Disruptive Technology

Mathias Klang

Democracy & other mythical creatures

e-

Disruptive Technology

Life is organized around technology

(and always has been)

What Churchill Understood

The disruption occurs when the technology, which is introduced

effects the social arrangements around

which we build our lives

Impulse Control

Structuration Theory

In this thesis the theory of structuration launched by Giddens (1984) and later developed and adapted

(DeSanctis & Poole 1994, Orlikowski 1992, Orlikowski 2000, Orlikowski & Robey 1991) is used as an outer framework with which to study the role of power within social systems.

This adapted structuration theory understands that

technology enables, forms and limits the actors’

choices and actions. This should not be seen as a one-

way relationship. It is the actors themselves who

constitute the structures.

Regulation: From Command and Control to

Fuller

What’s wrong with Command and Control?

Lon Fuller

The position of this work is that regulation is every force or external controls exerted upon those to be

regulated.

“the enterprise of subjecting human conduct

to the governance of rules”

Latour, B. (1992). “Where are the Missing Masses?

Sociology of a Few Mundane Artefacts”

Winner, L. (1985) “Do Artefacts have Politics?”

HCI people can think of this as the tyranny of

affordance*

* I want to write an article with this title…

Lessig (1999)

Murray (2006)

…and now for six stories of regulation…

Participation

• The purpose of this chapter is to better understand the political protest activities carried out online and to see whether traditional civil disobedience theory embraces these new forms of political activism.

Conclusion

• The present trend is the use of hierarchical (Murray & Scott 2001) regulation to criminalises DoS attacks and more in the name of terrorism are much too far reaching and seriously hamper the enjoyment of individuals’ civil rights.

Communication

• The purpose of this chapter is to explore the regulation of online communication by exploring the attempts by the regulator to come to terms with the computer virus.

Conclusion

• From the three national approaches to the regulation of the disruptive technology of viruses we can deduce two basic approaches to regulating the phenomenon, these are hierarchical and design-based regulation (Murray & Scott 2001). The design-based control is seen through the use of anti-virus software – this has not been the focus of this chapter.

Integrity

• The purpose of this chapter is to illuminate an example where regulatory structures fail to act in an adequate manner and the solution to the problem is enacted by the socio-technical means in the sense that the solution lies in a combination of technological, organisational and social solutions.

Conclusion

• The form of regulation seen in this chapter is a blend of the design-based and competition-based (Murray & Scott 2001) forms of regulation. As this case study has shown, the lack of hierarchical regulation leads to an opening for competition-based regulation to fill this gap. In this specific case the form which competition-based regulation has taken is one that uses design-based regulation in the form of anti-spyware software.

Property

• This chapter therefore will look at the way in which new environments, such as MMORPGs, challenge existing established principles in property and attempt to re-interpret them to better suit their new environment.

Conclusion

• The forms of regulation most evident in this chapter are the design-based and the hierarchical forms of regulation (Murray & Scott 2001). The design-based regulation is seen in the way in which the software making up the MMORPG environment can be changed to suit the regulatory needs of the platform owners. This is used together with the application of the EULA as a form of hierarchical regulation, which is supported by the courts through the implementation of contract law.

Access

• This chapter therefore studies the creation of an information infrastructure with the express political goal of being freely available for everyone who wants it, to be used in any way the users desire.

Conclusion

• The two forms of regulation seen in this chapter are community-based and design-based (Murray & Scott 2001) regulation. The community-based regulators can be seen in the force of the policy decisions and mindsets of those making technology investments while the design-based regulators are the effects of the lock-in and path dependencies caused by the installed software base.

Autonomy

• The purpose of this chapter is to present censorship theory and practice in relation to the debate of Internet regulation. The chapter will also present the results of some empirical censorship research and look at the growing anti-censorship movement.

Conclusion

• In this case we see three regulators interacting to control user access to information. These are design-based, community-based and hierarchical regulators. The design-based regulators refer to the filtering software employed to block user access, the community-based regulators are the “soft” voluntary policy documents which corporate entities choose to enforce while the hierarchical regulators are the legal actions with both intended and unintended consequences.

Results

I. Regulator seriously adopt the functional equivalency approach to ensure against online discrimination.

II. Users activity without deferring tough choices to experts.

III. Regulator to accept user participation in the regulatory process.

IV. The tolerance of non-conventional uses of technology.

Conclusions

• Where to now?• Activism• Academy