Justice On-line: Distributing Cyberspace Fairly
The future is here, science-fiction writer William Gibson is reported to have said, it’s just not evenly distributed yet. Much modern technology, which now seems terribly familiar and mundane, shows that the science-fiction world envisaged two or three decades ago is now in place. We don’t whizz off to faraway galaxies like Captain Kirk in the Enterprise, but then travelling faster than light was always a bit of a fantasy. And, as Woody Allen reminded us, terribly inconvenient as one’s hat keeps blowing off.
But the smooth integration of personal communications and information processing is happening, and is proving to be much more powerful than anyone conceived. Of course, when you see a teenager swapping inanities with her mates over the mobile, it’s less impressive than seeing Charlton Heston in 1968 talking into his wrist radio. But if we focus on the substance, the power of information processing has increased by orders of magnitude in the last half-century.
Gibson’s joke, though, has ramifications. Let’s agree that the future is here. It’s the second clause – that it’s not evenly distributed – that’s potentially worrying. If we take is seriously, then a distributional question is raised, and that becomes a matter of fairness and justice. ICT is different from many technologies as it defines a new space in which political questions can and should be raised. Unequal distributions of access to ICT are a matter of worry in any society in which justice is a value.
This raises the question of what should we do (if anything)? That, given the fast-moving nature of the technology is a very hard question to ask, and a very unwise one to provide a nailed-down answer to. Here’s a better question: how shall we decide what to do? Or: how should we develop just policies?
The research project asks this question, and then answers it. The answers cover a number of different terrains, including the transformation of human life, society, and politics; the centrality of ICT to the conduct of democratic politics; regulation and the free market; the consequences of leaving some people out of the wired world; and, issues such as security, privacy, cyber-crime, and freedom of information that arise when a system is not working quite as it should.
Recent outputs from this project include:
Kieron O’Hara and David Stevens, 'Inequality.com: Power, Poverty, and the Digital Divide', OneWorld Press, 2006.
Kieron O’Hara and David Stevens, ‘Democracy, Ideology, and Process Re-Engineering: Realising the Benefits of E-Government in Singapore’, WWW06, University of Edinburgh, April 2006.
Kieron O’Hara and David Stevens, ‘Comments on Transformational Government: Enabled by Technology’ (February 2006). Advisory paper to Cabinet Office Re: Cabinet Office Document 6683. (In attachment-three pages.)
The above on
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/politics/Research/Project-Cyberspace.php
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