Pax Technica by Philip N. Howard

Author:Philip N. Howard [Howard, Philip N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015-05-24T16:00:00+00:00

Third Consequence: From a Clash of Civilizations to a Competition Between Device Networks

Information activism is already a global ideological movement, and competition among device networks will replace a clash of civilizations as the primary political fault line of global conflict. Samuel Huntington famously divided the world into nine competing political ideologies, and described these as largely irreconcilable worldviews that were destined to clash.16 What is more likely, in a world of pervasive sensors and networked devices, is a competition among device networks. The most important clash will be between the people and devices that push for open and interoperable networks and those who work for closed networks.

The dominance of technology over ideology has two stabilizing consequences. The first is that information activism is now a global movement. Every country in the world has some kind of information-freedom campaign that allows for a consistent, global conversation about how different kinds of actors are using and abusing digital media. The second is that the diffusion of digital media is supporting popular movements for democratic accountability. Some Silicon Valley firms build hardware and software for dictators, and as I’ll show in the next chapter the serious threat to the pax technica comes from the rival network growing out of China.

Many civil-society groups, even those not concerned with technology policy issues, now think of internet freedoms as human rights. People mobilize themselves on information policy, and civil-society groups have taken up technology standards as civic issues. The reasons are evident: civic leaders realize that their ability to activate the public shapes their political opportunities, and political elites realize that their capacity to rule depends on their control of device networks. The result is that every country in the world has an active tech community that is connected to a global alliance of privacy and information-freedom groups. Some of these activists started their work through the Global Voices network.17 Others came to technology issues when their websites were attacked, or when their broadband connections got throttled by national ISPs.

In terms of political opinion, they run the spectrum, and many are more interested in fast-streaming access to content about the Eurovision contest or distant soccer games than in political news. Some are libertarian, others progressive, some conservative, and some a mix of all three. But they are all often dedicated to pushing back on onerous government regulations over their internet access, and some participate in, or eagerly read about, technology issues from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology, tweet about the latest reports on their country from the Open Society Foundation or Reporters Without Borders, run Tor Project software quietly on their home equipment, and even participate in training sessions from the Tactical Technology Collective.

Even the most banal technology standards in the poorest of countries get scrutinized by civic groups emboldened by John Perry Barlow’s “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace,” or Hillary Clinton’s arguments that internet freedoms are a foreign policy priority.18 When I visited Tajikistan a few years ago, the government simply didn’t have an employee who was in charge of public-spectrum allocation.

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