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Having decided to study Politics and Economics around the issue of cyber-warfare, I started by finding some books in the subject which I have had the least experience in – Politics (having an A-Level in Economics). After a quick library search I found a number of books which should be suitable: “Politics An Introduction” by Axford, Browning, et al; “Key Concepts in Politics” by Andrew Heywood and “Comparative Politics in a Globalizing World” by Jeffrey Haynes. This all seemed like quite a lot to be getting on with, so I (naturally) started with “Politics An Introduction”.

One of the things that I find most intriguing about Politics is the concept of Political Science, how something which to me seems fundamentally about how people interact with each other and make decisions can be studied in a scientific manner. The book starts by seemingly agreeing with me and makes a number of points on how Politics cannot be studied scientifically:

1) One cannot disprove theories such as “is democracy a better form of government that dictatorship”. It is rare that a political questions can be boiled down to a true or false answer. This is further complicated when many disagree on the definitions of certain concepts.

2) It is nearly impossible to replicate methods and results through experimentation or statistical methods. Most political experiments are severely hindered by ethical and logistical implications. There are often only a few number of cases that can be studied when conducting comparative analysis and the use of statistical data often falls foul of representative issue and disputes over the integrity of data sources.

3) Political science relies on visible and measurable phenomena. This is illustrated with the example of ‘false consciousness’ (in which individuals demonstrate a social understanding that is mainly false). One political thesis states that in capitalist societies, the working classes are always in a state of false consciousness, however it is not possible to prove that people are suffering from false consciousness and that as a result they do not act in their own interests.

4) When studying Politics it is essential to consider both facts and values and values may vary considerably between different societies and nations. It is very difficult to incorporate “fuzzy” concepts such as values in to scientific methodology.

5) Finally in social sciences there are no laws (or as the book points out, there are no laws yet). Political phenomena can be classified and probabilistic associations can be made between variables, but it is not possible to state causal relationships.

Therefore having established the constraints of what can and cannot be done when studying Politics (which may seem obvious to some readers, but having never studied a social science (except the rather mathematical Economics) is all quite new to myself) I then started to look into some of the issues that Politics concerns itself with, the first of which the role of people in Politics.

Upon seeing that the first chapter was about the role of the individual in Politics, I thought this had little to do with cyber-warfare and therefore maybe I should skip the chapter and head to some of the juicier stuff on international relations (at least I envisage it to be juicier). However the concept of the individual and identity (and I hope I’m not making too much of a faux pas by treating them synonymously) has cropped up a number of times in Web Science so far and so I thought I should read on and see how these ideas may apply to the Web.

First comes the question as to whether we should study individuals or structures? We can either treat these mutually exclusively, where the study of one does not infer things about the other and also introduces the concepts of individualistic fallacy (treating institutions as a single – large – individual) and ecological or systematic fallacy (treating individuals as if they take on the characteristics of their organisations). Both of these concepts I feel can be important to consider when studying Web Science and the groups and networks that form in the online world.

An alternative way of looking at individuals or structures is that of the reductionist, in which one set of variables can be explained wholly or in part by reference to another set. In this view collective structures are viewed simply as the aggregate behaviour and attitudes of the individuals. This strikes me as being similar to the construction of an object-oriented computer program in which the problem is broken down into smaller solvable problems which combined form the overall solution.

Thirdly there is the structurationist point of view in which structures are the product of day-to-day interactions of individuals. For example shoppers reproduce capitalism when they buy goods in shops even though they are not consciously doing so. This point of view can also seemingly be applied to the Web, for example social networking sites are products of the interactions between users (although I suppose the difference here is that the site is provided to allow people to interact rather than a production of the interactions). Nevertheless the social network site would fail without these constant day-to-day interactions.

To bring this back closer to the topic of cyber-warfare, Enlightenment, the process by which the concept of the individual came into being along with modernity, has also lead to some of histories worse atrocities. The concept of the individual can lead to some groups being excluded or persecuted for their collective attributes, with the book using the examples of the near genocide of the Native American peoples and the Holocaust. Could similar events take place online (without the horror or devastation caused by the aforementioned examples)? The online world can certainly be used to rally groups against other groups in society. The concept of the individual can also be used to illustrate how cyber-warfare could be used by a government against its own people, to restrict the level of individuality any one person may have (similarly to Georeg Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four) – the Web provides a medium with which Big Brother could easily monitor our actions. However it must also be taken into account that the Web helps to further a person’s individuality, giving them access to a wealth of new opportunities (aiding pluralism – a concept which many believe to be a contributor to a healthy political system).

This blog post has got quite lengthy now, however there are still many more points which could be discussed including the use of terror to control society, how the Web has effected citizenship and our rights and what impact cyber-warfare may have upon these issues and how the Web may change an individual’s political competence. The book so far has certainly made for some very interesting reading and its been fascinating to look at a subject which has a very different approach to study. Next I shall try and delve into Economics, before I get too carried away with Politics.

This week I’ve been focussing on the Sociology side of my investigations, primarily with the aid of Giddens’ “Sociology” (6th Edition).  I’ll confess that the very idea of sitting down and reading a text book is a bit novel, but armed with some post-its and good intentions, I seem to be getting somewhere!

So far, I’ve been introduced to coffee as the ultimate sociological artefact and three theoretical approaches to Sociology;  Functionalism, The Conflict Approach and Symbolic Interactionism.  I’ll try and explain my understanding of the three below, so that I might be corrected my someone who knows more about it.

Functionalism treats society as a set of parts that work together and interact.  One piece of society can be understood by looking at how it interacts with the other pieces,  the “function” that it performs.  Functionalism approaches sociology from the point of view that these different parts share some common goals or values, a “moral consensus”.  The functions performed by a “piece” of society (the book uses a Hopi rain dance as an example) can be broken into two subsets: 1) Manifest functions, or the function that is known or intended (to make it rain) and 2) Latent functions, or the functions that actually result in practice but which the participants are unaware (social cohesion).

The Conflict Approach sees society as a collection of distinct groups, but unlike functionalism it rejects the importance of a moral consensus and instead embraces the divisions in society.   Examples of divisions might include inequality, political power imbalance or membership of a particular religion.  Conflict arises when the interests (or at least the self-perceived interests) of two or more groups do not align.

Symbolic Interactionism (SI) focuses on the symbolic interactions between individuals.  A symbol could be a gesture, word, phrase, picture – Basically anything that has some semantics attached to it.  SI looks at the way in which meaning is conveyed by these symbols, via the shared semantics that are attributed to them by groups of people.  SI takes the view that social structures are the result of symbolic interactions – These interactions could be deliberately manipulated by one or more of the participants to create structures that work in their favour (the book uses the example of airline cabin crew being trained to smile – A deliberate symbolic gesture designed to convey certain semantics “I am happy to serve you drinks and peanuts”, with which the person smiling may not necessarily agree – “I don’t really enjoy serving you drinks and peanuts”.  In this case, the interaction helps to reinforce the steward-customer structure).

Despite the apparent differences between these perspectives, they are all based on an underlying positivist methodology that bases understanding on empirical evidence, observation, experimentation and comparison – Just the natural sciences study natural phenomena.  All three also go beyond just describing their observations and tackle the “why” question, by developing theories and models.

One thing that did strike me during my research is that, like web science, sociology operates within the same highly-coupled system that it is attempting to study.  Unlike the natural sciences, where it is often possible to isolate the object of study from external influence, doing so is not practical in sociology, and given the complex interconnectedness of society, observing or experimenting on one part could cause changes elsewhere or even feed back into the object of study itself.  That is not to say that the natural sciences are free from such problems (indeed, physics deals with observational interference on an elementary level) but such difficulties do seem to be particularly relevant to sociology and web science.

Next week I’ll move into the Biology/Ecology direction, but hopefully carry on with the sociology angle, too.

This week I have started my reading on Psychology and Criminology, which are the two disciplines that I am going to explore for my review.

Psychology – What is Psychology?
Psychology can be defined as the science of behaviour – the discovery and explanation of the cause of certain behaviours. Psychologists try to explain these behaviours by studying its causes, to explain why people do what they do. Some psychologists also examine the behaviour of animals to help provide insights into factors that can affect human behaviour. Different psychologists study different behaviours and are interested in different groups of causes, but how do we study and explain human behaviour? In order to understand why we do what we do, psychologists must become familiar with what people do, and look at the events responsible for a behaviour’s occurrence. Carlson et al (2007) have recognised 12 approaches to understanding the causes of human behaviour:
Physiological psychology– examines the role of the brain in behaviour

Comparative psychology – explores the behaviour of various species of animals to try and explain the behaviour in terms of evolution.

Behaviour analysis – consider the effects of the environment on behaviour

Behaviour genetics – look at the responsibility of genetics in behaviour

Cognitive psychology – explores complex human behaviours and mental processes e.g. perception, attention, learning, memory etc.

Cognitive neuroscience – works alongside cognitive psychology and physiological psychology and is concerned with looking at brain mechanisms that are responsible for cognition.

Developmental psychology – is concerned with the development of behaviour throughout a person’s life. Includes looking at physical, cognitive, emotional, and social developments.

Social psychology – studies the results/effects that a person’s behaviour has on others.

Personality psychology – looks at individual differences in patterns of behaviour and a person’s temperament.

Evolutionary psychology– is the study of natural selection and how this can influence behaviour.

Cross cultural psychology – studies the consequences of how culture can affect behaviour.

Clinical psychology – is concerned with looking at mental disorders, problems of adjustment and the causes and treatments of these.

By studying behaviour and its causes – we can look at how to solve problems and simply fulfil our need to understand what makes human beings work. For example, excessive smoking, obesity, poor exercise, bad diet, and heavy drinking are all responsible for many illnesses, which could be reduced and peoples living conditions increasingly improved if people changed their behaviour. Psychologists can therefore, apply their knowledge of behaviour to a range of problems and provide a solution. In this way it can be considered a profession. For example school psychologists try to help students with behavioural problems, and consumer psychologists provide advice to organisations that offer a service or buy and sell goods.

Carlson, N. et al (2007) Psychology: The Science of Behaviour. 6th Edition. USA: Pearson

For my reading next week I am hoping to look at research methods used by psychologists and start to look at evolution, genetics and behaviour. I also hope to start my reading of the book: The Psychology of the Internet by Patricia Wallace.

Criminology – A Brief History
The idea that criminals are driven by forces beyond their control still exists today. However, prior to the modern age of crime and criminal behaviour, it was proposed that criminals were possessed by demons that forced them to do bad things beyond their control – known as ‘Demonology.’ There was little written law, and crime was associated with sin. This meant that the state felt they had ‘moral authority’ to use horrible methods of torture and punishment. The accused were subjected to closed trials, torture and harsh punishments – which were often inflicted on the physical body of the accused. The accused also faced the possibility of being tortured to death. Little use was made of imprisonment as prisons were mostly used for holding suspects and offenders before they went to trial or punishment. It was thought that the threat of cruel punishments administered in public and with theatrical emphasis would act as a deterrent for the ‘dangerous’.

The criminal justice system was ‘chaotic, non-codified, irrational, irregular and at the whim of individual judgement.’ It was only with the emergence of the modern era and new methods of viewing and responding to the world, that lead to a breakthrough in the way that crime and criminal behaviour was dealt with.

Defining the extent of crime

Crime can include a range of different activities such as fraud, theft, robbery, assault, corruption, rape, and even murder. Crime can often be thought of as the doing of wrong, but not all activities that some might consider immoral, are thought of as crimes. For example, parking in a disabled space when your not actually disabled is immoral but isn’t considered to be a crime. The easiest way to define crime is an act that breaches criminal law. This can be problematic because in English law some offences (i.e. murder, serious assault), re seen as ‘real’ crimes and can be described as ‘mala in se.’ But some crimes are ‘mala prohibita’ prohibited because they are for the protection of the public.

As with everything, legal definitions change over time and vary between different cultures. What may be legal in one country may be illegal in another. Crime can therefore be considered ‘part of a political process’ and a ‘social construction,’ which is increasingly seen in the media.

Explanations and research into criminal behaviour have emerged from studies which have been carried out on individuals from lower socioeconomic groups. It is considered this ‘dangerous class’ have been at the forefront of criminological thought since the start of modern society. But it is important not to forget the problem of what is known as ‘white collar’ crime or corporate crime which often involves a person of respectability and high social status.

Burke, R.H. (2005) An Introduction to Criminological Theory. 2nd Edition. Devlon: Willan Publishing.
For my reading next week I am hoping to look at models and traditions that attempt to explain crime and criminal behaviour.

My main achievement last week was to identify “collective problem solving” as my topic, and complexity science as my first subject. My first challenge this week was to identify my second subject. After consulting our resident experts, Craig, Olivier, Paul and Chris H, it has become clear that the most relevant subject will be psychology, specifically social Psychology.

So, on Craig’s advice, I’ve got hold of the hefty tome that is Paul Gross’s “Psychology”, and read the early chapters, deepening my understanding of the different major approaches to the subject, which will form the beginning of my review. The book is well structured and pretty clear, but seems light on research techniques.

Olivier recommended “Group Processes” by Rupert Brown, and I’ve been finding this an enjoyable read. After the early context, I’m focussing on the chapters on group productivity, which are directly relevant to my topic. It seems that research has focussed on trying to determine the relative advantage or disadvantage of doing things as a group as compared to doing them as individuals. They do this by statistically simulating groups actually made up of individuals working seperately, and comparing their performance to real groups working together. So far the results don’t look too complimentary for the collective, but there’s more to come.

On complexity science, I have attended another lecture and discussion, and I have raised my topic with the course leader, Seth. He’s agreed that it’s an interesting area, and complexity science has plenty to say about it. I hope to pick his brains further this week, particularly on reading.

I’m currently reading Donald Gillies‘ “Artificial Intelligence and Scientific Method” as a introduction to AI.  The author has outlined inductivism and falsificationism as scientific methodologies relevant to the development and research of AI.

Issues concerning the topic are philosophical, psychological, logical and practical, and Gillies refers to the Turing machine as an example of the latter two, and to the program BACON.1 as psychological and logical.

Gillies has identified the development of expert systems as the first major break-through in the field of AI, although he notes the need for rule-based systems to solve the knowledge representation problem. The first expert system DENDRAL was essentially a chemist; the first expert system to (arguably) pass the Turing test (in a matter of speaking) was MYCIN, which had a knowledge base of some 400 rules.  The main stumbling block here is known as the “Feigenbaum bottleneck”.

I do have a question. Sir Francis Bacon wrote about scientific research which could/would/ought to be carried out “mechanically”. His examples include a mention of  a (circle-drawing) compass, which allows anyone to draw a perfect circle – something which by free-hand is near impossible, at least to most people. I find myself asking the question  – is using a compass to draw a circle a form of cognitive extension, even if it is, say, purely for fun, i.e. with no desire or intention to study the circle, use it to solve any problem, create a piece of art, etc. Does drawing a perfect circle with a compass = using a calculator to solve an equation?

My reading this week has focused on gaining a basic understanding of some of the underlying concepts on anthropology, before I turn to look at Identity from this point of view. I have started by reading “Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology” by Thomas Hylland Eriksen, from which some of the elementary points I have gained are described below.

One of the primary issues described immediately is that of ethnocentrism which occurs when a researcher examines a subject from only the point of view of their own background, and will therefore only describe it from their own culture’s perspective. This can lead to the researcher believing that their own cultural group may be superior to the group which they are researching, as they are only looking at it in comparison to what they are familiar with (pages 6-7). In contrast to this, cultural realism would state that “Cultures are qualitatively different and have their own unique inner logic”, and that ranking can not be used to distinguish different societies. Ultimately, cultural realism would believe that as long as something makes sense in a particular context, then it is as good as everything else, and it is not likely that this is followed by anyone completely outside of their line of work (page 7).

The book then began to cover a brief overview of the history of anthropology, and one concept immediately struck me as having relevance towards Identity, but according to the book it has never been part of the mainstream anthropological thinking outside of Germany. Diffusionism, “the doctrine of the historical diffusion of cultural traits”, seems to have been left behind after the First World War when studies on societies where taken without looking into the historical development of those societies (page 13). In terms of Identity, I believe there must be something in this area about the historical basis of a culture’s identity, so it is something I will investigate – the globalisation theory is reminiscent of diffusionism and “attempts to understand the ways in which modern mass communications, migration, capitalism and other ‘global’ phenomena interact with local conditions” and will also be worth looking at.

The final concept I will cover in this post is ethnography, which aims to develop a thorough understanding of the culture or society being investigated (page 24). It is the fundamental research gathering technique used by anthropology, and is generally where differences can be drawn with other social sciences as the study will generally cover a long period of time. The author uses a good analogy to differentiate anthropological views and historical views: “Anthropology may be described as the process whereby one wades into a river and explores it as it flows by, whereas historians are forced to study the dry riverbed.” However it is stressed that the two should not be seen as mutually exclusive, throwing weight behind my theory that looking at diffusionism may be of value in this study (page 33).

Now that I have at least some understanding of the basic concepts behind anthropology, I will this week begin to look a bit more at how Identity is seen from this discipline, and what other areas of the subject I will need to look at.

This past week I have continued to read further into my two disciplines of Psychology and Politics and how they relate to the issue of Privacy. For Psychology I have largely focused on the ‘Handbook of Self and Identity’ in order to gain more of an understanding of the psychological phenomena that constitutes ‘the self’. I was rather surprised to discover that this notion has only really been in prominence since the 1970’s and yet it is an issue that was given recognition Millenia ago by infamous thinkers such as Plato and Buddha! However it is noted that when attempting to determine the meaning of ‘self’ there is no single, universally accepted definition and that amongst the numerous definitions that have been offered, different definitions relate to different phenomena.

In accordance with the area of ‘self’ there is the notion of ‘the reflected self’ whereby an individual adjusts how their behaviour appears to others. The chapter: ‘The Reflected Self: Creating yourself as (you think) others see you by Dianne M. Tice and Harry M. Wallace is especially insightful and informative in this area. They explore the idea provided by C.H Cooley (1902), that the ‘self’ develops in reference to others within the social environment; ties in with the concept that it is created by reflecting the views that others are perceived to have of that person. The theory of ‘the looking glass’ is also imperative in this study.

Already referred to in my previous Blog. I have decided to start my initial investigation into Politics and potential political theories and policies which may be privacy related; by looking at security matters. For this I have been reading ‘Contemporary Security Studies’. Firstly I have tried to establish what is security. A simplistic definition is ‘something to do with threats to survival’, however this encompasses a wealth of issues ranging from war and the threat of war to pandemics and terrorism. Particular theories that are appearing relevant at this juncture are Realism and Liberalism: traditional approaches which were the main focus for security studies during the 19th Century, Human Security: which focuses on the need for humans to feel secure and Securitization which was developed by the Copenhagen School’: which places primary importance on determining how an issue becomes that of a security issue by how it is articulated for e.g. something may become a security issue due to the fact political leaders and or Governments have convinced their audiences that it represents a threat to our existence and thus requires emergency powers.

I am also reading books about privacy in light of technological advances and I am currently halfway through ‘Blown to Bits’ and once I have finished with that I have ‘The Digital Person’ by Daniel J. Solove. Thanks to Olivier I also have Journal articles relating to privacy to peruse too, so I have plenty of information to digest over the next week…….

Researching psychology on second thoughts will not take me out of my comfort and consequently I would learn little. I am therefore now looking into game theory. I first came across it while watching Adam Curtis’ iconoclastic film The Trap: What Happened to Our Dream of Freedom . It is a fascinating theory, which attempts, in a way analogous to quantum physics, to connect the large to the very small. It has something to say about many fields of knowledge from the inner workings of our minds to the behaviour of nation states. For example, in his film Curtis describes how game theory influenced America’s Cold War strategy and contributed to R.D. Laing’s understanding of the causes of mental illness.

This is from Wikipedia:

Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics that is used in the social sciences, most notably in economics, as well as in biology (particularly evolutionary biology and ecology), engineering, political science, international relations, computer science, and philosophy. Game theory attempts to mathematically capture behaviour in strategic situations, or games, in which an individual’s success in making choices depends on the choices of others (Myerson, 1991).

My only problem now is limiting myself to two disciplines only.

Initial Reading
A Guide to Game Theory by Fiona Carmichael

I’m going to have a go at looking at this from the viewpoint of psychology and modeling complex systems. From studying Economics I understand that the basic problem with cooperation is a lack of trust (prisoners dilemma etc) and the way round it is to build trust but trust is a pretty vague concept. This becomes more of an issue when you consider cooperation between people who have little face to face contact.

What I intend to do is research how people who model complexity atempt to define structures in which cooperation is considered stable (i.e. it is the most likely outcome based on the conditions of the model) and compare this to what psychologists would think of as the conditions in which people would cooperate with each other or trust each other.

Thus far I have read this from the reading list of the complexity science DTC:

Geard, N. (2001). An exploration of NK landscapes with neutrality. MSc thesis, University of Queensland.

NK landscapes were origionally developed as models for looking at evolution. It’s basically a way of calculating how the interelatedness of genes effects the ability of a gene pool in finding the best genome (gene = 1 bit of DNA coding for 1 characteristic, geneome = all the genes together in one individual, gene pool = all the genes of the species). For example, if the expression of one gene causes all the others to change to a different value is this better than if they all went about their business as individuals.

The basic conclusion of the model is that when there is no interelatedness you can evolve slowly to a peak fitness for the gene pool which isnt amazing but is still pretty good. If you add a little bit of relatedness fitness increases but more than a little bit and you get what is termed a catastrophy of complexity where fitness decreases as compliexity increases.

Looking at cooperation this is interesting because you would intuitively expect that a system with massively high levels of interconnectedness would be more stabe and cooperative than one without. The task now is to try and find work that deals with a more specific ‘real world’ scenario than one as abstracted from my topic as this.

Still, an interesting method for researching these issues I think.

IP and copyright theft are of course rather topical topics. Given as I’ve got a background in Law and Comp Sci the two most obvious avenues for studying this were closed. I decided instead to go for mathematics and economics to attack it. The little I can remember from IP law from my degree is that copyright law is old and rubbish. It’s designed to encourage innovation, but it does this by introducing something inherrently uncompetitive into a market which is based upon the idea of competition. Maybe looking at it from the economics side of things will help me understand it a bit better. As for the maths, I’ve decided to go for the Cryptography route in terms of being able to protect content from naughty people who want to steal it. It’s very hard, which is I suppose the point.

Reading wise, I’ve been told that it would help to look at number theory in order to better understand cryptography. I’ve had a little look at “A friendly introduction to number theory”, and also have got “Handbook of Applied Cryptography” which is on the recommended reading list for Stanford’s cryptography course. So it must be good. For the economics bit, I picked up “The Economics of IP law” which seems to be quite suitable given the subject choice. There are 4 volumes but I imagine that I’ll probably limit the scope to copyright (volume 1).