Improving FCC filing metadata

On 10 May 2010 I filed a comment on two FCC proceedings (10-43 and 10-44, if you must know) concerning ways to improve the way it does business. I argued that transparency and rule-making efficiency could be improved by improving the metadata on documents submitted to the Electronic Comments Filing System (ECFS).

I recommended that the FCC:

• Associate a unique identifier with each filer
• Require that the names of all petitioners are provided when submitting ECFS metadata
• Improve RSS feed and search functionality
• Require the posting of digital audio recordings of ex parte meetings
• Provide a machine interface for both ECFS search and submission

Engineers, Commissars and Regulators: Layered self-regulation of network neutrality

My post Ostrom and Network Neutrality suggested that a nested set of self- or co- regulatory enterprises (Ostrom 1990:90) could be useful when designing regulatory approaches to network neutrality, but I didn’t give any concrete suggestions. Here’s a first step: create separate arenas for discussing engineering vs. business.

One’s immediate instinct when devising a shared regulatory regime (see the list of examples at the end) might be to involve all the key players; at least, that’s what I pointed to in When Gorillas Make Nice. However, I suspect that successful self-regulatory initiatives have to start with a relatively narrow membership and scope: typically, a single industry, rather than a whole value chain. That’s the only way to have a decent shot at creating and enforcing basic norms. Legitimacy will require broadening the list of stakeholder, but too many cooks at the beginning will lead to kitchen gridlock.

Let’s stipulate for now that the key problem is defining what “acceptable network management practices” amount to. Most participants in the network neutrality debate agree that ISPs should be able to manage their networks for security and efficiency, even if there is disagreement about whether specific practices are just good housekeeping or evil rent-seeking.

The engineering culture and operating constraints of different networks are quite distinct: phone companies vs. cable guys; more or less symmetrical last mile pipes; terminating fiber in the home vs. at cabinet; and not least, available capacity in wireline vs. wireless networks. Reconciling these differences and creating common best practices within the network access industry will be hard; that’s the lowest layer of self-regulation. The “Engineers” should be tasked with determining the basic mechanisms of service provision, monitoring compliance with norms, and enforcing penalties against members who break the rules.

The core participants are the telcos (e.g. Verizon, AT&T) and cable companies (e.g. Comcast, Time Warner Cable), in both their wireline and wireless incarnations. Only within a circumscribed group like this is there is any hope of detailed agreement about best practices, let alone the monitoring and enforcement that is essential for a well-functioning self-regulatory organization. Many important network parameters are considered secret sauce; while engineers inside the industry circle can probably devise ways monitor each other’s compliance without giving the MBAs fits, there’s no chance that they’ll be allowed to let Google or Disney look inside their network operating centers.

The next layer of the onion adds the companies who use these networks to deliver their products: web service providers like Google, and content creators like Disney. Let’s call this group the “Commissars”. This is where questions of political economy are addressed. The Commissars shape the framework within which the network engineers decide technical best practices. It’s the business negotiation group, the place where everybody fights over dividing up the rents; it needs to find political solutions that reconcile the very different interests at stake:

1. The ISPs want to prevent regulation, and be able to monetize their infrastructure by putting their hand in Google’s wallet, and squeezing content creators.
2. Google wants to keep their wallet firmly shut, and funnel small content creators’ surplus to Mountain View, not the ISPs.
3. Large content creators want to get everybody else to protect their IPR for them.
4. New content aggregators (e.g. Miro) want a shot at competing in the video business with the network facility owners.

This is not an engineering argument, and a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) along the lines described by Verizon and Google (FCC filing) would not be a suitable vehicle for addressing such questions. The Commissars are responsible for answering questions of collective choice regarding the trade-offs in network management rules, and adjudicating disputes that cannot be resolved by the Engineers among themselves.

The Engineers can work in parallel to the Commissars, and don’t need to wait for the political economists to fight out questions about rents; in any case, it will be helpful for the Commissars to have concrete network management proposals to argue about. There will be a loop, with the conclusions of one group influencing the other. The Commissars inform the Engineers about the constraints on what would constitute acceptable network management, and the Engineers inform the Commissars about what is practical.

Finally, government actors – call them the “Regulators” – set the rules of the game and provide a backstop if the Engineers and Commissars fail to come up with a socially acceptable solution, or fail to discipline bad behavior. Since the internet and the web are critical infrastructure, governments speaking for citizens are entitled to frame the overall goals that these industries should serve, even though they are not well qualified to define the means for achieving them. Final adjudication of unresolved disputes rests with the Regulators.

References

Ofcom, Initial assessments of when to adopt self- or co-regulation, December 10, 2008,
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/coregulation/condoc.pdf

Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Cambridge University Press, 1990

Philip J. Weiser, Exploring Self Regulatory Strategies for Network Management: A Flatirons Summit on Information Policy, August 25, 2008,
http://www.silicon-flatirons.org/documents/publications/summits/WeiserNetworkManagement.pdf

Examples of self- and co-regulatory bodies

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) in the UK works to standardize procedures for the reporting and taking-down of abusive images of children. It was established in 1996 by the internet industry to allow the public and IT professionals to report criminal online content in a secure and confidential way. (Ofcom 2008:9, and IWF)

The UK “Classification Framework” for content on mobile phones is provided by the Independent Mobile Classification Body (IMCB) with the aim of restricting young people’s access to inappropriate content. It is the responsibility of content providers to self-classify their own content as “18” where appropriate; access to such content will be restricted by the mobile operators until customers have verified their age as 18 or over with their operator. (Ofcom 2008:9, and IMCB)

The Dutch organization NICAM (Nederlands Instituut voor de Classificatie van Audiovisuele Media) administers a scheme for audiovisual media classification. It includes representatives of representatives of public and commercial broadcasters, film distributors and cinema operators, distributors, videotheques and retailers. (Ofcom 2008:9, and NICAM)

Amateur radio service and frequency coordinators provide examples of self-regulation in spectrum policy. The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) has an understanding with the FCC that it manages the relevant enforcement activities related to the use of ham radio. Only in the most egregious cases will ARRL report misbehavior to the FCC Enforcement Bureau. (Weiser 2008:23)

The Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Division (NAD) enforces US rules governing false advertising, using threats of referrals to the FTC to encourage compliance with its rules. (Weiser 2008:24, and NAD)

US movie ratings are provided by a voluntary system operated by the MPAA and the National Association of Theater Owners.

Ostrom and Network Neutrality

My previous post scratched the surface of a self-regulatory solution to network neutrality concerns. While this isn’t exactly a common pool resource (CPR) problem, I find Elinor Ostrom’s eight principles for managing CPRs are helpful here (Governing the Commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action, 1990).

Jonathan Sallet boils them down to norms, monitoring and enforcement, and that’s a good aide memoire. It’s useful, though, to look at all of them (Ostrom 1990:90, Table 3.1):

1. Clearly defined boundaries: Individuals of households who have rights to withdraw resource units from the CPR must be clearly defined, as must the boundaries of the CPR itself.

2. Congruence between appropriation and provision rules and local conditions: Appropriation rules restricting time, place, technology, and/or quantity of resource units are related to local conditions and to provision rules requiring labor, material, and/or money.

3. Collective-choice arrangements: Most individuals affected by the operational rules can participate in modifying the operational rules.

4. Monitoring: Monitors, who actively audit CPR conditions and appropriator behavior, are accountable to the appropriators or are the appropriators.

5. Graduated sanctions: Appropriators who violate operational rules are likely to be assessed graduated sanctions (depending on the seriousness and context of the offense) by other appropriators, by officials accountable to these appropriators, or by both.

6. Conflict-resolution mechanisms: Appropriators and their officials have rapid access to low-cost local arenas to resolve conflicts among appropriators or between appropriators and officials.

7. Minimal recognition of rights to organize: The rights of appropriators to devise their own institutions are not challenged by external governmental authorities.

8. (For CPRs that are parts of larger systems) Nested enterprises: Appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises.

Many but not all of these considerations are addressed in the filing and my comments: The headline of section B that “self-governance has been the hallmark of the growth and success of the Internet” reflects #2. My point about involving consumers speaks to #3. The TAGs mooted in the letter address #4 and #6, but not #5. The purpose of the letter is to achieve #7.

In addition to the lack of sanctions, two other key issues are not addressed. Principle #1 addresses a key requisite for a successful co-regulatory approach: that industry is able to establish clear objectives. Given the vagueness of the principles in the filing, it’s still an open question whether the parties can draw a bright line around the problem.

I believe #8 can help: create a nested set of (self- or co-) regulatory enterprises. While I don’t yet have concrete suggestions, I’m emboldened by the fact that nested hierarchy is also a hallmark of complex adaptive systems, which I contend are a usable model for the internet governance problem. Ostrom’s three levels of analysis and processes offer a framework for nesting (1990:53):

• Constitutional choice: Formulation, Governance, Adjudication, Modification
• Collective choice: Policy-making, Management, Adjudication
• Operational choice: Appropriation, Provision, Monitoring, Enforcement

I think the TAGs are at the collective choice level. It would be productive to investigate the institutions one might construct at the other two levels. The FCC could usefully be involved at the constitutional level; even if one doesn't dive into a full-scale negotiated rule-making or "Reg-Neg", government involvement would improve legitimacy (cf. Principle #7). At the other end of the scale, operational choices include mechanisms not just for monitoring (and some tricky questions about disclosure of "commercially confidential" information) but also enforcement. The latter could be as simple as the threat of reporting bad behavior to the appropriate agency, as the Better Business Bureau’s National Advertising Division does (see Weiser 2008:21 PDF).

When Gorillas Make Nice

Verizon and Google’s recent joint FCC filing about the values and governance of the internet largely echoes the conclusions of a Silicon Flatirons summit in August 2008 (PDF): that self-governing institutions are the best way to manage day-to-day questions of network neutrality, with the government acting as a backstop when market forces and self-regulation fail.

The filing seems to come in two parts: a statement of principles, and a sketch of how self-governance might work. I’ll largely ignore the first part, since clearly Google and Verizon found little to agree on. The three key principles are motherhood (consumer transparency and control), Google’s non-negotiable (openness) and Verizon’s (encouraging investment), respectively; it’s hard to argue with any of this, except to observe that the hard work lies in achieving them simultaneously.

The most useful resource on self-regulation in communications I’ve seen is Ofcom’s 2008 statement on “Identifying appropriate regulatory solutions: principles for analysing self- and co-regulation” (PDF). It concluded that self-regulation is most likely to work when “industry collectively has an interest in solving the issue; industry is able to establish clear objectives for a potential scheme; and the likely industry solution matches the legitimate needs of citizens and consumers.”

If their effort is to succeed, the companies will have to build an institution that represents all interests. Let's stipulate that the three main stakeholder groups are content players, network operators and consumers; Google and Verizon fall in the first two groups. On the network side, they’ll need to add the cable industry (always much more leery of network neutrality than the long-regulated telcos), and on the content side, the studios. The trickiest part will be finding a “consumer voice” with some legitimacy; everybody, not least these companies, claims to have the consumer’s best interest at heart.

The filing is predictably vague about the basis on which government would become involved, and is silent about how its proposed institution would enforce its own norms. That’s a mistake. It’s in the companies’ best interest to declare which sword they want hanging over their heads. If they don’t, there won’t be sufficient incentive to Do the Right Thing in the short term (the CEO will ask, “If I’m not breaking a law, why should I go the extra mile?”), which means that eventually a mountain of punctilious rules will be imposed on them. (It’s my understanding that this is what happened over the last decade with accessibility to the internet for those with disabilities: tech companies promised a decade ago they’d solve the problem, didn’t do all that much, and now Rep. Markey is writing detailed rules.)

It’s not clear to me whether the filing is proposing self- or co-regulation, defined by Ofcom (2008) as follows:

Self-regulation: Industry collectively administers a solution to address citizen or consumer issues, or other regulatory objectives, without formal oversight from government or regulator. There are no explicit ex ante legal backstops in relation to rules agreed by the scheme (although general obligations may still apply to providers in this area).

Co-regulation: Schemes that involve elements of self- and statutory regulation, with public authorities and industry collectively administering a solution to an identified issue. The split of responsibilities may vary, but typically government or regulators have legal backstop powers to secure desired objectives.

I think co-regulation is indicated here. Without a backstop there will not be sufficient incentive for good behavior. Politically, too, the term “self-regulation” has become anathema in Washington DC because the financial melt-down is deemed to have been due to a failure in the same. (Not that it matters, but I think this assessment is incorrect on two counts: self-regulation is only part of a much larger problem in the financial crisis; and even if it weren’t, the lessons learned are not easily transposable to communications policy. Still, it’s probably best to use another term, like shared regulation, supervised delegation or bounded autonomy.)

A music/governance metaphor

I’m still struggling to find a usable taxonomy for “new methods of governance” for the internet. A conversation with Grisha Krivchenia, a music teacher, prompted this attempt at analogy. Since my knowledge of music and its history is sketchy, any corrective comments would be gratefully received.

Let’s start with a particular musical tradition: harpsichord pieces in the High Baroque. Bach wrote the Goldberg Variations, for example, with a particular instrument and even performer (Goldberg) in mind. The performer has many options, however, regarding tempo and mood. When the same score is played on a different instrument, e.g. the piano, an additional set of choices and opportunities arise.

Same score, different instrument(s)

A score written for one instrument can be played by another one with no change; for example, one can play a flute piece on the oboe. However, figurations that were easy for the intended instrument may be hard for the new one. Some instrument changes require transpositions of notes to a new key, for example playing the flute piece on a clarinet (pitched in C and B-flat, respectively). Even if the notes are the same, the music will be different.

As an example of the music/governance metaphor in action, consider libel. The same laws of defamation apply to web pages just as much as to a paper pamphlet; however, some additional interpretation is required from the judge when applying statute and common law developed for paper to the internet.

A slightly more extensive change comes about when music scored for one ensemble (e.g. strings) is re-arranged for another (woodwinds). Both the individual and blended characters of the instruments differ, and the character of the piece can change quite markedly. A possible analogy is the application 911 requirements for phone access to emergency services to Voice over IP devices. The desired policy result and the requirements in law are the same, but the implementation may have to be different. For example, “911” is actually an area code rather than a phone number, and its implementation in VoIP was debated. Further, 911 calls are delivered to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) determined by the location of the caller – which may not be easy to determine for an internet device.

Once the piano exists, it enables new forms of music. First, performers can radically rethink a piece: Glenn Gould’s Goldbergs, to cite a late example. Second, composers wrote pieces for the piano in ways that were inconceivable in the age of the harpsichord: Liszt and Chopin. An analogy in regulation might be the way in which the Kodak camera prompted the overhaul (or arguably invention) of privacy law. [1] Another one might be the way in which the internet if forcing a rethinking of common carriage rules as they apply to telecommunications carriers. [2]

New compositions, same instruments

However, new approaches to composition can come about without new instruments – the shift to atonal music (i.e. lacking a central key) associated with Berg, Schoenberg and Webern supposedly arose from the “crisis of tonality” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century . An analogy in communications policy might be the emergence of exclusive-use radio licenses allocated by auctions in wireless regulation: they were prompted by insights from economics (e.g. Coase and the privatization movement more generally) rather than by changes in technology.

New performances

Music can also change purely as a result of changes in performance practice. An unattributed assertion in Wikipedia states that “changes in performance practice made by prominent musicians often reverberated in the playing of many other musicians.” Other candidates for this phenomenon is the use of bel canto in early 20th century opera, the use of a clear declamatory vocal style in the French operatic tradition, and the dramatic increases in the minimum technical accuracy required of performers of classical music. One can see this effect in governance too, particularly where common-law is used; interpretations and precedent are cumulative. An ongoing example is software patents: legal scholar Mark Lemley stated at a Silicon Flatirons conference in March 2009 that over the last three years, courts have fixed most of the problems that have been grist for the software patent debate. I presume there are also fashions in jurisprudence, just as there are in music – but here again my lack of knowledge fails me…

A change in venue also makes a difference. The Wikipedia article on the history of the orchestra suggests that the 18th century change from civic music making where the composer had some degree of time or control, to smaller court music making and one-off performance, placed a premium on music that was easy to learn, often with little or no rehearsal. The results were changes in musical style from the counterpoint of the baroque period to the classical style, and emphasis on new techniques such as notated dynamics and phrasing. I believe that the shift in the stakeholder landscape in telecoms from an insider’s club of a few, large firms and regulators to a global plethora of companies and regulators of all sizes is in the process of changing governance, but we don’t have the luxury of 200 years to discern the key developments.

Tentative conclusions

The analogy of music to governance is as follows:

• Composer – policy maker (legislator or regulator with quasi-legislative powers, like the FCC)
• Score – law, rule or regulation
• Instrument – technology and social context
• Performer – judge (or quasi-judicial actor, e.g. the FCC)
• Audience – interest groups, stakeholders, citizens, etc.

Discerning the metaphor mapping for governance itself is harder – though no harder than I find understanding what “governance” means, period… Perhaps they’re both just the “meta”: music is the aggregate of all the actors and activities related to making music, and the same for governance. The useful insight for me is that all the elements – composer, score, etc. – are necessary to make music, and likewise for governance. Any focus just on policy makers, or just on regulations, or just on the courts etc. will understate the problem.

In terms of new kinds of music/governance, we see

1. Changes of instruments (technology) that require only minor changes in the score (law)
2. Changes that prompt composers (policy makers) to invent new genres (rules), either as a result of new technologies or the internal development of the genre itself
3. Changes brought about by shifts in performance (judicial) practice

The performers (judges) plays an important creative role; they can change the import of a score (law) by their interpretation in the context of a new instrument (technology). It may be that judges are most influential when the policy makers have not yet caught up with changes in technology – they are making music on new instruments using the old scores.

This short taxonomy focuses on the upstream part of the performance value chain. New kinds of music arise most visibly from new compositions and/or new instruments, but performance and audience play roles in disseminating and validating them. Likewise, new forms of governance need to be enacted by courts and accepted by stakeholders before taking hold; new technology and new law are only part of the picture.

Update 12/28/2009: See the comments for some great thoughts from Jon Sallet about the role of improvisation in music and governance. His conclusion: "In a world of change and uncertainty, discretion is an important tool; discretion that is applied by professionals (like trained musicians), within guidelines (like the old rule against using augmented fourths) but that calls upon the expertise of the composer and the performer both to work, as it were, in harmony."

Footnotes

[1] Robert E. Mensel, ""Kodakers Lying in Wait": Amateur Photography and the Right of Privacy in New York 1885-1915", American Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 1 (Mar., 1991), pp. 24-45, PDF available.

[2] James V DeLong, “Avoiding a Tech Train Wreck”, The American, May/June 2008

A skeptic’s approach to regulation

I don’t know.

You don’t know either, even if you’re a lawyer or scholar who’s written confident diagnoses of, and persuasive curative prescriptions for, various policy problems.

If you’re a regulator, you know you don’t know.

Decision makers have always operated in a world of complexity, contradiction and confusion: you never have all the information you’d like to make a decision, and the data you do have are often inconsistent. It is not clear what is happening, and it is not clear what to do about it. What’s most striking about the last century is that policy makers seem to have been persuaded by economists that they have more control, and more insight, than they used to.

We have less control over the world than we’d like. We are either confronted by unwanted situations we cannot prevent, or desired situations are precluded. We would like to prevent unwanted situations, but can’t; or we would like favorable circumstances to continue, but they don’t.

There is a small part of the world where the will has effective control; for the rest, one has to deal with necessity, i.e. circumstances that arise whether you will or no. Science and technology since the Enlightenment has dramatically widened our scope of control; economics has piggy-backed on the success of classical physics to make large claims about its ability to explain and manage society. However, this has had the unfortunate consequence that we no longer feel comfortable accepting necessity. If a situation is avoidable – say, postponing the moment of death through a medical intervention – then it becomes tempting to think that when it comes, someone or something can be held responsible.

As Genevieve Lloyd tells it (and I understand it) in Providence Lost (2009), our culture opted to follow Descartes in his framing of free will: we should do the best we can, and leave the rest to divine Providence, which provides a comforting bound to our responsibilities. In the absence of providence, however, we have no guidance on how to deal with what lies beyond our control. As Lloyd puts it, “the fate of the Cartesian will has been to outlive the model of providence that made it emotionally viable.” She argues that Spinoza’s alternative account of free will, built on the acceptance of necessity, is better suited to our time; there is freedom in how we shape our lives in the face of necessity, and a providential deity is not required.

Our Cartesian heritage can be seen in the response to the financial collapse of recent years: someone or something had to be responsible. If only X had done Y rather than Z… but an equally plausible account is that crises and collapse are inevitable; it was only a matter of time.

I submit that the best response to an uncertain and ever-changing world is to accept it and aim at resilience rather than efficiency. Any diagnosis and prescription should always be provisional; it should be made in the knowledge that it will have to be changed. Using efficiency as the measure of a solution, as neoclassical economics might, is the mark of the neo-Cartesian mind: it assumes that we have enough knowledge of the entire system to find an optimum solution, and that we have enough control to effectuate it. In fact, an optimum probably doesn’t exist; if it does exist, it’s probably unstable; and even if a stable solution exists, we have so little control over the system that we can’t implement it.

The best conceptual framework I’ve found for analyzing problems in this way is the complex systems view, and the most helpful instantiation is the approach to managing ecosystems encapsulated in C. S. Holling’s “adaptive cycle” thinking. (See e.g. Ten Conclusions from the Resilience Project). The adaptive cycle consists of four stages: (1) exploitation of new opportunities following a disturbance; (2) conservation, the slow accumulation of capital and system richness; (3) release of accumulation through a crisis event – cf. Shumpeter’s creative destruction; and (4) reorganization, in which the groundwork for the next round is laid.

Two techniques seem to be particularly helpful in applying this approach to governance: simulation and common law. Simulation and modeling exploit the computing power we now have to explore the kinds of outcomes that may be possible given a starting point and alternative strategies; it gives one a feel for how resilient or fragile different proposed solutions may be. Simulation may also help understand outcomes; for example, Ofcom uses modeling of radio signal propagation rather than measurement to determine whether licensees in it Spectrum Usage Rights regime are guilty of harmful interference with other licensees. (See e.g. William Webb (2009), “Licensing Spectrum: A discussion of the different approaches to setting spectrum licensing terms”.)

A common law approach helps at the other end of the process: Jonathan Sallet has argued persuasively that common-law reasoning is advantageous because it is a good way of creating innovative public policies, and is a sensible method of adapting government oversight to changing technological and economic conditions.

But I could be wrong…

Update 12/28/2009: See the fascinating comments from Rich Thanki, below. He takes two salient lessons from complexity theory: avoid monoculture, and develop rules of thumb. He also provides more of the usual quick Keynes quote about "slaves of some defunct economist."

Hard consequences of the soft revolution

What characteristics (if any) of 21st century communications justify a change in methods of governance?

Any change in policy has unintended consequences; some of them will be adverse. One has to think carefully before advocating radical change: the benefits of change or the costs of doing nothing should be substantial. One way of beginning a cost/benefit analysis is to understand the underlying forces.

Many arguments have been given for new internet regulation. Cowhey and Aronson (Transforming Global Information and Communication Markets 2009:17) cite three factors that will force change: the modular mixing and matching of technology building blocks; the need to span traditional policy and jurisdictional divides (aka Convergence); and the need to rely more on non-governmental institutions to coordinate and implement global policy. In my paper “Internet Governance as Forestry”, I cite three characteristics of the internet that require new responses: modularity, decentralized self-organization, and rapid change.

Let’s consider, then, the following candidates for radical, unprecedented and transformational change in the internet economy taken from these two lists: modularity, convergence, the “third sector”, decentralization, and rate of change.

Modularity

I doubt modularity will persist as a characteristic of the internet business. While it is clearly a hallmark of our current stage, it has a long history: the standardization of interchangeable parts is dated back to Eli Whitney’s process for manufacturing muskets for the US government in 1798, but there is evidence for standardization of arrowheads and uniform manufacturing techniques in the bronze age, and some anthropologists claim there was standardization of stone age tools. However, modular technology does not lead inescapably to a modular industry structure. Standard parts have not rendered pre-internet industries immune to anti-trust problems, and it is likely they will do so now. The role of modularity in the relationships between companies waxes and wanes, depending on rather than driving industry consolidation and market power.

Convergence

The good old convergence argument is a true enough, but tired. The mixing of broadcasting, telecom and intellectual property regulation brought about by common digital formats will undoubtedly require a huge amount of creative reform of regulation, but I no longer think that the result will be the abolition of regulatory categories based on the commercial and technological status quo.

I would very much like to see such an abolition; I proposed a re-organizing the FCC by policy imperatives rather than industry categories in my FCC Reform paper, but I don’t think it’s going to be practical. The human rage to classify [1] will reassert itself. Classifying by policy concern probably won’t work, sad to say, because of how regulation tends to work: take a new problem, fit it into an existing category, and apply the rules of that category. Even if this mechanism yields weird results in times of transition, it’s usually efficient and is likely to persist, even as categories change. We don’t yet have the new categories, but they may well emerge based more on how industry self-organizes than by logic. Judging by today’s behemoths, they might perhaps be networks, cloud services, devices and content (i.e. AT&T, Google/Microsoft, Apple/Dell and Hollywood) replacing broadcasting, telecom, cable and intellectual property (ABC/CBS/NBC, the old AT&T, Comcast and Hollywood).

Decentralization

The internet is no doubt much more decentralized than its forebears, e.g. the telephone network; it is by definition an affiliation of many networks, and a lot of processing is done “at the edges” rather than “in the middle”. There is a linkage between a decentralized architecture and modularity. Modularity allows decentralization, and is amplified by it. If or when either regresses to the mean, the other will tend to do so as well. Since I don’t believe that a high and increasing amount of modularity is an persistent attribute of the 21st century communications industry, I don’t believe that high and increasing decentralization is either. However, the current degree of modularity and decentralization in has probably put us into a qualitatively different regime; there has phase change, so to speak. The polity has just begun to work through the implications, and this will take a decade or more.

The “third sector”: Non-Governmental Institutions (NGOs), non-profits and civil society

Cowhey and Aronson’s interest in NGOs is based in trade, and the organizations they have in mind (ICANN, W3C, IETF) meet the four-part definition offered by Lester Salamon, a political scientist and scholar of US non-profits at Johns Hopkins: they are organizations, i.e., they have an institutional presence and structure; they are private, i.e., they are institutionally separate from the state; they are fundamentally in control of their own affairs; and membership/support is voluntary. Salamon argues that the prominence of NGOs represent an “associational revolution”. I cannot judge whether this phenomenon is transient or not; however, the large organizations clearly provide an alternative venue for governance. For example, Cowhey and Aronson argue that the IETF’s central role in internet standards came about because the US Government decided to delegate authority to it.

If one relaxes the requirement for formal institutional structure, the rise of private, voluntary engagement in politics facilitated by Web 2.0 represent an impetus and perhaps even a venue for new governance. Currently fashionable examples include http://transparencycorps.org/, http://opengov.ideascale.com/ and http://watchdog.net/; tools that facilitate engagement include http://www.opencongress.org/, http://www.opensecrets.org/lobbyists/ and http://www.govtrack.us/. The citizen’s ability to know about the activities of their legislators and petition has never been greater; tools for organizing into ad hoc coalitions (most famously the role of http://www.meetup.com/ in the 2004 and 2008 US campaigns) lead to a ferment of groups that may grow into more recognizable institutions. Policy makers will have to invent new ways to track and mollify these groups, at the very least; the Obama Administration appears to be using them to support policy making.

While the decentralized architecture of the internet and the rise of NGOs are different phenomena with different causes, Web 2.0 technologies are beginning to draw them together.

Rate of change

As to whether the rapidity of change is transformative and permanent, I think the answer is No and Yes. The rate of technical and commercial innovation on internet over the last two decades has been stunning. It has been abetted by modularity, and even more so by the ability of software to morph without having to retool a factory. (Retooling a code base is a non-trivial exercise, though.) However, the internet is growing up and it’s reasonable to expect that the industry and technology will settle into a phase of relative maturity. [2]

On the other hand, while the rate of change may not continue to accelerate, or even continue at its current pace, the political system has to adjust to the stresses that the increase to date has already imposed. William Scheuerman, for example, argues that the “social acceleration of time” has created a profound imbalance between the branches of government in liberal democratic systems like the US. [3] Even if the rate of techno-commercial innovation slows down, the rate at which global markets generate and propagate news will be a challenge for political systems whose time cycles are set in constitutions that change only very slowly, and human physiology which changes hardly at all. [4]

Back to Hard Intangibles

A change in context that forces a change in governance doesn’t need to be irreversible for the consequences to be profound. Since history is cumulative, a “phase change” in policy making is a change that never really reverts to its prior form, since the context changes with it. However, some changes are more portentous than others. I’ve argued above that the modularity, convergence and decentralization of the internet are temporary, and part of the regular cycle flow in industry structure. Changes in tempo and the rise of the third sector seem to me to be more momentous. I think both are rooted in the growing intangibility of our societies, which has been accelerated by ICT: complex software running on powerful processors linked by very fast networks.

I think there is a link back to my 2006/2007 obsession with “hard intangibles” (DeepFreeze9 thread). The ability to compose more components than the mind can manage makes programming/debugging very hard, particularly when those components are so easily mutable: it’s easier to change a line of code than to retool an assembly line. The “soft products” of these technologies, themselves complex, composable and mutable become the inputs for culture and thus policy making: it’s easier to change web artifacts and social networks than to manage a movement using letters and sailing ships.

Footnotes

[1] I first heard the term used by Rohan Bastin, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Deakin University, in a Philosopher’s Zone interview about Claude Levi-Strauss. “The human rage to classify” is also a chapter title in F. Allan Hanson, The Trouble With Culture : How Computers Are Calming The Culture Wars, SUNY Press 2007

[2] This prediction contradicts Ray Kurzweil’s contention that technological change accelerates at an exponential rate, and will continue to do so: his “Law of Accelerating Returns” [link, critique]

[3] William E. Scheuerman, Liberal Democracy and the Social Acceleration of Time (2004). Scheuerman defines social acceleration of time as “a long term yet relatively recent historical process consisting of three central elements: technological acceleration (e.g. the heightening of the rate of technological innovation), the acceleration of social change (referring to accelerated patterns of basic change in the workplace, e.g.), and the acceleration of everyday life (e.g., via new means of high-speed communication or transportation).” I’m indebted to Barb Cherry for introducing me to Scheuerman’s ideas; see e.g. her “Institutional Governance for Essential Industries Under Complexity: Providing Resilience Within the Rule of Law” CommLaw Conspectus 17.1

[4] Human thinking won’t speed up much, if at all – though tools can make it look as if it does. See for example the Edwin Hutchins’ wonderful Cognition in the Wild (1996). Hutchins contends that we need to think in terms of “socially distributed cognition” in a system that comprises people and the tools that were made for them by other people.

Polling x Lobbying = ?

Polling and lobbying are powerful factors of government that aren’t usually covered in Civics 101. Both are huge industries, and both shape the way political decisions are made. The current wave of web technology is going to create a hybrid form that will reshape politics.

According to 2002 Census data, the marketing research & public opinion polling industry as a whole had revenues of $10.9 billion; special interests paid Washington lobbyists $3.2 billion in 2008 according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Lobbying is as old as politics, but polling is relatively new (19th century), as is its premise: the importance of mass public opinion in government and diplomacy (18th century). Lobbyists are key players in Washington DC, and there’s a revolving door that moves former federal employees into jobs as lobbyists, and that pulls former hired guns into government careers or political appointments. Polling expertise is a key attribute in top political advisors, and something that politicians – and administrations – do incessantly.

The social media technologies of Web 2.0 will create a lobbying/polling hybrid and create a new political power center to rival traditional lobbying and polling. Efforts by government to solicit citizen opinion, like the Ideascale site soliciting input on the National Broadband Plan, or the Open for Questions site run by the White House, are a way for citizens to engage in little-L lobbying. These channels invite manipulation that will amount to big-L lobbying. In the same way that astroturfing co-opted grassroots lobbying, political operatives will co-opt the forms of web 2.0 citizen participation. Those who are adept at viral marketing will propel political memes into real-time polling tools in way that amounts to lobbying.

The amplification of the randomly popular that is pervasive on social rating sites like digg will infuse politics, intensifying the temptations of “poll, then decide”. We’ll also likely see something akin to the hollowing out of the media industry mid-list that The Economist charted in “A world of hits”: In movies and books, both blockbusters and the long tail are doing well; the losers are titles (and retailers) in the not-quite-so-good middle ground. Similarly, blockbuster issues will be laid on for the mass public that doesn’t care about politics (shibboleths like taxes and abortion), and niche lobbying on topics like radio spectrum, prison reform, and privacy will become even more fine-grained. Citizen publics will be important in both: as armies of computer-generated extras in the first case, and as engaged semi-experts in the second. Worthy mid-ground issues like trade, education, and energy policy will get steadily shorter shrift.

One implication is that niche topics like hunger policy shouldn’t strive to move up the charts into the middle ground – they’ll just wither there. Rather, niche players should embrace their residence in the long tail and make the most of Web 2.0 phenomena, like Polling x Lobbying, that give them direct access to the appropriate sliver of the policy making elite.

Two-way transparency

“Transparent government” is the watchword these days – but it’s the transparency of the proscenium arch. The curtain has been drawn aside a little and we can watch the players, but they care little and know less about what’s going on in the audience. The groundlings aren’t asked to shape the play.

It’s important for citizens to be able to see into government; but it’s just as important for government to understand what citizens want. And in a democracy, it’s most important for citizens to influence government.

Web 2.0 is giving participatory democracy a fillip, as online social networks are drafted into energizing voters. However, much of the “we’re listening to you” is still theater: citizens are asked to submit YouTube videos, and a select few are played to simulate that someone is paying attention.

It’s not (just) that politicians don’t want to listen; making sense of the individual opinions of thousands or millions of people is very hard to do in a nuanced way. The dominant method is still counting noses, whether in an election, an opinion poll, or keeping track of how calls from constituents are splitting on a contentious issue. Potential knowledge is boiled away, leaving only numerology at the bottom of the pot.

Advanced computation can help make sense of citizen input. Semantic analysis tools developed to filter spam, mine search queries, collate machine-submitted bug reports, and extract signals intelligence can be applied to provide a narrative. Old technologies should be still be used – and used more intensively. Regulatory agencies should poll citizens, and not just depend on lobbyists and lawyers to tell them what’s important. ICT can also turn citizen input from a burden to a blessing if it becomes a cost-effective way to leverage democratizing innovation into innovative democracy, using all the social networking and idea market tools of Web 2.0.