Access Contested
7
more people than ever before. The Internet can allow greater freedoms than citizens
previously enjoyed, especially in closed regimes where the state controls the mainstream media. Governments can use the same technologies to increase openness and
transparency in their operations. Moreover, cross-cultural understanding can fl ourish
as never before, or so the theory goes, now that digital networks connect people from
all around the world in new and important ways at very low cost. An individual in
nearly any country on earth, assuming he or she has an Internet connection, can
already access a vast store of information, much greater than what people a century
ago could have imagined.
The great power of the Internet as a force for democratization is in collective action.
Individuals can use these cheap technologies as organizing tools to pull others around
them together and, through collective action, have a greater effect on a political
process than they might have had otherwise. A vast amorphous set of communities
known as the blogosphere cuts in and across political, ethnic, and other boundaries
in a noisy but robust web of support for global civil society. However, any careful
examination of the blogosphere and its subsets will demonstrate, too, that there are
also problems associated with what people do in these spaces. This is true whether
the context is the United States or Burma. Few would argue that there are sound
reasons for any state to seek to restrict online speech and to practice increased surveillance, from child protection to routine law enforcement. While we celebrate the ways
in which ICTs, whether digital or not, are useful to those who would bring democracy
about around the world, it is equally important to realize that the same tools can be
useful to those who would harm other people. Nearly all the problems that arise in
offl ine space fi nd their way into the online environment and in turn give rise to
control strategies and contestation over them.
Though the rhetoric of the open Internet was (and remains, in some respects)
compelling, it was inaccurate as a prediction. It was wrong in large measure because
nothing in the technology is unrelated to human behavior. We have simply been
wrapping our lives into this hybrid reality that is both virtual and analog — all of it
“ real ” — at the same time. All the actions we take in using these technologies, whether
on a virtual or a real platform, are effectively interconnected and could be regulated.
As we have immersed more of our lives into cyberspace, the stakes have grown and
the contests over those stakes and their related regulations have become more intense.
The technology of cyberspace is also not fi xed in a way that lends itself to the sorts
of predictions laid out by early enthusiasts. Indeed one of the hallmarks of cyberspace
is its rapid cycles of innovations. It is a space characterized by powerful generativity —
any of its millions of users can create software that ripples across the Internet with
system-wide effects.
3 Whether these changes are benign or not, and regardless of their
utility, these innovations ensure that cyberspace is in constant motion. At one level,
the Internet ’ s central characteristic is rapid change.
7
more people than ever before. The Internet can allow greater freedoms than citizens
previously enjoyed, especially in closed regimes where the state controls the mainstream media. Governments can use the same technologies to increase openness and
transparency in their operations. Moreover, cross-cultural understanding can fl ourish
as never before, or so the theory goes, now that digital networks connect people from
all around the world in new and important ways at very low cost. An individual in
nearly any country on earth, assuming he or she has an Internet connection, can
already access a vast store of information, much greater than what people a century
ago could have imagined.
The great power of the Internet as a force for democratization is in collective action.
Individuals can use these cheap technologies as organizing tools to pull others around
them together and, through collective action, have a greater effect on a political
process than they might have had otherwise. A vast amorphous set of communities
known as the blogosphere cuts in and across political, ethnic, and other boundaries
in a noisy but robust web of support for global civil society. However, any careful
examination of the blogosphere and its subsets will demonstrate, too, that there are
also problems associated with what people do in these spaces. This is true whether
the context is the United States or Burma. Few would argue that there are sound
reasons for any state to seek to restrict online speech and to practice increased surveillance, from child protection to routine law enforcement. While we celebrate the ways
in which ICTs, whether digital or not, are useful to those who would bring democracy
about around the world, it is equally important to realize that the same tools can be
useful to those who would harm other people. Nearly all the problems that arise in
offl ine space fi nd their way into the online environment and in turn give rise to
control strategies and contestation over them.
Though the rhetoric of the open Internet was (and remains, in some respects)
compelling, it was inaccurate as a prediction. It was wrong in large measure because
nothing in the technology is unrelated to human behavior. We have simply been
wrapping our lives into this hybrid reality that is both virtual and analog — all of it
“ real ” — at the same time. All the actions we take in using these technologies, whether
on a virtual or a real platform, are effectively interconnected and could be regulated.
As we have immersed more of our lives into cyberspace, the stakes have grown and
the contests over those stakes and their related regulations have become more intense.
The technology of cyberspace is also not fi xed in a way that lends itself to the sorts
of predictions laid out by early enthusiasts. Indeed one of the hallmarks of cyberspace
is its rapid cycles of innovations. It is a space characterized by powerful generativity —
any of its millions of users can create software that ripples across the Internet with
system-wide effects.
3 Whether these changes are benign or not, and regardless of their
utility, these innovations ensure that cyberspace is in constant motion. At one level,
the Internet ’ s central characteristic is rapid change.