Can the Internet promote open global societies?

• Author: Houston, Douglas A.

The Internet has been proclaimed and cursed as a necessary but too expensive building block for modern development. Disparities in access to Internet infrastructure (networks, servers, and computers) and in the skills necessary to use the Internet have become yet another gap between have and have-not nations--an alleged "digital divide" for which massive investment in the physical and human capital oft, he have-nots has been suggested as a remedy. (1) For example, China's president Jiang Zemin has declared publicly that the melding of the traditional economy with information technology will drive China's economic development in the twenty-first century.

Along with this profession of faith in information technology, however, comes Chinese political repression and the control of what China's leaders perceive to be a multitude of abuses by its citizens and foreigners (Kalathil and Boas 2001). Many nations--and not all repressive ones--are following the Chinese lead in expanding their regulation of the Internet, fearing both political challenges and social disruption. The guiding principle behind these efforts seems to be that the Internet can be bolted mechanistically onto existing economic institutions, thereby creating more economic value while simultaneously preserving political and cultural autonomy.

Getting such an outcome, as we shall see, is quite a trick. The Internet's power as a communication tool comes in part from its capacity to disrupt the status quo by bringing new knowledge at very low cost to the far reaches of the globe. In reaching for alternatives to local and traditional knowledge, people can upset the operation of local economic, political, and social institutions. Nevertheless, a dynamic process of sharing knowledge is essential to capitalism, a free society (Hayek 1945), and a robust version of globalization that upholds human liberty.

Thus far, however, widespread claims for and fears of the powers of the Internet, both for economic growth and for social enlightenment (or destruction), have only scant factual basis, even in the developed nations where the network is densely woven and heavily used. In this article, I survey what we know about the deployment of the Internet and its effects in general and across fifty representative nations. This evidence suggests that we are still far from having entered a global "information revolution" and that highly globalized nations (as measured by economic flows) also can be inflexible, uncivil ones. Today the Internet certainly brings us closer together globally, especially in processing basic transactions and in sharing data, and with further innovation and investment we will become even closer. Teleconferencing, for example, will become far more "lifelike"--emotive, personal, and extensively disrespectful of political borders.

Ironically, this more "human" Internet is likely to increase human tensions. For example, the Internet can foster global clans and "network organizations"--small, intimate social and work groups that might be exclusionary (even tribal?) by nature. In general, the Internet as "relationship technology" will create cultural and political threats to the status quo because it offers so many economic, cultural, and political alternatives. After all, no one can be sure how individuals will process and use this torrent of information. Although repressive political regimes may be especially vulnerable to Net-induced change, all institutions--including Western democracies, corporations, religions, and cultures--are at risk.

Thus, many people may not like some of the consequences of Internet technology applications. For this reason, government efforts to regulate Internet use will intensify as public policymakers seek to define appropriate global information sharing for their citizens.

Worldwide Internet Use

After years of rapid growth of the Internet, we now understand some basic characteristics of its use internationally. Table 1 ranks fifty nations according to the percentage of the population using the Internet and provides statistics on that percentage as well as on Internet "hosts" per million inhabitants and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. All data are for 1998. (2) The nations listed include the more developed countries for the most part, but a fifth of them have a GDP per capita of less than $2,000. Not surprisingly, nations with little income have little Internet access or use. These nations, of course, also lack many other elements of infrastructure. As a result, it is unlikely that investments in the Internet or computer training would improve economic prospects directly in such nations. Among the top ten Internet-using nations, four are Scandinavian, three Pacific Rim, two North American, and one continental European. Among the ten lowest-rated nations on this statistic, five are African, four Asian, and one Middle Eastern.

Income per capita and Internet use are correlated positively. Taking this association to heart, many developing nations have made the building of Internet infrastructure central to their economic growth policies. Although the Internet is arguably a wellspring of economic productivity and growth, the supporting evidence is limited thus far. The reasons for the weak effects are three. First, investments in information and communications technologies have not been globally extensive. Even in developed nations, essential institutional and cultural transformations that would spur Internet productivity have not yet occurred (Brynjolfsson and Hitt 2000). These barriers are far greater for partly developed nations. Second, the Internet remains a modest instrument for much personal communication owing to technological impediments. We cannot (yet) carry out extensive, private conversations globally with high reliability, and such discussions lie at the heart of many future global relationships. Third, governments have basic technological tools with which to control Internet use, albeit clumsily. For example, in many repressive nations, the Internet service providers (ISPs) are either government owned or controlled. Governments' efforts to regulate communications can eviscerate much of the hoped-for economic payoff by reducing the users' control of information. American expectations in the late 1990s for economic growth of more 3 percent per year have been trimmed significantly now in part because of a dimmer view of the sustainable productivity gains from information technology applications. However, it is difficult to deny a connection between investments in information technology and economic output. As a result, many nations view the Internet as an entry ticket to the "knowledge-based" economy. By betting on the Net as source of economic growth, these governments also unleash, often begrudgingly if not unwittingly, the power of the Internet to affect politics and society.

The Social Net

The Internet can be an awe-inspiring conduit for data, but are more "bits" the same as more knowledge? Much of the current understanding of communications relies on information theory. This theory views communication as the transmission of "messages" with some specified degree of accuracy; communication problems in this context arise from "noise," added content, or line failures. Thus, information theory identifies failure squarely with problems in the data being moved. Clean it up, remove extraneous content, and maintain highly reliable delivery, and we will have greater knowledge. Individuals, however, invariably place the information they receive in a social context, attaching personal meaning to it and a sense of social connection to others. To paraphrase Brown and Duguid (2000), all information has a social life. And social status-seeking behaviors loom large in all groups and cultures.

Although any communication (letter, fax, telephone call, in-person discussion) is subject to misinterpretations and control problems, the Internet is fairly rich in privacy risks owing to the pervasive "broadcast" nature of sending messages across an open and unsecured network. Thus, one of the great strengths of the Internet--low-cost dissemination to vast numbers of users--is a weakness when the communication's value derives from expected privacy. State-sanctioned snooping chills personal disclosure. In some cases, we might find regulatory oversight appropriate--when, for example, discussions are libelous, foster criminal associations, or contain widely objectionable sexual content. Other media also face these public-policy issues, of course, and the balancing of free speech against other public values poses an always difficult question in the deployment of the Internet (Lessig 1999).

When privacy is broadly jeopardized by pervasive regulation or hacking, however, people limit what they say and cleanse messages of content or intonation that might be objectionable to a wider (uninvited) audience. This self-censorship typically drains considerable content and context from discussions on the Internet. Of course, such drainage is often the regulators' objective. Objectionable speech might involve sharing racist fantasies or pornographic materials. On the other hand, it might involve sharing aesthetics...