Technology, Thoughts, and Trinkets

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I tried. I tried so hard. I’ve spent literally years drooling over her. I’ve seen her cousins at some of my friends’ offices, and I was blown away. My choice of either a tall, slim image or one with a little more meat on the sides. My choice, and I could switch things around whenever I want.

I wanted to be with her so bad. After the time we’ve been together, I’ve touched her. I’ve caressed her. I’ve spent tens of hours reading about how to make us work together a bit more. I’ve really tried - I mean that. I realize that all relationships have a honeymoon phase, and that I might have been a little too optimistic that everything would work out between us, but I’ve never had a relationship like this be so challenging.

In this case, there is no compromise with her; she’s definitely a prima donna. In the past I’ve been able to put my ladies to either side of my primary display. This time, however, my Dell 1907 has to be in the front of me or else the colours are washed out. It’s amazingly annoying - to have spent a ton of money on a nice new 19′ monitor that I have the ability to rotate 90 degrees is pretty awesome. I had hoped that I could just wait it out, that I could adjust where it was and things would be better. Of course, this meant that I waited beyond the time that I could return the monitor. It’s not that it’s bad per se, but simply that it’s not good.

I have used secondary monitors for ages; it’s wonderful to be able to extend my workspace, and I’ve gotten quite accustomed to it. I have a monitor at work that would have cost a fraction more than the one that I bought, one that has superior viewing angles. I’ve never been in a situation where viewing angles were actually a problem; I’ve read all about problems with them but it’s never been a problem for me.

In my arrogance, I assumed that other people just didn’t know what they were talking about or being silly picky.

I was wrong. Viewing angles are important, and even Dell’s ‘premium’ line has been corrupted with crap. I shouldn’t have to shift it to dead in front of me; I shouldn’t have to rearrange my workspace to accommodate a supposedly high-calibur model; I shouldn’t have to be annoyed with my purchase. But I will be. Because it’s too late to return the product.

I’m done recommending Dell’s monitors. Not their premium laptops (XPS line), and I might even recommend their business computers, but there is no way in hell that I’ll recommend spending money on a Dell-branded monitor when you could spend the extra couple of bucks and get a known good-working Samsung.

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There’s a good chance that you’ve heard of the recent speech that Obama gave about racial issues in the US, but there is (unfortunately) a good change that you haven’t read it. I wouldn’t blame you if you haven’t - a lot of speeches that are talked about really aren’t worth reading. That said, if you haven’t read a speech in decades, read this one. It’s powerful, it’s poignant, and it’s deep. It’s also written by the candidate himself.

Link to Speech: Obama Race Speech

Technorati Tags: politics, Obama, puppy

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This isn’t a ‘full’ post, in the sense that I’m not actually going to get into any issues. Instead I’m going to put up a list of texts that are particularly helpful in getting into debates surrounding privacy, as well as some texts that deal with privacy as it relates to the process of digitization. I want to do this for two reasons: First, because I am curious to see how I would change this list in a year or two’s time, and second because when I was getting into my Master’s project I couldn’t find anything like the list I’ve prepared.

For the usual purposes of full disclosure/covering my ass, I’ll note that this list should be read as something ‘ongoing’/'in development’. It’s not comprehensive of everything that I’ve ever read and only reflects what I’ve been exposed to up until this point.

Core Books

Philosophical Dimensions of Privacy: An Anthology by Ferdinand D. Schoeman.
Somewhat amusingly, I finally got this book just a month or so after receiving my MA. Why is this the first book on the list? Because it would have saved me a metric buttload of time in going to primary sources to ‘catch up’ on the genealogy of privacy debates. Schoeman has done an exceptional job in collecting major issues and debates in privacy, drawing from prominent philosophical and legal theorists. The downside: it was published in 1984, so it misses the more contemporary discussions in the ongoing debates surrounding privacy. That said, its indispensable if you’re looking for a solid first academic discussion of privacy.

“It’s Discrimination, Stupid!” by Oscar H. Gandy Jr, from Resisting the Virtual Life: The Culture and Politics of Information.
Gandy brings a core insight to the table: rather than focusing on a panoptic observation per Foucault, he attends to the panoptic sort. The ’sort involves the identification of various informationally relevant particularities of people’s lives, and how they are computationally sorted, which ultimately catalogues citizens according to a set of dehumanized traits. This relates to privacy because Gandy provides insight into how databases operate while attending to the contemporary issues of datavallence, that is, the persistent collection and surveillance of individuals on the basis of data collected from their persistent involvement with ubiquitous computing devices.

R.D. Laing: The Philosophy and Politics of Psychotherapy by Andrew Collier
Laing took a particularly sophisticated phenomenological approach to matters of psychotherapy. In a great deal of his work, including The Politics of the Family and The Politics of Experience, he spent a great deal of time considering the relationship between privacy and publicity, while simultaneously contemplating their relation to the development of neurosis. Collier manages to beautifully integrate and critically reflect on Laing’s work. Admittedly, this is most helpful if you are advancing the claim that privacy is integral to the becoming and being of Self, but it remains to the privacy skeptic insofar as if summarizes a great deal of what the skeptic must refute.

Hiding from Humanity by Martha Nussbaum
Nussbaum’s legal treatise focuses on the appropriate roles of shaming and disgust in lawmaking, with the general point being that they cannot be integrated into legal systems without the risks of severely damaging the targets of laws derived from shaming and disgust. She provides excellent overview accounts of privacy as it relates to both law and psychology, and also provides an ingenious method of improving on Mill’s Harm Principle. Her work is particular useful because it draws on contemporary legal and social issues and identifies how they relate to the sense of individuality, self, and dignity that all Western citizens expect while developing her accounting around core liberal philosophical tenets.

In Pursuit of Privacy: Law, Ethics, and the Rise of Technology by Judith Wagner Decew.
Though a bit dated (1997), Wagner Decew’s text both provides wonderful, compressed, accounts of the major privacy debates over the 15-20 years predating her text while projecting a considerable degree of insight into how developing technologies might impact individuals’ privacy. This is an excellent ‘beginning book’, and doesn’t require the reader to have any significant amount of philosophical or legal training to appreciate the complex issues at hand.

Privacy and Digitization

The Digital Sublime: Myth, Power, and Cyberspace by Vincent Mosco.
This book is practically required if you want to begin studying digital systems as they relate to…well…almost any social issue. Mosco, a political scientist at Queens, begins by laying out prior myths surrounding technology, and draws links between prior technologies and our present reverence of technological systems such as the Internet and personal computing. Arguing that we will only realize these systems’ genuine influence and power when they recede into ubiquitous settings (as was the case with the telephone, radio, electricity, airline flight, etc) his focus is on the de-mythification of cyberspace. Moreover, he provides an excellent account of the process of digitization, that is, of the transferral of nodes of power and communication from analogue to digital systems. His analysis is invaluable to anyone who wants to consider the current experiences of living in a ‘digital era’.

Code: Version 2.0 by Lawrence Lessig.
Embarrassingly, I didn’t really know about Lessig until about a year and a half ago or so. While I can’t agree with all of what he says (and in fact devote a section of my thesis to separate my claims and proposed solutions to privacy infringements from his capitalist solutions) the man is a genius. As the founder of the Creative Commons, as well as a prominent advocate for digital rights and responsible computer surveillance, you really just need to read him. If you work in the humanities, and your work involves computers/digital systems, this book (which nicely captures a massive amount of his previous work in a mature piece of writing) is a must have, must read, must reference text.

The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age and The Future of Reputation: Gossip Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet by Daniel J. Solove.
I couldn’t have written my MA thesis without The Digital Person - it would simply have been outside of the scope of my project. In this text, Solove masterfully captures the impact of databases on people’s day-to-day lives and deficiencies with several legal ‘responses’ to this invasion of people’s expectations of privacy. If you are interested in data-mining, and how a legal scholar approaches this topic, you need this book. Moreover, and this is the book’s (perhaps most valuable) contribution for junior scholars examining digital systems, is that it validates investigation into data mining. Use this text to convince your advisor that you not only should, but ought, to be involved in this important area of research.

His most recent text, The Future of Reputation, isn’t as strong as The Digital Person. That said, it provides a wonderful overview of the very real concerns and issues that are arising with the advent of ubiquitous computing devices, social networking services, and Google. His legal responses here fail to really account for the ‘big picture’ (i.e. international character) of many of the issues he is discussing, but that’s principally because there really isn’t a foundational (read: enforceable) method of invoking privacy rights internationally. I would have liked to see him enter into this argument in some fashion, if only because of his present academic role as a pioneer into the unknown. He’s well-known enough, and well-respected enough, that junior scholars need people like him to just say it’s possible to do so they can legitimize their project to somewhat conservative supervisors and more senior academics. Sure, they can try to go it alone, but that’s an incredibly tough road to travel on without being able to lean on someone.

Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu.
The Internet isn’t free as in freedom, nor free as in beer. You’re not anonymous, you can always be found and censored, and notions of a digital commons are not necessarily valid. This book is a hard, cold look at why the Internet isn’t the dream it’s made out to be, and it’s required reading even if you’ve already lost all the illusions of Utopia: Internet.

I could list a great deal of other sources (and especially journal articles), but I think that this would function as a ‘baseline’ were I to begin the privacy/digital systems aspect of my MA thesis again. Hopefully this is found by someone who was in my shoes at some point and it can act as a helpful starting point/point of continuity.

Technorati Tags: Privacy, Literature, Surveillance

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Today I want to just briefly talk about the competition between Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s Blackberry. I’m not going to bother with things like the aesthetics or the ease of using one over the other. Instead what I want to talk about is how these devices are, and will (in the iPhone’s case) be used. I’ll, as usual, provide a bit of background and then get to what is the real issue with these devices: unless secured, these devices, and other like them, can reveal a substantial amount about yourself and others, enough that it would be a relatively simple task to assume your identity and potentially negatively affect others’ identities/reputations.

Packing Some Confidential Property

I’ll admit it: whenever I go anywhere, my Blackberry comes with me. I use it to track all facets of my life: my contacts (i.e. who I know, what I know about them, notes that I see as important about them), my calendar (i.e. what I do at almost all points of my day, who I’m meeting with, why I’m meeting with them), my email (i.e the communication that I have and think should be recorded for a later date), and my instant messaging (i.e my personal discussions that let me be me with friends). This is super-convenient for me. It also means that I’m carrying a device that would give someone who found/stole it a significant insight into my life and some insight into the lives of people that I know.

Apple has recently announced that they will be releasing the SDK for the iPhone, which will mean that push email and increased enterprise integration are forthcoming. That’s great! Now RIM will have some real competition (sorry Palm users, I don’t really see the Treo as competition at this stage in the game), and people who love all things ‘i’ will be able to get their email on their (more stylish) devices. It will also overcome a recent criticism that iPhones aren’t for enterprise-appropriate because they don’t provide the functionality that is demanded by enterprise-level customers.

What Have You Been Saying? When? Why?

Unsurprisingly, if your phone is stolen and the password broken then a potential rescuer/thief can learn an awful lot about you. This can be helpful if they call home and let your mom know that your phone is safe, but troubling if all of your celebrity friends start getting phone calls from creepy strangers. It’s even worse when those strangers know where you’re going, what you’ve been saying, and discover interesting tidbits not just about you, but about your corporation and companions as well.

What is most appealing about the iPhone is that with some new software that will be coming out for it, it can be wiped of all data by IT workers from a distance. This means that if you do have confidential anything on it that a few relatively simple clicks of a mouse and keyboard will erase the data that may have otherwise been responsible for destroying your career. At issue, of course, is that at the moment we don’t know how securely deleted this information is/will be. While it will almost certainly be enough to stop a casual thief from discovering anything useful on it, I have my doubts that will will prevent someone who really knows what they’re doing from gaining access to the files.

In the case where one of these devices is found/stole the person who possesses it can learn an awful lot about you. I know many people who email passwords to themselves, just in case they forget them. They also store personal pictures and intimate correspondence. While true that these devices tend to leave files on the network they are associated with (rather than remaining on the device itself), it is a relatively simple process to move them from the device to a portable computer. Depending on what is stored, and the details in the notes, memos, and meeting events, it’s entirely possible that someone could learn a significant amount about you. This could be used to harm your reputation or damage your identity, with identity here being defined as the values and normative expectations that you have built up around yourself, and insofar as you could suffer more tangible financial or marital unpleasantness that otherwise expected had your personal information not been compromised.

What Could be Improved?

As it stands now, it is possible to lock out a Blackberry from accessing the network it is associated with, which means that your email can remain safely hidden away from anyone else. To the best of my knowledge (and the knowledge of employees at RIM who I have spoken to about this) the same doesn’t apply to the other data that resides on the device. In Apple’s case, they will enable enterprise support teams to wipe iPhones, limiting the chances of confidential data being made public. Both of these solutions are, in my mind, inadequate. What would be preferable would be to allow both individual users (i.e. those who sign up for personal plans) to wipe their devices remotely. This, of course, would mean that they would be vulnerable to weak security protocols that discrete vendors put in place but I don’t see that as a reason to avoid this kind of system.

One of the nice things about enterprise level securing of mobile devices includes disabling the devices to the point where they cannot be turned on once IT has sent the ‘kill command’. The devices can be reactivated if it happens to be recovered, though the likelihood of that happening is likely minimal. What might be helpful, at least on personal devices, is for the lock-out screen to include some service number that a person who finds the device to call in order to return a device to its owner. In this situation the individual who lost the device would reimburse their carrier for the costs of returning the device. In most cases the cost of returning the device should be lower than purchasing a new mobile, leaving the individual who lost the device in a better position than if they had to abandon most hopes of ever seeing it again.

It’s my hope that by allowing individuals to lock their devices from a secured remote location that they would be able to reduce the damage that could come to them and to the individuals who’s information is held in the device as well. I don’t want to claim that my proposals would resolve all, or even most of the identifiable information issues with personal information management devices, but think that they would be a step towards a more comprehensive security system.

Technorati Tags: Privacy, iPhone, puppy

We live in a society where there is a strong desire to commoditize everything - water, energy, pollution, and each packet of data that is passed along digital networks. This desire comes from a position that (at least in part) holds that by giving everything a value, by associating costs with the degradation or poor management of commodities, it becomes possible for society to operate more ‘efficiently’. This is the great myth of capitalistic societies; that the deregulation of social goods provides a means to maximally divide wealth, opportunity, and power across the society. In Canada it is NAFTA, and its associated market pressures, that have been largely responsible for the deregulation of social programs and Crown Corporations that were previously responsible for providing core services to Canadians. We now see the specter of similar efficiencies mobilizing to ensure that bandwidth is distributed more efficiently, that people pay proportionate fees for the bandwidth and the actions they use that bandwidth for. In the process, private corporations will limit the possibilities of the Internet - they will stifle innovation by militating how their networks can be used and, as a result, inhibit development that can unexpectedly occur at each bend of these digital highways.

The Notion of Commons
It is possible that you’re not entirely familiar with the notion of the Commons, save for having heard in news reports of the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’, without any real guidance as to what the catchphrase means. To put it quickly, the Commons identifies all places, spaces, items, and products that belong to society at large rather than to any particular individual. This can be better explained by turning to town squares and roads. In the case of town squares, they operate as public space that is available to any and all members of the public to use. Because there is a greater advantage to having those spaces available to a large number of people than if there were not they continue to remain in public hands. By having squares as a public space it is possible to hold various town functions, rallies, readings, and other social events, whereas if they were privately owned the these goods would not have a space where they could be grown, potentially stunting the growth of the community’s identity.

Roads are kept in common because, again, there is greater benefit for keeping them in common than not. Were roads sold in pieces there would be a significant financial incentive for some people to refuse to let their roads be used by everyone; owners could strike strategic deals with come companies to let their goods along the road while denying other companies the right to use their pavement. While the individual who was leasing that section of the road might prosper in such a situation the public at large would not because they might experience increased costs for goods, might experience nuisances, and might be unable to participate in the actions available to them that exist when roads are kept in common. In short, there are more advantages to holding the roads in common than in placing them in private corporate hands.

The Internet As Commons
The notion of the Internet as Commons might initially strike you as a bit weird; you pay to get onto the ‘net, which would seem to indicate that the Internet was already privatized. In making that assertion, however, it would seem as though toll roads, where drivers pay a fee to maintain the roads, would be cases where the roads had been taken from the Commons. I would suggest that making some degree of profit while maintaining a Commons infrastructure is insufficient to show that the Commons have been lost. Instead I would suggest that what demonstrates the loss of a Commons are cases where individuals are denied the ability to enjoy actions that are possible in the commons on the basis of market regulatory efficiencies that operate along a profit maximization principle. I’ll try to unpack that a bit in the following:

Imagine, if you will, that you were driving down the road. You arrive at a toll booth and proceed to try and pay your fee but are prevented from doing so because your vehicle “might increase upkeep expenses” (perhaps it is particularly heavy, or you have snowchains on your wheels during the winter). You would be being denied access along the roadway on the basis of market calculations and, as a result, would be unable to engage in whatever action you had intended to. Disappointed, you turn around and head home. You aren’t given the chance to visit your ailing mother in the hospital, give a lecture at a conference, or assist your grandmother with her leaky tap. Perhaps you were prevented from going to a human-rights rally, or government protest, or similar public event. Regardless of the reason that you were traveling along the road, because it was not held in common the public (potentially) faces a reduced degree of civic participation, innovation, or personal involvement than if they had not been prevented from passing along the roadway. There was a reduction of potential actions that exceeds the overall value of what a private corporation gained.

When referring to the Internet as Commons what I am trying to articulate is the following: The Internet operates by sending packets of data across a series of servers around the world, with those packets ultimately arriving at their destination and being composed into the information that you had emitted. This means that when talking using Skype the packets of data move quickly across the networks so that you can listen to a person’s voice, and when sending messages using Instant Message clients (such as AIM, MSN, ICQ, and Google Talk) that what you type is delivered to the other person(s) involved in the chat. Whether you are sending a message using Skype, AIM, email, or torrenting a file, the data packets are treated equally on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.

Operating in the Commons, this means that the Internet can be used to do things that are unexpected because of the extremely limited amount of regulation that actually occurs along the networks. VOIP wasn’t something that was on the radar of the founders of the Internet (while, in the sense that it didn’t exist and wasn’t a core project of their’s - they were thinking of how to build a redundant communication system, where the system at the time was an analogue phone system) but because of the lack of ‘packet discrimination’ along the network someone could develop a way for packets to be transmitted and reassembled across the Internet and allow for voice communications. Similarly, the efficient modes of distributing data using Bittorrent exist because of a lack of filtering technologies along the networks. Unfortunately, this notion of the ‘net as Commons is under threat and, along with it, the fires of innovation are at risk of being extinguished.

Commons Under Fire
Internet Service Providers are increasingly deploying technologies that will let them inspect each packet of data that is transmitted along their networks and if that packet violates the ISPs terms of network use it may not be passed through the ISPs network. Moreover, the computer that sends that packet, and where it was going, may be recorded for future disciplinary actions. The possibility of this filtering is accompanied by two dangers.

Black Hole Syndrome
This syndrome involves the ‘disappearing’ of packets. It is often the case that when you send a packet of data that it is redirected when it tries to access a server that no longer exists, or isn’t operational at the time that you transmit a packet towards it. When these situations occur, the packet is routed around the black hole - this routing is where the phrase ‘the Internet routes around all damage’ comes from.

What may also happen in these situations, though it is less common, is the followin: You send a packet of data to a server with the expectation that that server will forward the packet to the next server in the chain, but when the server gets your packet it fails to forward it to the next server in the chain. It doesn’t announce that there is a problem with the packet, or note that it is refusing to take packets. This situation is especially problematic because, like a black hole, it sucks in packets and they never emerge from its maw. Were ISPs to inspect packets and refuse to pass them along their network AND refuse to provide redirects around their collapsed stars the the speed that packets moved would be impacted. The ’solution’, of course, would be to write programs that sent packets in ways that didn’t result in being sucked into ISPs’ maws. Unfortunately, this would mean operating in accordance with whatever regulations ISPs had established. ISPs would dictate what was permitted on their network and innovation that exceeded those boundaries would not be spread to other users. With a system such as this it would be questionable whether many of the technologies that we currently enjoy and that use a great deal of bandwidth would have ever been feasible to create, let alone created at all.

Persistent Guilt Syndrome
What if when you drove your car along the road there was always the possibility that you could be pulled over for absolutely no reason and asked what you were doing it, why, and how long you expected to be doing it? What if it happened every couple of feet along the road? Not only would it get pretty tiring (and really slow down your trip) but you would probably be pretty angry about the persistent disruptions. Sure, you might not have have anything to hide, but that doesn’t mean that you feel the need to explain what you’re doing every bloody meter of the way down the road.

On the ‘net you won’t necessarily experience that persistent slowdown as the data that you are transmitting is ‘inspected’ by ISP packet sniffing technologies. You will, however, be in a situation where everything you do is potentially monitored and you are always responsible for what you type/say/search. Given recent shifts in how US and British telecommunication giants are treating content (i.e. moving away from content neutrality toward militarizing their networks to detect ‘illegal’ materials) citizens around the world who pass data through their networks face the possibility of having their data similarly inspected. This means that it is possible to receive a phone call when the ISP passes ’suspicious’ traffic information to authorities or corporations - the police may want to know why you were reading about neurotoxins a few days before Ms. Jones next door turned up dead of a snake bite, or Microsoft may pay you a legal visit to ask why you were searching for ‘crackz’ for Office 2014. In either case, you are responsible for proving you innocence and can be found guilty without authorities having to move through historically common legal procedures (such as requiring some justification before getting a warrant to search your home). It’s a good thing that you remember exactly why you looked for everything you ever have online, right? You’re always innocent…as long as you have an eidetic memory.

The consequence of this is that citizens may reduce what they do online - they might be less likely to expose themselves to new things and individuals on the basis that any such exposure could endanger their well-being in the future. The possibility of forgetting why you were doing research on homocidal rages and the possibility of exposing yourself to coecive actions should you forget the motivation of that particular search might mean that you just don’t investigate that topic online. Why bother when it could be risky?

The Tragedy of the Commons
It may seem as though the possibilities that I’m proposing seem far-fetched. The Internet is a space of action, freedom, and exploration! This is true only so long as we can retain the Internet as a Commons. If it genuinely becomes commercialized at the level of ISPs, and if those ISPs are either allowed to or required to militarize their networks then it is entirely possible that the aforementioned syndromes could become widespread. While there will of course be solutions if we reach that point in the game, why bother getting to that point in the first place? Network Neutrality is, in part, an attempt to avoid the tragedy of the commons in cyberspace. While we have almost certainly lost most of the free fresh water, grazing lands, and precious metals that once belonged to the public good there is not a terribly convincing reason for why a similar tragedy must take place online.

Technorati Tags: Commons, network neutrality, Surveillance, Syndromes, Transparency

If you visit this blog, or any facet of my website, I can identify the IP addresses that have been here. From there I can backtrack and identify the geographic location(s) that my visitors are from and, if I really desire, can spend the time to trace individual computers. This means that I can identify a visitor to the terminal that they access the computer from; I can bridge the ‘divide’ between digital environments and the analogue environment that we eat and breathe in.

Dynamic Identity and Static Info-Requirements

There is a common myth that you can be anyone that you want on the ‘net, that identity is effectively infinite, that identity is mutable insofar as people can assume a multitude of identities that deviate from their analogue identity. Some argue that this degree of mutability persists online, and often identify Massively Multiplayer Online (MMOs) environments such as Second Life (SL), Guildwars (GW), and World of Warcraft (WoW) as prime examples of this mutability, but such assertions are misleading at best. Players in these digital environments assume command of avatars that are created during the character generation phase of the MMO experience. During this phase you can choose your avatar’s gender, race, and basic ‘geographical’ starting locations.

To play GW and WoW you must identify your geographic location before entering the online world. The ‘you’ referred to here is not a digital avatar that carries magic tomes and hefts broadswords across a digitally rendered fantastic environment, but the ‘you’ that drives a car, types on a computer, and participates in workplace socials. This latter you, the you of the analogue-world, has (perhaps inelegantly) been referred to as ‘meat’ following Gibson’s classic work, Necromancer. Once you enter a MMO your ‘meat-self’ can be found by tracing the IP address that is assigned by your ISP to a computer terminal. In addition to the connection that links your meat and avatar when logging into MMOs via an ISP, or purchasing its software from a digital distribution site, there is an even clearer association of your meat to a physical location should you purchase the software required to enter a MMO at a brick-and-motor/meatspace store. There are many methods by which a person’s ‘meat’ can be associated with the digital code that constitutes their digital presence in MMOs. 

In addition to a player’s geographic location, entry into these digital environments require players to enter a series of digital ‘passcodes’. I have chosen to divide these ‘codes’ into two analytical categories: ‘simple’ code and ‘complicated’ code. I define ‘simple’ code as non-user-identifiable – it is ‘dumb’ code in the sense that it is not designed to monitor or record user-identifiable information. I define ‘complicated’ code as user-identifiable, unique, used in the sanctioning of the the corporeal body, and requiring substantial interpersonal contact. Complicated code is used in the punishment and discipline of body. Punishment involved a shift from sovereign sanction (where sanction was directed by the sovereign as though they themselves directed their coercive might) to rendering the body’s appearance rather than its essence. Punishment sees the body’s appearance rendered using dozens or hundreds of micro-sanctions that are generated to alleviate manifest deviancy rather than involving the sole imposition of the sovereign’s immutable will.

Discipline, in contrast, involves the persistent observation by others. These others impose a set of norms that automatically correct deviant actions. When a person performs actions that deviates from norms the action and the deviate individual are seen by others, and this sight is responsible for the experience of shame and abnormality that accompanies deviancy. Sight here legitimises power by situating it in the hands of all individuals; all social actors are responsible for authoring and enforcing society’s norms, all are drawn into (semi-fabricated) narrative of authoring and addressing the norms to oneself. While both gaze and authorship can be understood literally, it is more fruitful to take a more nuanced account. While one is acted upon by the gaze of others – we are seen by the people who surround us – we are also acted upon by the gaze that we internalise and projected upon ourselves. We internalise public norms and evaluate our actions against those norms. While it is possible that we do not genuinely accept these norms – we may use them as a core means of justifying our own particularlised norm set– we do evaluate ourselves against their guideset.

The Gatehouses of Simplicity and Complexity

The ‘simple’ gatehouse that all players of MMOs must enter takes the form of a serial number which is associated with the software in accessing the digital environment. These numbers, while they are tied to particular distribution versions of the software, aren’t tied directly to individuals. These are the gatehouses of simplicity – there are no direct punishments for making a mistake at this gatehouse (punishment meaning no sanctions of any sort being applied to individuals who fail to pass this gatehouse).

The ‘complex’ gatehouse, on the other hand, involves a significantly more rigorous series of checks before letting the player’s bytes constitute their avatar. In the case of this gatehouse you are required to make a payment that is tied to real-world bank accounts and credit repositories. These repositories are, without a doubt, checked against you ‘meat-world’ identity. If you cheat these systems you will either be denied access (i.e. insert and incorrect credit card number and you cannot make payment for the software and consequently are prevented from constituting identity in the MMO) or call the attention of ‘meat-world’ authorities. These aforementioned processes call upon methods of punishment – they can lead to direct punishments inflicted on the body’s appearance insofar as the body is affected with corrective regulative mechanisms, rather than injury being directed towards the being of the body itself.

Once you pay the fee and enter ‘meat-world’ information to associate your MMO account with your ‘meat’ another system is imposed.

The Imposition of Analytic and Socialised Discipline

Discipline is made manifest the second that the player begins the avatar creation process. Players are given a particular range of options and are left unable to transgress those boundaries. As soon as, or if, those boundaries are met there are (literally) hard-coded walls that are impenetrable, insofar as players cannot breech the walls with much, if any, likelihood of success. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) establishes a limited and necessary range of options that affect the avatar’s bodily appearance; male, female? Orc, elf, human, undead? Warrior, wizard, rogue, paladin? In this GUI, players can establish a body that is persistently subject to punishment from other players’ avatars. Punishment in the MMO occurs by having avatars’ ‘hit points’, or representative health units, reduced by coming into contact with other avatars’ weapons and mythical abilities. In these cases, avatars’ appearance is affected without the injury striking at the being, or code itself, of the avatar. The avatars of many MMOs are designed so that only the appearance can be ‘damaged’, and the code itself is shielded from the ravages of others by design. No matter how much ‘damage’ a warrior-character suffers their essential, digitally coded nature, remains precisely as the MMO designers have shaped it.

In addition to the explicit crafting of all the elements in the MMO, which has the effect of imposing normative constraints upon avatars and, by extension, the players’ ability to form digitised identities that externally made manifest by their physical presence, there is a persistent observation process that persistently occurs in the MMO. Michel Foucault notes that when discipline occurs it takes the form of the imposition of social norms upon us by others and by ourselves towards ourselves. To simplify, when other players see the actions our avatars take when in the presence of their avatars their subtle responses indicate whether I have deviated from social conventions. In ‘meat-space’ ‘meat-subjects’ operate in a persistently fluctuating environment where a subject can deviate from social norms without even being aware of a transmutation of those norms.

In MMOs social norms can change rapidly, but those norms are regulated by the code that game architects have laid in place. Whereas in ‘meat-space’ it is possible for a social norm that has members crossing their heart with their right hand as an identifier as allegiance to a newly formed social group, in the MMO environment such physical manifestations cannot be developed as readily by ‘law-abiding’ members of the community. Law-abiding in this sense refers to individuals who enjoy the game without attempting to alter or influence the code responsible for the MMOs operation. In MMOs such as GW and WoW the game architects run programs that persistently monitor for deviant code insertions. in order to enter the MMOs’ digital landscapes players constantly transmit information from the game client computers to the MMO game servers. The packets of data that pass from the players’ ‘client’ computers are examined as they meet the border of game servers – the avatars and their actions have their essential nature inspected at all times by a ‘central guard tower’ – gatehouse(s) of the MMO server(s) – at all times.

In addition to these lines of ‘vision’ that regulate and mitigate deviance from their essential nature each player is responsible for watching other players’ avatars – their vision is limited to outward appearance, and are expected to recount deviancy of normative class, gender, and racial attributes. Those who deviate are termed ‘cheaters’ and ‘hackers’ by Blizzard. On their website, Blizzard Corporation notes:

Many of you may know the identity of some of these hackers. We would urge you to work with us to eliminate cheating by not supporting people or websites that promote cheating and hacking. We also ask that you not link to such sites or interview cheaters/hackers on your site. Additionally, if you discover functioning hacks or sites with hacks, please notify us immediately by filling out this form.

We believe that if we attack cheating on multiple fronts we can prevent hackers from negatively affecting other player’s games. This effort is presented in the best interest of all parties that are passionate, dedicated and enthusiastic about honest and genuine gaming. We hope you understand the importance of this message and will be willing to work together with us in a unified effort to promote the well being of our games and our online gaming community. (Source)

There is an important benefit for reporting others: the social norms that all players consent when logging into the game, and agreeing to a kind of ‘social contract’ that takes the form of a Terms of Use contract, will again be universally imposed. Moreover, the corporation behind the World of Warcraft environment notes that if you genuinely care about the game, if you want to be classed as a ‘genuine’ player of the MMO, that you should be invested in maintaining social norms. This establishes a normative position that, while you can deviate from it, such deviancy trespasses upon what it ‘right’, what everyone else is supposed to be doing. Without a comment page associated with each section of the player responsibilities, players are left with an aura that others must be accepting the policy, so why shouldn’t they?

I Am What We Are

When presenting myself in a MMO I don’t show myself to be ‘me’, in the sense that I cannot genuinely express a unique identity that I am significantly responsible for crafting; any identity that I adopt must be approved by the facets of the ‘complex’ gatehouses that I must pass through in order to constitute myself in the MMO. This means that the digital packets of information that I send to the MMO servers must be inspected and deemed ‘acceptable’, and that the actions that I take in the game must meet with the approval of others players and the normative code-basin we operate on. I can only talk about certain matters – if I admit to ‘hacking’ or ‘deviating’ from imposed norms I must be mindful of the possibility that my avatar will be banished. The digital archetype that I have created, the avatar who’s appearance deviates from the norm, is denied its very existence. In this sense, the avatar (and by extension I) am denied a right to exist; the digital representation is subject to sovereign sanction, sanction that can literally obliviate my essence.

To avoid this brutal extinction I behave like we behave. We have to operate in a certain way to simply ‘enjoy’ the game. We have to meet the social norms, accord with the social conventions we have ‘accepted’ when agreeing to the Terms of Use every time I cast my avatar upon the MMO’s soil. I must watch others or else they could detract from my fun. If I think that others are infringing on my hedonistic enjoyment I can contact the game architects directly, or notify my fellow players using online forums, newsgroups, blogs, email, and other digital communication technologies of the injustice that has been cast upon the MMO server. If we take a somewhat simplistic attitude that MMOs are played simply for hedonistic pleasure, and since my pleasure bears a strong relation to my ability to maneuver my avatar with the avatars of my fellow players without illegal interference, we punish the cheaters who discovered a method of deviating from code-imposed norms that make all people essentially equal.

We transmit our desire to be equal, and be free from unwarranted unfairness, into a desire for mass conformity. While it is possible that we may want to be unique ourselves in some fashion we think that it is unfair when others have some advantage over us that it manifest in the enhancement of essence. Cheaters’ advantages violate the social contract we and out fellows have agree to - such violations are the manifest examples of injustice turned digital.

Fortunately there is a pathway, a conduit, that we can transmit our rage along. We can notify others of the injustice, we can ensure that punishments are levied, we can ensure that our collective contract is maintained. By using our disciplinary powers, along with the powers of the game architects, it is possible to mete punishment upon the deviating players’ ‘meat-selves’. As players we can realize the pleasure of righting a wrong in the game, and knowing that such a right might provoke criminal charges towards the offending player should their deviation have either violated to ToS or manipulated an avatar’s essence. We can experience the pleasure of contributing to the systems of justice that rule the life of the avatar – the system that holds sway over the meat, and the system that constitutes their digital incarnation. I can be like we are by welcoming the code-regulated normativity that dictates how we can appear – I can be free by being, essentially, just like you.