MC433 - week 8

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These are my notes from November 16 for MC433 at the London School of Economics for the 2017-2018 school year. I took this module as part of the one-year Inequalities and Social Science MSc program.

The usual disclaimer: all notes are my personal impressions and do not necessarily reflect the view of the lecturer.

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Internet Infrastructure and Presence

Readings

Redistribution or Recognition? by Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth (chapter 1)

Only the first Fraser section was assigned, but the book seemed interesting so I just read the whole thing. I thought Fraser’s sections were stronger overall (Honneth’s sections kind of meandered in a way that made my eyes glaze over) but the book as a whole just felt a lot longer than it had to be. My notes are all on Bookmarker.

Main takeaways from this first chapter:

• we have to combine identity politics (recognition) and class politics (redistribution)
• the goal should be participatory parity, which requires both respect from peers & material resources
• a distinction between solutions to injustice that are purely affirmative vs those that are transformative (it’s a spectrum)

Barbara Van Schewick on network neutrality (YouTube video)

Takeaway: ISPs should be regulated as common carriers! Nationalise em all (my words, not hers)

Prohibition of discriminatory tariffs for data services (PDF)

Released by the telecom regulatory authority of India in 2016. Relates to the whole Facebook Free Basics debacle.

Lecture

• on Fraser: we have to pair recog & redist; neither approach is individually sufficient
  • we can think of recognition as referring to: status/identity politics/institutionalised patterns of cultural value/making note of differences
  • whereas redistribution has to do with: class/socioeconomic disparity/abolishing differences
• on code as a way of regulating (when it comes to network neutrality)
  • Van Schewick is relevant here, though her approach (to code for regulatory) is different from Lessig’s
  • in the original plans for the Internet (back when it was just a bunch of researchers using ARPAnet), there was no way to encode discriminating based on the type of data traveling
• arguments for an open Internet:
  • optimal way of fostering innovation
  • permissionless (no gatekeepers in the form of ISPs)
  • limits on overbearing powers of owners
• arguments against:
  • too absolutist (?)
  • prevents naturally-occurring corrective market behaviour
  • too much focus on content layer (instead of lower layer)
  • eradicates possibility of vertical integration and all the benefits that might bring (makes it harder for providers to move into emerging markets on the basis of efficiency gains)
• on India rejecting Facebook’s Free Basics program
  • there’s an excellent quote from egghead extraordinaire Marc Andreessen criticising the Indian govt for their decision
    • in response to a characterisation of the program as a technological extension of colonialism, he tweeted this:
    • “Anti-Colonialism has been economically catastrophic for India for decades. Why stop now?”
    • gonna let that speak for itself
• conclusion: we should think of the architecture of the Internet not just in terms of access, but in terms of the production of innovation/justice
  • open Q: is an open architecture enough to get participatory parity? what else do we need to change?
  • (me: capitalism)

Seminar

• I went on a bit of a tirade about diversity in tech as a very affirmative, identity-politics-limited strategy
  • this whole idea of representation might be a start, but it’s NOT ENOUGH and you can’t limit your focus to that
  • otherwise you just get Lean In Feminism
• someone asked how we can accomplish Fraser’s suggestion of both affirmative and transformative solutions in a limited amount of time
  • (to which myself and another student both quietly said, “revolution”)
• someone mentioned a proposal similar to Jaron Lanier’s Who Owns The Future? (for which I wrote an extremely negative review) that boiled down to micropayments from the tech giants to users
  • and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to deliver another, almost Leninesque diatribe about the dangers of that path
  • if anyone from my seminar is reading this, im sorry i just feel very strongly about this issue
• question about whether regulating the concentration of capital in the industry is the right approach
  • me: the concentration of capital isn’t the issue here—you can’t just try to break up Google/FB etc and think 1) they’ll acquiesce and 2) the problems won’t occur again—the issue is the existence of capital at all
• an important point someone brought up: who’s doing the regulating? will they take into account the concerns of marginalised groups?

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