a trustworthy information society for all

Informationsphilosophie. Information und urbanes Systeme 23

Mälardalen University, June 2013

José María Díaz NafríaUniversidad de León, Spanien | Munich University A.S.

• 1990s: Information Society (transparent and borderless) – September 11th

• Security vs. Trust (Boundary Conditions vs. Inner Conditions)

• Contradictions in the liberalist discourses with respect to protectionism and interventionism

• Pendulum with respect to the awareness of threats.

24A Trustworthy Information Society for All

1. Trustworthiness Model and Security

1. Trustworthiness Model and Security


A trust B to do X

What is behind?

Trustworthiness Model (RISEPTIS report, EC, trustIS)

Trustworthiness vs Complexity (Luhman)• Digital Divide• Social Divide• Ecological clift

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I. Newton (1642-1727)P.S. Laplace (1749-1827)

2. Trustworthiness in the planetary system: an 18th Century Issue

A Trustworthy Information Society for All

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• Subjective vs. Objective Sense (certitude vs. Stability of the system)

Self-realisation necessity: to be useful to others without effort

Self-esteem necessity:community acknowledgment

Necessity of belonging-to:being part of a community

Security Necessity: by group validation

Functional Necessities: finding a place to eat, sleep, drink


2. Trustworthiness in the planetary system: an 18th Century Issue

3. Historical roots of our trustworthiness and security understanding

“It is a very common clever device that when anyone has attained the summit of greatness, he kicks away the ladder by which he has climbed up, to deprive others of the means of climbing up after him […]Any nation which by means of protective duties and restrictions on navigation has raised her manufacturing power and her navigation to such a degree of development that no other nation can sustain free competition with her, can do nothing wiser than to throw away these ladders of her greatness, to preach to other nations the benefits of free trade”

(List 1885, pp. 295-296).


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a) Beginings of freetrading | s.XXI: Famine in Ireland (1846-48) vs. Opium Wars (1842, 1858)Opium Wars (s.XIX) vs. Iraq Wars (s.XX)

i) False arguments, ii) effect of previous wariii) de facto Colonialism, iv) hindered long term development, v) Losses of historical and artistic assests, vi) separatist, ethnic and religious rebellions favored

b) Hard Power vs. Soft Power (Joseph Nye) Global Information Dominance (Echelon, NationalImagery and Mapping Agency, Future ImageryArchitecture)



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M.Foucault (The eye of the power): „Bentham was the complement to Rousseau. What in fact was the Rousseauist dream that motivated many of the revolutionaries? It was the dream of a transparent society, visible and legible in each of its parts, the dream of there no longer existing any zones of darkness [...] It was the dream that each individual, whatever portion he occupied, might be able to see the whole society…”



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M. Foucault (The eye of the power): “[Bentham] effects the project of a universal visibility which exists to serve a rigorous, meticulous power. Thus Bentham’s obsession, the technical idea of the exercise of an ‘all-seeing’ power, is grafted on to the great Rousseauist theme which is in some sense the lyrical note of the Revolution… When the Revolution poses the question of a new justice, what does it envisage as its principle? Opinion. The new aspect of the problem of justice, for the Revolution, was not so much to punish wrongdoers as to prevent even the possibility of wrongdoing, by immersing people in a field of total visibility where the opinion, observation and discourse of others would restrain them from harmful acts”



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• G. Tarde (Sociologist and criminologist)“All the improvements of social organization… have the consequence of enabling that one meditated, coherent, individual project arrives purer, lesser polluted, deeper, and through the safer and shorter means into the minds of all the associated” (Tarde, Public opinion and the crowd. 1690, §107).

• Public Opinnion (co-opción) ~ Control Society (Deleuze) “The material and economic aspects of opinion were not acknowledged. They believed it “is fair by nature, it disseminates by itself, and it is a sort of democratic surveillance […]” (Foucault)

• Decolonization and reaction (1950-1970s)• New International Economic Order (1974), New

World Inf. and Comm. Order (1974), C. MacBride



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• John Locke"those, who like one another so well as to join into society, cannot but be supposed to have some acquaintance and friendship together, and some trust one in another; they could not but have greater apprehensions of others, than of one another: and therefore their first care and thought cannot but be supposed to be, how to secure themselves against foreign force. It was natural for them to put themselves under a frame of government which might best serve to that end…"

(Second Treatise on Government. 1690, §107).

• Liberal Foundations (J. Locke, A. Smith, J. Bentham, Burke)



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Differences in the target of each position:• The transparency/trustworthiness, hence the communications

without borders is at the groundings of many utopias of the Information Society (MacLuhan, Etzioni, Toffles, Barlow, etc) as well as of other technical utopias as Kropotkin’s, advocating the dissolution of (concentrated) power.

• There is a close connection with the various foundations of liberalism, in which different approaches are present:– Degree of Free-will vs Authoritarianism (Rousseau / Bentham)– Degree of Fairness/equality vs Unfairness/Unequality

(Bentham/conservative Liberals)



5. Towards a different sense of security and trust (in the Information Society)


• Etymology: se + cura– Passive (secured > safety –efects)– Active (secure > security -causes)

• Values:– Subjective | Objective | Relative– Passive | Active– Gradual

• Senses: Power / Liberty warranty



• Liberty warranty: – Negative (avoid dangers, risks…)– Positive (increasing space of possibilities)



Security contexts:

(s) States: (s1) national security (s2) social security system

(i) Individuals:(i1) property, privacy (i2) basic necessities, positive freedom

(i) Organisations:(o1) private goals (o2) necessities > general interest

(c) Complex Social Systems:(c1) subsistance aims (c2) global goals

(e) Ecosystems:(e1) resources availability (e2) long-term security

5. Towards a different sense of securityand trust (in the Information Society)

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Example: Syncom Project

Sept. 11th


a trustworthy information society for all

Technology

transparent society

security understanding

historical roots

control society deleuze

community security necessity

manufacturing power

allseeing power

meticulous power