T. Brooks Hartnett - Information Policy @tbhartnett50 - Tumblr Blog

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Budget TACC.

#supercomputers #playstation

So... data aggregation. The internet never forgets, class.

#bigdata #aggregation #tracking

markmgray-blog

Social Physics

Physics happens…

I found it fascinating the idea of a model composed of social networks facilitates in the creation and transfer of ideas. This type of idea transfer and prediction was not possible prior to the explosion of social networks and the ease of connecting to one another. The book mentions the ability to track an entire community of people and using the collected data over the course of multiple years, they mention this as a sort of “living lab.” The author goes on to mention that by studying past trends in social behavior they are able to accurately predict future behavior taken by an individual. One example they give in the book is a vast network of brokers communicating instantaneously with one another causing them to overreact to the responses of the other and ultimately converge into a heard. This caused many brokers to trade stocks in a very similar strategy and allowed for prediction of actions based on new inputs into the environment. The vast amount of data we have unlimited access to appears to lead many people to think the same way based on the social norm. I am abstracting away the use of tracking and predictive models from the equation and simply relying on social trends. Take for instance the Ice Bucket Challenge that was the internet rage a year ago. Some people didn’t hear about this from the original source (in fact probably most) but instead through the social networks they are involved with. This predictive model could use the fact that you have 50 IBC (ice bucket challenges) on your social feed and take the number that you have watched/liked and predict with a percentage of how likely you are to participate in the IBC.

The author talks about a social physics that expands beyond this level and analyses more information than just your social network feed. This involves communication with other people, locations visited, things interacted with, and information learned by monitoring GPS location, call length and to whom, and even what information is sought after. The author also mentions that the spread of ideas is beneficial to a certain extent. After a certain amount of ideas had accumulated the research started to show trends of something they called an “echo chamber” where the same few ideas were being re-echoed and causing less production than the idea diverse, but not isolated environment. They give an example with eToro and showed that as the rate of idea flow hit a certain amount the return on investment reached an optimal point. It was interesting to see the returns fall again once the idea spreading rate reached a high number. This appeared to be in part because of the herding effect they mentioned earlier in the book. It was interesting to read how the emergence of big data and social networking were able to create a social physics model that the author covers in the book.

I believe what he talks about we are only starting to see and use in recent years. We are getting to the point where we have the processing power to sift through this massive amounts of data and use it for a meaningful purpose. Now the question goes back to the reason for the class, does this type of analysis need a strict policy that governs it? Is it safe to create large predictive models for communities based on past behavior, or can these be exploited? With all the information that is out there it is not hard to imagine a predictive model used for malicious purposes.

tbhartnett50

One of the problems I had with Social Physics is something that @panamaluisito alluded to in his blog. He discussed how he had to remove impediments to change in his organization because some of the most intractable people he had to deal with refused to listen to new ideas. I think that’s fine for a professional setting, but I’m thinking there’s something Pendland alludes to in his book that I found disturbing in this context. In the eToro example you mentioned, Pendland never really mentioned the methodology that his team used in order to get to the “optimal” level of idea flow. How do you “fire” people who are merely exercising their right to freely communicate? Or do they suffer something akin to a Google / Amazon death, where everything they have to say gets discounted? Should that be a vehicle for policy? My question would be, “What are the implications for civil liberties?” (as so many of these information policy issues ultimately come down to).

I actually enjoyed Social Physics quite a bit, don’t get me wrong. However, what worries me is that maybe in striving to reach “optimal” idea flow, we end up curtailing civil liberties (either through brute force or through the court of public opinion) which could have an ultimately negative impact. The echo chamber phenomenon is real... take political ideas, for example. Great angst reigns amongst my progressive colleagues at the LBJ school as to what their conservative friends watch and read, and vice versa. But would that justify crafting policy that say, shuts down Fox News and forces people to search for alternative opinions? At one point in time, there was something in this country called the “Fairness Doctrine”, a set of FCC rules that forced radio broadcasters to actively seek to cover all sides of a particular issue. For good or bad, conservatives dominate AM talk radio. Would a reinstatement of these rules make sense in light of Social Physics?

Perhaps the medium of the Internet makes these concerns obsolete... but knowing that an incomplete set of options gets presented to me when I search Google or Amazon for information or a document is somewhat concerning. Now, I’m not that discriminating in my preferences when I’m shopping on the Internet, but it seems that in some ways, the medium has pushed the capacity for a truly collective opinion that can stomp on the ability to see new ideas. Policies that seek to harness the ideas in Social Physics to generate idea flow must be careful to present what many might think to be claptrap in a way that allows people to think critically rather than just filtering it out.

panamaluisito-deactivated201605

E = mc^2, where m = idea, c = flow, and E = emergence...

This week’s book, Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread—The Lessons From A New Science by Alex Pentland, was very interesting. I may be way off but, I feel like this book, in a way, took a more focused look at the things that lead to emergence in a system of people (organizations, communities, cities, and nations). More specifically, he honed in on how idea flow or social interaction is the catalyst for innovation and change. Although not directly speaking on emergence, his research did conclude that the cumulative intellect of a group of people in a community, city, organization, ext…had less to do with the individual intellect of its members, and more to do with the way the members of said group interact. This was very resemblant to the concepts in the emergence reading we had several weeks ago.

It is funny because there were several instances where Dr. Pentland would, very eloquently, build up the research he did for many of the conclusions he drew in this book. My expectations were always that his research would result in some astronomically incredible conclusion that I would never have thought of, but it seemed as though much of the conclusions he drew up were common sense. I do not want to diminish his work in any way. I think this book was very revealing and interesting, but a lot of the conclusions drawn were what I expected them to be. For example, one of his major points in the book was that the people with a diverse social group were always the most innovative people. He mentioned that this was due to the fact that people with diverse social groups could look at a problem in a more holistic view and be open to many more ideas. This makes sense to me and would not strike me as a conclusion that shocks me.

That said, what was intriguing was type of person Dr. Pentland chose to contrast against the person with a diverse social network to prove his point: the “expert”. This point hit home for me because I have worked in an organization where new ideas were like the plague and people in said organization would put all their efforts in finding a way to make known solutions to old problems fix new problems. I am blessed to have a very diverse work experience, and as an U.S. Army Officer, I also have to change jobs quite frequently. In my 12 years of service, I have had the honor of holding 7 different positions. My last job was one that brought me to a predominantly civilian organization. What this means is that, unlike my past jobs where personnel come and go frequently, my last job had people working for me that had been there for over 20 years doing the same thing. Kudos to my boss who understood my diverse background and saw putting me in the leadership position he did as an opportunity to bring innovative new ideas to the group and move them forward. That said, that job was easily the most difficult leadership challenge I had faced in my career. I have led a platoon of over 30 men into combat, I have commanded a company of over 200 men in combat, I have been the CIO-J6 of an organization of over 3000 personnel spread out all over the nation of Afghanistan, and none of these jobs were nearly as challenging to me as working to lead this group of nearly 20 civilian personnel and getting them to adopt new ideas. The biggest challenge was getting a group of entrenched personnel, who had done their jobs the same way for decades, to understand that they had to get with the times. As Dr. Pentland showed throughout his research, a group’s ability to produce innovative ideas were based on the cumulative intellect of the group. His research showed that the groups whose leaders were “experts” suffered from the fact that the leader is good at what he is good at and wants to fit solutions to what he/she knows. In my case, although I was assigned the leader of the group, the true leaders were the personnel who had been there for several years and had the influence over their peers. Every collaborative effort I made to have the group begin looking to new innovative ways to achieve our goals, were railroaded by the naysayers who did not want to learn new ways of doing things. I wish I could say that I found a way to motivate these naysayers to get on board, but I actually ended up having to remove them from our group. It was not until this happened that our organization began to flourish. Without the constant contradiction to what needed to be done, people in the group were open to the innovative ideas brought up in our collaborative sessions. This compounded by the tangible, positive results our organization was producing due to the adoption of several of these innovative ideas, help foster a cultural change in our organization. As a Soldier, it was hard for me to have to let go my team mates instead of making the effort to bring them into the fold, but I realized that with the time I had, something had to give.

I’m going a bit long here, but the point of my story was to show how Dr. Pentland’s concept of a having a diverse social network leads to great idea flow, and to show an example of how experts that tend to live in their comfort zones can suppress innovation. Great read!

bingut

I agree with you that in the book the author honed in on how idea flow or social interaction is the catalyst for innovation and change. Think of how many organizations there are that would like to influence our thoughts. They could do it without announcing themselves, but instead work through agents with nice personalities who could maintain engaging web personas. These “leaders” need not reveal that they are working to change our thought to align with some agenda or other. Imagine large numbers of paid shills, working hours every day, using these techniques to sway public opinion without ever showing their true colors.

I’m delight that you pointed out that having a diverse social network leads to great idea flow, and to show an example of how experts that tend to live in their comfort zones can suppress innovation. It’s time for a new social revolution!

I support Social Physics as a new science. Yes, you are right. All the observations and relationships between cause and effect are all familiar to us as common sense but this new science seeks to bring mathematical precision to the most imprecise of all things, human behavior. We need new social experiments which offer incentives in a subconscious and spiritual level rather than just on a monetary one. I have written a book which focuses on reorganizing our social relations and eliminating top down pressures to create a more just and socially mobile society.

tbhartnett50

I think that’s one of the points that Pendland is trying to make in terms of dealing with bureaucratic inertia; unless the entrenched individuals feel the pressure to change, they won’t. It’s easy for the “experts” to shrug off the attempts of the leader to directly change their ways of doing the same things “they’ve always done.”

The challenge, then, for the leader is to bring to bear the pressure of social networks in connected society. When the dead weight in an organization sees the social incentives to change to being more adoptive of new ideas, then they’ll finally take the step towards being more innovative. I guess that’s what the leaders job is to be the one who illustrates the growing consensus outside of his or her organization, especially if the naysayers are isolated or unconnected. It may even be that the challenge is to get those individuals “plugged in.”

A lot of what Pendland discusses reminds me of some of what I’ve gotten out of my Social / Information Networks class. Specifically, there’s discussion of altering people’s smoking habits. Anti-smoking groups found that when they targeted the family and friends of a smoker, he or she was much likely to quit rather than if the same group approached the individual directly.

I very much sympathize with you, @panamaluisito; I’ve been there and done that. An unfortunate aspect is when those who can’t adapt to new ideas become an impediment to the whole organization. In our line of work, unfortunately, it tends to be hard to get these individuals out so that communication can improve.

As government agencies and tech companies develop more and more intrusive means of watching and influencing people, how can we live free lives?

#atlantic #paranoia #tinfoil #intrusion #interoperability

From The Economist on Bitcoins' uses outside of cryptocurrency.

#bitcoin #blockchain #economist #communication #cryptography

pharmacistlife

Photo

tbhartnett50

So @pharmacistlife randomly liked my blog post because he's probably a bot, but some of the stuff on that page was funny, so I'll leave this here for all of you CS folks regarding the all seeing Eye...

#sauron #google

Weekly Blog 10: Social Physics & Switch

Having perused Social Physics by Alex Pentland, I can’t help but think of Switch by Chip and Dan Heath. The Heath brothers wrote about five years prior to the publication of their book, but I think many of their recommendations in terms of business and social strategies for change make a lot of sense in terms of Peatland’s work. The Heaths recommend three things for producing change: ‘motivate the elephant’, ‘direct the rider’, and ‘clear the path’. ‘Motivating the elephant’ more or less involves waking the latent potential in everyone for change. ‘Directing the rider’ means generally to encourage the natural restraining tendencies to productively focus on the change hand rather than remaining in fear. ‘Clearing the path’ means removing obstacles that restrict the change process.

To me, Social Physics aligns nicely with these premises. Through the combination of effective social norms and incentives, we can ‘motivate the elephant’ to engage in new forms of engagement and information generation / sharing. We can ‘direct the rider’ to break out of his or her echo chamber or isolation to be more receptive to new information from networks of contrarians who might have strategies that run against the grain of common sense but have significant consensus for being reasonable solutions. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, involves ‘clearing the pathways’ and providing new avenues for sharing that information and creating those same social incentives.

In the context of Pendland’s argument for social physics as a new sort of math that will enable us to develop more valuable social structures, I think this is truly where the rubber meets the road for information policy. Breaking down the obstacles to information sharing apparatus and designing more efficient, value creating enterprises is where information policy can have its best effect. Information policy, at best, should be an enabling capacity, and it can do this best through modes that remove obstacles and incentivizes strong social network performance.

Without getting too specific, but rather focusing on principles, I think we ought to look at information policy as a means rather than an end unto itself. When viewed from this perspective, the question becomes not “How can we make everyone’s data secure?” but rather, “How does this policy facilitate the secure transfer and storage of information so that we ultimately create a better society?” I think this is one of the best values in Pendland’s work, helping us to ask the right questions that identify the purpose of any information policy. If policies regarding the pitfalls and opportunities of data sharing techniques don’t somehow focus on the larger questions of bringing value to our social exchanges, we have constructed them too narrowly, and at best this represents a missed opportunity.

#switch #weeklyblog #social physics #pendland

World Wide Web creator makes last-minute bid for open Internet in Europe

#Net neutrality

On the 70th anniversary of the books that spawned Thomas The Tank Engine, NPR's Elizabeth Blair considers the economic model of Thomas's home island of Sodor, and its elaborate railway system.

#natural language processing #confusion and delay

hunterk1516

Where Do We Go From Here?

In The Global War for Internet Governance, Laura DeNardis outlines many of the complex policy issues that surround charting a path forward for the Internet. These questions involve a diverse set of actors and require us to think not only about how the actions that we take will affect technologically developed nations but also those parts of the world with less mature network infrastructure. Perhaps because I come from a computer science background, I appreciated the fact that the author delved into the technical details of these issues in a substantial manner, and I believe the author did a good job of overviewing in a balanced manner various policies that could be implemented.

I enjoyed reading early in the book about “critical Internet resources” and how they are managed and distributed. Having taken a couple of networking classes in the past, I was already familiar with some of the basics of how DNS resolution is performed and how IP addresses function, but some of the technical detail was new to me, especially those details that occurred at a more macro level. For instance, Autonomous System Numbers (ASNs) were an unfamiliar concept to me (even though they probably shouldn’t have been, given their importance). I also appreciated the discussion of how ICANN, top-level domain operators, and other actors cooperate to provide a functional Internet, and more specifically, it was interesting to hear about the particular ways in which the United States (through the Department of Commerce) has held on to its historical governance role by use of the intermediary of ICANN. I had read of the current tension in which other nations are pressuring for less U.S. influence over the Internet, but I never fully understood what this entailed. At this point, I’m not exactly sure where I fall on the question of whether the United States should abandon its privileged role in Internet governance. It makes a lot of sense that a truly global phenomenon should be managed by such an organization as the United Nations, but on the other hand, it doesn’t appear to me that the Internet has been hindered by this loose American oversight. Consequently, I’m not sure if I see a burning need to destabilize the status quo; however, I recognize that if I were a citizen of a different nation I might see things differently.

As the book described how standards and protocols for the Internet have come to be, it highlighted the fact that the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which are crucial for the ongoing success of the Internet and the web, respectively, operate in a very “bottom-up” manner in which openness and voluntary contribution by members are key. This is still somewhat remarkable to me that such a distributed process can have such successful results, and it’s this sort of result that makes me very hesitant to bring governmental (or UN) influence into considerations of Internet architecture. For instance, one topic that the author addresses is how peering and transit agreements come into being between various network providers. DeNardis makes the case that the well-established networks operated by Tier 1 providers have little to no reason to interconnect with newer, smaller networks on the basis of settlement-free peering agreements despite the fact that interconnecting might be the most sensible action from an overall technical perspective. While I understand that governments need to perform some oversight and regulation of a utility-like structure such as the Internet, I think that in a case such as this I would be more inclined to let the free market decide the result rather than having a government issue some mandate for peering.

Toward the end of the book, the author focused on the ways in which Internet governance can be made a tool for questionable purposes. One specific technique that she mentioned was deep packet inspection (DPI) and how it may be used to control the type of content that passes through a network, such as is the goal when a government is wanting to censor its citizens. Given the discussion in last week’s book regarding the potentiality of installing a real-time, wide-reaching DPI system across the the Internet backbone in the U.S., this mention by the author certainly provides a moment for pause and reflection about the potential implications of that action. While I still feel that the idea of DPI for cyber-defense makes a lot of sense, I believe this section in The Global War for Internet Governance should remind us that we would need to be extremely cautious if such a system were to be implemented. An abundance of transparency, checks, balances, and accountability would be absolutely essential. The potential for “mission creep” would be very real, and personally, I’m not even quite sure where exactly I would draw the line of acceptable vs. unacceptable use of such a system. I don’t want Big Brother, but I do want adequate protection from cybercrime and cyberwarfare. Striking that proper balance would be a difficult challenge, just as is the case for many of the issues lying in the realm of Internet governance.

bingut

I agree with you that many of the complex policy issues that surround charting a path forward for the Internet and these questions involve a diverse set of actors and require us to think not only about how the actions that we take will affect technologically developed nations but also those parts of the world with less mature network infrastructure. The same as you, I also like the fact that the author delved into the technical details of these issues in a substantial manner.

I agree with your idea that it makes a lot of sense that a truly global phenomenon should be managed by such an organization as the United Nations. I strongly believe that more people means more power. There are more experts in the field of global phenomenon and they can do a great help for the organizations like United Nations to make decisions which are more helpful than individual person or country. Therefore, I think that governments need to perform some oversight and regulation of a utility-like structure such as the Internet. However, in a case of not globally issues I would be more inclined to let the free market decide the result rather than having a government issue some mandate for peering.

tbhartnett50

I’m not convinced that a UN run operation will ever happen. It’s not in America’s interests to allow that organization to have that kind of power, nor am sure that rest of the world really wants that either, despite what they may say. That being said, the good news story about a potential UN type policy arm that ‘does internet’ is that it might be something the UN can actually do. There’s not too many things that it does right presently, but in a way, because of the relatively low barriers to entry compared to say, quality of life improvement in the third world, this could be something they jump right into. Unfortunately, it’s populated with many bad actors who’s commitment to making access to the larger world somewhat laughable, so there has to be some sort of mechanism for transparency.

With my free-market bias in play, I agree with you that that would be a more ideal solution, especially as these network providers high and low are the ones with the expertise and are already in the field. Being that this a policy class, then my question in the face of my acknowledged bias is “Well then, what do we do?” Sometimes the best answer is to do nothing, but if that is not possible to not do anything (the irony, btw), then maybe we need to focus the state on doing what it can do to make individual citizens understand what and cannot happen in the realm of cyberspace. To me, education is one of the key areas that policy can touch that would truly make cyberspace a better place and ultimately more accessible. If we are to rely on corporations to act in ways that are moral and driven by the greater good, then we must make the citizens that work there decent people. I think this is possible, and there are some companies that don’t just chase the profit motive, despite how cynical we might be of them. Being that the government tools are limited for dealing with managing cyberspace (at least in the US), then ultimately, we’re going to rely on people who are least partly incentivized by profit. Additionally, I’m not a computer science guy, but once the practical problems of putting network building capability into an individual human being’s hand (which I’m sure will come along), then we need that individual to know what he or she is doing.

aksullyopinions-blog

The Global War for Internet Governance

To start off this post, I thought I’d share this link: http://carlyfiorina.org/

Before announcing her run for presidency, Carly Fiorina failed to register this domain name. A faster moving person did instead – and used it to send a message. Specifically, how many people she laid off during her tenure as HP’s CEO. I bring this up because it was the first thing I thought of when reading about domain name squatters. In this case, I found this “squatting” effective because months later I still remember scrolling past all those sad faces.

At first, I was thrown to see chapters dedicated to topics from our past weeks – mostly since the topics from the past weeks haven’t really bleed into one another. However, in retrospect, this should have been completely expected since they are policy concerns about the internet and thus lend themselves to the topic of this week.

One of the things I liked about this book was that the author first frames the technical aspect of an issue, then the author outlines the policy implications. It’s helpful to understand why things have become so complicated. At multiple points, the author mentions how the internet wasn’t designed with all of these technical – let alone policy – issues in mind. For instance, security wasn’t a concern. Initially, everyone connected to the internet was a trusted entity. Nor did the inventers predict the exponential growth we’ve seen unfold. Its easy to see how we’ve gotten this far into the development of the internet and still have technical and political issues.

One of the big things in this book is a point we’ve echoed in class before – that there are both public and private actors in place. In fact, the private sector plays an important role in keeping the internet operational. However, the sets off its own issues – such as how to corporate interest impact the internet? One way we really feel the impact of private companies are those that have “the role of private information intermediaries” which is why I find it interesting that most of the companies that fit this bill will publish reports depicting the requests they get from various countries to take down content. I think it’s a move to build trust in the consumer base [since it’s our actions on their “free” sites that help them make advertisement revenue]. But its also the private companies setting standards and thus impacting the internet from its core. Or even private ISPs providing that access to the every day person. So when we look to global internet governance and the formation of global policy we can falsely fail to include the impact of all these private actors.

I’m also thankful the author took a chapter to look at policy issues related to the “core” of the internet. The few internet issues that are being discussed naturally focus on the impacts the end users feel – i.e. net neutrality, privacy concerns. It’s natural for most citizens to be concerned with what’s happening at their direct connection to the internet because it feels like that would impact us the most. However, as a result, I did not know about the issues concerning the inter-connections and IXPs where there clearly in an imbalance.

However, in the end, while I walked away with more knowledge and background about all the topics in this book, I’m left unsatisfied in the policy aspect. I ended up with a stronger “global governance is overwhelming” feeling than when I started this book. First, nations have to work together – but so many nations have very different philosophies when it comes to various freedoms. The book’s examples even show how “democratic” countries still have varying opinions on how things should unfold in the policy spectrum. Additionally, countries currently in power of various internet resources don’t want to surrender that for less power [naturally]. Then, there is the interplay of national/international policy and private corporations. There are just so many actors with differing opinions on every topic in hard to imagine a future with a strong international internet policy. But then I guess that’s why this book is titled a “global war” and not “global resolution.”

barelyopinionated

I got the “global governance is overwhelming” feeling too! Actually, I suspect that is part of the point of this class. It is neat seeing what people are contributing to the conversation, though. We’re producing solutions to the various problems piecemeal with varying quality. Like you said, a lot of the solutions are being implemented by private companies. And those solutions sometimes advance or discourage government goals. For instance Google isn’t accessible in China. Google also seems to run into government policies a lot. I remember a few months ago, some European counties determined that Google would have to pay to include those countries’ newspapers in their news aggregator.

Google just stopped aggregating those sites and people stopped visiting those news sites. Should news aggregators pay news sites for displaying those sites’ news? What if the aggregator makes money off it? What if the net effect is that the news site sees more visitors? What if the current system makes it so it’s near impossible for news sites to get visitors without being aggregated? These questions become thorny. And Google isn’t the only company whose agenda conflicts with other governments’ goals. In many ways other countries are dependent on US companies for some internet services.

tbhartnett50

Yeah, global internet governance... don’t know what to do either. It is an overwhelming topic.

My gut suspicion makes me worried that despite the fact that this book focuses, much like Lessig, on the architecture side of governing, it amounts to much the same thing as a body of law, only even less transparent. I don’t think that’s in keeping with the “spirit of the internet.”

Personally, I think whatever “policy,” legal and/or technical, need to be applied very thoughtfully with eye to what we lose should we choose to implement.

Additionally, the impetus for global policy seems to rest within the power of those that run the internet, rather than the state. @barelyopinionated‘s example of Google makes me chuckle. I love stories like that. What makes people assume that corporations will act in a fashion any less moral than nation-states? Now that power has devolved all the way to the individual level, should any policy we devoted focus on empowering the individual to operate in cyberspace? If cyberspace is a complex adaptive system, focusing on the system as a whole, or large components, is bound to fail. To wit, I think @aksullyopinions‘ point about the literature’s focus on the end user is somewhat true: the individual is the center of gravity, and therefore perhaps that’s where we should focus. Just wait until inevitably the old network structure fails, and human beings are able to connect their own networks; that’s the future. Then we’ll really see some fireworks, just like with telecoms today, but more so.

Weekly Blog 9: Global Internet Governance

Having finally gotten around to reading this today, my impressions remind somewhat of Number 2 from Austin Powers: “Countries don’t matter anymore, only corporations do.”

That being said, the nexus between government and internet coincide with some of my thoughts regarding cybersecurity. DeNardis points out that we are rapidly approaching a period in which government is no longer effective at regulating certain technologies, the internet being one of them. Much of the power rests now with private and nongovernmental entities. Her example of SOPA / PIPA shows just how inept our government has become with respect to carrying out any sensible regulation. SOPA and PIPA struck me as more of a problem of technical incompetence rather than intent; I’m not convinced that bad people were writing the legislation, but rather that they just couldn’t do it a way that made sense. In a similar fashion, the government is fairly proficient at securing its own networks (I’m sure only the bad news makes it out there, to be completely fair). But what happens when we get out there and try to protect civilian networks, and what are the ramifications for civil liberties?

Additionally, are comfortable then with corporations running the show? I sense the uneasiness in the room whenever we discuss how much Google collects about each and every one of us. However, deep down, I almost always sense the ambivalence, including my own. More likely we’re like “I guess...?”

It’s a lack of practical solution in terms of global governance. Global governance schemes always sound good in theory; create some overarching body here and there, and have a body of law the community of nations will all adhere to. But then, you ask, would I want to be subject to the whim of a prosecution from actors from a rogue nation? I’m often reminded of the hypocrisy of having Mummar El-Gaddafi with a seat on the UN Human Rights Commission.

But an international consortium is even more threatening. Despite what DeNardis says regarding the focus on coding and architecture of the Internet as a way to get at governance issues, I’m convinced this amounts to much the same thing as a traditional body of law, only more subtle and less understandable to the lay person. This is what truly bothers me regarding internet governance.

From the WSJ. In the words of Number 2 from Austin Powers, "That, too, has also happened."

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