Meeting 1 Notes

Co-ordinator = Neil Stewart

PARTICIPANTS

• Lets start by saying that ICT is self-generating and unpredictable and therefore it defies control. I think this type of control is only transitory as the case between the US department of justice and Microsoft is proving.
• On the other hand, Microsoft is certainly trying to push technology in a particular direction. But the social power of many people wanting to use the Internet with their daily documents has also influenced the development of the Web. So, in fact, even Microsoft is bowing to the power of developing technologies 
• If we look at the broad definition of ICT, then Government plays a significant role in its development. For instance in the regulation of telecommunication, 3G licenses, the superhighway, etc. I think that there is no intention in allowing a chaotic usage of Internet in the superhighway. The Government within the last 6 years has adapted or ensured that the existing TV legislation applies to the web.
• I think governments are trying to develop a further control over the Internet. For instance it is probably that some of them want to collect taxes on some of the services that are not associated with the national boundaries. The problem is how to do this if the business of e-business is not related to a particular country. In any case, Governments like anybody else will try to protect themselves, they will not hang about in this electronic era and lose large amounts of revenue, but the effect of new types of taxation will be different, we are going to have winners and losers. Inevitably the question of fairness comes in.
• What does the social control means?
• Notice that in early industrial revolution geography was not only the criteria for expansion. The British Empire itself is a very significant example, as with the Catholic Church and other religious enterprises they went beyond geography with their companies and corporate interests. This is not the first time that non-governmental bodies go across borders.
• We don't understand the new boundaries that define social systems and therefore we are not able to use ICT consistently to organise and communicate about political issues. 
• On one hand, we have the feeling of ultimate democracy in which, through the use of ICT, we can get everybody's opinion on every issue on every day. And also we can let people know what is happening around the world in currently politically sensitive issues, such as what is happening in Iraq and Iran. But on the other hand, we have witnessed the use of ICT to organise riots that goes beyond the power of Government to control them. Here we have the example of mobile Philippines Guerrillas using SMS messages to co-ordinate each other in order to attack Government. But to complicate matters even further, we can also have, in the other extreme, the use of ICT to help Governments be more autocratic. As with most technologies, ICT can be used in destructive and undesirable ways.
• I still have the feeling that there is a lead and lag effect on all this. It seems that control follows technology. Nazis were incredibly quick to utilise the punch card technology to tabulate the population. Everyone thought it was a lag but they needed detailed statistical analysis. I think that we need to discuss about our perception of what is fair. 
• If we look at co-evolution between ICT and social processes, which is the central theme of this syntegration, perhaps control means society wishing to shape ICT's evolution. If this is the case, then the key issues to consider are timing, enabling and desirability of that control.
• Going back to the point of use and abuse of ICT lets notice that other organisations different from Governments can abuse ICT. Do we have mechanisms for all theses groups to be adequately controlled? Perhaps they are all beating the system.
• Notice that anti-cooperative demonstrations are not healthy, particularly from the point of view of ICT.
• Perhaps one important issue for us is the corruption of control and the potential for chaotic developments.

CRITICS

• I think that the issue of globalisation should feature the multinationals. Multinationals, for instance, are able to move manufacturing facilities to cheaper countries and yet co-ordinate production and other logistics from a developed world location. Can government regulations do something to those multinational practices, for instance regarding VAT? If we are in the UK and order wine from France via the Internet, the French company would charge me French VAT or British VAT? Another example, if we order a book from France through Internet being in the UK we have the same issue. In France there is no VAT in UK there is. I would like to see these sort of questions resolved.
• Notice that there was a time when books were liberating, I think that ICT has the same potential for liberalisation. We are not regulators; we are facilitators. We know what we need to control and regulate, of course it changes who regulate what and for what purpose. I think that ICTs are very wide enriching and liberating forces, and regulations have always been lagged behind.
• I think that nowadays the Government-citizen dynamics has been eroded. In many aspects citizens are seen as troublemakers and Governments usually has contradictory controlling needs.
• I would like to point out that what is actually happening at the moment is that ICT creates the possibility for individuals to re-create the original politicians role that happened in the 19th century, which is to be able to actually inform other people about the needs and possibilities and resources and all those things. So the cost of politicking has come down.

PARTICIPANTS 

• I think that we now have a number of streams to consider. The first stream is something to do with the possibility of control. The second stream is something to do with the potential for abuse and then a number of streams that were related to the political process. Another stream that says that ICT is global but control is not because global political processes are very immature yet. Another stream says that historically and concurrently there is a tremendous creative energy created by communication, much of which is liberating and enabling, and we need to capture it. Then, we have a stream that talks about political accountabilities and the final point taken from Dutch history, which is about the actual change in the role of legislators.
• Perhaps we can add to these streams two more, one about individual's accountability and other stream on the instability in our social values.
• I think we can summarise these points by using the following matrix:

ICT GOVERNANCE MAP

• The above is just a framework. We have a real opportunity here to go back to traditional forms of citizenship.
• Notice that, for instance, when considering if porn is politically correct or incorrect or whatever, we usually forgot that there are a lot of groups of people who consider that the porn is correct, and those people nowadays have a much stronger voice than they used to have, then we have to have stable opinions. Nowadays we have to take into account the voice of prostitutes, the voice of drug dealers, the voice of the disable and the voice of the elderly. Today all have a political impact; we didn't have all these before. So perhaps we need new types of decision-making.
• There is not enough debate on these issues, the debate so far has focused on a very narrow positive and negative points of these sub cells (see the matrix) and we can't isolate these things from each other.