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

by David Brin

  Elsewhere we have envisioned transparency being all about accountability and freedom, while preserving a curtilage of decent reserve and genuine privacy for individuals and families to retreat within, whenever they choose. In fact, I see transparency as a principal tool for preserving some privacy. But in Damon Knight’s alternative scenario, a flood of light has effectively transmuted humanity into something new. A people as much unlike us as ...

  ... as we are unlike our Cro-Magnon ancestors, who likewise saw and knew everything about one another, almost all the time.

  Of course, Knight’s tale is just a vivid fabulation, the sort of “what if?” that makes a reader go “huh!” and mull silently for a while, as the best science fiction is supposed to do. Personally, I doubt human nature would provide for such happy attitudes in a world so utterly transformed. In any event, I am not ready to live in a society anywhere near that transparent.

  4. Surveillance Overload

  A final dystopic vision of transparency is called data smog. It tells of a time, a few years or decades from now, when the sheer volume of information does to us what all the secret codes and ciphers never could—deafening us in a cacophony of noise, blinding us in a bitter fog of our own profligacy.

  This scenario is disturbingly realistic in one way. Every time humans discovered a new resource, or technique for using mass and energy, one side effect has always been pollution. Why should the information age be any different from those of coal, petroleum, or the atom?

  Already, those who manage the Internet have to contend with a rising fraction of bits and bytes that can only be defined as “garbage”: old postings that keep reappearing after they have been erased and go on multiplying for no apparent reason; stored drafts of documents, minutely different from one another, that no one dares to throw away; “spammed” messages that take on a life of their own, reproducing endlessly; acres of bandwidth taken up by funky Web pages that feature live video images of a goldfish bowl or coffee pot. Updating an old lawyer’s trick, some corporations and government agencies nowadays respond to reporters’ freedom-of-information demands by spewing back more raw data than any journalist could possibly sift through in a dozen lifetimes. This “fire hose” defense often proves an effective way to stymie investigators, holding accountability safely at bay and neutralizing some of society’s best T-cells.

  Even if encryption proves overrated—or if we somehow evade the seductive trap of secrecy fetishism—there remains a danger that the proud promise of this new age may drown in an effluvium of openness. We may lose all the advantages of candor in an acrid data smog of our own making.

  Each of these four scenarios depicts a world of transparency taken to some logical extreme. Naturally, I have a reply to all four extrapolations. The answer is that human nature rebels against oversimplification, such as drastic social systems that limit the breadth of our ability to experiment and experience. This response will be especially true in a society whose most popular myths sermonize from the pulpit of eccentricity. For instance, our best hope against unhappy worlds 1 and 3 above may lie in the power of boredom to make the act of watching start to pall. A quid pro quo, a polite averting of eyes, could reduce the oppressiveness, if each person chose to see self-interest beyond the nose on his or her face.

  In our hypothetical society plagued by data smog, there is a good chance that the problem would be solved by the development of new software agents, sophisticated autonomous servant programs designed to cull and search through the morass, adroitly sifting the information byways with our needs foremost in mind, clearing away dross and eventually restoring clarity to cyberspace, the way the air of Los Angeles is gradually becoming breathable once again.

  As for the benighted denizens of dystopia number 2 (Surveillance Obsession), their self-made suffering will inevitably end in a way that they deserve, either when some clique or dictator finally takes over, or else when a computer, program, or virus finally evolves out of that fetid “darwinnowing” ferment, rising up to achieve artificial intelligence. Such a sapient program might then take over the world—a laudable situation, since the citizens of that wretched commonwealth have already exchanged sovereign judgment for paranoia. Fools forsake any right of mastery over their creations, a truth that has always held for parents, and may apply to humanity as a whole.

  These four scenarios were radical extrapolations of what might happen if we are stupid and let some malign trend reach its ultimate conclusion. In fact, though, I have faith that citizens of the neo-West will notice and correct such dismal tendencies before they get that far.

  Can future Vince Fosters—and all the others who find in-your-face confrontation painful—feel at home in a transparent society? While extroverted “T-cells” go careening about, challenging errors and battling threats to freedom, will there be serenity for the reticent and the shy? Throughout this book I have maintained that a culture of openness will sustain some privacy, if that is what free citizens want, and if Peeping Toms have reason to fear getting caught. Courtesy may return as an important moderating force, for the simple reason that it will make life among the cameras more bearable—and because those who don’t practice it will be found out, losing their neighbors’ good will.

  I believe this balance of technology with common sense may result in a world where we are observed only about 80 percent of the time, and still have that personal curtilage, a sanctuary where we can relax unwatched, share intimacy, or simply be solitary for a while. Those havens may not offer enough space for a mad scientist’s lab. Only a very small conspiracy will be able to meet in your sanctum or bedroom. But that’s okay. People won’t have much use for conspiracies in a civilization filled with well-educated amateurs and dedicated eccentrics.

  Above all, citizens will be much too busy to spend time peering at one another. They’ll have better things to do.

  In contrast to these five views of a transparent society (four of them chilling and one guardedly optimistic), the chief alternative is a world filled with a different kind of blinding fog. An encrypted haze that will nonetheless completely fail to thwart the sophisticated surveillance tools of the rich and powerful, who will simply work around the mathematics. Most of us will live in houses with glass roofs. Our neighbors may not be able to peer at us through the surrounding murk of anonymous masks and secret codes, but those dwelling higher on the restored social pyramid will look down and know everything about our lives, even the smallest detail, while we happily imagine that the mighty are still somehow our equals.

  They won’t be. They never have been. Among all the human cultures yet devised, only one came close to applying the tools of accountability evenly in all directions. But if we choose secrecy as our course, we will abandon the only reliable weapon that freedom ever had.

  A WITHERING AWAY?

  Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

  This quotation from John Perry Barlow’s “A Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace” illustrates one of the essential issues that will confront us in the coming decades: a realignment of the relationship between individuals and nations. We can see signs of this process all around us: in the breakup of the old Soviet Union; in a devolution of power from the British Parliament to regional assemblies; in rising influence by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on the international stage; and in a reborn American “states’ rights movement,” whose fringe elements now eagerly spurn a flag they were brought up to revere.

  “Just as during the Enlightenment the nation-state took over from ‘the church’ to become the dominant seat of action, so the nation-state is now receding, yielding center stage to the marketplace,” says Lawrence Wilkinson, cofounder of the net-wise Global Business Network, who goes on to suggest that national patriotism may fade to the level of affection people now give
sports teams, or even “brand loyalty” to their favorite companies.

  Amid a spate of recent books extrapolating this trend to a stateless future, financier Walter Wriston’s The Twilight of Sovereignty contends that, whereas geography once made history, the information revolution will make geography history. “How does a national government measure capital formation when much new capital is intellectual?” Wriston asks. “How does it track or control the money supply when financial markets create new financial instruments faster than regulators can keep track of them?” The Sovereign Individual, by James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg, makes the same argument by pointing out that technology is reducing the ability of government to enforce its power and control. The overhead cost of the modern industrial state will no longer be supported when people find ways to escape it. Wriston has supported efforts to transform offshore banking havens into high-tech sanctuaries, masking cybercommerce from national taxing authorities. Taking a slightly different approach to the same notion, David Post and David Johnson, codirectors of the Cyberspace Law Institute, have proposed that cyberspace should be a separate legal jurisdiction with its own laws and regulations, created and enforced by the online community.

  This is not a new dream. A thread of resentment toward hierarchical power structures has always gained strength from time to time, aided by some promising (usually informational) technology; for example, the printing press encouraged dissemination of vernacular bibles, breaking the rigid hold of church officials on religious thought and encouraging the rise of “individualist” Protestant alternatives. But the decline of church influence turned out to be only partial, as it adapted to changing times. Moreover, we should note that nation-states soon took advantage of the same technological innovations, replacing church authority and gaining strength from the increased information flow, rather than losing ground to it. Stephen Kern’s The Culture of Time and Space: 1880-1918 describes how the telegraph, telephone, and airplane helped prompt “a general cultural challenge to all outmoded hierarchies.” But other kinds of hierarchies soon emerged, from the totalitarianism of Hitler and Stalin to the business empires of Ford and Du Pont. The tendency of humans in leadership to leverage permanent positions atop pyramids of power should never be underrated.

  Despite all the transcendentalist proclamations we have heard that the Internet and new media will inevitably level social differences and empower individuals, most of the cash (and accompanying influence) seems to be passing through major corporations.

  In an article in the December 1997 Atlantic Monthly titled “Was Democracy Just a Moment?,” Robert D. Kaplan paid respect to the resiliency of authoritarians in adapting to fresh styles of technology and control, including the corporate boardroom. Picking and choosing in order to cite a few tyrannical success stories, and largely ignoring the error-prone, war-loving, and self-delusional nature of most dismal autarchies, Kaplan nevertheless did strike home by pointing out how nearly universal has been the tendency for cliques to take over during times of chaos, transition, or unaccountability. Extending this into the future, Kaplan’s view is that “Corporations are like the feudal domains that evolved into nation states; they are nothing less than the vanguard of a new Darwinian organization of politics.”

  What can we conclude from these seemingly contradictory predictions? We seem to be surrounded by bright fellows who think they have road maps for tomorrow. Kaplan, at least, has some history he can cite to support his dour view of natural trends. The cyberanarchists have nothing but a vivid dream.

  Still, the revolutionizing power of the information age is impressive, fostering reinvigorated utopian hopes. As discussed in the section “An Open Society’s Enemies” at the end of chapter 4, many libertarians have long called for dismantling those state structures they believe hobble and corrupt a natural free market—after which poverty and oppression would presumably vanish, dissolving in a cornucopia of unleashed creativity and enterprise. While some libertarians, such as those at the prestigious Cato Institute, would define this dismantling process in cautious or moderate terms, negotiating an evolving consensus with society at large, a radical or “anarchist” wing sees nothing about the word government worth preserving.

  The Internet’s arrival has stoked this quixotic aspiration to new levels, provoking proclamations of a coming age when tyrants and bureaucrats will smolder away in a soot of their own irrelevance. While the U.S. Libertarian Party polls only single digits in most elections, informal surveys indicate that up to 40 percent of the most technologically sophisticated netizens sympathize with libertarian agendas and goals.

  It can be interesting to compare the vision of radical libertarian utopianism with another one that was penned more than a century ago, by Karl Marx. Both look forward to a natural and supposedly inevitable withering away of the state, and a resulting civilization without coercion or authority figures, where free adults deal with each other under conditions of perfect independence, gravitating to any work they desire. The chief difference between these two transcendentalist world views, one “extreme left” and the other “far right,” has to do with how this result will be achieved.

  Marx believed that it would occur once industrial societies finish constructing the means of production. After the needed capital—factories, infrastructure, and all that—is completed, there will be no further need for the specialized skills of “capitalists.” Their services can then be dispensed with, along with the governments that protect their privileges.

  Anarcho-libertarians project a somewhat different path to the same goal. Their ideal society of free and rich individualism awaits one prime task: assertively demolishing the oppressive and inefficient state apparatus.

  In retrospect, the progression described by Marx sounds incredibly naïve. For instance, there is never a point in time when society finishes “forming capital.” In the modern era, factory equipment becomes obsolete with ever-increasing speed, requiring rapid and agile retooling that will leave us needing innovatively competitive “capitalist” managers for any foreseeable future.

  Alas, the anarcho-libertarian vision is no more realistic. Believers can cite no historical cases when following a prescription of unbridled individualism caused productivity and freedom to skyrocket in the manner they predict.

  We do know that markets often respond well to a moderate and continuing easing of onerous government supervision, a self-correcting process of gradual deregulation that many nation-states are currently performing through their own political processes, even as we speak, and one that we have discussed several times in this book. As Jaron Lanier put it, “Of course government intervention screws up a market, but at the same time it is the existence of government that creates markets in the first place. Otherwise, people would resort to violence instead of money to get things.” A position that is perfectly compatible with moderate libertarian thought.

  Without a doubt, many areas of public policy merit further attention for possible deregulation, for example, numerous cases of “corporate welfare.” In fact, mainstream economists believe that enhanced openness of information flows will result in gradual easing or replacement of many bureaucratic structures, as cheating is eliminated and all market players can participate with full knowledge. In other words, transparency.

  Unfortunately, libertarians in general (even the moderates) have little voice in this ongoing process, because a large fraction have politically marginalized themselves through blanket contempt for gradualism. By publicly ridiculing the current consensus, worked out by a free and educated citizenry over the course of many decades, enthusiasts like Wriston emulate the followers of Marx in dismissing their fellow citizens as puppets and dupes. Hardly an effective way to elicit support.

  Ironically, the dream that anarcho-libertarians and Marxists share may yet come about, though not in the manner that either group ordains. Instead of happening through some transcendent revolutionary transformation—a semiviolent or semimystical upheaval—their ideal w
orld of true individual sovereignty might appear through a gradual combination of the pragmatic tools and skills that have been described in this book. 1. Rising wealth and education levels may extend people’s horizons, encouraging them to consider alternatives to traditional tribes and empires. New affections won’t necessarily banish the old.

  2. The propaganda campaigns described earlier—a tsunami of films, books, and images promoting individualism and suspicion of authority—will accelerate a desire by billions to find ways of perceiving themselves as somehow unique and special. Millions will actually succeed in achieving truly creative eccentricity.

  3. Where this results in a proliferation of avocations, or “hobbies,” many private individuals and groups will take on tasks that formerly only state bureaucrats were thought capable of performing, such as nosing around for inefficiency and error. As shown by the example of public feedback regulation discussed in chapter 8, many paternalistic protections may prove less necessary, and even fade away, once consumers have ready access to the correlated information they need for making truly informed choices.

  4. Human nature will not change (though both Marxists and anarcho-libertarians seem to expect it to). Cliques and groups of would-be oligarchs will always conspire to improve their position through cheating rather than fair competition. But in a world of free-flowing information, these efforts may prove futile. Infections of nascent tyranny will heal under liberal applications of light. Government will be an essential tool for preventing coups and criminality in the short term. But transparency may eventually reduce or eliminate the need for armies and police to safeguard our lives and property.