Post on 24-Jan-2016
description
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’