So @drcabl3 asked the other day if the structures of the internet (TCP/IP, http, physical layer, etc.) were inherently patriarchal. This is what I ended up writing about that.
I suspect this is a question you can answer either way based on your definition of terms. I’m also not convinced that it’s a testable hypothesis. Is the Gherkin phallic? Hell yes. Would female architects free of millennia-long oppression design yonic buildings? Pass. So as a first answer, I’m going to go with mu.
I’m not a fan of attaching inherent moral value to scientific concepts and technologies. Is nuclear fusion evil because of Mutually Assured Destruction or good because that massive fusion reactor in the sky keeps us alive? Or possibly even evil because the massive fusion reactor keeps us a live and we as a species are a blight on the face of the earth? Mu. In much the same way I’m not convinced that a data exchange protocol can be inherently patriarchal.
Now, our use of technologies, and the social structures we build around them can be patriarchal. Technologies can be used to perpetuate unearned privilege for one group while oppressing others. With the internet, I’d argue that’s not been the case so far. I’m biased and Evegny Morozov will almost certainly tell you I’m wrong but I’m inclined to believe that the Internet and the Web have enabled a much greater plurality of views to be much more visible in our society. They have enabled oppressed groups to bridge the chasms of geography, organise, and start making their voices heard. Yes, of course there are forces acting against that in the form of state and other censorship and surveillance, but by and large, so far I’d say oppressed groups have done rather well out of the internet.
Having said that, I see three challenges with how we’ve structured the technology and how we are using it that could in the end lead to perpetuating oppression.
1. Ownership structures: One of the things that worries me the most is that our entire communications infrastructure that we use for all this wonderful political activity – from the undersea cables to applications like Twitter – is in the hands of private companies. With the exception of a couple of community-run efforts of varying quality and independence (Wikipedia, Mozilla, Dreamwidth, the Archive of Our Own), our entire infrastructure is subject to the whims of the invisible hand. If Twitter decides there’s money to be made in suppressing political discourse, or folds because there’s not enough money to be made from our updates about sandwiches, we lose a huge amount of investment we’ve put into it in terms of community building, and we lose access to an absolutely vital piece of infrastructure. If BT decides to throttle the bandwidth of people downloading documents from WikiLeaks (or for that matter people who think Julian Assange should stand trial for rape in Sweden), we might be free to switch ISPs; if the consortia running the undersea cables decide to do the same, we’re rather more screwed. I have two partial answers to this challenge – one for the capital-intensive infrastructure like undersea cables and hardware and one for applications and platforms. Net neutrality, ideally enshrined in law and international treaties, is absolutely vital when it comes to the former. Supporting community-run platforms like Dreamwidth and identi.ca and putting in place the right governance structures around those has to be one of the ways we approach the latter.
2. State control: This is of course the Evgeny Morozov side of the argument; that as well as presenting us with unprecedented opportunities, digital technology gives enormous amounts of power to the state. Surveillance has never been so easy – permanently attached to our mobile phones, we carry our very own digital spies in our pockets. Put a little pressure on Google and see search results related to, say, student protests or rape culture disappear from its pages. And yes, some people would notice, and a few would know how to get around that, but the jury’s out on whether those would be enough to form a critical mass and inform the rest. This is where digital rights campaigning is vital. You all know the organisations I’m going to direct you to next: the Open Rights Group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EDRi. They’re absolutely vital in setting the boundaries for what the state can and cannot do in a digital world, and we need to support them and remain vigilant on that front.
3. Who has the skills/access? And how do we define access? The technology and telecomms industry, as well as certain online spaces, continue to be notoriously male-dominated. Yes, we are making some progress in fixing that, but we are also experiencing significant backlash. Hardware manufacturers still see women as decoration. Anita Sarkeesian dared to imply that she might have an opinion about the representation of women in video games. Only 14 women applied to study Computing Science at Oxford last year (and the success rate for women was less than half that for men). What all of these illustrate is that women are still not quite equal on the internet – either in terms of technology or in terms of the perceived validity of their opinions and experiences. There are two things we’ve got to do in this area. The first is address the massive problem technology as a sector has in attracting and retaining female talent. That’s not a problem with TCP/IP. It’s a problem with our education system and media which continue to send the message that what is valued in a girl is pretty passivity, not smart activity; and it’s a problem with our technology industry which takes every opportunity it can to snub women as both consumers and potential employees. The second is that we need to admit to ourselves that if women and other minorities are repeatedly and deliberately silenced and dismissed by abusive trolls, we have a massive free speech issue in our community. It doesn’t matter if it’s the state doing the censoring, or Facebook, or the trolls who tell women they deserve to be raped or killed – the effect is the same. That’s not a problem with TCP/IP either – it’s a problem with people. Access is not just about having the skills, the hardware and the internet connection. Access is also about feeling safe to speak out. And it’s our responsibility to enable that.
Science and technology don’t have intrinsic moral values. I find they rarely take sides. It’s people that do, and it’s people we need to work with to address that.
drcabl3 has since written a response to this arguing that technology has moral and ideological values attached to it. I owe him a reply.