Governing the Commons

Markets and Hierarchies

The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It Jonathan Zittrain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. 342 pages. $30.00.Jonathan Zittrain's book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, discusses the tension between generativity, the "capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from a broad and varied audience" and the security problems inherent in today's personal computers and Internet system (70). This generativity, Zittrain argues, is the greatest strength of personal computers and the Internet and had led to great innovations, including creative software, peer-to-peer networking, blogs and content sites such as Wikipedia, and even the Internet itself. Yet this same generativity has also spawned security, legal, and social problems that may lead to the demise of personal computers and the Internet as they exist today (101). If we do not find solutions for these problems, Zittrain warns, we will be faced with government or corporate control of personal computers and the Internet, similar to current controls of cellular telephones and cable converter boxes, which will effectively shut down the innovations that personal computers and the Internet currently enable (245). Personal computers, according to Zittrain, will become nothing but appliances programmed by the manufacturer, capable only of limited tasks, and stripped of the tools and capabilities necessary for innovation.The first part of the book traces the history of personal computers, mainframes, proprietary servers, and the Internet. This section highlights how differences in technology and administration fostered generativity in personal computers and on the Internet and prohibited innovation on the mainframes and proprietary networks. Yet the innovations made possible by the generative nature of the Internet and personal computers also created its vulnerabilities: viruses, worms, malware, and spyware. Despite his obvious support of generativity, Zittrain admits that the current situation is "not sustainable" (43), but warns that the obvious solutions-such as limited functionality, governmental controls, and censorship-completely undermine the creativity made possible by personal computers and the Internet. The sec- ond part of the book defines generativity and explores its benefits and detriments. Here, Zittrain proposes that information technology functions best when generative, while admitting that we cannot ignore the problems caused by generativity (64), and warns equally of the dangers of controlled appliances: censorships, surveillance, forced legal compliance, and unannounced changes in machine functions. Chapter 6 in this section considers Wikikpedia as a self-regulating generative system that functions imperfectly but well. Part Three proposes technological, legal, and social solutions to the problems discussed earlier in the book.The Future of the Internet intertwines its analysis of current personal computer/Internet problems with current and historical examples from business, law, culture (Internet and otherwise), and technology. These examples, often worthwhile and interesting in and of themselves, underpin Zittrain's analysis rationally and support his conclusions. The examples show that the kind of sledgehammer solutions that Zittrain predicts are not merely possibilities or potentialities, but already have been and are being employed by various companies and governments. Perhaps best of all, Zittrain's use of these historical and current examples avoids the sensationalism often seen in other works that predict governmental and corporate control of options, behavior, and creativity. …

The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It

This article explores the governance by algorithms in information societies. Theoretically, it builds on (co-)evolutionary innovation studies in order to adequately grasp the interplay of technolog...

Governance by algorithms: reality construction by algorithmic selection on the Internet

Communication scholars have recently begun to recognize and investigate the importance of algorithms to a wide range of processes related to the production and consumption of media content. There have been few efforts thus far, though, to connect these developments to potentially relevant bodies of existing theory and research. This article seeks to address this gap by exploring the utility of institutional theory as a potentially useful analytical framework for continued inquiry into the role of algorithms in the operation of media systems, and by offering some suggestions for ways in which an institutional analytical frame can be extended into algorithmic contexts.

Automated Media: An Institutional Theory Perspective on Algorithmic Media Production and Consumption

As government pressure on major technology companies builds, both firms and legislators are searching for technical solutions to difficult platform governance puzzles such as hate speech and misinf...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2053951719897945

Algorithmic content moderation: Technical and political challenges in the automation of platform governance

Following recent theoretical contributions, this article suggests a new approach to finding the governance in Internet governance. Studies on Internet governance rely on contradictory notions of governance. The common understanding of governance as some form of deliberate steering or regulation clashes with equally common definitions of Internet governance as distributed modes of ordering. Drawing on controversies in the broader field of governance and regulation studies, we propose to resolve this conceptual conundrum by grounding governance in mundane activities of coordination. We define governance as reflexive coordination – focusing on those ‘critical moments’, when routine activities become problematic and need to be revised, thus, when regular coordination itself requires coordination. Regulation, in turn, can be understood as targeted public or private interventions aiming to influence the behaviour of others. With this distinction between governance and regulation, we offer a conceptual framework...

/pdf/between-coordination-and-regulation-finding-the-governance-1p3y29babx.pdf

Between coordination and regulation: Finding the governance in Internet governance

Visions of the future are omnipresent in current debates about the digital transformation. This introductory article and the full special issue are concerned with the function, power, and performat...

/pdf/future-imaginaries-in-the-making-and-governing-of-digital-1utu6vc15h.pdf

Christian Katzenbach

Papers

Algorithmic content moderation: Technical and political challenges in the automation of platform governance

Between coordination and regulation: Finding the governance in Internet governance

Future imaginaries in the making and governing of digital technology: Multiple, contested, commodified:

Weblogs und ihre Öffentlichkeiten

Die Zukunft der Kommunikationswissenschaft ist schon da, sie ist nur ungleich verteilt