AUTHOR

Elzbieta Pakszys
The Institue of Philosophy
Adam Mickiewicz University
Poznan, Poland

ABSTRACT

On reasons and consequences of androgynous approach in human mind studies

In contemporary feminist literature Rene Descartes’ (1596-1650) concept of Cogito has been denounced as an embodiment of exclusively masculine characteristics of human cognition. However, Cogito contains primarily those features of the mind which reflect ones’s self-assertion in subjectively overcoming sceptic dubito and reestablishing his own existence. Likewise, in philosophy, any Rationalist as well as Empiricist current has been regarded as androcentric, merely due to its exclusively male representation troughout history. Also, such formal and applied disciplines as logic, mathematics, geometry and computer science are considered gender-biased. In my paper I first focus on some examples of peculiar “female” cogitos, i.e. women who challanged the historical stereotype with their early and high competence in formal thinking: Maria Gaetana Agnesi(1718-1799); Sophie Germain (1776-1831); Ada A. Byron Lovelace (1815-1852), and others. This part of discussion serves as a basis for a reflection on the timeless issues of male/female mind vis a vis nature/ nurture dichotomy.

The exclusion of women from logic and analytical philosophy in the 20th century, real in numbers, will be illustrated with two contradictory examples:

1. Polish women from the second generation of the Lvov-Warsaw school: Janina Hosiasson-Lindenbaum, Seweryna Luszczewska-Rohman, Maria Kokoszynska-Lutman, Janina Kotarbinska, Izydora Dambska, Maria Ossowska and
2. rare women logicians and mathematicians from the Vienna Circle: Olga Hahn-Neurath, Amalie Rosenbluth, Kathe Strauss-Steinhardt, Rose Rand, Olga Taussky-Todd and Else Frenkel-Brunswik.

Contemporary problems of the cogito’s sex/gender will be discussed with reference to the so-called “Polgar sisters chess” experiment in Hungary. The appearance of the three female chess players, fully competitive with the male ones, is crucial for the assessment of the dychotomies in question, relating to human mind diversity.

AUTHOR

Professor William Murphy
Franklin Pierce Law Center
Concord, NH 03301
USA

ABSTRACT

Ever since Darwin the notion of self-organizing systems in biology has gained nearly universal acceptance(1). In biological terms a self-organizing system, like a flock of Canadian geese flying in perfect unison or school of fish darting and weaving among the coral as one, unites the disparate, independent actions of individuals into a complex and coherent whole without centralized command and control. The individuals, following simple “rules”, develop structures and behaviors that were not those necessarily intended by the individuals.

In human society we often insist that “someone” or “something” must be controlling and directing the organization and operation of orderly, complex, and interacting systems(2). But recently an awareness of how decentralized systems can also form orderly, complex aggregations and interactions without centralized command and control has emerged; first in biology(3) , now in economics(4) and even in the production of digital domains(5).

The reason that free market capitalism has thrived is that it self-organizes to produce, at least in comparison to alternatives, beneficial results(6). In the industrial age economy, the decentralized ideal of the capitalist model works, for the most part, because when individuals, pursuing selfish interests (like the goose seeking an easier flying burden), interact freely in the marketplace the resulting complex and ordered system produces benefits that exceed its costs. On ethical rather than economic terms, this self-organizing free market satisfies three moral criteria:

1. justice (distributional justice under the capitalist criterion whereby each receives according to contribution and according to voluntary bargained-for exchange),
2. rights (right of free consent, voluntary exchange, and freedom of choice), and
3. utility (resources are allocated, used and distributed efficiently).

There is little doubt that a truly free market economy is a self-organizing system. By following the simple rules of individual self-interest the collective interactions in the free market produce a dynamic and complex economy that answers the four basic economic decisions(7) in a manner superior to command and control systems. Many have argued(8) that the internet should be left alone, and that a rough and tumble free market will produce that best outcomes in terms of efficiency and consumer benefits. The operation of the free market in the industrial age has had this effect so why not apply the hard-won lessons of the industrial age to the information age?

Potential for Self-Organizing Monopolies
The question that the paper will discuss is whether the economic environment that is emerging in the information age is sufficiently different from that which prevails in most of the industrial age sectors, that the same self-interested behavior by individuals and organizations, will lead to undesired consequences or structures where the long-term benefits might be outweighed by the costs and burdens(9). Specifically, is the environment of the internet such that the activities of individuals and organizations will self-organize into monopolistic structures? The paper will examines six separate but often interrelated factors that are found in many business sectors that are emerging in the information age economy. When one or more of the first five factors examined are present in sufficient strength it is suggested that there is the danger of self-organizing monopolistic structures, while the sixth factor examined may have a mitigating effect(10).

The Six Factors to be Examined

1. Scale economy effects
In the high-tech economy of the information age the ratios between fixed costs and variable costs have changed for many products. Now the percentage of fixed costs to variable costs can greatly exceed those common during the industrial age. Because of the high fixed costs associated with the development, production and distribution of many information age items relative to their variable costs, economies of scale are even more important today than in the industrial age and can lead to industry structures where a single firm can dominate a market by exploiting a scale economy derived cost advantage(11).

2. Learning/experience effects
Learning curve and experience curve effects express the mathematical relationship between the accumulated output of a product at the unit costs of the product. The effects are thought to be underlying natural characteristics of organized activity and have long been observed in industrial age industries(12). The relationship is generally expressed in terms of a percentage decline in cost for each doubling of output. For most standardized manufacturing industries cost declines of 10 to 30% are common(13). It has been suggested that learning curve effects are even more pronounced in knowledge and technology intensive industries(14). In addition, many information age products have extremely low (or potentially no) marginal costs so accumulation of output can be accomplished at little or no expense(15). To the extent that learning curve or experience curve effects play a significant role in information age industries there is a marked tendency to favor the first mover, the company that is able to accumulate output quickly(16).

3. Superstar effects
Superstar effects(17) are related to the scale economy effects but differ in important aspects. In times past there were limits on the capacity of individuals or firms to satisfy the demand for their products or services. As a consequence, after the capacity of the most desired supplier had been reached customers would, of necessity, turn to their second best choice. This excess of demand over supply would also have the effect of permitting the suppliers of the preferred product or service to charge a higher price. This again would have the effect of customers shifting to their lower-tiered choices. Unlike scale economies and learning curve effects, superstar effects are based on specific consumer preference (other than favorable prices which can result from the scale and learning effects) for the perceived “best” product. As a consequence, the fact that a winner-take-all marketplace may arise due to superstar effects may not necessarily be bad for the consumer since in such a winner-take-all marketplace each consumer can have the most desired product or service and need not settle for second or third choices(18).

4. Network Effects and Standardization
Network effects or network externalities(19) exist when the amount that one is willing to pay for access to the network is dependent upon how many other parties are also connected to the network(20). Network products or services become more valuable as their use becomes more widespread(21). In a related manner standards are often required to allow the efficient functioning of a network. As a consequence, achieving a critical mass of acceptance is significant in a number of information age markets. The first firm to achieve a critical mass of acceptance sets the de facto standard, and success then breeds more success. When a critical mass is reached on a standard, the beneficiary of the standard receives increasing benefits as more and more individuals switch to the dominant standard, which as a result increases the standard-setter’s dominance(22). The importance of first mover advantages may go beyond critical mass of acceptance. First movers will also be farther down the learning curve, and may enjoy greater scale economies(23).

5. Information Search and Retrieval Burdens
The fifth factor contributing to self-organizing monopolistic structures in the information age focuses on the burdens of information search and retrieval. This stems from two causes. First is the complexity of the products and services. The informational asymmetry between buyers and sellers is magnified in technology driven markets. Individual consumers are often ill-equipped to comprehend the salient technological features of competing products and system. As result, consumers place increased reliance on reputation and prior experience to make judgments. A type of herd behavior can evolve, further entrenching market leaders. It is safer to stay with the grazing herd, even if the herd is grazing in a sub-optimal area. The second cause of the information search and retrieval burden is a direct by-product of the information age. The increasing amount of information available can overwhelm even the most conscientious consumer(24).

6. Non-rivalry and Reproduction Costs
Like Pandora’s box the story ends with one new factor of the information age economy that may provide a ray of hope against self-organizing monopolistic structures, although this characteristic poses ethical and economic dilemma of its own. One of the fundamental characteristics of tangible property in the industrial age economy is that possession is rivalrous. When the possibility of non-rivalrous possession is coupled with the costs of reproduction a serious problem arises. In the industrial age economy social welfare was maximized because consumers were willing to pay a price for tangible goods that was greater than the marginal cost of producing another copy. It was unlikely that you were going to cheaply “clone a copy of your Ford” for a friend. The marginal cost of reproduction (often near zero) for many digital goods is below the marginal cost of producing and distributing the product. Will anyone have an incentive to produce digital goods where the costs of production and distribution exceed the marginal cost of reproduction? If the answer is no, all of society will be worse off. The producers of digital goods have begun to attack the situation by trying to increase the marginal costs of reproduction through the threat of legal prosecution for infringement or through technological changes (such as digi-marking)(25).

Ethical and Ecoonomical Considerations
The self-organized monopolies that may arise in the information age economy appear to pose an ethical and regulatory dilemma that was not present in the industrial age economy(26). As noted in the beginning the industrial age economy satisfies three moral criteria(27). The potential winner-take-all nature of the many information markets can cause a disassociation between these three moral criteria(28). Distributional justice may be threatened in that rewards may exceed one’s contribution. In addition, individual rights of choice may be limited by the absence of competitive alternatives. On the other hand, one could argue that utility is actually enhanced as costs are driven to their lowest levels. Of course, low costs do not guarantee low prices, so the benefits of the effects listed above may be captured and internalized by the producers rather than shared with the consumers.

The possibility for self-organizing monopolies to evolve in these winner-take-all markets also makes them extremely attractive because of their potential remuneration for the winners. As a result participants can become engaged in an expensive “arms race” to achieve dominance. This type of competition can result in escalating expenditures that may not produce any additional security of success since security of success is relative to the threat(29).

1. In the early 1970’s Professor Keller at MIT demonstrated that slime mold cells, a simple life form without specialized cells, formed clusters or aggregations simply in response to a chemical secreted and sought by each slime mold cell. This “aggregation without a leader” is but one example of self-organizing behavior whereby complex structures emerge as the result of simple interaction “rules” followed by free acting individual organisms. [These experiments were conducted by Evelyn Fox Keller, a professor of mathematics and humanities whose work has been in mathematical biology and in the history, philosophy, and psychology of science]
2. Although the self-organizing nature of biological systems is widely accepted (as noted earlier) there are some who hold to a command and control explanation of biology. This disagreement is at the core of the creationism debate. Our tendency to centralized control explanations may also help explain the persistence and popularity of conspiracy theories. See also, Michale Resnick, Changing the Centralized Mind, Technology Review, July 1994.
3. Benno Hess and Alexander Mikhailov, Self-organization in living cells, Science (4/8/94) at 223. Howard T. Odum, Self-organization, transformity, and information, Science (11/25/88) at 1132.
4. Larry D. Browning Janice M. Beyer Judy C. Shetler, Building cooperation in a competitive industry: SEMATECH and the semiconductor industry, 38 Academy of Management Journal 113 (1995); Peter Nijkamp and Aura Reggiani, Non-linear Evolution of Dynamic Spatial Systems: The Relevance of Chaos and Ecologically-Based Models, 25 Regional Science and Urban Economics (April 1995); Raghu Garud and Suresh Kotha, Using the Brain as a Metaphor to Model Flexible Production Systems, 19 Academy of Management Review 671 (1994); Friedrich Hinterberger, Self-Organizing Systems, appearing in The Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics, Peter J. Boettke, ed. (Ashgate, Brookfield, Vt, 1994); and, Michael J. Radzicki, Institutional Dynamics, Deterministic Chaos, and Self-Organizing Systems, 24 Journal of Economic Issues (March 1990)
5. Michael Rothschild, Call It Digital Darwinism, Upside, December 1991. 20,000 bytes under the sea, Economist (6/13/98) at 81. See also, M. C. Yovits and S. Cameron, Eds., Self Organizing Systems (Pergamon, New York, 1960); H. von Forster and G. W. Zopf, Eds., Principles of Self-Organization (Pergamon, New York, 1961).
6. For a discussion of this point see A. Michael Froomkin and J. Bradford De Long The Next Economy? at http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/newecon.html
7. The four fundamental economic decisions that must be made by a society are: 1. What products to produce. 2. How much of each to produce. 3. What resources shall be used in producing these products. 4. Who will get what. Or to express the four in a single sentence -Who will produce what and how for whom?
8. John Perry Barlow, Selling Wine Without Bottles: The Economy of Mind on the Global Net, http://www.eff.org/pub/Publications/John_Perry_Barlow/idea_economy.article, and John Perry Barlow, Stopping the Information Railroad, Keynote Address, Winter 1994 USENIX Conference, San Francisco, California, January 17, 1994 at http://www.eff.org/pub/GII_NII/info_railroad_usenix_barlow_eff.speech. The freedom from control and regulation is often part of the desire for preservation of the freedom of speech on the internet. See for example, the web site of Internet Freedom at http://www.netfreedom.org/.
9. The fact that something is different about information age competition, and the internet in particular, has not escaped notice. According to one commentator, “Something very unusual is going on here. É There is something about the information industry in general and the Internet in particular that makes the application of normal antitrust rules problematic, whether you approach them from the point of view of classical antitrust scholarship or of the Chicago School.” Mark A. Lemley, Antitrust and the Internet Standardization Problem, 28 Conn. L. Rev. 1041 (1996)
10. Some authors have characterized the “new” economics of the information age as the proliferation of winner-take-all markets. Robert H. Frank and Philip J. Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society, (Free Press, 1995)
11. For a discussion of this point and its application see Joseph Kattan, Market Power in the Presence of an Installed Base, 62 Antitrust L.J. 1 (Summer 1993)
12. Wilfred B. Hirschmann, Profit from the Learning Curve, Harvard Business Review, January-February 1964. The first documented observation of the learning curve effect was made in 1925 by the commander of what is now the Wright-Patterson Air Force base in Ohio.
13. Pankaj Ghemawat, Building Strategy on the Learning Curve, Harvard Business Review, March-April 1985. The unit cost declines of 10% and 30% for each doubling of output are generally described as 90% and 70% learning or experience curves, respectively.
14. A. Michael Spence, Competition, Entry, and Antitrust Policy, Strategy, Predation, and Antitrust Analysis 45, 65-66 (Steven C. Salop ed., 1981). One way of summing up the learning curve effect is “practice makes perfect”. In information age industries where flexibility and willingness to change are present the benefits of learning curve effects should be significant. Additionally, some have argued that the more complex the undertaking the greater the rate of learning. [Wilfred B. Hirschmann, Profit from the Learning Curve, Harvard Business Review, January-February 1964] As a consequence, in high-risk, high-reward winner-take-all markets any incremental benefits, such as those from a learning curve effect, may be sufficient to determine the winner. Another author claims that “self-organizing systems are learning systems”. David H. Freedman, Is Management Still a Science? Harvard Business Review, November-December 1992
15. In most tangible products diminishing returns eventually limit the positive cost effects of the learning curve.
16. This may also help explain why market share is profitable and why pursuit of market share is a rational strategy for many organizations. In the 1970’s and 1980’s the Boston Consulting Group used the learning curve in support of strategies seeking significant market share positions. John S. Hammond III and Gerald B. Allan, Note on the Boston Consulting Group Concept of Competitive Analysis and Corporate Strategy, Harvard Business School Note #175175, 1983. Learning curve effects have also been used to explain some of the results from the PIMS (Profit Impact of Marketing Strategy) database which show a correlation between market share and profitability. Robert D. Buzzell, Bradley T. Gale, Ralph G.M. Sultan, Market Share – A Key to Profitability, Harvard Business Review, January-February 1975.
17. For a general discussion of the concept see When Winners Take All, The Economist, November 25, 1995 at 82. Other discussions on the topic can be found on the web at http://www.adm.duke.edu/alumni/dm13/silver.html and http://www.gsm.cornell.edu/NewIdeas/PressReleases/WinnerTakeAll.html
18. If there are significant entry barriers this elimination of lower-tiered competitiors may increase the riskiness inherent in the market. If the “superstar” winner subsequently becomes less desired the concentration of decision making in fewer hands may result in sub-optimal results. (All your eggs in one basket problem.) Markets with numerous competitors are more robust than single firm marketplaces, even if the single firm is currently the most desired or lowest cost producer, because of the risk posed by a single firm’s mistake is more easily corrected by consumers shifting to competitive products in a contested market.
19. Technically, network effect should be used to describe situations where there are increasing returns as the number of network participants increases and network externalities should be limited to situations where the network effect creates less than optimal conditions where a decision maker does not bear the full costs of his or her decision. S. J. Liebowitz and Stephen E. Margolis, Network Externality: An Uncommon Tragedy, 8 Journal of Economic Perspectives 133 (1994).
20. Nicholas Economides, The Economics of Networks, 14 International Journal of Industrial Organization (March 1996).
21. Economists refer to this as increasing returns. In the physical world one could think of this as a virtuous circle, where feedback from the growth becomes self-reinforcing.
22. Often cited examples of this phenomenon are the well-known Betamax/VHS, Windows/Macintosh, 8 track/cassette audio tapes situations.
23. The first mover advantages may also be related to the marketplace advantages enjoyed by early or quick success in the movie and television industries.
24. A similar phenomenon is beginning to appear with searches on the internet. So many “hits” are returned that an exhaustive search may no longer be effective. Automated agents and filtering mechanisms may help but there is a concern that those who control the filters (Microsoft Sidewalk is an example) could
25. Digi-marking is the electronic tagging of copyrighted work with identifying information that can assist in tracing the origin of the work. Copy protection schemes, at one time widely employed in the software market, may also reappear – and already have done so for high-end software products.
26. If self-organizing systems orchestrate the formation of undesirable structures and do so without leaders, is it fair or correct to look for culpable leaders who are the architects, the master planners, of these self-organizing structures? Is the queen termite “responsible” for the construction of the termite colony mound on the plains of Africa? No, and it is an example of the centralized mindset to even call her the “queen”, which implies leadership.
27. justice (distributional justice under the capitalist criterion whereby each receives according to contribution and according to voluntary bargained-for exchange, 2. rights (right of free consent, voluntary exchange, freedom of choice), and 3. utility (resources are allocated, used and distributed efficiently).
28. Some have even argued that computers are the largest driver of wage inequality in the emerging winner-take-all information age economy. By these accounts the concentration of greater economic rewards in proportionately fewer hands will lead to a substantial income and wealth gap, and since one “votes with dollars” in allocating resources in the free market economy those with more dollars get more “votes” in this resource allocation process. Whether or not this is “fair” is left for others to decide. Neil Munro, For Richer and Poorer, The National Journal, July 18, 1998. For a discussion of the moral legitimacy concerning these competitively determined profits and incomes see Derek Bok, The Cost of Talent: How Executives and Professionals Are Paid and How It Affects America (Free Press, 1993).
29. In fact the opposite may occur. If each side keeps increasing its “arms build-up” it is possible that each is less secure (or at least no more secure) than it was before the race began.

AUTHOR
Miranda Mowbray

Hewlett Packard Labs
Bristol,
Filton Road,
Stoke Gifford,
Bristol
BS34 8QZ
UK

ABSTRACT

This paper is a practical application of ethical philosophy to a question on the administration of virtual communities.

In recent years there has been an exponential growth in the number of people using virtual communities, which allow international multi-person communication between community members via the Internet using bulletin boards, chat rooms, hosted web pages, community email, and other means of communication. The amount of communication taking place within such communities is very large, with millions of messages being distributed every day.

For many users these virtual communities are their principal public forums, in the sense that they use these forums as first choice when they want to make a statement to the world at large. Most users of virtual communities have only a limited ability to express their views using traditional mass media. (For example they may write letters to newspapers, but most are not journalists or television producers.) So virtual communities offer them an opportunity to reach a much wider public than they might have otherwise.

The principles of administration of virtual communities are still being argued over. Moreover, since virtual communities can have members in many countries, it is not clear to what extent rules on regulation of speech given by an existing geographical jurisdiction can be applied. A recent example of a conflict over regulation of online speech is the French court case in November 2000 which resulted in a ruling that Yahoo! should be fined $13,000 a day for not blocking French citizens from auction sites on Yahoo!’s US portal that advertise Nazi memorabilia. Such sites were already banned from Yahoo!’s French portal. (The Industry Standard, 2000)

All this means that for the members and administrators of virtual communities the question of how (if at all) speech in virtual communities should be regulated is an important one. As in US law, the term ‘speech’ in this paper also covers text, pictures, video, discourse by member-programmed software robots, and so on. This paper takes as its starting point the philosophical justifications given for freedom of speech in (Greenawalt, 1995). For each of the philosophical justifications mentioned by Greenawalt I discuss the types of speech to which they apply, and implications for virtual communities.

The justifications for freedom of speech imply several limitations that should be made to freedom of speech within a well-run virtual community. Since these limitations arise from justifications for freedom of speech, it is arguable that they are minimal limitations. If the philosophical arguments supporting the freedom of speech are not accepted, then further limitations to freedom of speech may be justified. (On the other hand, if one justification for freedom of speech implies that a particular speech act should not be allowed, there may be another justification, possibly one not found in this paper, which supports that speech act, and outweighs the reasons for banning it.)

I make several practical suggestions for administrators of virtual communities that appear to follow from the philosophical justifications.

1. Have a clear, published, code of behaviour for members and staff of the virtual community.
2. Allow members to criticise the community and staff, as a quality check and deterrent to poor performance.
3. Consider balancing the quantity of speech devoted to different points of view, if one point of view threatens to overwhelm alternative viewpoints by sheer quantity.
4. Ask members to rephrase inflammatory or offensively-expressed messages before publishing them in public parts of the community.
5. Do not allow very aggressive or harassing speech, or monopolizing speech, if its probable net effect would be to decrease community participation.
6. Make clear any limitations of the information given in the virtual community; for example, do not pretend to give unbiased information if you are promoting one company.
7. Consider putting safeguards in place to protect child community members.
8. If one member is allowed speech on a particular subject, then any member should be allowed speech on that subject.
9. Try to ensure that evaluations of offensiveness of types of speech are based on the opinions of members or possibly on the opinions of the target membership for the virtual community.
10. Consider the use of technical features that give members some ability to choose for themselves the types of speech that they hear.

REFERENCES

Greenawalt, K. (1995). Rationales for Freedom of speech. In Computers, Ethics and SocialValues, editors Johnson and Nissenbaum, Prentice-Hall, 664-668.

The Standard. (2000, November 21). Borderless Net, RIP? The Industry Standard, [Online], 5 paragraphs. Available: http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,20331,00.html [2000, December 11].

AUTHOR

Wojciech St. Moscibrodzki
Technical University of Gdansk,
Poland
Faculty of Electronics, Telecommunications and Informatics
Department of Programming Techniques

ABSTRACT

The Internet is a ultra-fast developing, self-supporting technology structure of modern days. In a few decades its growth influenced the everyday life of many people, even those not very familiar with computer technology. Some people even dare to claim, that this is comparable to the Gutenberg’s invention, as both of them dramatically expanded the accessibility to the information. Moreover, the Internet with additional support of modern multimedia devices gives people for the first time in history the possibility to maintain direct interpersonal contacts with no respect of distance. One is certain: we witness the birth of the new generation – the first generation of a global information society. In the paper, the author discuss the influence of the networking technology and rapid development of multimedia transfer on various aspects of young peoples’ life: from the new entertainment types to the complete reorganization of their future careers. A comparison between Japanese and East-European culture is given, based on authors observations and self-prepared questionnaires (target group is 16-20 years old). The paper shows the interesting differences and similarities between two comparable sample groups in two separate in origins societies. The factor of different level of technology acceptance and understanding in both regions is proved to be not too important, which could be a significant encouragement for young democracies of the Eastern Europe, for it seems that the high-tech society can quickly match the development level of current leading countries (in opposition to the industrial age). The main focus of this paper is placed on the sociological and economical points of view, as well as on the strict technology details. The main researched fields are: outbreak in information availability, emerge of groups of interest and subcultures, the influence on traditional family structure and young people opportunities (jobs, experience exchange, remote teaching etc.) and threats (e.g. drug availability, radical politic movements, quasi-religious cults). Further considerations are also investigated, e.g. the possible effect of untamed world-wide idea and opinion exchange on the peoples’ relations stability. Last, but not least, the author present a brief discussion on the aspects of other factors of community, e.g. international law, privacy and free speech ideas, as applied to currently developed techniques and technologies.

“Ne invoces expellere non posis”

AUTHOR

Robert K. Moniot
Department of Computer and Information Sciences
Fordham University
New York,
NY

ABSTRACT

Prior to about 1980, almost all computers belonged to organizations, not individuals, and were operated by trained professionals. Then the personal computer (PC) made its debut. The first PCs required extensive learning on the part of the users. In an effort to make the machines more accessible to unsophisticated users, PC vendors developed a graphical user interface (GUI) based on an analogy to an office desktop. This “desktop metaphor,” as it was called, was the guiding principle behind the very successful Apple Macintosh and, soon after, the Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is characterized by certain key elements: windows representing sheets of paper on which to work, icons representing documents, folders, or applications, and menus providing choices of actions or documents. The desktop metaphor GUI has become almost universal as the interface between humans and computers.

By means of the desktop metaphor, PC vendors greatly reduced the steepness of the learning curve for their products and made computer technology available to a much larger class of users than before. This development has clearly had many benefits. It increases productivity in many office tasks and places users in direct control of the computer, instead of making them use older, less efficient technology or else rely on intermediary technical staff.

However, the desktop metaphor also introduces a number of thorny problems, raising ethical issues concerning the manner in which this development has taken and is taking place. The drawbacks of the desktop metaphor were recognized early on: it tends to limit the functionality of the software to that of the physical analog; the implementation can never be completely faithful to the metaphor and so will sometimes behave in unexpected ways; and whereas the interface is easy to learn, it is not optimal for many tasks and impedes maximum utilization of the capabilities of the computer system [Gentner and Nielsen 1996, Halasz and Moran 1981, Johnson et al 1985].

Users are being put in control of a system they do not really understand, but the desktop metaphor tends to give them the impression that they do understand it. Thus users are often unaware of the risks they are exposed to when they rely on these systems for important tasks. For instance, The desktop metaphor suggests that computer documents have the same permanence as physical documents. Hard disks are so reliable that this is almost true, and so, to economize, most PC systems are sold without a practical device for doing routine backups. Users do not realize, until too late, that the hard disk can crash at any time, making the user’s files unrecoverable. If they were more informed about the risks they would be more willing to pay for (and use) a backup device.

Similarly, when the system fails in some way not foreseen by the designers, users may be unable to fix it since they lack a real knowledge of its inner workings. Customer support for helping users solve such problems is notoriously inadequate. This problem is becoming increasingly common as the complexity of systems increases, causing conflicts or unanticipated interactions between different system components.

Looking beyond these practical issues, more fundamental concerns can be identified. A metaphor is useful because it makes an analogy between an unfamiliar new situation and a familiar old one. It thus provides a bridge that facilitates the learning of the new system. But the desktop metaphor is of no help to someone who doesn’t have a desktop [Brock 1996]. Young people in particular have the time and willingness to learn an interface based on a new, more efficient paradigm. But it is very difficult for an alternative interface paradigm to get a foothold, because of the immense inertia of the existing installed software base built around the desktop metaphor.

An ethical analysis of this situation must of course consider the many benefits resulting from the wider diffusion of computing technology throughout society. The desktop metaphor approach has been quite effective in enabling this very positive development. It is hard to see a practical alternative to the problem of making a highly complex technological system accessible to untrained individuals. The “blinking twelve” syndrome typical of VCRs shows that when faced with a non-intuitive user interface, users will often fail to learn how to use a complex system effectively rather than devote the time necessary to read and master the instructions.

Nonetheless, the creators of complex systems should be considered responsible for the adverse consequences of their design decisions, even if some of these consequences were not directly foreseen. Different kinds of responsibility can be distinguished: here we are dealing with causal responsibility, since the system designers are responsible for creating the conditions that enabled these consequences to occur. Causal responsibility does not necessarily imply blame, but it does suggest at least some degree of liability [Johnson 1994, Ladd, in Dunlop and Kling 1991].

Ultimately, perhaps the solution will be provided by more powerful software incorporating artificial intelligence, allowing an interface between human and computer that is both natural and efficient. Until the technology reaches this stage, computer vendors must recognize the limitations of the desktop metaphor and seek ways to move beyond it, even if this requires devoting more resources to user education and support.

REFERENCES

Brock J. F., “Whose Metaphor?” interactions 3:4, pp. 24-29 (Jul. 1996).

Dunlop C. and R. Kling, eds., Computerization and Controversy: Value Conflicts and Social Choices, Academic Press (1991).

Gentner D. and J. Nielsen, “The Anti-Mac Interface,” Commun. ACM 39:8, pp. 70-82 (Aug. 1996).

Halasz F. and T. P. Moran, “Analogy Considered Harmful,” Proc. ACM Conf. on Human Factors in Computer Systems (March 15-17, 1982), pp. 383-386.

Johnson J. A., D. C. Smith, F. E. Ludolph and C. H. Irby, “The Desktop Metaphor as an Approach to User Interface Design,” Proc. 1985 ACM Ann. Conf. on the Range of Computing, pp. 548-549 (1985).

Johnson D. G., Computer Ethics, 2nd ed., Prentice-Hall (1994).

AUTHOR

Anand Mitra
Ph.D. Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
Dept. of Communication
Wake Forest University

ABSTRACT

The increasing availability of the Internet and the tendency to live in cyberspace has transformed many key elements of everyday life, particularly in places where the access to the Internet has become relatively ubiquitous. Indeed, the ease of access is not necessarily dependent on geographic location nor is it necessarily determined by traditional parameters of development. For instance, countries such as India, which still belongs to the category of “developing” nations, have perhaps got easier access to the Internet than countries which might be considered more “developed” on traditional scales of measurement. In a city like Kolkata, for example, one can enter a cybercafe and browse the Web for up to one hour for a fee of less than one US dollar. This tendency is increasingly leading to a re-thinking of the relations of power in cyberspace, where the power vectors do not necessarily mimic the way power is distributed in real life.

Associated with the questions of power is the inevitable issue of ethics in cyberspace. There are many different ways in which the question of ethics of cyberspace can be presented as demonstrated in a recent issue of the journal “Communications of the ACM,” where topics from business ethics to privacy are discussed. The underlying theme of all the different manifestations of the ethical issues of the Internet, however, reduce to questions about who can be trusted on the Internet and what parameters must be invoked to make judgments of trust. In this paper, some of these fundamental concerns are explored through the use of a case study approach examining a set of Internet texts and what they say about the questions of power and trust in cyberspace.

It is argued that cyberspace can be conceptualized as a discursive space where the determinate moment is when a Netizen chooses to “speak” in cyberspace perhaps by authoring a Web page or a posting to public listserves. It is at that moment that a “voice” is articulated in the global discursive space and what the voice says enters the public sphere of cyberspace. This determinate moment, I argue, is particularly poignant in the case of the Internet, because the technology of the Internet has made it possible for anyone with access to a computer, a network and minimal knowledge of computers to place an utterance in cyberspace. Consequently, I argue the construct of voice is particularly important in thinking about the issue of power in cyberspace. However, unlike traditional media, the ability to have the voice is no longer dependant on financial or cultural capital but merely on the ability to get to a networked computer and acquiring some basic computer skills.

The significance of this transformation of speaking power lies in the way in which the change can call into question the way in which speaking power has been structured in real life. Traditionally, the ability to speak was dependent on vectors of power that related with geo-political placement. Some were able to speak purely by virtue of the fact that they were placed in a more powerful position while others were silenced because they were relatively powerless. Arguments about international news that triggered the New Information Order movement of the 1970s focused on such inequities of power and their consequences on the representational abilities of developing and developed countries. In cyberspace, however, the traditional structures of power of real life are now distilled into discursive power and representational acumen. In cyberspace, voice is constructed by strategic use of signifying processes such as the construction of Web pages and postings on listserves. Simultaneously, for the audience of the Internet, the key parameter for judging the power of an utterance in the public sphere of cyberspace is the eloquence with which the voice can speak.

This condition, however, presents an interesting ethical conundrum because both the trustworthy and the dishonest can mobilize discursive eloquence to make their point. In other words, the ones who are desperately needing to find a voice to present their perhaps marginal conditions are cohabiting cyberspace with the ones who are out to dupe and deceive. Thus, the user must make some cautious choices about who to trust and who not to trust. Eventually, this choice is based on a series of factors of which, I argue, the discursive strategy of the speaker is most visible and tangible.

Thus, this paper would first offer a textual analytic approach that would consider the ways in which the trustworthiness of a speaker in cyberspace can begin to be understood by looking at the representational strategies used by the author. Following that, and using examples from traditionally marginalized speakers (women from South Asia), the paper would make the argument that being trustworthy in cyberspace is a necessary condition for the growth of this mode of communication, particularly when the traditional parameters of trust are absent in this space.

In summary, the paper would first explore the conditions that make voices in the discursive cyberspace trustworthy. Following from that I would argue that users of the Internet need to understand the conditions of production of the Internet voices and then make judgments about the veracity of the voices. These strategies are important ones because it is these factors that would ultimately describe the ethos of cyberspace in terms of who inhabits it, how they inhabit it, and what reactions they can expect to their existence in cyberspace.