We Are All Prometheus Now

Ready for review. The ideas in this essay crystallized after watching Cory Doctorow’s recent lecture, The Coming War on the General Purpose Computer, which I strongly recommend.

We believe that in a free society, government enforces laws that may restrict actions, based on the need to protect safety and social order. We may expect that there be limited prohibitions on reading and listening -- but only in extraordinary circumstances, tied to what we think will keep us safe, whether related to fears of terrorism or concerns about child pornography. And yet, our moral intuition is that the freedom to do can be curtailed, but for us to be free, our government can't punish thought itself.

Computers challenge our ability to differentiate between a law that infringes the freedom to do something with the freedom to think about it. This matters because computers are now the way we acquire and transmit knowledge.They can be combined with 3-D printers to manufacture physical objects and devices. They can run DNA synthesis machines and engineer microorganisms. Laws can be enforced to prevent the use of computers to copy movies, build counterfeit or dangerous goods, or produce patented or dangerous microorganisms. But, how compatible are these laws with what we think is a free society?

When we think about computers, we don't usually think about what computers actually are, just what they do -- the software they run or the content they display. The computer is just a passive, invisible entity. We don't even call most of them "computers." We use words like "smartphone," or “tablet” instead of “tablet computer.” Kindles and Nooks are "e-readers." Playstations are "game consoles," even though they are basically desktop PCs, and we usually ignore the computers in Blu-Ray players and inside cars. But, these are all programmable, universal computers.

Universal computers are special, because they can execute any algorithm. Algorithms are just thoughts that have been broken down to pieces, a set of process and rules that can be described using logic. What algorithms computers can run is limited only by the speed of their circuitry and capacity to store data. Computers are "thinking machines," even though that’s a concept that usually comes up in exotic, metaphysical discussions of artificial intelligence and silicon consciousness, the stuff that Kurzweil writes about. The reality of computers seems much more mundane; they just follow concrete, logical instructions. But, computers are already thinking for us, if not exactly like us. Computers execute our thoughts, or someone else's or a collective's thoughts, and then display the results.

The "Information Age" is characterized by the word "information." This is interesting, because information is a long, Latin-rooted word. “Information” is a word that removes itself intellectually from our living experience. "Knowledge" means basically the same thing, but it's not used as much. This is because "Information Age" is basically a marketing device, used to sell people on the idea that money can be made by buying and selling information. The word "knowledge" is bound up with "knowing," to human thought. Commercializing “thought” would be a tougher sell. We intuitively recognize that to control the marketplace of thought, means controlling thought itself. That’s actually the basis of marketing, really, but we don’t like to think about what that implies, so we prefer the word “information.” But the choice of word can’t avoid reality.

The problem is that the information the eager Information Age marketer sells is translated into a series of logical processes, run through a universal computer, and turned into numbers that can be stored and displayed. A universal computer can run any algorithm with which it is programmed. Duplicating what it has stored in its memory, even when it’s only cached there temporarily, is really easy. This means that profits can’t be extracted from the scarcity of information.

In an attempt to make the information artificially scarce, sellers have tried increasingly sophisticated mechanisms to control it. But, these are consistently foiled again and again. Universal computers can run the algorithms that defeat the restrictions, because they have to be leaky for the information to be distributed and read by paying customers. Information sellers respond by developing restrictions that are increasingly fundamental to the operation of the computer. For example, software can be silently installed in computers that secretly reports on unauthorized access when a computer goes online, or even shuts computer’s operating system and ability to function entirely. As Cory Doctorow says, "digital rights management always converges on malware." This is especially common in computers that are marketed as smartphones and tablets, or embedded in systems like DVD players, a de-functioning disguised by avoidance of the word “computer.”

Anything thought builds though, thought can undo. All the most sophisticated means of locking up information can be broken. The knowledge of how to circumvent can be restricted by punishing people who come up with the algorithms, censoring the websites that publicize them, and watching those who seek them. But, an algorithm running on a computer can go around all these measures. All it takes is knowledge and thought.

This is why copyright law in the digital age is inconsistent with what we think of as being a free society. Enforcement means making circumvention illegal, and that means limiting thought, punishing it when it goes out of bounds, all to support an already obsolete business model. Not to mention that the enforcement can’t prevent anything. It can only go after people after the fact, after the locks have been broken, and information runs free.

There will be harder questions as computers do more stuff, and we try to stop people from 3-D printing and synthesizing microbes in ways that we fear will harm safety and social order. But, when we try to restrict the use of computers to do these things, we need to recognize first, that our countermeasures will fail, and second, all we can do is punish anyone caught after the restrictions are already broken. And, in weighing the laws we want as punishment, we need decide how enforcing them sacrifices our own personal freedom to think, in what we believe is a free society.

-- BahradSokhansanj - 17 Jan 2012