The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?

by David Brin

  Mutually Assured Surveillance

  Sometimes the wisdom of a policy can be known only in retrospect. A strategy of reciprocal deterrence seemed extremely dangerous during the Cold War, forcing us all to live in fear of a nuclear apocalypse. But it worked. Although direct warfare between large nations had been routine for many thousands of years, this persistent nasty habit was abruptly broken when two mighty empires faced MAD—or mutually assured destruction—a threat of total annihilation if either of them initiated head-on conflict. Despite a litany of shameful and costly surrogate wars, this fifty-year experiment had one valuable outcome: it proved that people and nations may sometimes behave more soberly when they face inescapable accountability for their actions.

  This notion of reciprocal accountability as a balance of power can be seen elsewhere in many forms. Take, for instance, the uniquely American romance with personal firearms. One favorite myth of the Wild West, depicted in countless films, has been the power of a humble man, armed with an “equalizing” six-shooter, to resist thugs or corrupt officials. This notion was generalized into a forceful ideology during the 1940s, when John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding magazine, propounded, “An armed society is a polite society.”

  Campbell posited that even a mighty gunslinger will be foolish to abuse other people, if everyone around him is also armed! Under such circumstances, no swaggering bully, even one with a quick draw, will last very long. The “inevitable” result, promoted by Campbell (illustrated in novels by Robert Heinlein and others), must be a society of great manners and courtly caution, where weapons wind up being used rarely just because they are ubiquitous.

  This ideology underlies many of today’s arguments against gun control legislation. Alas, as with the “just so” tales of Karl Marx and so many other ideologues, Campbell’s fabulous leap of logic does not survive the test of evidence. (Like communism, it might apply to some other species of sapient beings, but not to humans.) The definitive experimental test is currently under way on the streets of countless North American cities, where a plethora of handguns has brought about anything but a renaissance of civility. The problem with Campbell’s notion is that many human beings, especially young males, have intensely wrathful emotional reflexes, often blinding them to abstract long-term consequences. In former times, when fists were the chief schoolyard weapon, lashing out caused no more than a black eye. But with firearms, one angry spasm can lead to at least a pair of tragedies: a dead victim, and an assailant whose life is effectively ruined. There are no “take backs” if you lose your temper with a gun. No saying, “I’m sorry” or “I didn’t mean it.”

  And yet, one wonders. What if some way were found to remove the major drawbacks from Campbell’s idea? Suppose that instead of pistolas, we all carried something nonlethal, that would nevertheless be profoundly effective in enforcing accountability for vicious actions?

  A stun gun? No, that’s still too literal.

  How about cameras? The kind with a live remote feed to some distant recording device, as described in chapters 1 and 2.

  Ponder an image of everyone sauntering down the street with one of these “weapons” on their hips. Naturally, one result is a near absence of street crime—that is a given. But what about the price? To many folks, the first picture that leaps to mind will be of a nosy place, snooty and provocative, with everyone shoving lenses toward one another at the slightest cause, real or imagined.

  But would that actually happen? Recall the restaurant analogy discussed in chapter 1. People already have the power to stare at strangers! Yet blatant gawking doesn’t happen very often, because most folks just don’t like Peeping Toms. It is generally more embarrassing to be caught staring than to be observed with crumbs in your beard, or soup on your tie. True, it is one of life’s hazards that someone you know may “make a scene,” attracting unwanted attention in public, and the famous or beautiful will always lure the eye. But these are bearable life hazards—or else restaurants would be empty. For the most part, the deterrence of two-way visibility already works in daily life, helping to keep things generally cordial.

  So why not extrapolate the same overall sensibiliy to a future world of enhanced vision? Aren’t cameras just extensions of our eyes? What holds for a restaurant should apply when we have tomorrow’s amplified senses, assuming that such powers are distributed evenly. If it is considered boorish to brandish your camera too openly, people will “shoot back” at those with itchy trigger fingers, retaliating by spreading reputation-damaging evidence of their voyeurism on the Net. However, most of us will leave courteous neighbors alone, not because of some utopian civility, but out of general self-interest—the same muted balance of power that today lets us have an islet of privacy amid a crowded diner.

  Perhaps, after a while, Campbell’s aphorism might come true after all. A photographically “armed” society could turn out to be more polite. Only there is one paramount difference from his scenario that used lethal firearms. With cameras, one can aim and fire without ruining lives. The first to shoot does not always win. And it is possible to apologize after a flash of temper. In a world of cameras, in other words, there can be “take backs.”

  This metaphor is applicable to the problem we saw earlier, in discussing public feedback regulation.

  Strong privacy advocates often assert, when objecting to transparency, that a homogenizing rabble may assail eccentrics with conformist harassment, pursuing any idiosyncrasy with braying cries for blood. Only through concealment, say the advocates of anonymity, can nonconformists find hope of safety from the mob.

  Their supposition is not baseless. Without any doubt, this was true at other times. Most societies punished nonconformity. Even slight deviations from the norm might bring on waves of devastating gossip. Take anthropologist Sally Engle Merry’s description of life in an isolated Spanish village: “Every event is regarded as common property and is commented on endlessly.... People are virtuous out of fear of what will be said.”

  But that was there. That was then. Evidence from our own society refutes the image of relentless conformism, especially amid the waves of pro-eccentricity propaganda discussed in chapters 2 and 5. By coming boldly out of the closet, homosexuals are winning vastly greater acceptance than they ever had while cowering within. The same trend applies to the slow weathering away of racial stereotypes, as modern media expose us to admirable, or normal, or idiosyncratic figures wearing many shades of skin. All sorts of quirky eccentrics achieve their fifteen minutes of fame through shows like Strange Universe that celebrate the outrageous and unorthodox. This is one of the chief drivers bringing on a “century of amateurs.”

  Even if that weren’t true, the case for reciprocal transparency would still stand, because there is no greater weapon against the intolerant than exposing their peccadilloes.

  The reader may remember a song that was popular some decades ago called “Harper Valley PTA.” It tells the story of a single parent who is targeted as an unfit mother by vicious gossip in a small community. One night she shows up at the local parent-teacher association meeting, steps forward, and proceeds to “sock it to” the local busybodies, reciting every secret skeleton that her persecutors had so long and so carefully concealed in their attics. “You’re all Harper Valley hypocrites,” Jeannie C. Riley sang.

  Great art? Not exactly. Decisive evidence? Well, no.

  But the spirit of ornery independence showed by the song’s heroine, plus a determination to use light in her own defense, makes her almost an icon for reciprocal accountability. It demonstrates an essential point: if enough people are eccentric or individualistic in the coming age, they will almost certainly rally together on one issue, in a single cause uniting all the cypherpunks, amateur scientists, loners, polygamists, librarians, celibates, skateboarders, llama breeders, volunteer firefighters, paraplegics, UFOMANIACS, libertarians, agoraphobes, street jugglers, college professors, hobos, members of every ethnic minority or small religious denomination, and millions of
others who just happen to like tolerance and diversity. Despite all their myriad differences, they may fight for a general policy of live and let live.

  This air of tolerance won’t happen because of admonitions to be nice, but out of cantankerous self-interest. In fact, via this strange irony, we may thus find that a little privacy can be secured in the coming age of universal sight, when a democratic balance of power makes it society’s worst sin to judge others too harshly.

  Cast not stones, ye who live in glass houses.

  When I began my career as a futurist I believed a free soeiety required promises and dreams—not just by experts, but by everyone.... But now I see uncertainty as the necessary handmaiden of freedom.... Instead of being confident in our plans, we can be confident in ourselves.

  PETER SCHWARTZ, THE ART OF THE LONG VIEW

  A TOOL KIT FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

  Up to this point, readers might have formed an impression that the new technologies are inherently friendly to secretiveness and the subverting of accountability. So, before continuing with the overarching discussion of transparency in chapter 9, the next few pages will explore how some plausible technical innovations may have the opposite effect. We will see that openness, credibility, and responsibility might be enhanced as entrenched systems of hierarchical control loosen, enabling citizens increasingly to dispense with intermediaries and participate directly in the running of their civilization. In each case, it will happen by increasing the flow of information to those who can best make use of it.

  Take an example recently proposed by science fiction author Neal Stephenson, a hybrid between openness and privacy, wherein people around the world would band together in ad hoc teams to keep an eye on each other’s safety and property, allowing (or forcing) the police to draw back to a lesser role in everyone’s lives. Under this “global neighborhood watch,” homeowners would set up their own cameras to monitor nearby streets and surroundings, feeding those images across the Net to friends on the other side of the world. While you sleep, a camera takes enhanced, real-time images of the gloom outside your house—images that then appear in a corner of the computer monitor of a distant acquaintance—say a software engineer at work in New Delhi. That engineer notes if anything suspicious is going on near your house, and calls you or your local constable directly if things seem serious enough. Conversely, when he goes to bed it will be your turn to keep an eye over your distant partner’s home and goods, glancing at a little window in the corner of your screen, while the moon shines down on India.

  Another notion of autonomous accountability is as old as a skit from the 1970s television series, Love, American Style, which depicted a young woman whose blind date has just appeared at her door. Politely, she asks for some ID, and feeds his driver’s license into a computer (then depicted with rows of flashing lights). Soon a printout appears from a database containing reports by all the women that the young man previously dated! While this skit was done for humor, who can doubt that such databases will appear in future years, if enough women choose to take part? (On several Ivy League campuses there are already underground feminist booklets containing the names of alleged “date rapists,” sometimes published anonymously on the Internet.) And yes, coteries of impolite boys will maintain dark versions, unsavory listings of women and their attributes, equivalent to the older habit of scribbling names on bathroom walls. Nevertheless, on balance, the harm avoided through the first example may far outweigh the harm caused by the latter. In any event, the issue is not whether something like this should happen, but merely when it will.

  If self-replicating chemicals had as hard a time reaching maturity as good ideas, this planetwould still be lifeless.

  ROBERT QUALKINBUSH

  “Percolation,” or Bypassing the Know-Ails

  Nearly every large-scale human society up till now has been pyramidal in its social structure, with a few at the top lording it over masses below. Only recently have we arguably shifted to a new geometry, one that is wider in the middle than either at the top or at the bottom. In another venue I discuss this historically unprecedented phenomenon, a diamond-shaped society, where the well-off actually outnumber the poor. A progressive stage that is still far from complete, yet a worthy step toward a better world.

  Despite this shift to a diamond pattern within neo-Western society as a whole, the classic pyramid still represents the social order in one modern realm: the arts.

  There is talk about how the Internet will free creative people from dominion by an elite—the studio producers, gallery operators, record executives, and impresarios who decide which artists become stars while others, equally talented, languish in obscurity. “Alternative artistic zones,” like Kaleidospace and IUMA, offer ways for musicians and others to exhibit their works on the World Wide Web, selling copies by direct order. In theory, wide-band multimedia should help creative individuals bypass rigid corporations.

  Some have mixed feelings about this prospect, among them James Burke, the author of Connections.

  Whether it be music, or three-dimensional architecture, or sculpture, or three-dimensional art, or literature—when everybody can publish, what are the standards? ... Michelangelo happened because Julius II happened. Mozart happened because the Bishop of Salzburg happened. Wagner happened because Ludwig of Bavaria happened. Almost every artist you look at—up until recently—has been supported by patronage.

  Perhaps it reflects the different memes we were brought up under, but I feel less daunted than Burke by the prospect of artists striking forth in a free market, peddling their creativiy like buskers putting on a show at a sidewalk bazaar. We are already seeing a breakup of monolithic culture. Teens no longer listen to all the same bands at the same time, but participate in several dozen tribes of musical interest. Those who predicted a homogenization of Western culture could not have been more wrong. Ideally, this should lead to ever greater diversity and creativity.

  But let’s not exaggerate. The “suits” at Time Warner, Paramount, and Disney still seem confident with good reason. While there are more gifted amateur film makers than ever, equipped with inexpensive video and other equipment, we won’t see a sudden flood of lucrative independent cinema pushing aside the old dinosaurs soon, for two reasons. 1. Systems of distribution and publicity are still so concentrated and expensive that only the largest companies can participate in them.

  2. Production standards keep going up, remaining beyond the reach of private newcomers. There are more independent movies, just as there are fresh alternative ways to get news, but not enough to make Michael Eisner or Rupert Murdoch lose sleep.

  The role of producer or critic won’t vanish. Nor will the pyramid magically flatten because new media enhance the infobit flow rate. Yet the “century of amateurs” will never be complete so long as some grand culture know-all must reach from Olympian heights in order for genius to be plucked from a sea of wannabees. We need alternative ways for talent to flourish. One I expect to see is percolation. Its repercussions will spread beyond the arts.

  Good ideas are not adopted automatieally. They must be driven into practices with courageous impatience.

  ADMIRAL HYMAN G. RICKOVER

  In his 1967 essay “Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare,” philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco said that if you give people tools that help them criticize the messages they are receiving, these messages lose their potency as subliminal political levers. One means to achieve this might be through tag commentary, consisting of a few parasitic bytes affixed to any data stream—or simply a Web link—where each reader or recipient may add a brief comment, perhaps a succinct plus or minus, signifying “thumbs up” or “thumbs down.” These blips will be ephemera, not formally part of the data packet they comment on. Their sole aim would be to sample reactions to a particular document, program, or posting. As the system grows more sophisticated, a user might send software agents to read the tags of most extant copies of the same document, taking a “poll” of reader respo
nses. An ad hoc merit system could judge documents, proposals, or works of art. The more people give favorable nods, the more widely the item will spread.

  Does this sound like “word of mouth”? Informal systems of commendation could learn your tastes and start giving greater credibility to the tag comments made by some people (presumably, those who are right a lot), and less to others.

  A pertinent parallel to “tag commentary” might be the way academic citations already track most papers in science and scholarship. Checking how often (and by whom) an article has been cited, busy researchers get a rough idea which articles are “must reads” in their field. Though some complain that the process fosters a herd mentality, most participate anyway, because citations-tracking proves so damned useful.

  Jaron Lanier, sometimes called the “father of virtual reality,” expressed the need for some such process in an essay written for the Global Business Network, where he observed, “New democratic institution[s], expressed in a combination of technical design and law, can and should be created that tend to [foster] quality and truth without creating a privileged editorial position.”

  Such semi-anarchic systems might elevate an artwork, or a particularly insightful essay, even one that was first posted by some unknown person to a dim corner of the Net. In time, the piece could percolate out of obscurity—via reprinting, reposting, and perusal by ever greater numbers—on a path uncontrolled by the moguls who own vast media empires. This second route to renown will be crucial to a transparent society. For as long as good ideas, unusual art, and biting criticism have alternative routes, powerful “opinion shapers” will never be able to keep a mortal lock on what we see or think.