We’re Not That Good At It

I want to talk about why I think net neutrality is a microcosm for the endemic problem of cultural and societal approaches to technology.

To do that, I’m first going to lay down some theoretical and historical groundwork, then move on to my larger point, which is this: if we do in fact shape technologies, the debate over net neutrality shows that we are pretty bad at it.

Theoretical Approaches to Technology and Society

What role does net neutrality play in the debate between social constructivism versus technological determinism?

The basic tension here is one of causality: does technology determine human action, or does human action shape technology? In the reductivist world of technological determinism, function follows form — that is to say that how we use technology is determined by the structure of the technology itself. As technologies progress, centralize, and stabilize, the architecture of our technologies determine how their networks operate. Put more simply, technology’s design preempts human agency and dictates the behavior of its users.

In the social constructivist (or technological constructivist) camp, the causality is flipped — it is the users, the network that shape the technologies. Essentially, one can’t fully understand how a society uses a technology without actually understanding that technology’s social context.

So, what, if anything does the debate on net neutrality have to add to this debate?

Well, I’m fairly hard-pressed to think of substantive arguments that show how the debate over net neutrality supports technological determinism’s propositions. (I’m also a bit lost on the question as to if the answer turns on whether net neutrality principles are upheld or not.) Somewhat funnily, but totally unsurprising, the bests arguments for both theories trace back to the beginning of the Internet.

The Technological Determinist Argument

The Internet has always been decentralized: hierarchical structures, such as those that would result from paid prioritization, run afoul to the very fundamental architecture of the Internet. In this sense, upholding net neutrality principles is just function following form.

The Social Constructivist / Technological Constructivist Argument

The Internet’s decentralized architecture is largely a result of human agency and, in a broader social context, the result of distrust and disillusionment with the efficacy of centralized structures and hierarchies.

A Bit of Historical Context

As Johnny Ryan explains in A History of The Internet and the Digital Future, “graduate students at various facilities funded by the US Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) had been given the task in 1969 of developing the missing communication protocols…[and] also began to establish the informal protocols that would influence interperonsal communications on the Internet in general.” (31) One critically important way in which these graduate students issued notes on developing the protocols was Requests for Comments (RFCs). According to Ryan, they used RFCs “to make the invitation to participate as open as possible, and to minimize any claim to authority…which set the tone for the next half century of Internet culture and initiated the process to define the protocols that govern virtually all data exchange on the planet.” (32)

The graduate students produced the Network Control Protocols, something that controlled communications between the Internet and computers — but it was only for ARPANET, meaning that it wasn’t “an ‘internetworking’ protocol that could tie different machines and networks together.” (33)

Enter Robert Metcalfe. Influenced by some French counterparts, and increasingly frustrated with the consensus approach of other graduate students working on the subject, Metcalfe struck out on his own and created what became known as PUP (PARC Universal Packet). “The PUP network had no capability to control transmission or flow of data…Instead the software protocols running on the connected host computers would control the network.” As Ryan argues:

This moved control over the operation of the network from the connecting infrastructure to the actual devices participating in the network themselves…This internetworking protocol is, in a technical sense, the essence of the Internet and in its priorities and functions can be discerned the cardinal characteristics of the new medium. TCP is centrifugal by necessity, as one of its designers notes: ‘We wanted as little as possible at the center. Among other reasons, we knew quite well that it’s much easier to scale a system that doesn’t have choke points in the middle.’ (38- 39)

From the outset — from the RFCs to the protocols themselves — the structure was intentionally decentralized. Not only can we not understand the Internet as a technology without understanding the mindsets and intentions of its creators, but we also can’t understand the architecture of Internet without examining the social structures and contexts through which it emerged, developed, and progressed.