social norms are not behind other points of regulation

In weaving a response to me, Joi connected my arguments with Wendy Seltzer’s commentary on the norms of publicity.

In reading her argument, i found that i take issue with some of her assumptions so i’m putting them here for discussion.

We early adopters know how referer logs work… We know how to write .htaccess files, or at least whom to ask for something similar, if we want better (though still not total) privacy. We’ve internalized the norm that conduct not marked private is public.

There is no doubt in my mind that the self-referential “A-List” blogger knows this and WANTS their conduct to be public, but there is a second form of early adopter that is getting swept away by the blogging phenomenon. Live Journalers and other pseudo-private bloggers were also part of this. Many of them do not know how to work an .htaccess file or even manage the LJ Friends lists. Over and over again, i run into people who are outright shocked that their material is on Google. For them, their website is not public; Google is public. And they don’t understand how their private ramblings ended up on Google.

As technologists, we have a tendency to mock this population, arguing that it’s their own fault for being stupid. Well, this is foolish. The technology is not being devised by them or for them. They are getting swept away by decisions in many ways propagated by the A-List blogger-esque community that WANTS to be public, seen and heard. Furthermore, when they do realize things are public, they often don’t care so long as it doesn’t affect them locally. This is not because they are stupid but because the mass populous does not fear Big Brother and that is their conception of why they should care about privacy. In many ways, us technologists do a disservice to the population when we ask them to rebel against these technologies because of how institutions might treat them. They WANT to sell their data for the chance of winning a Porsche. They WANT the Easy Pass because they don’t think that the government cares; they’re law-abiding, right? People care about local vulnerability… things that will affect them personally. That’s what Garfinkel and others have noticed that people perk up when their identity is stolen or when their boss finds out about their digital behavior. People don’t think about how the technology is evolving because it’s not evolving in a direction that meets their needs. Thus, it is unfathomable.

I wondered at first if privacy tensions would ease as more people became more technically sophisticated, but I’m inclined to think that gaps in understanding will just move with the tech, and social norms will follow still further behind.

I think it is quite dangerous to believe that social norms are “falling behind.” Social norms aren’t behind; they’re baffled at the direction in which things are going. They’re pushing for a different direction and they aren’t being heard. People are using technology to meet their needs, but they are not prepared for how the architecture is pulling them in a different direction.

Arguing that social norms can fall behind suggests that there is a hierarchy to the four points of regulation. Those points are valuable in discussion because they provide tensions. Social norms pull in different directions than the market, the law or the technology. This does not mean that it is behind. Quite often, social norms leapfrog everyone else. For example, social norms pushed Napster into creating an architecture that challenged the market and the law. It wasn’t that the market was behind, but that it was pulling in a different direction and with a new tension, things need to be worked out.

Thus, rather than thinking about how social norms are behind, i truly believe that we should be understanding why social norms are pulling in a different direction. What does this say about the population being served by the technology?

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7 thoughts on “social norms are not behind other points of regulation

  1. Joi Ito's Web

    Which comes first, technology or social norms?

    A few days ago, I quoted Wendy Seltzer in a entry about building norms together with the technologies.Wendy SeltzerI wondered…

  2. Wendy's Blog: Legal Tags

    Regulatory Slippage

    Thanks to danah boyd for challenging my claim that social norms are “behind” technology. Social norms aren’t behind; they’re baffled at the direction in which things are going. They’re pushing for a different direction and they aren’t being heard. I th…

  3. davee

    i guess i would visualize the market, society, and government all tied together with big, loose elastic bands and each on rough, slippery terrain. at any given moment, each has a force applied by the terrain shape and they’d like to slide in a particular direction, but they’re each tied by mutual relationship and experiencing forces from that elasticity.

    i don’t see social norms necessarily trying to go in a different direction as the market and government. But boy it seems like the elasticity between social norms and the other two might be looser and less in step sometimes.

    Companies definitely spend a lot of effort tracking social desire and trying to find the most cost effective way to make use of the trend (terrain shape) but aren’t always very good at it. And they use lobbying also to drag government in the direction that works best for them.

    Government similarly tries to effect change and gets dragged by the other two.

    But it does feel like we amble along as an erratic and vibrating group while members try to add more or less elasticity between the three elements via regulation, marketing, legislation, etc.

    But it also seems like the social norm’s ability to influence the other two is related to the long-term attention span and awareness of the group. If all people notice is the short term what’s in front of their face, like we all usually do, then we amble along fairly blindly huh.

  4. Ben Chun

    Things that are interesting:

    1. People’s posts on Usenet now available via Google. This is a case where technology and its relationship to society has changed so much over time that no one back then could have anticipated what it would actually mean for their posts to be “public”.

    2. The idea that social norms could be baffled. I guess I would say that the realm of activity for which social norms have yet to be established or are very new is growing. This happens any time there is a discontinuity in the technological development of a society. But I think it’s cute to imagine social norms as these little creatures that have become baffled and are now wandering about in a daze.

    Things that are not surprising:

    1. Most people are stupid, lazy, and fail to plan for the future (including consideration of the consequences of their actions) even when they could.

    2. Capital systems (which largely control the allocation of resources for the development of technology) move to make a profit from most people. See previous.

    3. Smart people are easily distracted by debating irrelevant points while both technology and society march onward relentlessly.

  5. Napsterization.org

    Privacy and New Technology: System Openness, User Control and Good Interface are Key to Making Users Feel More Comfortable

    Ross Mayfield has a really interesting discussion roundup on his site, about users driving policy. As the discussions around various blogs became more specific, much of it centered around privacy and social norms issues, particularly mismatched expecta…

  6. Randy Moss

    Social norms shift, often quickly and the challenge is keeping product up to date that will service the needs of the user. I like the description using the bands and terrain, but I think that the connection is a tight one. As society progresses forward the new approach is servicing the individual. How can we customize a product for each person according to their preferences; or can we build a product the user can customize to their liking? The best and most agile companies will find ways to respond to the terrain quickly and cost effectively, making customers’ happy and making money.

  7. Randy Moss

    Social norms shift, often quickly and the challenge is keeping product up to date that will service the needs of the user. I like the description using the bands and terrain, but I think that the connection is a tight one. As society progresses forward the new approach is servicing the individual. How can we customize a product for each person according to their preferences; or can we build a product the user can customize to their liking? The best and most agile companies will find ways to respond to the terrain quickly and cost effectively, making customers’ happy and making money.

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