3.1 Critical Issues Methodology
According to aesthetic modelling, all expressive products have common features and this study is no exception. Firstly, they include a medium, the physical means by which the product is expressed. In terms of content, they all include a theme, the orientation and message of the expression. The message is expressed through character or characters within a setting or settings and resolved through a narrative (in the case 'still art', such as painting or sculture, the artist captures a moment of the narrative). Finally, all expressive products have a particular style.
In terms of medium, this study is expressed through the literature in both the printed form and as a virtual document in both plain text and hypertext. The first chapter discussed matters concerning the theme of the study (Social Theory) as well as the setting (the Internet). In the second chapter, discussion was orientated towards character and development with the Internet community as a "generalized Other". In this third chapter an attempt is made to describe, analyze and resolve the critical issues of the narrative. The final chapter represents the denouement of the narrative and includes elaborations for further inquiries. The demands of academic analysis determine the particular style with which this product expression is conducted.
The general theme of social theory refers to the set of problems arising from within and between the science of social systems, regulative laws, cultural expressions and individual morality, that is all rationalization complexes within the social world and all regulative orientations. Tangentially on a meta-theoretical level, it is also has to deal with
the with the relationship with these rationalization complexes and science of artefacts and nature, sensuality and art, metaphysics and psychology. Social theory is thus an extremely broad thematic orientation, not quite as broad as philosophy which literally deals with "everything", but certainly on par with scientific and aesthetic theory.
Given the range of literature that discusses these issues the choice of influences in this study has been primarily a matter of discerning which models offer the greatest levels of internal consistency, precision in data types and procedural logic and secondarily, those which are most adapted for studying within the particular setting of the Internet. With this criteria the thematic message of this study has been mainly derived from the works of Jurgen Habermas and Hannah Arendt; Habermas for the extraordinary high degree of precision and logic, founded on the notion of communicative action and communicative rationality, and Arendt for the interest in political action and political institutions and with an orientation towards freedom.
Unlike most other product expressions, the definition of setting proved somewhat problematic. In most cases definition is relatively simple, enframed by real (and in the case of metaphysical and fantasy expressions, imagined) locations bounded by space and time, matter and energy. Whilst the definition of setting in this study also had to deal with
these issues the matter was further complexified due to the existence of a technological medium adding to the setting's frame. Strictly defined the term "the Internet" refers to networked computers within the TCP/IP protocol suite. This definition however was inappropriate for this study as it included networked computers that do not connect to other hosts (independent "intranets") and it did not include precursor (e.g., NCP) and alternative (e.g., FidoNet) protocol suites. Instead, and whilst not a technically exact definition, "the Internet" for the purpose of establishing the setting of this inquiry is networked computers that connect to other network hosts.
In the review of the characters who act within this setting three broad criteria were established. Firstly, an ontological orientations of the characters (virtual reality), secondly the epistemological orientations of the characters (virtual community) and finally, the psychological orientations of the characters (cyberpunk science fiction). Social theory as a thematic orientation is not necessarily well suited for analysis of character and character development, so an array of alternative theoretical sources were utilized, including phenomenology of technology, symbolic anthropology and psychoanalysis. Further, rather than fragmenting the characters of the Internet into their constitiuent components a deliberate choice was made to analyze the range of characters as a generalized Other with specific emphases based on evident examples of deep character involvement in the shared setting and locations within that setting, a shared notion of culture and community and shared expression of fears and desires.
What was revealed in the analysis of the Internet community's character and development is a matter of some concern. Born of cold-war necessity, developed by irreverant technological idealists, nurtured by the western military alliance and its higher educational institutions in childhood, turned to matters of general education, politics and expression in its adolescence, was initially victorious in a critical confrontation with the legal system, was distributed for mass, commercial and international adoption and since then - and primarily during the course of this study, it may be added - appears to have undergone a period of paralysis of expression and product, cultural impoverishment,
fragmentation, and dilution, increasing imbalances in its relationship to other communities and legal systems and a widespread apathy and increasing lack of involvement in its own institutions. In other words, the Internet community, despite utopian ideals, connectivity, resourcefulness and resilience, is a character in <i>crisis</i>.
Of course, if there was not the central intuition that there were crisis tendancies in the first instance this study would have never been initiated. There would be no point to researching a social theory of the Internet if it was evident in the first instance that the new technology would not cause any disruptions either to the previously existing
state of social systems or cultural lifeworlds. Rather, the combination of mass and international communication, the capacity to provide diverse information on a qualitatively new scale, origin, in multimedia formats and with culture expressions based on irreverance, anarchism and a dystopian view of the future (recognizing that a dystopia is not an anti-utopia, but rather a tragically flawed utopia) - all suggested that a head-on collision with the statutory and soverign laws of nation-states, communities used to being provided information with authoritative screening mechanisms, and a popularist and largely superficial mainstream culture, was inevitable.
In the initial chapter of this study a preliminary description of 'crisis' was provided. It is now opportune to reiterate the key points of that description and elaborate for the purpose of understanding the rest of this chapter. Generally understood, a crisis is a particular type of problem where the seriousness of the issue challenges the very capacity of a character for survival. The use of the term in this sense is very well known from medical parlance and increasingly in terms of ecosystems, both local and global. In typical literature, it represents the dramatic climax of a narrative, the point where conflicts between internal and external competing interests are resolved, where central themes gain their greatest exposure and where motif is most prominent. Political, administrative, economic and commercial systems too can experiences crises as well, representating dramatic challenges in legitimacy, rationality, resources and financial value, respectively.
In this chapter therefore, general and particular examples of recent events (that is, during the course of this study) and conflicting orientations have been carefully chosen that, if not resolved satifactorily will result in increasing dysfunctions in the Internet as a system, debasement in the community as a lifeworld and, positing in advance the importance of the Internet for the future development of modernity, the global political and economic
systems, cultural and individual lives. From this, further derivatives of "crisis" can be made, the terms "critical" and "critique". For this is not just a descriptive study and includes a requirement for seeking resolutions to these problematic trajectories.
The term critical implies the negative and in sense what is meant is that existing procedures, both within the Internet and in external social systems, are woefully inadequate to deal with the sorts of the crisis issues that the Internet is facing and are doomed to failure. However, elaboration of these inadequacies itself is far from sufficient, as this would merely mean an enunciation of a description of the crises and the inability for resolution. Rather, "critical" here is supplemented by the notion of "critique", that a reconstructive approach that recommends substantive changes to
the procedural means of resolution in both the Internet's internal system and external social systems.
Before providing a preliminary review of the critical issues, source material and supplementary methodological texts used in this chapter a note must be made about the stylistic difference in this chapter compared to other literary analyses of crises. As a theoretical text, rather than a historical or fictional narrative, the critical elements are
expressed analytically separate each with definition, examples, recommendations and justifications as a standard template. This means that the chapter is quite large and no specific timetable is posited. This differs from the historical or fictional narrative where the elements occur holistically and usually within a rapid time frame which invariably results in a relatively short section of the overall text.
The general methodological approach for this entire chapter is a comparison between the empirical evidence and case studies and with, using Habermas' approach, counterfactual, universal, and idealized alternatives. To express simply, a counterfactual proposition recognizes that the current situation is not the only case of how the world could have been. The basis of counterfactual reasoning is deeply ingrained with notions of causality with intrinsic relations and transivity, acknowledges preemption and may include temporal assymetry based on context sensitivity and interpretative relevance. In a social theoretical sense, such specificity in counterfactuals are extremely important, because if
claims are made for an alternative to a currently existing situation, precision is required in locating the causes and procedures that generated the existing state of affairs. If this is not done, then it is almost inevitable that a different state of affairs will arise in the implementation of the proposed alternative and that an incorrect evaluation of the affairs has been made in the first place.
[David Lewis, Counterfactuals (1973 [revised printing 1986]; Blackwell & Harvard U.P.]
The second component of the general methodological approach is that of universality of moral reasons and legal rights. Whilst other versions of universal moral reasons have been provided in the past (from metaphysical absolutism to the transcendental formalism of Immanuel Kant), the particular approach used by Habermas is discourse ethics. The determination of whethere a moral claim or norm is justifiable is not through individual assertion, regardless of the degree of moral reasoning employed by the individual, but the pragmatics of intersubjective relations. Whilst discourse ethics beginning from the formal, by not prescribing a priori specific norms, through the procedure of intersubjective deliberation and verification it comes to decisions which are universal and non-contingent, appliciable to all people and, as Klaus Otto Apel emphasizes, necessary for a post-conventional macroethics of a globalized humanity and global
concerns. In this instance, if the principle of universalization is taken away, then moral reasons and legal rights became merely an expression of subjective and collective competing wills - a war of all against all.
[Klaus Otto Apel, Towards a Transformation of Philosophy, G. Adey and D. Frisby, translators, London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1980.
and "A Planetary Macroethics for Humankind: The Need, the Apparent Difficulty, and the Eventual Possibility." In Culture and Modernity: East-West Perspectives, 261-278. Edited by Eliot Deutsch. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991.]
The third component of the general methodological approach is idealization. In the physical sciences and in most cases of modelling this represents an justified approximation of reality suitable for descriptive and, in most cases, evaluative purposes, especially when real-world differences are compared to mathematical forms ("the earth is a sphere"). In the practical world however, that of "making law" or "making artefacts", idealization is actually the inverse, although it is often used in the sense used by the physical sciences to represent those who engage in a selective and imprecise description of a social fact. Rather than providing a "real-world" description of a current state of affairs, whether approximate or precise, the act of idealization is take this real world and posit a ideal, formal alternative. This is subtly different from a counterfactual claim which tends to look more at what currently exists and what could have been the case. A social or aesthetic idealization concerning positing an possibility that may not be reached in reality, but is principle achievable. It concerns the transformation of an ideal into a reality through praxis, the practise of rational actions conducted for their own end to a reality.
In this sense a comparison with utopian literature is unavoidable. Of course, utopian refers to two concepts. Firstly, the notion of an ideal, especially in the realm of social, political and moral criteria. However it also represents something that is impratical and unattainable. Both concepts are embodied in the etymology of the word [Grk: ou = not,
no, topos = place]. With independence from religious discourse, utopian theories gain a particular treatment in the modernist narrative with a plethory of examples in political theory, historical examples and fictional literature. [Monroe Berger. Real and Imagined Worlds: The Novel and Social Science. Harvard University Press, 1977 and Phillip E. Wegner, Imaginary Communities: Utopia, the Nation and the Spatial Histories of Modernity, Univeristy of California Press, 2002]. Within the academic treatment of social theory, an attempt is made to be orientated towards the first definition of utopia, rather than the latter. One particular example of this is the work of Frederich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, whereby a strict distinction is made those who conceived a socialist implementation of society from rational ideas (the utopian) and the those who considered it as a product of material forces (the scientific). Given that Karl Marx and Frederich Engels also posited a utopian society, it would have been fairer to entitle their text, Socialism: Idealist and Materialist, however they too were entrapped by scientism as an ideology. One particular passage from the text stands out as due warning for the challenges of any utopian theory and as an grimly ironic example of the fate that befell the theory itself:
"But the new order of things, rational enough as compared with earlier conditions, turned out to be by no means absolutely rational. The state based upon reason completely collapsed. Rousseau's Contrat Social had found its realization in the Reign of Terror, from which the bourgeoisie, who had lost confidence in their own political capacity, had taken refuge first in the corruption of the Directorate, and, finally, under the wing of the Napoleonic despotism. The promised eternal peace was turned into an endless war of conquest. The society based upon reason had fared no better. The antagonism between rich and poor, instead of dissolving into general prosperity, had become intensified by the removal of the guild and other privileges, which had to some extent bridged it over, and by the removal of the charitable institutions of the Church. The "freedom of property" from feudal fetters, now veritably accomplished, turned out to be, for the small capitalists and small proprietors, the freedom to sell their small property, crushed under the overmastering competition of the large capitalists and landlords, to these great lords, and
thus, as far as the small capitalists and peasant proprietors were concerned, became "freedom from property". The development of industry upon a capitalistic basis made poverty and misery of the working masses conditions of existence of society. Cash payment became more and more, in Carlyle's phrase, the sole nexus between man and man. The number of crimes increased from year to year. Formerly, the feudal vices had openly stalked about in broad daylight; though not eradicated, they were now at any rate thrust into the background. In their stead, the bourgeois vices, hitherto practiced in secret, began to blossom all the more luxuriantly. Trade became to a greater and greater extent cheating. The "fraternity" of the revolutionary motto was realized in the chicanery and rivalries of the battle of competition. Oppression by force was replaced by corruption; the sword, as the first social lever, by gold. The right of the first night was transferred from the feudal lords to the bourgeois manufacturers. Prostitution increased to an extent never
head of. Marriage itself remained, as before, the legally recognized form, the official cloak of prostitution, and, moreover, was supplemented by rich crops of adultery.
In a word, compared with the splendid promises of the philosophers, the social and political institutions born of the "triumph of reason" were bitterly disappointing caricatures."
[Frederich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific First Published: March, April,
and May issues of Revue Socialiste in 1880 Translated: from the French by Paul Lafargue in 1892 (authorised by Engels)
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/soc-utop/]
Thus social theoretical methodology requires exceptional care, when dealing with critical issues and proposing alternatives and even more so when dealing with societies with high technical capacity. The review of the phenmenology technology makes it clear that technologies and institutions can have telic inclinations and different levels of
functional stability. But ultimately it is the moral application of a technology that determines the effect. Technology and institutions thus are an amplifier of moral action, whether for good or for evil, hence Hannah Arendt's insistence that political action must be orientated for <i>freedom</i> - and not just rationality (although it will be more
succesful it is), not just nationality (although political action occurs with the intention of sovereignity) and not just for class interests (although it is the dispossesed who are most likely to be aggrieved). Arendt also notes that this orientation towards freedom "only seldom - in times of crisis or revolution - becomes the direct aim of political
action." [Arendt, BPF, p146] Most of the time politics is concerned with the machinations of power and to ensure that the social system functions smoothly. But when it is in contraction with itself, or the vested interests which are entrenched in it these functional or power orientation will prove to be dysfunctional and illegitimate.
Developing a general methodology for the critical issues of the Internet starts with and interest in freedom (in both the positive and negative sense), the statement of utopian and idealized alternatives that appeal to universal rather than partisan interests. The methodology is, counterfactual statements must be, includes the objective material
conditions of being in causal relationships and without ambiguity. With diverse, but non-contradictory, influences from Jurgen Habermas' theory of communicativeaction, Hannah Arendt's commitment to political action and freedom, moral philosophy and psychology, neofunctionalism and systems theory, justifications are given to resolving the key problems of this new global communications and information medium.
Natural human beings provide the ontological necessary and sufficient conditions for the formation of human activity and human consciousness. Individuals raised in isolation do not generate social activity nor social consciousness and their behaviour and thought processes remain limited to the bestial and the instinctive, without moral reasoning,
without symbolic associations, without language. With the introduction of at least one other person to the life of a human individual, the necessary and sufficient conditions are satisfied for the formation of shared symbolic values, of moral behaviour and the sharing of interpreted experience as knowledge.
The formation of shared symbolic values, of moral behaviour and the sharing of knowledge is naturally limited by neurological maturity and completeness, and structually influenced by sensual variance. Furthermore, these formations are structurally influenced by pre-existing norms. These pre-existing norms have highly varying degrees of rationality, precision, validity and verification. In the course of social activity and social consciousness human beings attempt to overcome the existential conditions of nature through the formation of artefacts and institutions that embody knowledge
and meaning.
These artefacts and institutions provide an increased degree of permanence and effectiveness to economic property and political power. They also add further complexity as additional influences to consciousness and activity as technologies and institutions also have their own telic inclinations. As the degree of permanence and effectiveness
increases, so too does the influence on consciousness and activity. Natural human social activity increasingly becomes technological and institutional human social activity, and natural human social consciousness increasingly becomes technological and institutional human social consciousness.
Whilst technology and institutions raise members of the species out of nature and natural contigencies, these provides only necessary but not sufficient conditions to improve the quality of human life from its natural state. What has changed is the capacity of individuals and groups to amplify the effects and scale of their decisions and which are now further influenced as the new media of institutional power and property of artefacts which creates previously unknown and unnatural motivations. Each technological and institutional development correlates with new capacities of providing pleasure or pain.
Because natural social human consciousness and activity preceeds technological and institutional influences and because natural social human consciousness includes the capacity of significant forward planning, ideas concerning artefacts and institutions exist proir in the mental universe than they do in material reality. However, the capacity to
introduce new technologies and new institutions is significantly dependent on the history of previous and the existence of current technologies and institutions.
Institutions manage the relationships between people and the administration of things. Because the capacity for both is technically mediated, institutions tend towards a structural correlation with the technologies available as the most efficient model for the management of artefact resources. Institutional systems that are too advanced to be implemented with the available technology suffer the same likely fate as when technology advances beyond the ability for an institutional system to manage it.
This particular example of correlation also exists in a general sense. It is possible to define societies - all societies - in a highly generalized but unambigious manner with correlations that appear structural but with underlying causal relationships that develop as a simultaneous equation. The general descriptive structure is social formation; societies can be defined as primitive, traditional and modern according to their correlation with the particular structures described below. It is extremely important to note that these terms are not used in the pejorative sense, or with any sense of the relative development of moral reasoning in legal systems or the democratic versus authoritarian
applications of institutional structures. A primitive social formation is just as capable of having a high level of universal moral reasoning in its legal norms and democracy in its systematic relations as a modern society. It is the capacity and effectiveness that differs; technologies, physical and social are amplifiers of social behaviour and reasoning but are structurally influenced by the telic inclinations of such technologies.
All societies include a dominant means of communication, starting from the natural abilities of the species, developing into writing and then the printed form. All societies include a dominant means of production, starting from the natural behaviour of gathering and hunting, then to the activities of agriculture, animal husbandry and artisanship and
then to the industrialization of these activities. Alongside these natural and technical structures for the production of needs and wants and for the reproduction of meaning and knowledge, all societies also include an institutional base and means of systematic differentation in social relations. Starting from kinship relations and differentiated by sex
and age, the development of the state introduces the notion of political rank and then the semi-autonomous corporation and economic class. The particular technological capabilities and institutional arrangements indicate particular dominant forms of crises - natural, political and economic. Finally, societies have a dominant mode of consciousness
whose potential for change depends on to the rationalization of knowledge and the means of communication. With the initial mythic mode of consciousness the maintenance of narrative structure and the embodiment of cultural knowledge is dominant. With the transformation to a religious mode of consciousness and interest develops in the universal and the metaphysical and in the secular mode of consciousness a division between metaphysical privacy and civic rationality.
The introduction of new systematic institutions and relations, means of production or modes of consciousness are by no means a guarantor of the transformation of a society from one social formation to the next. The relative success of such introductions is highly dependent on the particular circumstances and the crises of the time. The transition from
primitive to traditional social formations occurred originally in region best suited for minimal natural disasters, that of the axial Sumerian city states. In this region, according to the available evidence at hand, the introduction of widespread agricultural techniques preceeded the introduction of new institutions, systematic relations, means of
communication and so forth, although these evolved relatively soon afterwards. Likewise, the earliest transition from traditional to modern social formations occurred in the European context with the introduction of a new means of communication, with the movable type printing press. The is sufficient historical evidence to suggest that a secular,
or at the very least, proto-secular mode of consciousness had already appeared prior to its introduction with the various heretical movements in Europe. But without the means of mass communication, these were limited to geographically and culturally contingent regions and invariably failed.
[Include reference to ancient Sumerian archeology]
[Include reference to proto-protestant movements]
Assuming the successful introduction of new social structural content, a telic demand is placed on the content of other social structures to transform themselves as well. In a rather dogmatic manner and one which over-emphasizes the effects of the change in productive forces, Karl Marx emphasized the point in the oft-quoted lines: "In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production, and in changing their mode of production they change their way of living-they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist."
[The Poverty of Philosophy: Answer to the Philosophy of Poverty by M. Proudhon, Karl Marx, FP 1847
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/index.htm]
This quotation is often used as an example of Marxian technological determinism, and there is significant justification to the claim. It is easy to interpet from this that the Marxian perspective does not account for the possibility that the introduction of corporate institutions provides the basis for the introduction of industrialization, yet this is
precisely what happened. The industrial revolution was well-preceeded by the formation of the merchant and guild corporate institutions and such formations provided the impetus for the scientific and technological research that led to a transformation and industrialization of agricultural and artisan activities. Likewise, whilst Chinese traditional
society had introduced the printing press (and notably in a non-movable type implementation) well prior to the Europeans, the emphasis was on enforcing the pre-existing social institutions rather than the formation of alternative spaces for discourse, that is, the technology was primarily information rather than communication enhancing.
Where the quotation is particularly useful is actually found in the preceeding lines, where Marx notes that social relations also, like technology, occur historically and are made by human social activity. The subsequent quotation notes the telos of the transformation. A society that does not undergo the necessary transformations to alter existing social structural content whilst integrating a new dominant content in social structural becomes, as noted by neofunctional sociologists, radically dysfunctional relying evermore on authoritarian means of enforcement and lower levels of moral reasoning in their legal code and systematic behaviour. A contemporary example of this radically uneven structural development can be found in the religious and para-religious nation-states of the world which have introduced modern means of production and communication, yet attempt to rely on pre-modern institutions, systems of differentiation and even modes of consciousness.
Initially, in this chapter, an attempt is made to discern the effectiveness and the efficiency of the introduction of the Internet within primarily modern social formations. The concerns are, in one sense, whether modern institutions, means of systematic differentiation, means of production and mode of consciousness are able to implement
the Internet in a manner that posits the highest potential for universal moral behaviour and democratic procedures. However, there also remains the proposition that the Internet is a technology that is on such a vastly different qualitative scale to existing print media that it also represents a new means of communication whose relative success will depend not so much on its successful integration with modernity, but rather will necessitate the transformation of other social structural content to a new social formation, that is a postmodern society. The preliminary research and hypotheses raised on this prospect are raised in the final chapter.
Necessarily truncuating the critical issues of the Internet in this manner allows this chapter to concentrate on the critical issues of the Internet within contemporary society rather than hypotheses of the future. As mentioned previously, this inquiry is not simply implemented with an attempt to "force" the Internet into the pre-existing functional norms, but rather to counterpose the idealized potential of the Internet counterfactually with actually existing circumstances and to raise justifications and recommendations for actual implementation, a transformation from social theory to social practise. In the idealized version, the Internet is a global communications medium with universal access. Communication content and information is utterly free of censorship, yet at the same time has veracity and is secure. The Internet has system and lifeworld functionality, providing a new level of efficiency in effectiveness and adaptability, integration and pattern maintenance. The technology is interoperable, with idealized levels of transparency and democratic regulation.
Even on an initial and cursorary reading of the literature, it is clear that this is not the case. Access is not universalized, with high levels of disparity according to physical connectivity, literacy and language, physical ability, pre-existing prejudices of gender, culture, "race" and age and economic ability. The content of communication is provision of information is significantly restricted according to the legal codes of various nation-states. The communication that does exist is highly insecure, with propensity to computer hacking, the malicious distribution of destructive computer viruses and the provision of deceptive and fraudulent information. There are claims and evidence that the introduction of the technology does not have functional benefits and there are continious concerns of
systematic colonization. Finally, there is a significant lack of interoperability and concerns of regulation by elites and exclusiveness.
The first critical issue in this chapter comes under the general heading of Universal Access. Initially the subchapter provides a definition and histroy of the notion of universal access to the means of communication. Within this general heading there are also the particular examples of access according to geopolitical location, language and literacy, disability, systematic and structural distortions based on gender, age, culture and the structural effects of economic class. The idealized utopian perspective is that the Internet should be accessible to all those who wish to use it. The empiricial limitations are discussed, both technological and institutional, along with locating the structural
distortions from systematic effects and cultural prejudices.
If the first critical issue discusses the ontological issue of accessibility in the first instance, it is logical that the question of content censorship is raised next as the premier example of epistemology. Again, following the standard template, a definition and history of censorhsip is initially provided. Key Internet case studies refer to the censorship of the communications medium in societies whose legal code is substantially influenced by religious thought, the application of sedition laws in developing countries, anti-erotica legislation in developed nations and the introduction of anti-vilification and defamation legislation in advanced developed nations. Difficulties in this section refer to the difference in mode of consciousness between religious and secular societies, the tensions between between system stability and mass loyalty in developing nations, phenomenology of perception and media influence and finally, the tension between freedom of speech and responsible of speech.
Following the logical ontological and epistemological content, the next section discusses the concept of data security. This logically follows from the preceeding two sections. Freedom of information, communication and the provision of content is logical dependent on the existence of access in the first instance. Likewise the capacity to receive secure information, that which has veracity and will not have unstated effects on the capacity to perform speech is likewise dependent on the ability to engage in communication in the first instance. This section, following the standard template, initially begins with a history and definition of the concept of data security before moving on to the particular Internet case studies of encryption and privacy, computer hacking and malicious distribution of viruses, deceptive and fraudulent information. The recommendations and justifications of this section, in seeking the idealized objective of secure and private information must also remain consistent with those established in the preceeding section.
The fourth section deals with the critical issue of functional integration of the Internet within existing social systems and cultural lifeworlds. Following a definition and history of the integration of communications technology, specific concerns are raised with the role and process of pedagogy and the formation of public opinion, the relationship of the technology with the dominant means of production and with concepts of intellectual property, corporate institutions and systematic differentiation and the generation of shared symbolic values. The recommendations and justifications in this section are orientated towards idealized implementations that make the highest functional
use of the technology for the purposes of education, commerce and the formation of meaningful convictions.
The final section discusses the critical issues raised by matters of technical interoperability and the institutional status and governance of the Internet. Again, following definition and history of standards and their institutional authorities, paricular examples are raised by the existence of non-interopeability (e.g., proprietory software), the management and operations of the domain name system and the governing institutions of the Internet, such as ICANN. The recommendations and justifications in this section are based on the possibility of idealized degrees of interoperability, implementation of the global and local domain system in a manner that is logical and functional for the purposes of domain management and whose institutional forms are managed in a democratic manner with opportunities for universal participation.
The general methodology for critical issues of the Internet must be reiterated at this point: universal, idealized and counterfactual. The interest here is developing alternatives that are orientated towards veracity, justice and freedom without sectional interest or prejudice. The recommendations either provides benefits to all, or not at all. However,
such recommendations must remain within the realm of the possible and their idealization for the purposes of practical implementation rather than idealization in the fantastic and impossible. To be sure, they will in many instances introduce possibilities that are unlikely given prevailing norms and vested institutional interests, but expressed as
counterfactual possibilities it is also hoped to phrase these alternatives in a manner which are clarify their rational content and their functionality.
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