[Previously published in March, 2003]
A new global conflict is emerging among proponents of opposite views of the nature of systems, closed or open. The conflict flows from an epistemological shift that affects worldviews in general. Closed systems are mechanistic and are designed or authored from outside of themselves. Open systems are structured dynamically from within, through self-organization. They emerge from complexity. There is no authority that governs their structure. A critical battleground for this conflict is the question of Internet “regulation.” In the sense that we have defined it here, that makes the conflict a clash of cultures.
CCA is particularly interested in social constructs that change our ideas about systems of governance affecting the fairness of the human condition. The primary goal of closed systems of governance is control or stability in the social order. But self-organizing systems are also a form, but a very different form, of governance. They sustain a dynamic equilibrium through interactions based on trust, reciprocity and cooperation. Therefore they are inherently fairer in the consequences of their actions. The primary goal of open systems of governance is learning. Since world level problems are complex, we all need learning far more than we need control.
The Internet is a set of technologies that express the cultural values and interests of the proponents of open systems. That is to say, it is the product of the worldview on the other side of the epistemological shift, not the cause of it. The primary purpose of the Internet should be understood as serving needs for learning, not for control. As of now, the outcome of the growing battle over regulating its use or affirming its purpose is uncertain.
If you seek to defend the Internet as an instrument of open systems for learning and you hear these phrases; intellectual property rights, information security, international policy framework for the Information Society, you are probably encountering proponents of the power of nation states as closed systems of governance. On the other hand, if you hear these phrases; open source, communication as public good, Internet code layer as commons, you are probably encountering proponents of the autonomy and responsibility of individuals to connect with each other, to self-organize and therefore learn, in open systems of interaction. .
Defending the consensus on standards and values that led to the Internet’s existence in the first place is far more important than regulating the communications that it carries. The Internet is not “merely a tool” that can be adapted to serve the conventional purposes of governance. Because it represents a worldview expressed through technology, those purposes are already being altered by its use.
More than the “system” of international institutions, the Internet is the only effective means we have discovered, so far, to support the self-organization of response to large-scale complex problems. By surfacing multiple points of view about intentions and consequences in our local and global interactions, the Internet saves us from those arrogant voices that claim omniscient authority. Those voices imagine themselves to be outside of the systems they seek to govern when now we know that they are not. Defending the Internet can thus be expected to lead to greater fairness as the ultimate beneficial outcome of connectivity.
Garth Graham
garthgraham@accountabilitycircle.org
(CCA will provide and update links to organizations acting to protect the Internet — under construction).
