[iDC] A Curmudgeonly Look at last month's Conference.

[Michael H Goldhaber]

Frank,

I think both the points you make are mistaken, fairly trivially so.

(a) Most people suffering from ill health are in no position to hide  
that fact. Why exactly should the ones who can hide it be singled out  
for protection? We do need a good law insuring everyone, while the  
Americans with Disability Act should already cover employer  
discrimination, or be strengthened if it does not. Meanwhile, there  
are many reasons a person who does not herself need a drug might look  
it up — for instance out of concern for a friend, out of curiosity  
about how a drug they have heard of works, out of interest in the  
originator of the drug, for possible investment reasons, because they  
are considering taking a job with the company that makes it, because  
they are in medical school, because they are writing a screenplay  
about someone who has the appropriate illness,  because they have  
hypochondria; ; if insurers or employers rely on data of such look-ups  
to decide on who to cover or employ they will make many mistakes  (and  
should be sued as well).  (Incidentally, the individual insurance  
market up to now has required that one list pre-existing conditions,  
drugs used, etc. As current law stands, if one gets insurance by  not  
stating a condition and then it becomes clear form the medical  
procedures covered that one has had it, one's insurance is then  
revoked. The doctor-patient relation is directly and legally broken by  
the insurer in such cases without any need to collate data from  
Internet searches,  which is another reason your example is of so  
little import.

(b) The fact that the ACLU is worried about something is certainly  
good for them, but does not necessarily reveal that the rest of us  
should be worried. Like most other kinds of organizations like theirs  
they partially make their money  by invoking fears. They may well be  
quite sincere, but it does not follow that they are right. The fear of  
undisclosed algorithms may be different in kind, but not in degree  
from fears of Torquemada or McCarthy. These algorithms are just  
guesses,no more reliable than the kinds of misinformation used  
earlier.. The ACLU has certainly not shown that this is the primary  
means used to seek out suspects for arrest or prosecution for any kind  
of crime.

In any case, if all this invasion of privacy is so effective, why is  
the government still so incompetent at finding  criminals? Bernard  
Madoff was subjected to preliminary investigation six times, and it  
appears that sheer incompetence in data analysis was the main reason  
he was never caught. Everyone knows that illicit drugs of just about  
any sort are easily available. Huge numbers of people have "illegally"  
downloaded music files and publicly boast  about that. Many murders go  
unsolved. Even the White House was easily breached recently. Even when  
the government does to try to prosecute someone, it often fails.  
Judges in New York City have recently admitted it is common knowledge  
that the police, when testifying,frequently lie. Etc. So just why we  
should fear collection of ever more data is unclear. The more data  
there are, the harder they are to sift through, not the easier, so  
more spurious and absurd correlations will show up, Thus we should  
perhaps worry about the data collection if we desire efficient crime  
solving, but not particularly because our basically innocent  
activities leave us more liable to prosecution.



c) Something people have begun to worry about recently is that stuff  
they put out knowingly, directly and openly  on their blogs, or  to  
"friends" on Facebook  or like sites  might eventually embarrass them,  
and possibly cost them jobs at prestigious law firms or whatever. I  
suppose academics, on that basis, ought to be worried about putting  
forth insufficiently thoughtful comments. It hasn't seemed to have  
stopped many, so far.



Best,
Michael

On Dec 20, 2009, at 1:18 PM, Frank Pasquale wrote:

> I have two specific points to take issue with:
>
> 1) You state that " the idea that there are some highly vital data  
> about personal preferences that advertisers can grab hold of and  
> somehow influence purchases strikes me as exaggerated, unimportant  
> and of basically trivial impact on individuals."
>
> You give a few examples of why this type of data collection might  
> not be effective for an advertiser.  But what about the larger  
> cultural issue--that individuals are influenced and classified in  
> ways that they cannot evaluate? The relevant databases are trade  
> secrets, and good luck getting access to those.
>
> Rather than being "unimportant and basically trivial," data gathered  
> on the web may have a devastating impact on indviduals. For example,  
> a person who's looked for drugs for cancer treatments might be  
> classified as a bad risk on the individual insurance market.  It is  
> easy to imagine an alliance between online databrokers and "medical  
> credit scorers," just as insurance companies use applicants'  
> prescription records to deny coverage (see article at
> http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_31/b4094000643943.htm
>
> 2) You also dispute that "we are supposed to be very worried about  
> governments finding out our political convictions or other damaging  
> information.  Since when do inquisitions bother with accurate fact  
> collection?"
>
> The people at the ACLU who worry about these issues for a living are  
> not worried about the return of Torquemada or McCarthy.  They are  
> instead alarmed about new government data collection facilities  
> (like fusion centers) that create probabilistic profiles of  
> suspicious individuals using undisclosed algorithms.  Thousands of  
> US citizens have been placed on "watch lists."  This article  
> describes one tip of this iceberg:
>
> http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23231
>
> "At a million square feet, the mammoth $2 billion [NSA data center]  
> will be one-third larger than the US Capitol and will use the same  
> amount of energy as every house in Salt Lake City combined. . . .   
> [A]t the NSA, electrical power is political power. In its top-secret  
> world, the coin of the realm is the kilowatt. More electrical power  
> ensures bigger data centers. Bigger data centers, in turn, generate  
> a need for more access to phone calls and e-mail and, conversely,  
> less privacy. The more data that comes in, the more reports flow  
> out. And the more reports that flow out, the more political power  
> for the agency."
>
> In other words, there is a self-sustaining dynamic of surveillance  
> at work here, which has less to do with persecution of any given  
> group than with bureaucratic empire-building familiar to any student  
> of public choice theory.  The ACLU report "What's Wrong with Fusion  
> Centers" also describes some of the dangers:
>
> http://www.aclu.org/technology-and-liberty/whats-wrong-fusion-centers-executive-summary
>
> "Fusion centers are incorporating private-sector corporations into  
> the intelligence process, breaking down the arm's length  
> relationship that protects the privacy of innocent Americans who are  
> employees or customers of these companies, and increasing the risk  
> of a data breach."
>
> Their reports give examples of invasive surveillance, garnered via  
> online sources, designed to harass political activists.  It's no  
> wonder that large internet companies, such as Google, are in no mood  
> to disclose their degree of cooperation with such entities:
>
> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/google-talks-out-its-portal/
>
> "We asked Google some simple questions about how much user data it  
> turns over to the government. . . .Google, however, declined to  
> address the question adequately."
>
> Glenn Greenwald has observed that this fusion of public and private  
> is a hallmark of our age, nearly as strong in the Obama  
> administration as it was in the Bush years: "In the intelligence and  
> surveillance realms, for instance, the line between government  
> agencies and private corporations barely exists.  Military policy is  
> carried out almost as much by private contractors as by our state's  
> armed forces.  Corporate executives and lobbyists can shuffle  
> between the public and private sectors so seamlessly because the  
> divisions have been so eroded."
>
> We need more people studying these connections. The new  
> "inquisition" will probably not be a direct persecution of unpopular  
> groups, but will instead take place in the form of a subtle, steady,  
> and stealthy erosion of millions of individuals' life chances via  
> unaccountable computerized decisionmaking.  Kafka's and Huxley's  
> worlds, not Orwell's, are the dystopias we should be concerned  
> about--a point made eloquently by the work of legal scholars  
> Danielle Citron ("Technological Due Process") and Daniel J. Solove  
> ("The Digital Person").
>
> In conclusion: I have no idea what Marx would think of this  
> conference.  But as a legal scholar frustrated by the bloodless,  
> piecemeal cost-benefit analysis of individualized disputes now  
> dominant in my field, I was very grateful for the number of speakers  
> who dared to take
>
> --Frank Pasquale
>
> Frank A. Pasquale
> Professor of Law, Seton Hall Law School
> One Newark Center
> Newark, NJ 07102
> (973)-642-8485 (w)
> (201)-988-5774 (c)
>
>
> PS: on the topic of "medical credit scores," this article is good:  
> Robert Berners, Hospitals X-Ray Patient Credit Scores: More and More  
> are Buying Credit Data to See if the Sick Can Afford Treatment,  
> Businessweek, at http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_48/b4110080413532.htm?chan=magazine+channel_what%27s+next
>
> I'm still working through it, but I've seen nothing so far i the  
> Senate health reform bill to stop that practice.
>
>
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>
>  That's so even assuming, which is often not the case, that these  
> data are at all useful in drawing Internet users' attention to what  
> is advertised. These ads rarely work, because we are already  
> inundated with too many ads, leading us to ignore them however they  
> are presented. Further, knowing that somebody was interested in a  
> category of item or service as recently as  as a few minutes ago may  
> be utterly useless in reaching  that person now, because they quite  
> likely already made a relevant purchase and do not want more ( A new  
> suit? A new mortgage? A new plane reservation? —Too late, already  
> chosen or rejected.)
> Likewise, we are supposed to be very worried about governments  
> finding out our political convictions or other damaging information.  
> Since when do inquisitions bother with accurate fact collection?   
> Domestic spy agencies from the KGB to the FBI act on the basis of  
> misunderstandings, rumor, innuendo, outright lies, prejudice,  
> corruption, etc. By asserting that “Big Brother is Watching” we only  
> help spread the paranoia that in Orwell’s novel  the slogan was  
> designed to create. Detailed and precise data collection has very  
> little to do with it.
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 4:55 AM, Michael H Goldhaber  
> <mgoldh at well.com> wrote:
>
>
> Missing the Forest for the Trees: A Curmudgeonly Look at the IPF  
> Conference.
>
> As with others, if a bit belatedly, I join in offering kudos to  
> Trebor Scholz and everyone else involved in bringing about and  
> running the conference, handling the complex logistics, volunteering  
> their time, etc. The conference was a success for me in stimulating  
> a lot of thoughts, introducing me to some quite interesting new  
> people, as well as renewing a few old friendships.  What I heard  
> from  Catherine Driscoll, Gabriella Coleman, Fred Turner and Chris  
> Kelty seemed especially fresh a nd insightful, and it was probably  
> no accident that the last three spoke in a session delightfully  
> moderated by Ted Byfield.  There were more than a few other talks I  
> was sorry to miss. However, based on the majority of the sessions I  
> ended up attending, including the final plenary — and maybe I chose  
> badly —  what I heard had also had a negative side, which I think is  
> worth addressing.
>
> The Internet is arguably the largest collective creation of humanity  
> in all of history. In various degrees it has incorporated an ever- 
> growing series of inventions, modes of participation and very  
> widespread involvement in one or another of its forms, from e-mail  
> to blogs to social media to search engines etc, etc. All of this  
> activity I think fits neatly under the broad rubric of work and/or  
> play, to which the conference seemingly was addressed.  Yet I think  
> from Trebor’s intro on, the conference on the whole mischaracterized  
> this vast and unparalleled achievement, seeing it as  primarily a  
> source of profits for capitalists. The prime evidence, beyond an  
> ideological bias in favor of such views, comes from the fact that  
> corporations officially own many websites and try, sometimes with  
> some success to make money, principally by selling advertising and  
> by offering data they collect as tools for advertisers.
>
> In order to be outraged at this, a number of speakers at the  
> conference take it for granted or loudly proclaim that very bad  
> results can come from this, including the highly nonsensical claim  
> that extracting data on from the actions, say, of Facebook users,  
> amounts to infinite exploitation. This is a total misuse and  
> misunderstanding both of what goes on with advertising and of Marx’s  
> (anyway antiquated) formulations. Marx would have laughed   
> uproariously at this absurdity, I suspect.
>
> Incidentally, the same person who made that bizarre claim misstated  
> Google’s stock policy — falsely asserting that employees do not own  
> shares — and misunderstands Facebook’s terms of service — implying  
> that the company asserts rights to use  personal creations in other  
> settings for its own reasons, rather than to permit users to post  
> pretty much where they expect to while still acknowledging their  
> ownership of their own “intellectual property.” In each case, the  
> bias is towards making capitalism re the Internet seem considerably  
> worse than it actually is.
>
> It is not just one person's shocking incomprehension that is at  
> issue, for a number of other speakers focussed on the practice of  
> collecting data from users as the basis for their intense criticism  
> of the Internet, as well as for proof that it is fundamentally a  
> capitalist tool. Advertising is an annoyance at best, in my view,  
> but the idea that there are some highly vital data about personal  
> preferences that advertisers can grab hold of and somehow influence  
> purchases strikes me as exaggerated, unimportant and of basically  
> trivial impact on individuals. That's so even assuming, which is  
> often not the case, that these data are at all useful in drawing  
> Internet users' attention to what is advertised. These ads rarely  
> work, because we are already inundated with too many ads, leading us  
> to ignore them however they are presented. Further, knowing that  
> somebody was interested in a category of item or service as recently  
> as  as a few minutes ago may be utterly useless in reaching  that  
> person now, because they quite likely already made a relevant  
> purchase and do not want more ( A new suit? A new mortgage? A new  
> plane reservation? —Too late, already chosen or rejected.)
>
> Likewise, we are supposed to be very worried about governments  
> finding out our political convictions or other damaging information.  
> Since when do inquisitions bother with accurate fact collection?   
> Domestic spy agencies from the KGB to the FBI act on the basis of  
> misunderstandings, rumor, innuendo, outright lies, prejudice,  
> corruption, etc. By asserting that “Big Brother is Watching” we only  
> help spread the paranoia that in Orwell’s novel  the slogan was  
> designed to create. Detailed and precise data collection has very  
> little to do with it.
>
> Anyway all such data collection is  done only because capitalist  
> firms have found few other ways to make the Internet — and the  
> services through it that people enjoy — pay for themselves.  
> Advertisers and governments are always desperate for new tools, but  
> that doesn't imply that  the tools on offer will be of any great use  
> to them, or even that very much will be paid for such data or for  
> very long. Meanwhile, the Internet keeps functioning in other ways  
> of much greater import. As I have long argued, and find more valid  
> than ever, the Internet  is primarily a system for individuals to  
> obtain attention for themselves, even if they do make use of  
> channels provided by corporations. (By the way, Lenin supposedly  
> said, more or less, “the capitalist will be happy to sell you the  
> rope you will use to hang him;” why do I suspect some at the  
> conference would say, ”Don’t buy the rope; the capitalist will make  
> a profit” ?) Using these tools adroitly we may get some form of  
> socialism, or we may simply find that those who do use them have  
> created a new kind of post-capitalist class economy. In the latter  
> case, would-be supporters of socialism would certainly need to  
> understand the new system if they hope to make progress in their  
> preferred direction. For those wearing the heavy blinders that many  
> did at this conference, no such enlightenment would be possible.
>
> As is typical of most academic conferences, a great many of the  
> papers only discuss trivia because that is the route to academic  
> success. This seems particularly true in the sorts of theories put  
> forward under the guise of cultural studies; I found it indicative  
> that after the conference several people think the most exciting  
> thing that occurred was a discussion of in terms of Said’s  
> “Orientalism” as applied to a miscellany including the “Mechanical  
> Turk” and and Chinese ‘World-of-Warcraft gold” hunters. The point is  
> not wrong, and it may reveal a bit of bias, but given that numerous  
> participants in Internet firms hail from or work in various Asian  
> countries and are treated with just about the same respect as anyone  
> else, the charges of Orientalist exoticization seem overwrought and  
> beside the point. This is simply not anything to get excited about  
> except for scoring purely academic points. It says nothing about the  
> value of the Internet, or even about how it might better promote  
> international exchange and understanding.
>
> Along the same lines, another conference participant is fond of  
> asserting that billions of people have been disposessed by  
> capitalism. As he uses it, this seems more a rhetorical stratagem to  
> criticize capitalism than any indication that he wants to try to see  
> how the Internet might be used to help ameliorate that suffering. In  
> some ways capitalism is to blame for such immiseration, but the  
> situation is complicated. So many would not be suffering were it not  
> that since the advent of industrial capitalism population has grown  
> rapidly as famines and infant mortality have been much reduced, even  
> in the worst-off countries. This due in part to better food  
> distribution, higher crop yields, better hygiene, vaccination, some  
> spread of drugs such as antibiotics, and the like, for which  
> capitalism certainly deserves some credit.
>
> In most social systems historically, there were many who were  
> supernumerary; in the past most such people were killed in infancy,  
> starved to death or had to to take up vows that kept them from  
> reproducing. Less of that happens now, though they still live with  
> much less than others in the same culture, and very often live  
> permanently quite close to starvation. It is a huge and horrendous  
> problem, but not one that should be used for scoring purely  
> rhetorical points. The Internet does hold out great promise in this  
> regard, but that is not a promise that many at the conference seemed  
> much interested in investigating, forwarding or even discussing.
>
> Another comment at the final session, from Jodi Dean, struck me. It  
> is that she had finally been convinced by Christian Fuchs that  
> “communism” cannot be achieved without “computers.” One reason this  
> struck me is that it is such an old idea, dating back to the 1950’s,  
> when the Soviets and others — such as the Western economist Wassily  
> Leontief —  in fact devoted considerable efforts to  investigating  
> how to use mainframe computers to do better with central planning.  
> But I also found it odd that in the context of this conference  
> Professor Dean would say “computers” rather than “the Internet,”  
> which has much more promise in terms of bringing about some sort of  
> participatory socialism.
>
> Jodi Dean is well-known for promulgating the thought of  
> “communicative capitalism” to describe the Internet,,etc. It’s very  
> easy to claim that whatever change has occurred is just some new  
> sort of capitalism, but this hardly an analytic success, as I see  
> it. Of course any term can be stretched to mean whatever one  
> chooses, but hiding distinctions in this way is not necessarily  
> perspicuous. To be sure, Dean is far from alone in engaging in such  
> broad use of terms like capitalism and capital.  “Human resource”  
> people widely speak of “human capital,” though it hard to see how a  
> human a can be capital (for herself), and certainly not simply by  
> being educated as they imply. Likewise, Pierre Bourdieu was fond of  
> such terms as “cultural capital,” which again is certainly not  
> capital in the Marxian sense, and does not suppose the same sort of  
> exploitation as plain old capital. Many on the left, such as David  
> Harvey, and many not at all on the left take most changes in the  
> life around them to be proof of the continued strength of  
> capitalism, when an entirely different possibility is utterly  
> neglected. Inflating a formerly precise term in this fashion should  
> be avoided if one wishes to speak  with any sort of intellectual or  
> analytic precision, certainly in a conference such as this one. But  
> that is not widely done.
>
> All this highlights for me that what some cleave to as “theory” does  
> not seem deserving of that name. I started out my professional life  
> as a theoretical physicist, and as I changed fields still referred  
> to myself as a social theorist. I love theory, if it is good theory  
> — of many sorts from astronomical to zoological, from political to  
> literary theory.  By good theory  I mean a search for new  
> understanding , often through new concepts of what the world is, how  
> it works, how it can work, and what it should be. Such theorizing  
> has to be self-examining, subject to doubt and critique, always a  
> bit tentative, and certainly constantly tested for its coherence and  
> meaningfulness  against new ranges of experience, as well as in  
> comparison with other theories. It should of course strive to be  
> rational, but it can never and probably should never be that purely.  
> To get anywhere, not all hypotheses can be put in question at the  
> same time, yet nothing should be beyond examination. Theory must  
> always be seeking to add  new kinds of observations and predictions,  
> examining how it comports or contrasts with other theories, whether  
> it can be improved in its logic and strength of conclusions, where  
> it is on possibly shaky grounds , in what ways it can be useful  
> rather than merely descriptive or pejorative, when it is prematurely  
> reductionist, when it can no longer easily be extended, when there  
> are aspects of the world it has has overlooked, etc.
>
>
>
> Good theory must always be — to use a favorite post-modernist term —  
> transgressive —as well as audacious, surprising and  offering up new  
> concepts, which lead to new percepts. But even the best theory, by  
> the time it is articulated and typeset, is surely wrong in some  
> significant aspects. It always must be subject to critique,  
> modification, enlargement, and eventual abandonment. Any textual  
> formulation of it is by no means Holy Writ. It is not to be quoted  
> with an air of devotion, or as if by itself it stands for or can  
> prove anything.
>
> For too many people at the conference, I found, too much is taken  
> for granted; too much is asserted without compelling argument;  
> existing texts are treated as if sacrosanct and unarguably correct,  
> as if they were bits of the Bible and we were fundamentalists; and  
> metaphoric or analogical points are taken for logic or careful  
> analysis. (Though thought — as Derrida among others has indicated —  
> can never fully escape metaphor, that is no reason not to seek to do  
> so.) Again, too much that is said seems to be intended as nothing  
> other than academic preening. That leads to highly mistaken  
> assumptions, focussing on trivia, unwarranted smugness, and other  
> irksome behavior. It makes intrinsically intelligent people come off  
> as fools or jerks.
>
> Three things are widely held to be true in the western world today:  
> first, that we live in a more or less strictly capitalist society;  
> second, that, except possibly for some sort of socialism, nothing  
> other than capitalism is possible; and third, that capitalism is  
> much to be preferred to socialism.  (What socialism is generally  
> taken to mean — especially in the US, but increasingly elsewhere —  
> is usually some variant of Stalinism. With this definition, if the  
> first two hypotheses are taken as correct, a good argument can  
> indeed be made for the third.) Many or even most participants at  
> this conference reject only the third hypothesis, pointing to or  
> taking for granted the evils of capitalism, while also leaving  
> unstated and little thought how a humane socialism would work. But  
> how do we know that our system is primarily capitalist? Certainly  
> not just by assertion. Nor by metaphor. And equally not by  
> superficial observation of capitalist forms and notions, for the  
> question has to be what other forms might be present at a less  
> explicit level. In other words, without new concepts we cannot   
> clearly perceive what is around us.
>
> But having made the conceptual break with capitalism, perhaps most  
> participants find it too hard to take a further step; perhaps many  
> of you already feel yourselves too far out on a limb. Or, as I  
> suspect, an adherence to Marxism is enough to secure a comfortable  
> academic niche, so why even think of questioning it? One can publish  
> endless papers finding some way to  criticize, say, the Internet as  
> inherently and irrevocably capitalist, without having to have any  
> thoughts of doing anything about it. (One speaker even sneeringly  
> joked that he was going to use Facebook to organize a march on  
> Washington in favor of single-payer health care. Many smaller but  
> effective organizing projects have in fact been accomplished through  
> Facebook, but the built-in sneer evidently better preserves his  
> academic pretenses.)
>
> That’s not how to do good theory. The humanist tradition quite  
> honorably has taken up exact quotation, and  a desire to get back to  
> the text, in the case of poetry —in the largest sense —  or in  
> studying what a particular author thought or said.  Such activities  
> are commendable, but they should not be mistaken for theory, any  
> more than a portion of a painting or snatches of a symphony would  
> be . Not even a  mathematical formula, not even “E equals m c-  
> squared,”  can rest in that light.
>
> All this is true of scientific theories, but it is even more vital  
> to consider when dealing with theories that refer to the state or  
> the future of humanity, for through its own actions the human word  
> is in endless flux. What were indisputable “laws” cease to be, what  
> was the state of affairs has changed. Marx himself wrote in 1851,  
> “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on  
> the brains of the living.” Whatever he exactly meant by that then,  
> it has value for us only if reinterpreted to apply to now. Marx’s  
> own work and that of everyone who came after him — in whatever  
> tradition — is today part of a similar “nightmare.”   To live now,   
> we must be fully awake to now, not letting the clanking chains of  
> our dreamt ghosts entrap us in fears and formulations of the dead  
> past., not the past of the1860’s, nor the 1960’s, nor even more  
> recent times.
>
>
>
>
> Best,
> Michael
>
>
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