This week I read 2 books: Greg Latowka, Virtual Justice: The New Laws of Online Worlds, and David Berry, Copy, Rip, Burn: The Politics of Copyleft and Open Source. 

Greg Latowka, Virtual Justice: The New Laws of Online Worlds

This is an absolutely terrific book that I would recommend to anybody. I am particularly interested in it because it speaks to the law aspect of the internet, which I am working on for this module. Lastowka is this young hot-shot professor of law at Rutgers University, the same place Dan Dennett works at. He is a very good writer and he spends most of his time looking at real-life or imaginary case studies and then discussing the implications/interpretations from a legal, jurisprudential or moral point of view. I’ve never studied law before, but from this book I get a real sense that much of law in general, but in particular new areas of legislative law, work mostly by precedent. By this I mean that if there’s no law about this or that thing, then it basically hangs on what some judge has to say about  it. And judges are human – the judge might be in a bad mood one day and decides that someone broke the law, even if there is no strictly codifed grounds to ratify this. Some of Latowka’s real life case studies are fascinating. For example, he talks about the Habbo Hotel hacker, the scam artist who made 1000’s of dollars in real money by “stealing” virtual furniture and other online second life belongings on the site EVE online.

David Berry, Copy, Rip, Burn: The Politics of Copyleft and Open Source

I’m not quite finished this yet but this is a very good book for general reading which I recommend. It’s not too old (2008), and impressively research. Berry is a lecturer at Swansea in Media and Communication. The book is about what he calls FLOSS free/libre and open source software. He spends a lot of time talking about the difference between the free software movement and the open source movement. To be honest I am not entirely convinced that these definitely are different in the definitive way that he says. I get the impression that most people within these movements have in the past considered them to be separate, but that does not necessarily it has always been the case or that it is the case now. Like most historical arguments, it is probably subject to a little bit of doubt. In any case, it seems that the main difference between open source people and free software people is a question of philosophy: is it an issue of moral principle or is it an issue of pragmatism. Free software people like Richard Stallmann, the prophet who founded it, think that there is a moral high ground at stake. Open source people like Linus, who created the early versions of Linux, are more pragmatic. Linus believes that code should be freely available because it results in better programs. But programmers need to live – you can’t expect them to work for free or else we won’t get anywhere. To day, Linus has made a lot of money through working on projects related to Linux, even though it is still free. There are many large companies including IBM who have worked with Linus on or around Linux. I’m not sure to what degree these differences are really important. Stallmann they are very important. However all these FLOSS ideas have a lot in common – a focus on the collective good. A famous paper by John Perry Barlow (1996) A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace to some extent captures the emphasis of both sides, though Berry thinks it is closer to the free software position.

Although my initial plan was to research solely e-mail hacking from a political perspective, and it appears that there a number of different cases on politics and e-mail hacking, Mitt Romney and Neil Stock, I believe it would be beneficial to open the subject out slightly to communications hacking (again). This allows me to review more cases in a wider areas of hacking channels and head towards an analysis of the political intent for communications hacking, rather than focusing on the specifics of the e-mail hacking cases.

After continuing my research it appears that there is a political sector dedicated to hacking of communications. This is called hacktivism. This word is a portmanteau of two words; hack: “the process of reconfiguring or reprogramming a system to do things that its inventor never intended” (BBC News, 2010) and Activist: an individual who is involved with achieving political goals. Hacktivism appears as a means for political personnel to seek retribution using computers and/or technological devices as a vehicle to perform such actions. This insinuates that hacktivism is an action that is surrounded by negative connotations involved with ‘damaging the opposition’.

However, a BBC News Story entitled: Activists turn ‘hacktivists’ on the web (BBC News, 2010, link) notes how a hacktivist body such as the Chaos Computer Club is not intent on causing chaos amongst their opposition or in society, they are an organisation that is built for defining and analysing ‘holes’ in security systems on the web to maintain an optimal level of security for such systems involved with government, national security and emergency services. This helps to protect the identity and reputation of the state, and its political counterparts, but potentially bias the system against a democracy and an ideology of the freedom of information.

Other hacktivist groups such as Anonymous and the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF) have an alternative ideology in which they ‘fight’ for. These groups push for the freedom of information against the ‘corporate blockades’ (Ball, 2012) on the web, which are said to blind the population, of any given nation, from seeing the truths about our political leaders and their encompassing political parties. It is believed that, as we are going from a restriction of information to an abundance, society should reserve the right to view information concerning those that govern our lives.

Although it is a valid point to seek truths about our ‘leaders’, one may argue that the freedom of information is a subject that would be fraught with corruption and abuse, especially in a political sense. Information that is to be available to all citizens, including those that counter our political systems and ideologies, may be vulnerable to attacks.

In light of this, a debate around hacktivism is due for establishment in my next blog about political parties and communications hacking.

This week’s reading was somewhat disappointing. I had intended to get through more content however I found that much of what I was reading required a much deeper level of analysis to understand. For this reason, rather than exploring social networks or globalisation; I have focused more heavily on sociology and in particular one of the most famous thinkers to have influence the field: Karl Marx.

Both for Politics and for Sociology, Marx is held in very high regard. Despite how authors feel about the validity of Marx’s views; it is quite clear that most, if not all, commenter’s extend a degree of respect for the man regarding him as a thought leader both in his own time and beyond. Whilst I would have preferred a broader week of reading, the fact that Marx and Marxist theory exists so prominently both in sociology and politics I did not begrudge the topic the extra time I afforded it. I consulted two texts in particular.

Marx, Marginalism and Modern Society

This book offered a good introduction to Marx as a whole, in terms of both his contribution to politics and sociology. The thrust of the argument presented in this text is that Marx’s key contribution was his critique of the political economy. The author presents the case that whilst this was recognised to varying extents in politics and economics; sociological perspectives took longer to entwine themselves with Marxist viewpoints.

On reason for the eventually large scale adoption of Marxist theory within sociology is suggested to pertain to Marx’s views on materialism, in particular; Historical Materialism. The perspective argued that whilst history might have previously separated notions of personhood from thingness, history rather required a deeper account of interactions. For example, dissecting the “things” called institutions into the individual “people” they were made of. This view offers significant importance for sociology allowing far deeper consideration of the people that were previously amorphous entities. Many comparisons can be drawn between these notions and social networking. Not least because of the changing relationships such sites have had with their user bases over time but also at the level of individual users with the structural changes from simple lists of activity to Facebook’s features like “Timeline”. These most certainly can be argued to personalise “events” allowing them to become related much more closely to the individual they are associated with.

Classical Sociology

This book provided a good logical point of development for explaining the development of Marxist sociological theory. In particular it dealt with the ways in which Marxist theory has been modified or adjusted in what has been argued is a necessary process of modernisation.

This notion of modernisation does not reflect technological or social advancement explicitly but rather the sociological ideas about “modernity”. As before, this is essentially the view that different cultures/societies have modernised differently leading to “multiple modernities”. The author highlights that sociologists like Anthony Giddens have argued that modernity changes the social structure and as such requires a post-modern sociology. The means that only theories that account for such changes, only post-modern theories, are sometimes argued to be the only theories relevant to assessments of the modern world. This text’s author however, believes that Marxism exploits a loophole in this argument by way of the additional work done by one Max Weber.

The author argues that Max Weber’s  neo-marxism, in particular the addition of Nietzsche’s perspectivism, is the key to incorporating Marxist theory into discussions of “modern” society. Perspectivism is the theory that the acquisition of knowledge is inevitably limited by the perspective from which it is viewed. This is infact a common view within  sociology and has significant relevance to the nature of accounts of social networks. Does a persons experience of myspace or facebook vary if they are a “user”, a “business”, a “celebrity”, a “moderator”, a “site owner” and so on. When considered alongside political perspectives this is of course still deeply relevant. The nature of both a person’s position/perspective, the role that position/perspective implies and the power (or lack of power) that it entails all contribute the nature of the interactions they will experience.

For my reading this coming week it is my intention to focus on texts relating to social media. In particular The Network Society.

A very heavy book

My reading for this module this week has been the incredibly weighty tome “economics”, 1994 4^th edition by D. Begg, S. Fischer and R . Dornbusch,  published by McGraw-Hill Book Company in Maidenhead.  It is a very easy to read, entry level book which explains economics in a simplified and an advanced version.  I stuck with the simplified version.

Economics is the study of human behaviour with the central issue facing economists being the almost limitless desire for goods and services when the resources the same goods and services depend upon maybe scarce.   Economics studies how society decides which commodities to produce above another.Economics can be split into two areas, microeconomics and macroeconomics, which represent the differing methodologies at play within the field of economics.  Microeconomics focuses on individual economic transactions about specific commodities whereas macroeconomics studies the interactions in the economy as a whole.

A researcher in the field of microeconomics would concentrate their research into why certain people purchase a certain item and then use the data they have collected to extrapolate a theory of human behaviour which can be applied to the general population.  One critique that can be levelled at microeconomists is their simplicity allows them to ignore the wider picture.   Indirect effects can heavily influence an economic decision. 

Macroeconomists concern themselves with the economy as a whole.  The analysis they undertake tends to focus on GDP, inflation and the labour force.  They are more likely to concern themselves with how government policy is affecting the economy. 

Economies are not the same for each country.  There are three different types of economies, firstly, the command economy.  The command economy is a term used to describe when a central office makes all economic decisions.  Secondly, the free market economy.  This term is used to describe a situation where no one is intervening in the market and individuals pursue their own self interests.  Despite the lack of regulation it is posited that a invisible hand would guide the market.  Lastly, the mixed economy.  A mixed economy is one which is a blend of the command economy and the free market economy.  Mainly the economy is allowed to follow a free market style but government regulation is needed in certain areas.  This is the type of economy which we currently experience in the United Kingdom.

The study of economics can be undertaken for two reasons.  It may explain why things have happened or it may seek to explain what should happen.  The first type of economic study is called positive economics and the second type is called normative economics.  Normative economics is open to subjective value judgments, whereas in positive economics researchers are likely to come to the same conclusions.

Next week I will blog about how to undertake economic analysis and the methodologies involved.

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Blog Post week 2