CODE AND OTHER LAWS OF CYBERSPACEI203 Social and Organizational Issues of Information

Administrative

Class on Feb 26th: Meet in Room 110

Mailing List!

Reading Response Papers Thursday

Office Hrs Coye and Judd: Thursdays 4-5:30 Coye: Tues 4-5:30 Judd: Wed 2-3 (PhD office)

Topics

Agents/Bots/Foibles

Norms and Law

Privacy

Code as Law

Information Systems as Agents

Solving routine information processing Ordering a pizza… Finding information on a specific

website… Suggestions based on preference tracking

(product brokering)…

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Human versus Bot “foibles”

Human Change our minds on the fly Abandon “rules” when it might hinder

progress or larger goals

Bots Fairly blind to complex social trade-offs

and competing goals What is wrong with a price-maximizing

and rational bot?5

A new problem? Bots and other software tools echo

machines and industrialization in earlier eras.

Doing mundane tasks for humans (printing press, assembly line machines)

Representing humans (voicemail, junk mail)

So what is different, and why make such a big deal about it?

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Norms

What is a ‘norm’?

“Rules of conduct which specify appropriate behavior in a given range of social contexts”

Anthony Giddens 1997

Folkways Mores Taboo Law

Norms and ‘Code’

How are ‘norms’ created and followed on the web?

Norm development and time

Negotiating norms between designers and users

Privacy and Surveillance

Privacy in Social Science

Explored for decades from many different social theoretical perspectives

Erving Goffman: privacy is part of any ongoing social relationship where individuals are viewed as attempting to control perception.Thus, ‘privacy’ is control over one’s persona

We could argue, then, that the current IT privacy debate is partially a reframing:Privacy is control over one’s personal data

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Privacy and Surveillance13

Broader concerns about Surveillance and Privacy in IT Monitoring what you do now

Government (Carnivore, wiretapping) Hackers/Identity Theft Company Interests (P2P monitoring,

corporate emails)

Finding out what you have done Googlestalking Electronic records

What are the implications of broadcasting and/or redistributing information that we find “publicly”?

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Normative ‘violations’

Code as Law

IP and “power” in code

Lessig believes that many IP issues could be solved (or can only be solved) through the ‘code’ itself– not just law. Do you agree or disagree, and why?

Does the ‘code as law’ argument really reduce power? How does it relate to stratification (social hierarchies based on class, income, etc)?

…and do not forget your Reading Response Papers!

Next Class: Group Discussion of Social Issues of ‘Web 2.0’