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The Distributed Generation: Technology, Politics, Law | | | I. Conceptual Tools | |
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< | This essay addresses the following question:
How can the things we have learned so far in this course be applied to have useful ideas about dealing with climate change?
One useful conceptual tool introduced at the start of course is the triad of "law, technology and politics," accompanied by the suggestion that these three elements affect each other and are affected by each other in complex ways that vary over time. Parsing the distinction between law and politics is difficult, and some doubt meaningful distinction can be sustained. For the purposes of this essay, I will treat law as a sociological structure that provides constraints and opportunities, analogous to how technological structures provide constraints and opportunities. I will treat politics as the exercise of agency acting within and reshaping these structures. Altering structures of constraints and opportunities alters who has power to do what when. We might, applying a concept from sociology, refer to the combined, emergent system of constraints and opportunities as the political opportunity structure. | >
> | This essay addresses the following question: How can the things we have learned so far in this course be applied to have useful ideas about dealing with climate change? | | | | |
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< | A second conceptual toolset, "pipes and switches," fills in some detail on the way in which the "technology" element, as it pertains to networks for moving bits, is structured today. The internet is made of pipes, which carry bits, and switches, which decide which bits to transmit, when, and to which pipes. Telecommunication companies, finding that control over pipes cannot produce significant profits, have acted politically to obtain laws that assist them in centralizing their control over switches. | >
> | One useful conceptual tool introduced at the start of course is the triad of "law, technology and politics," accompanied by the suggestion that these three elements affect each other and are affected by each other in complex ways that vary over time. A second conceptual toolset is the network metaphor to explain the technology element. In the network metaphor, things are either "pipes" or "switches," things that carry things, or things that send things. | | | | |
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> | Putting these toolsets together creates a model which provides a description of reality, which can be used to generate strategies for change. As a general matter, one simple prediction of this model is that if law and technology interact to produce a system in which control over the network's switches is centralized this will encourage corruption and unfreedom. This essay will now discuss the model's applicability in two issue areas, internet freedom and sustainable energy. | | | II. Applications for Advocacy | |
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< | A. Network Freedom | >
> | A. Internet Freedom | | | | |
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< | These conceptual tools are not just good for generating explanations, but also for generating a strategy for change. They highlight two structuring systems that powerfully affect the network, technology and law. Many people with an interest in social change, perhaps especially those with legal training, seek to cause social change through legal change. This is based on the theory that political activity (I would include impact litigation as well as grassroots mobilization in that category) can change law, which in turn can change the societal distribution of power. However, the way telecommunications laws have concentrated wealth and power in a few telecommunications companies means that a strategy based on legal change is unlikely to succeed. The relevant organs of federal government are too far captured. | >
> | These conceptual tools are not just good for generating explanations, but also for generating a strategy for change. They highlight two structuring systems that powerfully affect the internet, technology and law. Many people with an interest in social change, perhaps especially those with legal training, seek to cause social change through legal change. This is based on the theory that political activity (I would include impact litigation as well as grassroots mobilization in that category) can change law, which in turn can change the societal distribution of power. However, the way telecommunications laws have concentrated wealth and power in a few telecommunications companies means that a strategy based on legal change is unlikely to succeed. The relevant organs of federal government are too far captured. | | | However, in broad terms, one might instead focus on the triad's other structuring principle: technology. It turns out that technology might be used to route around the current legal system's roadblocks to education and its surveillance checkpoints. Thoughtfully developed technology might even, in the long term, sufficiently change the political opportunity structure to enable the realization of a better legal system. Technology might reinforce and expand desired political goods like the freedom to share. |
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