William H. Dutton

The OII has posted a new Policy Briefing written by our Visiting Associate Tony Wales, former General Counsel of AOL International, responsible for the company’s worldwide legal affairs outside the US. He offers his insights on issues arising from the UK Government’s Digital Britain report (June 2009) and Digital Economy Bill, focusing in particular on provisions for enforcement action against unlawful filesharing (where Internet users share music, video and other entertainment content without the permission of the copyright holders) by imposing new policing obligations on ISPs and other online intermediaries. The piece is: Tony Wales (2009) Industry self-regulation and proposals for action against unlawful filesharing in the UK: Reflections on Digital Britain and the Digital Economy Bill. The addendum to this article provides a briefing on the sections of the Digital Economy Bill that propose measures to deal with unlawful filesharing, together with recommendations for amendments.

Access the paper via: http://people.oii.ox.ac.uk/research/?p=1194/

Turing Lectures have been important agenda-setting events in the computer sciences and engineering. This year, Professor Chris Bishop, Chief Research Scientist at Microsoft Research Cambridge will be speaking on ‘Embracing Uncertainty: The New Machine Intelligence’. He’ll be doing a series of lectures in February and March. You can find dates and register online at www.theiet.org/turing My Balliol colleagues have encouraged me to attend and I pass on their recommendation.

The ESRC has just published a revised ‘Framework for Research Ethics (FRE)’, which is available in full on the Web. I would just like to draw from the  report here to highlight six key principles of ethical research — principles that the ‘ESRC expects to be addressed whenever applicable — are:

1. Research should be designed, reviewed and undertaken to ensure integrity, quality and transparency.
2. Research staff and participants must normally be informed fully about the purpose, methods and intended possible uses of the research, what their participation in the research entails and what risks, if any, are involved.
3. The confidentiality of information supplied by research participants and the anonymity of respondents must be respected.
4. Research participants must take part voluntarily, free from any coercion.
5. Harm to research participants must be avoided in all instances.
6. The independence of research must be clear, and any conflicts of interest or partiality must be explicit.

In addition, the report highlights key procedural issues for implementing these principles:

•    The responsibility for conduct of the research in line with relevant principles rests with the principal investigator and the research / employing organization.

•    The responsibility for ensuring that research is subject to appropriate ethics review, approval and monitoring lies with the research organization seeking or holding an award with the ESRC and which employs the researchers performing it, or some of the researchers when it is acting as the co-ordinator for collaborative research involving more than one organization.

•    Research organizations should have clear, transparent, appropriate and effective procedures in place for ethics review, approval and governance whenever it is necessary.

•    Risks should be minimised.

•    Research should be designed in a way that the dignity and autonomy of research participants is protected and respected at all times.

•    Ethics review should always be proportionate to the potential risk, whether this involves primary or secondary data.

•    Whilst the secondary use of some datasets may be relatively uncontroversial, and require only light touch ethics review, novel use of existing data and especially data linkage, as well as some uses of administrative and secure data will raise issues of ethics.

•    Research involving primary data collection will always raise issues of ethics that must be addressed.

I hope you take the time to review the entire report.

A colleague of mine from my USC days, Guillermo Asper y Valdés, was in Oxford last week for a visit – but asking about UK research on personal health records. He and colleagues in Brazil and the US are undertaking research in this area. If anyone has suggestions of individuals he should contact, please let me know. I think they are interested in the whole range of issues surrounding the development and use of personal health records in the provision of more direct health and medical services. However, they want to understand leading-edge developments cross-nationally in order to contribute to the design of systems in this area. Any thoughts would be appreciated. My own contribution was to note the importance of focusing on the legal-institutional constraints surrounding the development of these systems, and not have too great a focus on the technological breakthroughs.

Guillermo Asper y Valdés and Bill

I have agreed to be an associate editor of a special issue of MIS Quarterly, entitled ‘Digital Business Strategy: Toward a Next Generation of Insights’. A former colleague of mine, Omar El Sawy at USC, is co-editing this issue with others. There is a very well considered call for papers available for this issue, and I hope you consider this if your research is relevant to how the IT strategies of firms should be aligned with their business strategies. Of course, challenges to this thesis would be as welcome, particularly if based on empirical research. I am hopeful that the editors receive submissions from research anchored in Europe, but also the Internet research community. I would particularly welcome research on small business enterprises. Given all of the research around the digital divide across households, much more needs to be done to look at divides within business sectors that might strategically disadvantage firms that are not using the Internet in strategic ways.

World Wide Research
RESHAPING THE SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

Edited by William H. Dutton and Paul W. Jeffreys
Foreword by Ian Goldin

Forthcoming from MIT Press

CONTRIBUTORS: Hal Abelson, Robert Ackland, Roger Barga, Tim Berners-Lee, Christine L. Borgman, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Alan Bowman, João Caraça, Gustavo Cardoso, Annamaria Carusi, Paul A. David, Grace de la Flor, Matthijs den Besten, David De Roure, Matthew Dovey, Ricardo B. Duque, William H. Dutton, Paul N. Edwards, Rita Espanha, Michael A. Fraser, Jenny Fry, Ian Goldin, Wendy Hall, Tony Hey, Steven J. Jackson, Paul Jeffreys, Marina Jirotka, Jane Kaye, Cory Knobel, Julia Lane, Xiaoming Li, Sharon Lloyd, Christine Madsen, Andrew Martin, Sandro Mendonça, Eric T. Meyer, Kieron O’Hara, Savas Parastatidis, Michael Parker, Justine Pila, Tina Piper, Rob Procter, Ralph Schroeder, Nigel Shadbolt, David Shotton, Wesley Shrum, Michael Spence, John Taylor, Mike Thelwall, David Vaver, Andrew Warr, John Wilbanks, Yorick Wilks, Paul Wouters, Marcus Antonius Ynalvez, and Jonathan J. H. Zhu

Overview

Experts examine ways in which the use of increasingly powerful and versatile digital information and communication technologies are transforming research activities across all disciplines.

Advances in information and communication technology are transform- ing the way scholarly research is conducted across all disciplines. The use of increasingly powerful and versatile computer-based and networked systems promises to change research activity as profoundly as the mobile phone, the Internet, and email have changed everyday life. This book offers a comprehensive and accessible view of the use of these new approaches—called “e-Research”—and their ethical, legal, and institutional implications. The contributors, leading scholars from a range of disciplines, focus on how e-Research is reshaping not only how research is done but also, and more important, its outcomes. By anchoring their discussion in specific examples and case studies, they identify and analyze a promising set of practical developments and results associated with e-Research innovations.

The contributors, who include Geoffrey Bowker, Christine Borgman, Paul Edwards, Tim Berners-Lee, and Hal Abelson, explain why and how e-Research activity can reconfigure access to networks of information, expertise, and experience, changing what researchers observe, with whom they collaborate, how they share information, what methods they use to report their findings, and what knowledge is required to do this. They discuss both the means of e-Research (new research-centered computational networks) and its purpose (to improve the quality of world-wide research).

William H. Dutton is Director of the Oxford Internet Institute, Professor of Internet Studies, and Professorial Fellow of Balliol College at the University of Oxford. Paul W. Jeffreys, formerly Director of the Oxford e-Research Centre, is Director of IT at the University of Oxford, Professor of Computing, and Professorial Fellow of Keble College at the University of Oxford.

Forthcoming July 2010
7 x 9, 424 pp., 8 illus., $33.00/£24.95 paper ␣ 978-0-262-51373-9

In a castle in a remote village of Dagstuhl, Germany, about a dozen colleagues from the social and computer sciences debated the role that information and communication technologies could play in shaping democratic structures and processes. We co-produced a long set of notes, and then sought to edit this down to a brief overview of the discussion. The abstract of this paper, along with a downloadable copy of the full overview, is posted on SSRN, entitled ‘Machiavelli Confronts 21st Century Digital Technology: Democracy in a Network Society’. It is at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1521222 I’ve had an earlier post on this event, and would welcome comments on the general topic or on our overview — either would be very welcome as comments on this post.

The Castle at Dagstuhl

Abstract

Computer science and informatics have great potential to improve citizen engagement with public officials, voting, access to public information and other democratic processes. Yet progress towards achieving these aims on a wide scale remains slow. A main reason for this lack of progress is that digital technologies create the potential to alter significantly the relative influence of different groups and actors in the political process, and thereby quickly become embroiled in a political debate that crosses and complicates technical discussions. These political conflicts and uncertainties have been made more transparent in applications of the Internet and related Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to support democratic processes. The challenges created by these techno-political tensions, and how to address them, were the overall cross-cutting themes that emerged from the interdisciplinary Dagstuhl Seminar on Democracy in a Network Society, on which this paper is based. The seminar involved a multidisciplinary group of computer and social scientists, legal scholars, practitioners and policy experts who aimed to chart the latest technical approaches to e-democracy and governance. Their intention was not to tell politicians how to maintain and enhance their power with the support of new technologies, in the manner of Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli’s 16th Century adviser to the prince. Instead, participants explored how new technologies could enhance or constrain the power of politicians and the general public, depending on how the technologies and the systems based on them are designed and implemented.

Citation

Baer, Walter S., Borisov, Nikita, Danezis, George, Guerses, Seda F., Klonowski, Marek, Kutylowski, Miroslaw, Maier-Rabler, Ursula, Moran, Tal, Pfitzmann, Andreas, Preneel, Bart, Sadeghi, Ahmad-Reza, Vedel, Thierry, Westen, Tracy, Zagorski, Filip and Dutton, William H., Machiavelli Confronts 21st Century Digital Technology: Democracy in a Network Society (December 10, 2009). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1521222

Journal of Information, Communication & Society (iCS)

Brian D. Loader

Since 1997, the journal of Information, Communication & Society (iCS) has been charting the global diffusion and implications of digital media, communication and information technologies for individuals, households and society at large. The ubiquity of such media is a striking testimony to their influence in the contemporary world. This rich interdependence and inseparability of social and technical manifestations is well represented in the titles of articles published in iCS covering almost every facet of our lifestyles including patterns of work and leisure, entertainment, consumption, education, environmentalism, political activity, domestic life and individual identity. From the outset iCS has encouraged a multidisciplinary approach to the analysis and understanding of the economic, political, cultural and other social implications of information and communication technologies (ICTs). This has and continues to be reflected in the contributions by academics, practitioners and policy-makers drawn from such fields as communication and media, political sciences, sociology, philosophy, psychology, geography, gender studies, computer sciences, social and public policy, science fiction and many more.

A defining objective of iCS is the publication of the highest quality material from these varied sources and to provide an international forum for accessible but critical analyses of the social shaping and implications of technological change. It has always avoided the more hyperbolic claims of technological futurists and has instead sought to ground our knowledge and understanding on high quality empirical and theoretic studies of media, communication and information technologies and society. As such it addresses such questions as:

• What are the social issues of new and evolving forms of social networking?
• What is the geography of communication on the worldwide network of networks? Will ICTs facilitate globalization or reinforce local identity, ethnic difference and region sub-cultures?
• Are new technologies, from the Internet to sensor networks leading to an age of electronic surveillance?
• How are ICTs affecting daily life and social institutions such as the family, work, organization, education, politics, health care and leisure activities?

iCS publishes eight issues a year which includes a number of special issues and book reviews. We are also pleased to publish special issues of selected papers presented at the annual conferences of The Association of Internet Researchers and The American Sociological Association (CITASA Group). iCS has become the place to submit leading articles on the social issues of our networked society.

For more information, see the journal Web site at Taylor and Francis-Routledge.

Joshua Harris was a graduate student of mine in the early 1980s. My most memorable experience with him was in connection with a major paper that was assigned. Josh wanted to focus on the future of the personal computer. This was of course very early in the life of the personal computer, only invented at the end of the 70s. Josh said he envisioned what we would years later call a multimedia computer. He had clear ideas about how the technology would develop that were well ahead of his contemporaries.

The problem was that Josh did not want to do a traditional paper. Instead he wanted to build a model of his multimedia computer. I could not convince my colleagues to accept this proposal. It was shortly after this that he became disillusioned with the value of graduate school, and left to seek his fortune, which he soon did. In 1986, he founded Jupiter Communications, one of the world’s first Internet market research companies. He made millions went it went public. Later, in 1994, in line with his vision from a decade before, he founded the world’s first Internet-based interactive television network (Pseudo.com).

Called the ‘Warhol of the Web’, Josh was too constrained by academic institutions and processes. More importantly perhaps was his commitment to doing things – building models so that people could see what he envisioned rather than simply to read about it. This might be common in design and technology, but Josh personified this commitment.

Therefore, I can only celebrate his next creation – a world in which there would be no privacy. Surveillance was everywhere. Today, in 2010, most computer and social scientists who think about it are alarmed by the ways in which new technologies promise to erode privacy in society. One need not be a technological determinist to see how the technological capabilities are being developed in surveillance technologies, from satellite imaging to miniature cameras and sensors, to see everything. But also, and importantly, people want the technologies, whether security cameras or Webcams to check on the children at preschool. Josh saw this and built an environment in which he and 1000 other inhabitants lived for one month – a place with no privacy, branded ‘We Live in Public’ — created well before reality TV.

Josh is the best person to describe this vision and related projects. Take a look at this 2009 Sky Television interview with Josh or look at a trailer for the ‘We Live in Pubic’ documentary, which won acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival.

Josh has kept in touch with me through the years as one of the professors who supported his proposal. Schools are hard to build for a Joshua Harris. We should have let Josh build the model, but we did not dampen the creativity of a budding Internet pioneer with a vision of the future that everyone should seriously ponder.

The need for a greater emphasis on multidisciplinary research in the area of climate change was made even more evident by a poll discussed in The Times, entitled ‘Widespread scepticism on climate change undermines Copenhagen summit‘. The article leads with the point that ‘[o]nly a quarter of people believe that climate change is the most serious problem that the world faces’. Furthermore, the poll conducted in Britain over the previous weekend (7-8 November), found that ‘only two in five people in Britain accept as an established fact that global warming is largely man-made.’

Putting to the side all of the issues that might be raised about the reliability and validity of any weekend poll of Britains, from sampling to question wording, it struck me as a tremendous example of a very common feature of research on climate change — its focus on the hard sciences, from climate forecasting to earth sciences, and the relative neglect of the social sciences. Some of the biggest questions that the article raises are: Why do people hold these beliefs? Why are the findings of scientists not well understood or accepted by more of the public? Why are policy initiatives so difficult to implement nationally and globally? Why does the press focus on the 2 in 5 who do not accept a fact, versus the 3 in 5 that do? These are all basic questions of the social and political sciences, not the so-called hard sciences. Yet, the funding of research on climate change is hugely skewed toward the sciences, as compared with the social sciences.

Even when these questions are asked or foregrounded, leaders look to the hard scientists to answer them. Environmental scientists sign a petition and wonder why it is not directly translated into policy, leading social scientists to wonder if they have a clue about how policy is shaped, how opinions are formed, how influence works in politics and public policy. Do people realize that entire fields are devoted to the study of influence, persuasion, communication, the politics of policy-making and policy implementation, and so on. These ’soft’ sciences are needed to address the hardest questions about whether governments around the world will be able to respond to the threats of climate change. Part of the success of Al Gore’s work on climate change has been his ability to communicate with the public, but even former Vice President Gore focused on the science of climate change rather than the politics of climate change policy. Hopefully, he and others are doing much more behind the scenes to shape policy and practice, including public opinion, by employing what we know from the social sciences.

Until governments place priority on the social sciences in addressing some of the hard questions about influence and policy related to climate change, we cannot expect to make real progress. The common refrain of the scientist is that we know what should be done, but the policies are not being implemented. ‘Why are our pronouncements not automatically reflected in policy?’ Well, the study of the politics of public policy has a long history, and much to offer, but remains largely neglected by the climate change community that seems to adopt this overly rational view that scientific findings are immediately translated into law and policy. Where is Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli when we need him?