Internet 2.0: 6 Degrees of (Hardware) Separation

-- By AndreiVoinigescu - 06 Nov 2008

Table of Contents

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Introduction

The continuing migration of human activity 'online' requires a re-examination of many of the bargains embodied in our social contract--bargains antiquated by the underlying technological change. Debates about intellectual property laws and privacy are, at their core, debates about the right balance between our interests in autonomy, equality, prosperity and security. Consequently, it is hard to overstate the importance of the consensus we reach on these issues. We are balancing fundamental values.

We should not entrust the balancing process to politics as usual. That is to say, we should not allow it to devolve into a bargain between incumbent factions with the resources to capture the political process. We need real grass-roots deliberation. We need an internet architected to curtail the influence of the incumbents--a network where both ownership and control are maximally dispersed.

How Technological Change Threatens Democracy and the Rule of Law

Lawrence Lessig has identified four mechanisms though which human behavior is controlled: laws, social norms, market forces, and physical architecture. Physical architecture is a far more powerful means of regulation than law: physical architecture creates self-enforcing ex-anti constraints, while law can only threaten ex-post punishment and requires a complex bureaucracy to enforce. Laws against drunk driving are less effective then breathalysers hooked to the ignition switch.

For activities conducted over networks, the code than controls the switches defines the physical architecture of the network. It prescribes what can and cannot be done on the network, which communications can get through, which are to be modified (and how), and which are simply not to be forwarded on. Modify the code on enough switches to block the http protocol, and you could have an network where websites no longer exist, but email, VoIP? , torrents and other activities are unaffected. And that's just the crudest example of what you can do when you control the code.

Our ability to modify the physical architecture of the real world is still, fortunately, rather limited. But in a networked world, code is easy to modify. The owner of the switch has almost unlimited control over what is and isn't possible on the network. And, in the Internet as it exists now, ownership of the switches is concentrated among a relatively small number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs), most of whom are commercial entities. This creates an environment where a single ISP (or a few acting in concert) can regulate human behavior much more completely than the most determined police states of the Cold War era ever could. Comcast's unilateral decision to throttle BitTorrent? traffic across its network is a pale hint of what we can expect to see as switch hardware develops to allow real-time deep packet inspection of all network traffic and the owners of the switches become increasingly savvy about the power they control.

Network Architecture as a Check on the Power of Code

The solution to the dangerous concentration of power in the hands of the switch owners cannot be government regulation alone. First, such regulation only transfers the control from ISPs to political incumbents who would undoubtedly be tempted to employ it to consolidate their own power. Second, legal regulation it is only reactive, not preemptive; some switch owners will be willing to risk the consequences of the law if the immediate rewards are large enough. To stop factions from using the unprecedented regulatory power of code in ways that hurt democracy, we must take a page out of The Federalist #10, and create a network where ownership and control of the switches is disseminated as widely as possible.

Building a Commonly-Owned Internet

The current Internet architecture is very hierarchical. It is a network of networks that can be visualized like a pyramid with end-points at the bottom. Groups of end-points (laptops, PCs, internet-enabled cellphones, etc.) connect to a switch at the next layer up, allowing communication between all the end-points connected to that switch. Groups of switches in turn connect to one switch at a higher layer of the pyramid, and so on. Any end-point can thus communicate to any other end-point by climbing up through the levels of switches until it finds a switch that both end-points can reach, and then descending again. End-points never communicate directly with each other.

The hierarchical structure of the Internet is an part a relic of the use of wired links to connect computers together. While wireless (radio) technology

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