Date: August 9, 1991
From: Comp.org.eff.talk (usenet)
Subject: Reciprocity in Cyberspace, by Robert Jacobson
The following paper was prepared for the "Civilizing Cyberspace"
meeting on law and cyberspace hosted by the CPSR and ACLU (with
support from the EFF, I believe), to be held in Washington, DC, on
June 26-27, 1991.
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Reciprocity in Cyberspace
Robert Jacobson
June 1991
Cyberspace is the term used to express the evolving and expanding
electronic/photonic/neuronic network of computers and similar
communication devices that encircles the globe. In cyberspace, one or
many persons can exchange ideas, in many forms, with correspondents
around the world. But despite the appearance of autonomous action
that such communications, on their face, might suggest, in fact
cyberspace is a designed medium -- and the designers' criteria may
differ substantially and significantly from the expectations of those
who travel cyberspace. In this short paper, I argue that the concept
of "reciprocity," which Webster's defines as "a mutual or cooperative
exchange of favors or priviliges," must become the rallying cry of
those who hold for personal and collective freedom in cyberspace.
An analogy can be suggested by air travel. One can plan to visit
anyplace, at any time, to conduct whatever business or take whatever
pleasure one has in mind. But in fact, one's plans are literally at
the mercy of those who build aircraft and those who operate them.
What appears at first to be a tremendous freedom, the ability to jet
off to distant realms, is in fact highly constrained by the offerings
of aircraft manufacturers and airlines. These purveyors of air travel
are organized into oligopolies and the operations of the individual
firms are largely determined by the formal and informal codes of the
oligopolies. Prices for travel, selection of destinations, and modes
of transport are less at the command of the traveller than of the
sellers of travel. These factors select who can travel by air, at
what time, and to where. The permutations of these factors can appear
manifold, but in fact there are a relatively few combinations and the
air traveler must accept them, buy his or her own plane, or take a
bus.
So it may be with cyberspace. Large entities, manufacturers of
computer and communications equipment, network operators, and
information-service vendors pretty well define the possibilities for
travelers in this new ether. It doesn't always appear so -- the rogue
traveler, whom some would call a bandit, makes his or her presence
known, or is revealed, to a wide public. This is the cracker/hacker
phenomenon, aided and abetted by the forces of law and order,
including the press, in the service of those who otherwise control the
means of telecomputing. We mistake the occasional lapse in the order
as a sign of freedom. But the lapse is very infrequent and usually
gets turned around, one way or another (as law or calls for "ethics")
into a defense of the order.
The notion that "interactivity," which simply means (again according
to Webster) "the ability to act on each other," somehow equates with
freedom is nonsense. I can interact with the U.S. government, Exxon,
or more to the point, an ATM terminal standing in for my bank, but no
one believes that our dealings are in any way equal or that I am
necessarily going to get a square deal. Moreover, if I am wronged, my
chances of righting that wrong are slim to none. It is an ill-founded
idea, too freely propagated on the nets and in the press, that
interactive media are also equitable media. As Vincent Mosco has
illustrated in The Pay-Per Society (Ablex, 1989), my interaction with
the electronic machinery of domination is act of submission.
In contrast, I would like to propose that _reciprocity_ is an
essential criterion that should be incorporated into cyberspace, and
the sooner the better. Reciprocity requires that not only can I
interact with and through the network, but that I be fully apprised of
the who operates the network and how it functions Q and that I, or we
(including my correspondents), be involved in its design and be able
to alter its workings.
I know this is a tall order in a social order that values (perhaps too
greatly) the role of the entrepreneur and the entrepreneur's
inheritor, the corporate manager, in making design decisions
unilaterally. Unilateral power to design, we are taught, fosters
originality and system alternatives. Autonomous decision making,
otherwise known as democracy, gets lip service in our schools but is
seldom acted on in the real world of economic and political power.
Those who enjoy the freedom to design for others seldom give it away.
The more enlightened among the owners may make token offerings of
involvement: they have learned that there is greater power (as, for
example, the Pacific Northwest Indian chief knew) in appearing to
surrender power in a way that ultimately buys compliance. But
genuinely sharing design responsibilities? This is a real threat to
the hegemony that determines our cyberspace possibilities, and the
owners of the means know it.
Still, this principal is one that the rest of us, who do not own the
networks and the technology (machinery and organization) behind the
networks, cannot cease to invoke. It is our one way out of a
technological trap that otherwise binds us tighter and tighter to the
prerogatives of the already powerful. If we have to sing the song, at
least let us write the lyrics.
