For her Distinguished Faculty lecture, Jane Fountain spoke about how the state (ie, the governmental institutions) has adopted and adapted to internet technologies. She began with some quotes to show how far off people have generally been with respect to predictions about technological change, both in terms of excessive optimism and pessimism, provided some definitions regarding technology and the state, and provided a broad overview of how the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations have approached internet change.
Her central point was that technology had not produced a "revolution" in government. The first forays into technology were driven by the idea that certain segments of the population, like students, could visit a portal and get information from across many agencies of the government. This ran afoul of the fact that budgets and oversight are managed by agency and cross-agency initiatives tended to produce infighting and turf-protecting. Subsequent efforts were to standardize implementations of IT and document how purchases were related to goals. This led to recognition of common needs across agencies and the development of portals like grants.gov and benefits.gov.
She ended with a very abbreviated summary of how other governments, like Venezuala, are using technology less for public information than propaganda. Or China, that pays people to engage in social media in support of the central structures. Her take was that the tension persists between the duality of technology providing states with more increasing ability for control and individuals with tools for personal freedom and expression.
I asked her about the increasing corporatization of the Internet:
In Cluetrain Manifesto, the authors cite the decentralized structure of the internet, that put the smarts in the endpoints and left the middle to only pass packets, as being central in producing the transformative character of the resulting changes. A phone company would never have built a network that way: the put the smarts in the middle and left the users with just a dumb terminal. As corporate interests take over the internet and technology, and increasingly model it on centralized control that limits which apps you can use and which protocols are allowed, do you see the further innovation of the internet having as much potential for transformation?
Short answer: no. The "wild west" days of the internet revolution are coming to an end as entrenched interests find ways to extract rents and we'll be less likely to see revolutionary changes going forward.
Someone else asked a great question about the Arab Spring and the Occupy movements, and how technology played a role in those. Her fundamental response was that although technology provided many ways for people to organize for protesting and disrupting institutions, it did not provide an easy path toward building the kinds of institutions that you need for stable, democratic governance. It's easy to tear things down, but its much harder to build.
I guess, I'm still a bit more hopeful. The Free Software and open culture movements have come a long way in 20 years. She began with a great quote by John Perry Barlow
With the development of the Internet...we are in the middle of the most transforming technological event since the capture of fire. I used to think that it was just the biggest thing since Gutenberg, but now I think you have to go back farther.
which she used as an example of hyperbole about the impact of the internet. But I still believe that's closer to the truth than not. A kid today with a smart phone has access to more and better information than the President of the United States did 20 years ago. We've still only begun to see where that takes us.
- Steven D. Brewer's blog
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