The Trouble With Admitting That We Shape Technology:

We’re Not That Good At It

I want to talk about why I think net neutrality is a microcosm for the endemic problem of cultural and societal approaches to technology.

To do that, I’m first going to lay down some theoretical and historical groundwork, then move on to my larger point, which is this: if we do in fact shape technologies, the debate over net neutrality shows that we are pretty bad at it.

Theoretical Approaches to Technology and Society

What role does net neutrality play in the debate between social constructivism versus technological determinism?

The basic tension here is one of causality: does technology determine human action, or does human action shape technology? In the reductivist world of technological determinism, function follows form — that is to say that how we use technology is determined by the structure of the technology itself. As technologies progress, centralize, and stabilize, the architecture of our technologies determine how their networks operate. Put more simply, technology’s design preempts human agency and dictates the behavior of its users.

In the social constructivist (or technological constructivist) camp, the causality is flipped — it is the users, the network that shape the technologies. Essentially, one can’t fully understand how a society uses a technology without actually understanding that technology’s social context.

So, what, if anything does the debate on net neutrality have to add to this debate?

Well, I’m fairly hard-pressed to think of substantive arguments that show how the debate over net neutrality supports technological determinism’s propositions. (I’m also a bit lost on the question as to if the answer turns on whether net neutrality principles are upheld or not.) Somewhat funnily, but totally unsurprising, the bests arguments for both theories trace back to the beginning of the Internet.

The Technological Determinist Argument

The Internet has always been decentralized: hierarchical structures, such as those that would result from paid prioritization, run afoul to the very fundamental architecture of the Internet. In this sense, upholding net neutrality principles is just function following form.

The Social Constructivist / Technological Constructivist Argument

The Internet’s decentralized architecture is largely a result of human agency and, in a broader social context, the result of distrust and disillusionment with the efficacy of centralized structures and hierarchies.

A Bit of Historical Context

As Johnny Ryan explains in A History of The Internet and the Digital Future, “graduate students at various facilities funded by the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) had been given the task in 1969 of developing the missing communication protocols…[and] also began to establish the informal protocols that would influence interperonsal communications on the Internet in general.” (31) One critically important way in which these graduate students issued notes on developing the protocols was Requests for Comments (RFCs). According to Ryan, they used RFCs “to make the invitation to participate as open as possible, and to minimize any claim to authority…which set the tone for the next half century of Internet culture and initiated the process to define the protocols that govern virtually all data exchange on the planet.” (32)

The graduate students produced the Network Control Protocols, something that controlled communications between the Internet and computers — but it was only for ARPANET, meaning that it wasn’t “an ‘internetworking’ protocol that could tie different machines and networks together.” (33)

Enter Robert Metcalfe. Influenced by some French counterparts, and increasingly frustrated with the consensus approach of other graduate students working on the subject, Metcalfe struck out on his own and created what became known as PUP (PARC Universal Packet). “The PUP network had no capability to control transmission or flow of data…Instead the software protocols running on the connected host computers would control the network.” As Ryan argues:

This moved control over the operation of the network from the connecting infrastructure to the actual devices participating in the network themselves…This internetworking protocol is, in a technical sense, the essence of the Internet and in its priorities and functions can be discerned the cardinal characteristics of the new medium. TCP is centrifugal by necessity, as one of its designers notes: ‘We wanted as little as possible at the center. Among other reasons, we knew quite well that it’s much easier to scale a system that doesn’t have choke points in the middle.’ (38- 39)

From the outset — from the RFCs to the protocols themselves — the structure was intentionally decentralized. Not only can we not understand the Internet as a technology without understanding the mindsets and intentions of its creators, but we also can’t understand the architecture of Internet without examining the social structures and contexts through which it emerged, developed, and progressed.

Back to Net Neutrality

Over 3.7 million comments were submitted to the FCC regarding net neutrality. And from some beginning analysis, it seems that those comments were overwhelmingly in support of upholding strong net neutrality proposals. If anything, this speaks to the larger truth that the users are, in fact, shaping the technologies they interact with on a daily basis. Literally, that’s what is happening.

And that’s part of the problem.

The Trouble With Admitting We Shape Technologies, Not the Other Way

Paid prioritization decouples the Internet as we understand it. And that’s a problem! No one wants to have to pay more for effectively the same service as before. No one wants Internet fast lanes. And no one wants a new start-up to get quashed because it just couldn’t compete and pay-to-play.

But this is the problem. This is how we think of technology!

Even if we are to believe that the overwhelming response in support of net neutrality is evidence for social constructivism, that’s a scary proposition in and of itself! If we are in fact capable of shaping our technologies, and our social structures and context influence the technology’s architecture, net neutrality is case in point the sign of the larger problem: on the biggest technological issues of the day, we are staggeringly narrow-minded.

The world of technology is too insular.

How we think about and speak of technology often seems to be a unidimensional or bidimensional at best. In the first instance, we think of, speak of, and understand technology through technological terms only. In the second instance, we begin to think and speak of technologies in the economic or business contexts.

Net neutrality has all been about fast lanes, what will make your Comcast bill cost more, whether or not Title II is better than Section 706 authority, and whether or not paid prioritization really is a problem.

If the social constructivist argument wins out, if we are in fact able to control and shape technologies — and not the other way around — we must make a concerted effort to be aware about how we think about, how we speak about, and how we approach those technologies.

If those technologies are derived from and are artifacts of our own social architectures and structures, let’s actually think about that for a second. What do we want to see from our technologies? What do we want to intimate about our society from our technologies?

What does it mean if the first way in which think about and approach the issue of net neutrality is an economic one? Probably not a lot. But if the 3.7 million comments are mostly only about economic concerns, that’s pretty troubling. What about concerns for how an Internet without net neutrality would impact us by race? By gender? What does it mean if those societal concerns don’t even enter the conversation?

Now, this isn’t to say that conversations about how technologies impact society don’t happen. That’s a pretty absurd statement: there certainly are a ton of recent examples — see, for example, the conversation around algorithms and their impact on Fergusonand what Twitter might look like with algorithmic sorting of its timelines. While these conversations are good, let’s think about where they are taking place and who is starting them: tech media. They aren’t the problem.

The problem is the everyday user: you and me.

As Tim Wu argued, “the problem with technological evolution is that it is under our control and, unfortunately, we don’t always make the best decisions…technological evolution has a different motive force. It is self-evolution, and it is therefore driven by what we want as opposed to what is adaptive.”

“…it is therefore driven by what we want.”

It probably starts with this premise: we, the users, have to stop thinking of ourselves only as consumers or products when it comes to technology. Doing so pigeonholes us into how we approach technology — we think of the technology itself first, we think of the technology’s economic or business impact second. If what we want from our technologies is something more than just pure technological fancy and something morethan economic output and growth, we are in control of that. If we want our technologies to empower and better our societies and networks, we are in charge of that. If we want the Internet to be the empowering equalizer and a force for social good, we are in charge of that.

So how do we take charge of that? We stop thinking of technology only as technology and start thinking of technology as a reflection and artifact of our own society. In doing so, maybe we’ll get better at expressing and designing technologies and technological structures in ways that better society.