The other side of the coin: Theorizing the dual use of ICTs

Heidi Herzogenrath-AmelungH.Herzogenrath-Amelung@leeds.ac.uk

Pinelopi TroullinouP.Troullinou@leeds.ac.uk

Institute of Communications StudiesFACULTY OF PRFORMANCE, VISUAL ARTS AND COMMUNICATIONS

The ubiquity of ICTs Living in technicized times• Email, smartphones, twitter, Facebook, etc.

Draft Communications Data Bill• Real-time monitoring of mobile phone calls, email, browsing & social

networking activities• Blanket surveillance: irrespective of suspicion

ICTs – an opportunity, a threat or both?

Heidi Herzogenrath-Amelung and Pinelopi Troullinou NECTAR C1 Workshop, Harrogate 2012

The ideological packaging of ICTsLyotardian grand narratives • The Information Society

– ICTs for information, entertainment, convenience & efficiency

• The Surveillance Society – Orwellian Big Brother, Panopticon (Foucault)

Fairclough: The power of language• “‘common-sense’ assumptions … implicit in the conventions according to which people

interact linguistically and of which people are generally not consciously aware”• “Ideologies…are a means of legitimizing existing social relations and differences of

power, simply through the recurrence of ordinary, familiar ways of behaving which take these relations and power differences for granted…. [They] are closely linked to language, because using language is the commonest form of social behaviour, and the form of social behaviour where we rely most on ‘common-sense assumptions” Fairclough (1989:2)

Ideological Packaging of ICTs as a deflective mechanism pre-empting critical engagementHeidi Herzogenrath-Amelung and Pinelopi Troullinou NECTAR C1 Workshop, Harrogate 2012

Assumptions implicit in the notions of Information & Surveillance SocietyPrimary qualities of information – flow, compression of time and space, real-time relations (Lash 2002) – capital or liability?• Positive bias of Information Society (Kony 2012)• Negative bias of Surveillance Society (Article 12: Waking up in a Surveillance

Society)

Information circulating for the user – information circulating on the user

Heidi Herzogenrath-Amelung and Pinelopi Troullinou NECTAR C1 Workshop, Harrogate 2012

Same technologies, different perspectivesICTs for Information & entertainment and surveillance kept in separate cognitive spheres by the end user• Technology implementation/diffusion distracts attention away from

technologies to prospective positive benefits• Instrumental perspective: technology as neutral means to beneficial ends

Heidi Herzogenrath-Amelung and Pinelopi Troullinou NECTAR C1 Workshop, Harrogate 2012

Same technologies, different perspectivesElectronic devices used for information entertainment purposes can be harnessed for surveillance & control• Media & privacy watchdog reactions to Communications Data Bill• Interoperability has always been inherent to digital ICTs: dual use

ICTs united by their basic operating principle• The computer as “universal machine” (Kittler 1997)• Standardization of data formats and channels

“The general digitization of channels and information erases the differences between the individual media. Sound and image, voice and text are reduced to surface effects, known to consumers as interface. Inside the computers themselves everything becomes a number... With numbers, everything goes. Modulation, transformation, synchronization; delay, storage, transposition; scrambling, scanning, mapping—a total media link on a digital base...” (Kittler 1999:1)

Heidi Herzogenrath-Amelung and Pinelopi Troullinou NECTAR C1 Workshop, Harrogate 2012

The dual use of ICTsInteroperability allows for contact-less transfer of information between any number of devices and databases

Oyster smart card • Intelligent transport, • surveillance mechanism • or both?

“While people are allowed to move, their identities must be constructed and controlled” (Bigo 2002:115)

Need to consider ICTs not within separate discourses but as complex and connected informational systemHeidi Herzogenrath-Amelung and Pinelopi Troullinou NECTAR C1 Workshop, Harrogate 2012

What isn’t obvious: hidden implications Difference between analogue & digital technologies

• Wide application and ubiquitous nature• Automatic tracking, collection, interlinkage of data• Data storage, (de-)centralized data storage• Access to databases• Proportionality• Risks of misuse/abuse of personal data

Heidi Herzogenrath-Amelung and Pinelopi Troullinou NECTAR C1 Workshop, Harrogate 2012

Reversing the OrderThe lack of an outside from which to critique informational order: whoever discovered water, certainly wasn’t a fish (Marshall McLuhan)• Lack of historical distance• Normalization: our full involvement in ICT artefacts & practices

Pathologies of the informational system currently addressed by• Technology (e.g. PETs: Microsoft U-Prove): Zizek’s “chocolate laxative”• Policy (e.g. Supplementary legislation on body scanners)

Philosophy can help us“…develop, and (…) comfortably speak, evaluative languages not already structured by the presuppositions of the language of progress, which does not allow us to be critical of progress without appearing to be politically and morally conservative, and so, without appearing to be against science and against reason”. (Kompridis 2009:30)

Heidi Herzogenrath-Amelung and Pinelopi Troullinou NECTAR C1 Workshop, Harrogate 2012

Heidi Herzogenrath-Amelung and Pinelopi Troullinou NECTAR C1 Workshop, Harrogate 2012

Website: http://icicts.wordpress.com/

IseeICTs @icicts