5. The Network Society
5.1.
Networks
"It
is not proper to think of networks as connecting computers. Rather,
they connect people using computers to mediate. The great success
of the Internet is not technical, but in human impact. Electronic
mail may not be a wonderful advance in Computer Science, but it is
a whole new way for people to communicate. The continued growth of
the Internet is a technical challenge to all of us, but we must never
loose sight of where we came from, the great change we have worked
on the larger computer community, and the great potential we have
for future change." - David Clark
Licklider,
as David Clark, was among the first to notice the social importance
of networks, and to envision the future paradigm of a global network.
It is important that the technology evolved as we analysed in the
previous chapter, providing the infrastructure that allowed this network
to be possible. However, the computers, network devices and protocols
were simply the media to get the communication performed. Similar
to the psychophysical definition of the sound, as a wave transmission
that is perceived by the ear, the information available in the network
only becomes interesting when it's consulted by a user. The users
of a network are the elements that count, as stated by Metcalfe: "The
community value of a network grows as the square of the number of
its users increase" . The mission of people like Metcalfe was
to be like the first architects that built cities and planned squares,
working to give the material conditions for the people to meet and
communicate.
We
saw that the first networking concepts were built around the definition
of common protocols, open standards and the open systems. After the
networks were established, they have been used to improve the communication
among the researchers, and revealed to be the best way to exchange
information, discuss ideas, have agreements, publish them, and restart
the cycle. This created a positive spiral, which elevated the performance
of the network :
§
With an increasing consistency, due to the high sharing of knowledge
between the users, aimed to increase the efficiency and usage of the
network.
§
With a high connectedness, due to the increasing efficiency and usage
of the network, and to its reduced cost and complexity.
We
may also note two external factors with participated in the factors
above:
§
The incentive of the governments - and most specifically the military
organizations during the cold war - that funded the infrastructure
and sponsored the academic institutions. This allowed the research
to produce the knowledge and be connected to the network.
§
The increasing performance of the microchips at a given price, as
specified in the Moore's law , which implied in reducing costs of
computer power and hardware components, allowing more users to be
connected to the network.
Figure 24 - Network power spiral and external factors
5.2.
The Network Enterprise
5.2.1.
From merchant networks
Initially,
the networks were used by high-tech companies - like ATT's Bell labs,
Rand Corporation, BBN (Bolt, Beranek & Newman), IBM - to exchange
information with the scientific community, and to progressively build
stronger infrastructure devices, protocols and software. IBM still
uses its revolutionary proprietary protocols and standards to promote
a cohesive work among the different R&D centres all over the world,
smoothly integrate them with the other departments and - by the usage
of standard interfaces, TCP/IP and OSI-compliant protocols - with
the academic institutions. IBM understood it should increase its sources
from all forms of knowledge, to remain an innovative firm. Innovation
was critical and companies like Sun and 3COM have flourished in this
environment. The computer scientists participating of this networked
environment alternated or cumulated jobs in the industry and in the
academic institutions. This created a networked milieu of innovation
whose dynamics and goals became largely autonomous from the specific
initial purposes .
5.2.2.
To the merchantable network
Later
all the enterprises started to be connected, via the network, with
suppliers, customers, service providers and research laboratories
over the world, in a multicultural framework, forming network enterprises,
and founding the global economy. Thus, the information economy emerged
in a planetary level, in different cultural/national contexts, evolving
around a common matrix of organisational form in the processes of
production, consumption, and distribution .
Castells
identified an important shift from vertical bureaucracies (the hierarchical
oligopolies from the industrial era) to the horizontal corporation
(the networked companies that survived and thrived in the informational
economy), "dynamic and strategically planned network of self-programmed,
self-directed units based on decentralization, participation, and
coordination. (…) The manner in which a company shares information
and systems is a critical element in the strength of its relationships"
.
The
networks formed by the horizontal corporations are divided, according
to Ernst , into intra-firm (link different divisions and business
functions from the company) and inter-firm (normally relying suppliers,
producers or customers). However, the scope of our study is to identify
two other important inter-firm connections, also identified by Ernst:
§
Standards coalitions - initiated by potential global standard setters
with the explicit purpose of locking-in as many firms as possible
into their proprietary product, architectural, or interface standards.
This is the case of Wintel (Microsoft and Intel association explained
on the chapter 2.2.4) and .Net (discussed on chapter 3.2.2).
§
Technology cooperation networks - built to facilitate the exchange
and joint development of product design and production technology,
involving cross licensing and patent swapping, and permit the sharing
of R&D. Under such arrangements, knowledge typically flows in
both directions and all participants need to master a broad array
of technological capabilities. The mainframe architecture (explained
on the chapters 2.1.1 and 2.2.1), MDA (discussed on chapter 3.1.1)
and Java (discussed on chapter 3.2.1) illustrate this.
5.3.
Peer-to-peer and collective conscience
"Some people use virtual communities as a form of psychotherapy.
Others spend many hours per day pretending they are someone else,
living a life that does not exist outside a computer. "
- Manuel Castells
In
parallel with the formation of the network enterprises, academic people
started to use the network to build strong communities of interest,
which started by exchanging ideas and finally discovered a potential
to defy and compete big monopolies. New companies were created to
exploit the new technologic developments in ways unanticipated by
the scientists and big companies - it was the case of Apple, Microsoft
and Intel - reducing the entry price to be part of the network. The
benefits of being in the network grew exponentially, because of the
greater number of connections. This gave birth to the modern counterculture
movements like the hackers and the crackers; it helped to break geographic
barriers in the consolidation of currents of thoughts, like anti-globalisation;
it helped the formation of worldwide/underworld organizations like
the (cyber) terrorism.
5.3.1.
Online communities
One
of the start points of the online subculture was the set of science
networks (like ARPANET, CSNET, BITNET) being used to exchange personal
messages around subjects like science fiction, but the advent of personal
computing and cheap networking equipment gave birth to the BBS (Bulletin
Board Systems). Described by Rheingold as "a grassroots element
to the Net that was not, until very recently, involved with all the
high-tech, top-secret doings that led to ARPANET (…). Real grassroots,
the kind that grow in the ground, are a self-similar branching structure,
a network of networks. Each grass seed grows a branching set of roots,
and then many more smaller roots grow off those; the roots of each
grass plant interconnect physically with the roots of adjacent plants,
as any gardener who has tried to uproot a lawn has learned."
. Rheingold - who was an active member from an online community called
WELL and specializes today in the creation of new communities - uses
the term virtual communities to define the social phenomenon spawned
from the BBS. Virtual communities are social aggregations that emerge
from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions
long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal
relationships in cyberspace.
He
identified that the technology that makes virtual communities possible
has the potential to bring enormous power - intellectual, social,
commercial and political - to the citizens, but this latent technical
power must be used intelligently and deliberately by an informed population.
He considered the online subculture to be "like an ecosystem
of subcultures, some frivolous, others serious." Some of the
serious communities united programmers, who used the network to exchange
information and programs - mostly related to the network itself -
aiming recognition from their peers.
The
hackers were already used to the time-sharing systems networks as
a communication medium. With the networks, it was easier to exchange
programs and routines, and the university walls were not barriers
as before. The community would then span to other academic centres,
and to other countries. Due to fate, or to the anarchic tendencies
of academic ecosystems, the networks started to be organized in a
horizontal manner.
5.3.2.
Peer networks and cooperative computing
Initially,
the term peer-to-peer (P2P, or simply peer ) described a protocol,
application, or network where every node had equivalent capabilities
and privileges, being able to initiate or complete any supported transaction.
Beyond the technical definition, the term started to designate decentralized
virtual communities where every individual participated in the same
level, obtaining information with the same access rights, and sharing
this and new material with other network members. Bauwens abstracts
the peer-to-peer concept to other levels, like politics and spirituality,
and even suggests the hypothesis of a new civilization format based
in P2P .
Bar
and Borrus suggested that based on the two elements already discussed
- ubiquitous computing and a coherent infrastructure - a new computing
paradigm emerged in the 1990s, shifting from simple linkage of computers
to "cooperative" computing . Mimicking the cooperation between
different companies, and based on peer-to-peer anarchic structure
of organization, the hackers started to organize themselves, initially
simply letting spontaneous and informal communication flourish at
the same time, generating reciprocity and support by the dynamics
of sustained interaction.
5.3.3.
May the force be with the hackers
The
world-wide web was built on the contribution of the hacker's culture
of the 1970s. The group of researchers at CERN led by Tim Berners-Lee
and Robert Cailliau relied on the hypertext concept created by Ted
Nelson in the 1970s , used hacker technology like UNIX and TCP/IP
and distributed their software free over the Internet. Richard Stallman
and Linus Torvalds gave the initial impulse to the new-hackerism movement,
by creating GNU and Linux. As important as GNU and Linux technological
features, are their sociological ones. They are in the core of the
modern hackerdom activities. They started the projects alone, and
once their concept was stable enough to be understood by other people,
they used the Internet as the communication media to form P2P task
forces, by opposition to having a project team - sponsored by governments
or companies - working in the same space. They had a centralization
role, needed to guarantee the integration among the different software
parts, but the community was still in the power.
According
to Eric Raymond, "Linux is subversive. (…) I believed that
the most important software (…) needed to be built like cathedrals,
carefully crafted by individual wizards or small bands of mages working
in splendid isolation. (…) Linus Torvalds' style of development
- release early and often, delegate everything you can, be open to
the point of promiscuity - came as a surprise. No quiet, reverent
cathedral-building here - rather, the Linux community seemed to resemble
a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches (aptly
symbolized by the Linux archive sites, who'd take submissions from
anyone) out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly
emerge only by a succession of miracles."
5.3.4.
The motivated and ethical hacker
The
most difficult, for people outside the hacker communities, is to understand
what are their motivations. According to Himanen , the hacker ethic
may be divided into the work ethic, the money ethic and the network
ethic. By the work ethic, he explains that the hacker activity must
be joyful, enthusiastic and passionate, while performed in an individualistic
rhythm of life.
The
money ethic states that the main hacker objective shall be the recognition
from the peers, and through the "capitalism hackerism",
one can take part in the traditional capitalism only temporarily (until
have enough capital to dedicate exclusively to "have pleasure")
or on a part-time basis (working for a traditional company during
the day, developing free software during the night). In addition,
most of the hackers who established companies to earn money from free
software and open source don't see any problem in selling software
or services, once the work ethic is followed.
The
network ethic (or nethic) preaches that a hacker should always try
to practice the freedom of expression, respect privacy and stimulate
self-activity - "the realization of a person's passion instead
of encouraging a person to be just a passive receiver in life (…)
very different to the traditional media"
"A
hacker who lives according to the hacker ethic on all three of these
levels gains the community's highest respect. This hacker becomes
a true hero when she or he manages to honour the final value (…):
creativity - that is, the imaginative use of one's own abilities,
the surprising continuous surpassing of oneself, and the giving to
the world of a genuinely valuable new contribution" .
5.3.5.
May the force be with the hackers
David
Stutz, The man formerly responsible for Microsoft's anti-open source
strategy, attacked in February 2002 (just after his retirement) Microsoft's
PC-based strategy, which he argued as misguided in a computing world
where complex networks are more important than single devices. He
maintained that the internet, the web and open source software projects,
in which communities of programmers contribute improvements which
are distributed free, are all part of the steady advance of networked
computing.
Stutz
suggested that Microsoft needs to focus on building a layer of software
that integrates network technology. But that layer should not be an
operating system like Windows, which is tied to PC technology. "To
continue to lead the pack, Microsoft must innovate quickly,"
he said. "If the PC is all that the future holds, then growth
prospects are bleak."
5.3.6.
Lingua Franca
The
hacker communication tools are the e-mail, newsgroups, chats and,
later, the weblogs. The contents are around new programs, tools, routines,
problems, and updates. The language was often English. It changed,
after the spread of cheap web access in other countries, and then
voluntary translations for programs, web sites and documentation flourished
- again in exchange of recognition. This phenomenon helped to expand
the hackerdom borders, by creating hacking sub-networks speaking regional
languages, even if the common language among different local communities
was English. To some analysts, the exchange of information via written
medium could give an impulse to the recuperation of the constructed
and rational discourse. What finally happened, on the contrary, was
the stimulation of a new form of language, expressed by the electronic
texts and richly completed by funny symbols, weird acronyms and multimedia.
Another
important factor is the asynchronous communication favoured by the
e-mails and newsgroups. This allowed each developer to work when convenient,
with no time obligations, exactly as preached by the hackers ethic.
5.4.
Privacy
The
need for privacy on the net started to attract the public opinion
in 1999 during the menace, from Intel, to create a processor identified
by a unique number, known as PSN (Processor Serial Number). Although
this practice is current in mainframes - software licenses are often
validated by comparing an encrypted key with the computer's serial
number - its implementation in the personal computers could be the
foundation of a vast tracking system that could help accumulate data
on users as they travel around the Web, violating their fundamental
right to privacy. The outraged privacy advocates launched a boycott
of products containing the Intel Pentium III chip, the first such
broad-based boycott of a product over the privacy issue . And they
won the battle. After a letter from the American government , Intel
finally decided to disable the PSN feature .
Another
long-term battle is against the abusive usage of cookies , to trace
the virtual footsteps of online users. The main advantage of cookies
is the addition of a simple, persistent, client-side state, which
significantly extends the capabilities of Web-based client/server
applications. Without this type of persistent applications, it is
virtually impossible to securely transfer the user information between
two web pages, functionality required by commercial web sites. Nevertheless,
sometimes the collection of information is excessive, with consumer
habits being monitored by marketing companies and stored into databases,
later used in aggressive advertising actions.
The
original cookie definition, by Netscape, had several flaws, avoiding
the user acceptance of the cookie execution. The IETF prepared a new
proposal, containing a privacy section to enforce the need for this
acceptance . The newest releases from Microsoft explorer implement
part of those suggestions.
A
famous case is the EPIC against DoubleClick. "EPIC (Electronic
Privacy Information Center) filed a complaint with the Federal Trade
Commission on February 10, 2000, concerning the information collection
practices of DoubleClick Inc., a leading Internet advertising firm,
and its business partners. The complaint alleges that DoubleClick
is unlawfully tracking the online activities of Internet users (through
the placement of cookies) and combining surfing records with detailed
personal profiles contained in a national marketing database. EPIC's
complaint follows the merger of DoubleClick and Abacus Direct, the
country's largest catalog database firm. DoubleClick has announced
its intention to combine anonymous Internet profiles in the DoubleClick
database with the personal information contained in the Abacus database."
Important
is to notice that all discussions about cookies, and the discovery
of the privacy issues, are due to the openness of the HTTP protocol,
needed for the interoperability between the HTML language and the
browsers. If similar initiatives were taken under proprietary environments,
everything could remain secretly hidden for a long time.
