FIXING THE INTERNET What does this mean?

In  2020-2022, the internet played a dramatic role in communication of misinformation, and coordination of activities that threatened the stability of our political system.  There have been hearings in congress confronting specific leaders of internet companies,  with no intelligent response, and a general tendency across the society to blame the companies and the "internet" in general for current problems.  If the internet  is the problem then it should be possible to analyze the issues and fix them.  This is explored in this and several succeeding posts.

What is the "internet"?  A communication system.  A network of connections between computers managed by other computers that transfer messages according to specific addresses.  The idea to connect a group of computers to provide interaction between users was developed by a research arm of the US Dept of Defense ARPA (now DARPA) in 1969.  (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet   https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet/   To achieve this goal,  four elements are needed: 1) a group of computers/users to connect, 2) wires to transmit digital signals from one unit to another, (or some other method), 3) a system of addresses the switching computer uses to direct the messages, and 4) a program that performs the switching functions and sending the messages to the correct locations.  These addresses or "domains" are assigned by ICANN and have yearly renewal fees.  (Some domain names are so favorable to businesses that they command high prices.) 

Everything else is a  human elaboration of the potential that these elements provide.  Three expansions of the "internet" are important: 1) the "world wide web" (= www.) (1989-90) is a change in the method of addressing associated with expanding the digital content from purely text symbols to audiovisual information, and "hypertext", the placement of addresses within documents to other addresses.  2) This was associated with new user programs,  "browsers", to search and navigate the web more easily.  A vast expansion in the number of nodes/users occurred between 1980 and the present.  This has required a new address system with more capacity to address the increasing number of nodes. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6 ).  and 3) Organizations manage the cable/computer systems that transmit the information globally.  The network of cables/computers is not owned or controlled by one country or company. (https://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/basics/who-owns-internet1.htm )  But several major companies have part responsibility, the "upstream providers" including UUNET, Level 3, Verizon, AT&T, Qwest, Sprint, IBM.  Most of these are telecommunications companies in the US, and this poses interesting questions about management of the system.  These companies have providers that deliver communication to local sites,  but the "upstream" is open to all users (at least in theory) and none of them has full control, and so must work with the others to get access to the entire system.  These companies do not appear to exert any control over the distribution of messages in their networks,  and censoring, as in China, occurs at the entry points for data within the country's networks.  The main organization and linkage of the internet system is not regulated or controlled by any single country.  The internet is a complex communication system which delivers digital messages between addresses owned by users along world wide networks, managed by private companies.  The sending and receiving of these messages is controlled by local users with computer programs, browsers, etc. that manage the creation, search, and distribution onto the web. That is the definition of the operations of the  internet. 

The development of the world wide web and browsers allows all types of digital audio-visual information to be sent from one sender to one or more receivers selectively, individualized management of distribution of messages.  Every address/user is capable of sending all the information and types of messages it wishes to send. Every address/user is capable of receiving all the information and types of messages it wishes to receive.  The types of information sent require high rates of data flow as when movies or live TV etc are transmitted in real time.  Not all users have the data flow capacity to receive this,  but networks have been expanding to meet this demand.  (All messages are data encoded digitally, in a different encoding method from tv video digital encoding or radio transmission, which were previous forms of information transfer that were not point to point,  but point to group.)  Every message includes both content and data on sender and receiver.  This transmission data often is as valuable as the message content to businesses or other users.

Portals:  The switching computers that manage sending messages are capable of recognizing portals:  addresses which require additional codes for transmission,  or addresses that favor links to specific types of information.  The ability to control access allows charging for access (paywalls) and also provides the basis for securing sites from intrusion for data access. (Hacking)   Portals provide control of flow in and out for various uses:  content creation,  secrecy,  fee for use of portal, etc.  These features of the internet are created by human users,  not the structure per se.   Any user may block access to his site from other sites,  but the origin may be hidden or disguised. The following issues have emerged as key problems,  each of which requires solution(s).

ISSUE #1 Data content: ownership.  Whose data is it?  Does the sender own the data sent?  Receiver?  Jointly?  Is the data secure?  Is it encoded transmission by VPN?  Is the node protected by a "firewall"?   Portals allow some control,  but even youtube has no complete ability to control flow.  Messages may be encoded (as when adding CRM)  to prevent duplication,  etc.  Piracy of digital data has been a continuing issue, on internet or other modes (CDs) and programs like "bit torrent" were widely available for pirating by individuals, but have generally been suppressed.

ISSUE #2: PRIVACY AND SECURITY The data associated with transmission and reception is used by the switching computer system and can be stored for use by either node.   How much control does the sender have in limiting this information?  Data about content, sender, and receiver are frequently sold by "social media" companies as the basis for personalized advertising, and a lucrative business. Specific transmission programs ("cookies") are added to transmitted messages in order to monitor the activity of the receiver.  These are hacking into your computer to gain information access acknowledged by the sender at times, and recent public reaction has led to some states in US requiring notification  and permission for cookies.  The user can always prevent or delete cookie access,  but many commercial nodes will not operate without accepting them.  In addition to marketing,  the data provides information on activities that may involve illegal actions and be the basis for criminal prosecution.  Therefore the extent of law enforcement search is also an issue.   Networks can hide the source of the transmission.  Some sites specifically block access to search engine discovery of their addresses,  to make them inaccessible, i.e. DARK WEB.

ISSUE #3: DATA CONTENT: REAL INFORMATION AND ILLEGAL INFORMATION  Is the data sent from a node "real" or "true"?  There is no basis for authenticity beyond knowing the sender, and that the message has not been corrupted. There is no way to ensure the data is true, any more than ensuring a person's direct speech is true.  Why people expect this to be different on the Internet is a great mystery.  It appears that public transmission carries with it assumptions about messages carried over from print and TV media of previous eras; these media sources went to great lengths to support editorial claims that they were unbiased.  The same process occurs on the internet complicated by the assumption that the data is coming from "someone I know" and "they are telling the truth".  Real people commit fraud everyday in person or over media, and sometimes get away with it.

ISSUE #4: FINANCIAL Can you make money from the internet?  Can someone steal money from you? The node to node access allows a more  detailed advertising platform than any other medium.  Direct commerce from node to node is also possible.  Producing content and posting it along with advertising is one model, developed by Youtube.  Selling location reference data to business sites is the method, developed by Google Maps.  Search engines develop complex algorithms to favor sites in order of discovery and charge them to be favored in this way.  These are a few of the many possible legal methods of internet business.  Stealing money occurs by selling a nonexistent product and collecting money without delivery;  the more frequent method is hacking or phishing for personal information that allows access to  financial data that can be ysed to steal assets.  Money is digital.  Most savings and holdings are in the form of digital accounts.  Protection of this information is protection of your money,  and vice versa.  Tarnoff blames the economics of the internet for its problem and offers the plan to make it something like a public utility.  I don't that that addresses all the issues.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/27/opinion/technology/what-would-an-egalitarian-internet-actually-look-like.html

ISSUE #5 DATA CONTENT: The political and social impact of the internet. The great paradox of the internet is its apparent ability to unite different individuals to create a more diverse and socially balanced culture.  Tart calls the group agreement of certain perceptions "consensus consciousness",  a social construct.  Access to internet expands this construct,  but also enhances the isolation and silo-ing of subgroups.  This "internet clanning" can be compared to an organization like the original Klan, a feature of human activity enhanced by the net in ways not anticipated.  This has been utilized for political organization,  and for non political activities like "flash mobs" and impromptu musical performances.   The government  attempts to put the responsibility for control onto the private access companies;  ironic because the US government intervenes in other countries' rebellions, but is not happy with internal divisions.

ISSUE #6 PARTICIPATION what happens to the person who participates online, how are they changed or managed by the interaction, and sites they engage?  Is this influenced by age?  Is it more important with children?  Is there internet addiction? How can individuals manage their use of the interaction?    How should this use be controlled by each person?   Is it possible to remove yourself from the internet once you have entered?  All these issues were drastically exaggerated by the Covid pandemic when an un-accoutable expansion of internet use and interaction occurred to replace direct in person interaction.

Each of these topics will be addressed in a separate posting.  But there is a clear underlying theme:  The fundamental nature of the organization of the internet is the control by each node.  When China or other countries attempt to interfere with exchange of information,  government computers must block messages for control,  and draconian punishments are needed to limit or control diffusion of information.  In a democratic country with a constitutional protection of free speech,  the government definition of "dangerous speech" or "treason speech" is  difficult to define and manage.  Trying to offload this task onto non-governmental companies avoids the political responsibility and will ultimately fail, as it has so far.  Individual behavior on the internet must have legal consequences as speech does in public discourse,  and anonymous  messages of hidden origin must be suppressed.  In a true democracy,  only individual responsibility and legal recourse can control the safety of the system.  The EFF (https://www.eff.org/ ) is organized to safeguard individual rights with varying success,  but the issue of collective safety of the society has no obvious protector.  Both Brookings and Heritage foundations have explored positions on this issue.

https://www.brookings.edu/research/why-protecting-privacy-is-a-losing-game-today-and-how-to-change-the-game/

https://www.heritage.org/press/heritage-foundation-responds-preventing-online-censorship-executive-order

REFS

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/22/what-is-the-internet-13-key-questions-answered

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/12/18259700/world-wide-wide-turns-30-www-anniversary-favorite-sites

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/15/how-the-internet-was-invented-1976-arpa-kahn-cerf

https://starry.com/blog/inside-the-internet/what-was-the-first-web-browser

Abortion and patriarchy

WHY ABORTION?

Though the anti-abortion movement defines itself as “PROLIFE” in fact many of the positions taken by this group are anything but:  they generally favor the death penalty for murderers, and sometimes for other criminals as well;  some members of the group see no inconsistency in killing doctors who carry out abortions.  So what is so pro life about these views?

Also puzzling is the way that this issue has become a central one in recent American political debate.  It would be nice to think that our political system is so sensitive to the issues of the unborn child that it would center a major focus on this issue.  But in fact the politicians put almost no interest into children’s needs,  the preservation of the family, or any other core issue for children.  (In case you haven’t noticed, children can’t  vote.)  So why is abortion such a central issue?

A clue may come from the rhetoric of their opponents the “PROCHOICE” group.  According to this group the issue is not about life or death, but about a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body, ie, whether she chooses to have a baby after impregnation or not.  (In some versions, this even extends to whether she can choose to become impregnated, ie learn about certain birth control methods or not.)  If this is not about the lives of children, then what is so important about whether women can choose to have babies or not?

One answer comes readily from Anthropology:  the determination of control of reproduction is crucial to the definition of your family cultural system.  Typically there are two basic types, matriarchy and patriarchy, and variations on these.  In matrilineal systems, the woman bears  children by as many males as she chooses, who carry her name,  and the control of delineation of the family is down the female line.  The choice of reproduction is under female direction and control. 

In the patrilineal system, the woman bears children to a specific man,  who carry his name, and delineation of family including property etc is down the male line.  The choice of reproduction must be under male control in this system.  If women have control of reproduction, then males cannot entirely be sure that the children the mother bears are genetically their children!

Lest this seem like an abstract lesson in anthropology, please be advised:  in 2002, far more children were born to single household women in the USA than to women who had husbands.  This was not restricted to any ethnic or socio-economic group but was seen across the entire social spectrum of American women.   There is every indication that the trend is increasing in 2003.

If we look at recent presidential administrations in the USA a similar trend appears:  The Clinton administration  was probably the most “matriarchal” administration in our history as measured by 1) the single parent status of his mother, 2) the powerful role of females in his cabinet, ( including some that didn’t make it, like Zoe Baird) and 3) the powerful political role that his wife played in his administration.  (One could argue that N Reagan played a similarly powerful role in the Reagan administration, but that was never allowed to be overt or publicly acknowledged.  Which is typical of strong women’s roles in partriarchal systems.) By contrast, the Bush 2 administration shows many indications of being more partriarchal in values and attitude than any we have seen in a long time.

In the absence of evidence refuting this,  I would argue that abortion is the issue most suited to test the position of the individual on the matriarchy/patriarchy scale in current politics and is being used as such.  It is the test case for the ambiguous “family values”—which does not mean having a caring and loving family which is rare in politicians who spend so much of their time away from family ----  but “PATRIARCHAL family values”.  It is interesting that the Republicans have not seized on the fact that the Mormon culture is one of the strongest patriarchal systems in present day USA.  They do not seem in a hurry to point out that many of their initiatives lead toward  Mormon society.

The Supreme Court has removed the "right" of adult women to choose to terminate a pregnancy for the entire nation.  This decision has now shifted to the states, where the view of matriarchy and patriarchy is very different in different places.  Will this lead to a more personal approach to defining the basis of our culture?  I don't think so.  If we are to be one country,  we have one culture, and that is not currently the case.

 

Return of the Hunter-Gatherers

 RETURN OF THE HUNTER GATHERERS?

Anthropologists have distinguished two different cultural forms in human civilization that appear to have an evolutionary sequence. The earliest, often called "Hunter Gatherers" (HG), is characterized by a nomadic existence in which the group hunts game and gathers roots and naturally occurring plants as their food supply. These cultures have strong communities, religious rituals focused around the magic of the hunt, and the behavior of the animals hunted, with a strong emphasis on intuition and/or chance. There is a lack of  hierarchical political organization and separate bands deal with each other with distrust, except under special circumstances. Many have rituals of intense emotional ecstasy, sometimes chemically induced, alternating with periods of quiet rest. They have been labeled "Dionysian."

The alternative form of social organization is agricultural (A). The development of a planned, harvested foodsupply has several implications for social organization. It is no longer necessary to roam seeking game when a local plot of land is sufficiently productive. Awareness of planting seasons using astronomical observations becomes important  to maximize the growing season. Social organization benefits such societies by providing increased labor and the capacity for irrigation and tools for agricultural activities. Such societies often develop hierarchical political organizations and complex differentiated social roles within the hierarchy. These serve the function of protecting the agricultural lands from outsiders, and providing organizational support for the larger communal needs of irrigation, etc. The political head of such cultures is often also identified with the religious or spiritual head since the dependence on the seasons and other phenomenon of the natural world is  crucial to agricultural societies. The religious orientation of such societies tends to be focused on the land, with a sacrificial and supportive relationship to a higher Deity  to maintain the productivity.  This form of organization has been called “Apollonian”

Diamond, in his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel, puts forward the thesis that there are certain features of agriculturally organized societies which eventually allow them to overpower and dominate hunter gatherer societies. He cites examples from a number of situations, including European conquest of Indian and other native peoples in the 18th and 19th Century as support for his thesis.

Contemporary social organization in developed countries continues to follow this agricultural model. Political units, educational units, and social support systems are often land-based, to geographic markers. In most countries, voting is organized around geographic regions. Most countries also organize their educational functions around geographic domains.  By 1940, less than half the counties in the United States had agriculture as their primary source of income, and certainly by the year 2003, a much smaller percentage of counties are primarily agricultural in nature.  Which means that there is no absolute basis for maintaining this organization.

 Industrialization and Trade complicate this anthropology view.   There is evidence of active trading patterns in ancient cultures. Much of the dissemination of traditional technologies and inventions occurred through trading patterns. It requires some agricultural development to free up enough population to produce the various goods necessary to accomplish trade, so trade is dependent on the formation of a prior agricultural organization. Predominant trading countries develop from regions in which the agricultural pattern has been established. Trade also enables sharing of agricultural production.

Industrial development is different.  Freeing up resources in a society for the production of tools and machines presupposes the ability to feed the society, and exempt individuals from the daily activity of hunting and gathering or growing.  (In the Pacific Northwest, there was adequate available free time for fairly sophisticated development of the production of various goods and equipment. In that society, artistic creativity and the design of everyday objects became a significant part of the culture of the society.) The highly organized agricultural societies of Europe and North America went on to develop the full industrial revolution of the 18^th-19^th  Century. It is also interesting that the early development of industrial production depended on power sources, particularly water and rivers, in some ways similar to agriculture. As the result, early industrial development was locally based and locally controlled. Even in the somewhat complex industrial society of the 20th Century, certain features  remain.  Detroit has been identified as the “motor city”, due to its concentration of production of motor vehicles in the United States, though this production is distributed over a much wider area, and the localization of executive and management groups in the automotive industry in Detroit is an anachronism,  sustained by attachment to the "fertile soil" for the development of ideas.  Industrial development within agricultural societies uses an agricultural conceptualization of production, including "seasons" of new products, and other features, though the actual  production do not depend on seasonal variation.

Trends in the late 20th Century suggest that this preeminence of the agricultural model and the values associated with it are waning. Freidman’s book, The Lexis and the Olive Tree, the common interests across geographical boundaries s stronger than the interests or needs within a local geographical area.  At other times the traditions and interests of the local area tend to challenge or predominate.  An inconsistent change from a localized agricultural production to a different non-local one is inconsistent. Businesses have increasingly become global as opposed to national. This is true for large multi-national corporations, but equally for smaller organizations and even for some farm-production companies whose market now extends far beyond their local region. France has recently been criticized by the World Trade Organization for its protectionist stance toward its farm industry and an attempt to maintain the economic viability of its local farming against outside pressures from lower-cost producers. When migratory labor from other countries is necessary for farm production in certain areas of the United States it creates the  paradoxical situation of a nomadic group of people providing agricultural services without any direct equity or historic connection to the land on which they are working. An historic example of this phenomenon is the use of slave labor in the Southern United States and Caribbean and Latin America for the development of agricultural production in those new areas. The various revolutions and political reorganizations in these different regions have left a wide range of solutions. In some cases, there is an agricultural-like commitment of the original slaves to the agricultural land that they have worked, while in other places they have been displaced off the land into the general society.

Along with the change from local distribution to wider distribution in industrial production comes an increased emphasis on marketing. At first, this can be seen as simply an effort to expand trade and distribution of locally produced goods. In recent years, marketing in the broader sense has taken on a dominant role in business to direct the process of production and design of business activity, rather than serving it. This observation is not intended as a value judgment, but an accurate description of shifts in the current orientation of manufacturing and some other elements of the economy. Marketing resembles hunting more than it does agriculture. Each encounter in the marketing process represents an event with economic potential which is immediate, though some planning and organization is involved, as in hunting. Marketing does not depend on season factors except where established holidays (i.e., Christmas and Easter) drive it. Marketing often carries with it as in the case of real estate or large capital expenditure a "big kill" mentality in which a few successful sales ("kills") are sufficient to maintain the hunter-marketer and/or the associated organization for the entire year. This is especially true in certain sectors of the financial industry; investment banking shares more similarities with hunting than it does with the long-term view of nurturing or developing a product.

Do these factors, a) decline in local factors in society in production and labor, and b) marketing as a driving force in capitalist market economies, change the culture to one favoring "hunter gatherers"? It seems unrealistic to use descriptors from archaic society to describe the more complex evolution of the contemporary economic scene. However, it is interesting to notice that some of the features of organization that are traditionally seen in hunter-gatherer societies are re-emgerging. Some characteristics include: 1)An increasingly nomadic existence in which primary connection with a specific area of community or land is lost. This includes both legal and illegal immigration, and the tendency for next-generation family members to be widely distributed within a country. 2)An decreasing attachment to a lifelong commitment to a specific work environment, whether this be the land or corporate work environment. 3)Increasing emphasis on immediate economic compensation in encounter-based events, rather than a cycle of agricultural or industrial production. In order to control inventory, supply chain procedures for rapid manufacture of equipment respond to the sale of the equipment. This produces a whole new direction in which the rate and direction of the production process is  responsive to the marketing event. The role of labor, human services, in the economy becomes more event based than agri-cycle labor. 4)Decreased commitment to religious and spiritual-based activities which focus on a traditional time-bound seasonal view of religion.  There is a malaise about this loss of commitment to traditional spiritual/religious activities which are replaced by more personal and ecstatic forms of observance. 5) The commitment to a primary social group ends with the loss of local lifestyle.  Identification with the large company has also been eroded.  The immediate social group where the person is located becomes a source of reference, the family continues to be another, and there is confusion about one’s primary commitment.

September 11th (2001) challenged the country to look at its primary values. An interesting response sometimes heard was that the heroism of those fighting in World War II was echoed in the heroism of the Fire Fighters and Policemen who were involved in rescue efforts. (Many of these public workers live in close-knit family oriented communities which maintain the qualities of a local, family culture more than  the rest of the country.) When American citizens went to fight in World War II, they were clear about the "home land", the land where they came from, that they were defending, the family that they were defending, and a particular image of the United States that they were defending. By contrast, the "Department of Homeland Security" attempts to activate this image of local values that no longer exist.

The US must develop a new cultural image of  living together. This involves the complex process of living together at the daily level over time, and cannot be generated on a conscious rational basis. We can examine the basic human values that must be addressed  in order to make this new culture viable and stable. Prominent among these is a basis for human affiliation and support.   Creating support systems not based on agricultural locality is a problem.  This is well documented in Bowling Alone.  We struggle in our current culture to find ways to define these non-family support groups and it is clear that a way of doing this is necessary since the family is rarely accessible on a day-to-day basis due to our Nomadic nature. Television, media and other other surrogate experiences do not provide the real human contact that is essential, but have begun to be used as substitutes with unknown consequences.  It is worth mentioning in this regard that the use of Internet and telephone contact can facilitate family connection, but it appears that humans require ongoing face-to-face interaction to build a full sense of social and emotional support. This problem has been exaggerated by two and half years of relative isolation in the covid pandemic, which has intensified the problems of direct contact, and shifted the country even more toward "remote interaction".  This cannot be the realistic solution by itself. 

It is a failure of imagination to think that we can go back to the agriculturally grounded social system that was prevalent in the United States before World War II. Current trends suggest an evolution toward a more hunter gatherer style of society, but realistically, beyond the characteristics that we share with that more traditional society are a variety of other characteristics in our world that bear no resemblance to that of hunter gatherers, including global communications, marked diversity of population, etc.  What is needed is an evolving social dialogue that examines the areas in which we are failing to integrate our culture. In this process,  perhaps we can develop a new consensus culture which  benefits from an understanding of the unmet human needs and the task of the social system to find new solutions for them.