one's rights of access to
>>> the Internet are predetermined, as in feudal days, by the land (or
>>> operating system) one is born on or born into.
>>>
>>>
>>> The masters of the universe at Google are indeed on the very precipice
>>> of being the Lords of the Internet, not evangelists of the Internet. Lords
>>> do not simply answer searching questions, Lords tell us what we should be
>>> doing next. Evangelists hope and pray that ALL will access the Internet or
>>> the Bible, but by saying there is no right of access to the Internet, Mr.
>>> Serf is made himself and fellow executives at Google our Lords, and
>>> abandoned his post as Chief evangelist of the Internet, at Google.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Paul R Lehto, J.D.
>>> P.O. Box 1
>>> Ishpeming, MI 49849
>>> lehto.paul at gmail.com
>>> 906-204-4026 (cell)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> ____________________________________________________________
>>> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>>> governance at lists.cpsr.org
>>> To be removed from the list, visit:
>>> http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
>>>
>>> For all other list information and functions, see:
>>> http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
>>> To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
>>> http://www.igcaucus.org/
>>>
>>> Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Aldo Matteucci
>> 65, Pourtalèsstr.
>> CH 3074 MURI b. Bern
>> Switzerland
>> aldo.matteucci at gmail.com
>>
>>
>>
>> ____________________________________________________________
>> You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
>> governance at lists.cpsr.org
>> To be removed from the list, visit:
>> http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
>>
>> For all other list information and functions, see:
>> http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
>> To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
>> http://www.igcaucus.org/
>>
>> Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> “The fundamental cure for poverty is not money but knowledge" Sir William
> Arthur Lewis, Nobel Prize Economics, 1979
>
--
Aldo Matteucci
65, Pourtalèsstr.
CH 3074 MURI b. Bern
Switzerland
aldo.matteucci at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.igcaucus.org/pipermail/governance/attachments/20120117/c6cdf08f/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing
For all other list information and functions, see:
http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
http://www.igcaucus.org/
Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t
More information about the Governance
mailing list