Tech Policy Seminar

The Future of the Net?

 

The second part of Carr’s book examines the social, political and economic implications of the continued evolution of Web 2.0. Carr’s analysis offers valuable insight as to the potential changes to our society that may result from this evolution. This part of the book strikes a cautionary note by explaining that the Internet’s triumphant march forward may take society into something less than an information utopia. 

 World Wide Computer: a Break from the Past

In discussing rise of World Wide Computer, Carr touches on two often-discussed elements of this new Web 2.0: Second Life and blogging. Though Carr primarily focuses on the modular nature of these two features, I thought they present an excellent example of the concerns raised in last week’s class regarding the disruption of social communities. Professor Sunstein has raised several valid questions as to whether the Digital Age is leading to increased polarization; Carr echoes these concerns (Pg 160). But there is another potential effect of the rise of the online world: individuals are beginning to identify more and more with their online communities as opposed to their geographic areas. Web 2.0 may indeed lead to some segmentation based on viewpoints and beliefs. However, one cannot discount that the Web enables individuals to overcome one other important barrier: that of geography. This should come as no surprise; past technological advancements have had this dual effect.

 

The rise of Second Life and the proliferation of blogs have created opportunities for individuals to carve out their own private niche in cyberspace. Others who share the personal views or tastes of the individual may congregate around this area (See pg 119-120 for the Mustang Blogger example). Commentators have cited these developments with concern, noting that they may undermine the communal spirit of the early internet (See pg 108-109). Other past advances in technology have also caused decentralization of many aspects of American society. The rise of the automobile certainly diminished the amount of interactions had with one another during the commutes to and from work. Yet there are probably few people who argue that this effect outweighs the benefits that cars brought to society overall. The development of the highway system and the sharp rise in the prevalence of the automobile had two competing effects. It arguably did reduce the number of daily interactions that individuals had with their local communities. Yet it also brought distant communities closer together, enabling Americans to visit parts of the country that previous generations would have gone their whole lives without seeing. The Web brings with it similar effects. While individuals may be segmented according to their favorite web pages and blogs, they are no longer confined to their local media outlets. To use Carr’s Mustang example, aficionados from LA to New York can read and share their common interest, unbound by geography.

Unlike past technological developments, however, in theory, the polarization on the Net has no stopping point. While driving does reduce one’s interaction with other individuals, it stops short of eliminating it completely. This is due to the fact that other activities requiring human interaction were not completely displaced by the car. Thus, the car did not enable a person to eliminate all exposure to potentially divergent viewpoints. The same cannot be said of the Web. As Carr points out, search engines tailor the information they delivers to users based on their search history; in essence this allows individuals to create their own personalized information conduits. (Pg 160-161) In theory, traditional media sources, which do not deliver content specifically tailored to a particular user’s viewpoints, would provide a check on this process. However, as more individuals receive their news online, traditional media sources become less relevant to large sections of the population. (Pg. 152). Thus, unlike the car, the Internet has the capacity to replace the alternative sources of human interaction that could serve to prevent the narrowing of views. As of yet, it is still too early to predict where this process will ultimately lead. However, we may not want to write off quite yet the notion of providing some form of public funding to prevent the “Balkanization” of the distribution of information.

 

Our Domain, but for How Long?

 

Carr does an excellent job pointing out the fact that for the most part, Americans have little problem with the Internet because it is largely under de facto American control (Pg. 182). Unsurprisingly, there is a growing chorus from other countries to establish greater international oversight of the Net on a more inclusive basis (Pg. 183). America has witnessed this type of transformation occur with respect to other institutions that it has founded as well. The United Nations owes its existence  in part  to the US; yet as the past three decades have demonstrated, America’s relationship with its creation has grown somewhat rocky.Carr points out that the perceived US domination of the Internet may lead countries to create rival networks (Pg. 183). Such a move would raise serious concerns. In the first instance, it is highly likely that if each nation were to set up its own national net, there would be a good deal of duplicative systems created with the accompanying wasteful expenditures. In addition, such a move would undoubtedly exacerbate the “Balkanization” of the Internet, but on a national level. Individual countries may be tempted to discriminate against foreign web-based commerce or to use their national systems as a means to further restrict the availability of certain content to their populations. If the US wishes to avoid these outcomes, it may be necessary to allow for greater international participation in the regulation of the internet. While this naturally entails a diminishing of American control over the Net, this tradeoff is well worth if it prevents global fragmentation.

iGod?

 

The last chapter of the book arguably presents the most controversial aspect of humanity’s future relationship with the Web. Carr accurately sums up this by describing the goal of Google’s founders to “have the entire world’s knowledge connected directly to our minds.” (Pg 212). The idea of being able to plug our brains directly into the Internet raises several troubling questions. The most obvious one is whether creating devices that can transmit and broadcast signals that perfectly mimic human brainwaves could pose a threat to human safety. If we become fully capable of sending artificial brain signals, the next logical step could simply be to “program” individuals like any other operating system.

 

Even assuming that such a possibility does not occur, the melding of human and artificial intelligence raises the ultimate privacy question. As we’ve learned over the past few years, the use of the Internet comes with a price: individuals surrender a small bit of their privacy. Imagine a world where the cost of “plugging in” to the net may be to literally allow Google to know what’s on your mind. As things stand now, there are certain steps that an individual concerned about his or her privacy can take while surfing on the net. It’s hard to see how the same steps could be taken if we plugged our brains directly into the net; telling someone not to subconsciously think about certain aspects of their life while surfing hardly seems like a real solution.

"From Many to the Few": Should we be worried?

As Carr discusses the rise of new online companies due in part to the low capital and marginal costs these firms face, he talks about how “there’s another side to the robotic efficiency, global scope, and increasing returns enjoyed by the new Internet companies” (p.134). The other side, which I suspect Carr might describe as the “dark side” is that “[e]ach of these companies competes . . . with old-line firms that have long employed and paid decent wages to many people.” He then discusses how “traditional firms may have no choice but to refashion their own businesses along similar lines, firing many millions of employees in the process” (id), pointing specifically at the job losses in the publishing and journalism industries, a sector obviously dear to his heart, and he explains how computerization isn’t creating a broad new class of jobs to take the place of those it destroys. (p.134-36). Finally, he talks about how the trends in computerization in addition to free labor provided by Internet users (uploading videos to YouTube, for example), allows a few people to reap large returns while taking away jobs from people who used to be paid for that work.

So my question is, so what? Assuming that Carr’s predictions are true (and I’m not sure they are, at least to the extent he believes), should we be worried about computers displacing people’s jobs, and should we be worried about the income inequality that might result as a small group of people harvest the returns of the Internet? I don’t think we should be. If a computer can do a better job than a person (or at least, more cheaply), we should want computers doing these tasks. Also, while income inequality may widen, I doubt that computerization will make a significant portion of the population worse off. Even if I’m poor, I shouldn’t mind that the richest person just got richer as long I’m not any worse off than I was before. Also, there’s a good chance that by getting richer, the rich person may have made at least a little better off than I was before.

Reading Carr’s chapter “From the Many to the Few” had me thinking back to my introductory econ class as an undergrad. One of the profound principles I learned in that class was that of comparative advantage. This principle states that, as long as we’re not equally good at making everything, people will be better off through trade as it allows one to concentrate on doing what he does best (compared to others) and then trade for the things he doesn’t make. Tom can grow corn and Mary can build cars, and then Tom can trade his corn for one of Mary’s cars (or in the case of countries, the United States can make movies and China can make toys). The miracle of comparative advantage is such that even if Mary is better than Tom at both growing corn and making cars, they still benefit from trade as Mary’s opportunity cost of growing corn is higher than that for building cars. If she’s really good at making cars but just pretty good at growing corn, we don’t want her wasting her time growing corn. Instead, we want Tom to grow the corn even if he’s not very good at growing corn if he’s even worse at building cars. Trade makes even more sense if Mary is superior at building cars and Tom is superior at growing corn.

You may be wondering where this is going. If computers are replacing people in the information services industry, it must be because computers have a comparative advantage at doing a lot of information-related work compared to people. (This may be because computers are just better at this work than people, or it could be that while people do a better job than computers, they do other things even better, so they should be doing that work instead.) If computers do have a comparative advantage, society is better off with computers doing this work, though that means that a lot of people with information-related jobs may have to find another job. There are significant relocation costs for these workers, just as we’ve seen as steel and automotive workers have been let go as automation and the US decline in these industries has reduced the need for these workers and increased their costs. But the response is to provide training, unemployment insurance, etc. for these workers, not keep them employed when they are inefficient. Technology is disruptive – there will always be people who may be displaced by some new technique or machine. These people will of course lobby hard to block or hinder the new technology, or at least argue that the old way of doing things is better. I recently saw a movie with Alec Guinness called The Man in the White Suit. In this movie, Guinness’ character invents an indestructible fiber that repels dirt. He sees this invention as boon to humanity as it would provide cheap and durable clothing for everyone. However, the labor unions and mills see him as a terrible threat to their livelihood and hunt him down, fearing that once consumers had purchased enough cloth, demand would drop precipitously and put the textile industry out of business. We see a similar fear arise among the Luddites of the 19^th century, artisan weavers who sometimes destroyed the new mechanical looms that threatened their livelihood.

Will we see such protests today by information industry workers? Probably not, as nothing that the Internet brings today seems quite as disruptive as the mechanical looms. Should we bemoan the decline of print newspapers? I don’t think so. Carr in a later chapter does raise some plausible arguments about the increasing polarization of ideological groups on the Internet, which we touched on in class the other day. He also talks about the problem of homogenization of news because of the Internet. I think, though, that there is a significant benefit from the Internet as people are more empowered to indulge their idiosyncratic news tastes more than ever before. I’m no longer stuck reading whatever the local newspaper printed or watching the NBC news broadcast. Growing up, I was stuck either reading the town newspaper (not exactly what I would call hard news – lots of high school sports and garden club announcements), or the neighboring city’s newspaper – not bad, but definitely not the New York Times. If the local newspaper can’t stand on its own two legs in face of competition from the Internet, maybe we don’t need it (though I suspect there will always be room for some type of local news sources).

So as long as I’m better off because of computerization, I don’t really care whether the rich are getting richer. Politicians talking about income inequality often state that the richer are getter richer while the poor are getting poorer. Is the income gap between the poorest and the richest growing? Maybe, but are the poor really worse off? Is the middle class worse off? It’s difficult to tell, but many items today that are considered essential were luxuries not that long ago. How many of the general population have more than one TV, a DVD player, a microwave, or a laundry machine? Comparing the poverty of the US to some other countries where relatively few have access to electricity and running water or even the US one hundred years ago, one suspects that Americans are doing fairly well overall. I am very doubtful that computerization, utility computing, or the other advances that Carr describes will actually make the poor or middle class worse off.

Overall, Carr seems to discount the benefits to society from the advances in information technology. The cheaper it becomes to provide these services, the cheaper it is for society to use it. Carr lists several of the free services available on the web like blog posting, search engines, and a wealth of information is available for free. I, for one, need my daily fix of email and news and enjoy near-instantaneous answers to random questions (“What other movies has that actor been in?”). Sure, the dollar value of this information is hard to calculate, but even if it’s low, adding up the value across society leads to a pretty high amount. The founders of YouTube became fabulously rich after Google bought their site, but users of YouTube don’t seem to mind – they’re just happy they have a convenient place to post and view videos. Just because some economic endeavor makes someone a lot of money doesn’t make it bad. In the absence of anti-competitive practices, we should be happy when someone like Jeff Bezos strikes it rich with Amazon – it means he’s providing a good or service that people really want.