Pax Technica: How the Internet of Things May Set Us Free or Lock Us Up

by Philip N. Howard

A foremost digital expert looks at the most powerful political tool ever created—the internet of things. Will it be like the internet of surveillance and censorship we have now, or will it be something better?

Should we fear or welcome the internet’s evolution? The “internet of things” is the rapidly growing network of everyday objects—eyeglasses, cars, thermostats—made smart with sensors and internet addresses. Soon we will live in a pervasive yet invisible network of everyday objects that communicate with one another. In this original and provocative book, Philip N. Howard envisions a new world order emerging from this great transformation in the technologies around us.
 
Howard calls this new era a Pax Technica. He looks to a future of global stability built upon device networks with immense potential for empowering citizens, making government transparent, and broadening information access. Howard cautions, however, that privacy threats are enormous, as is the potential for social control and political manipulation. Drawing on evidence from around the world, he illustrates how the internet of things can be used to repress and control people. Yet he also demonstrates that if we actively engage with the governments and businesses building the internet of things, we have a chance to build a new kind of internet—and a more open society.

Genres: Technology, Nonfiction, Computers

352 pages, Hardcover

First published April 28, 2015

About the author

Philip N. Howard is a professor and author of seven books, including Democracy’s Fourth Wave? and The Digital Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. He is a frequent commentator on the impact of technology on political life, contributing to Slate.com, TheAtlantic.com and other media outlets.

Reviews

[John Fredrickson · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was disappointing on multiple fronts. The title specifies the Internet of Things, but this is now what the book is about at all - it is about internet usage through applications within browsers and phones. It is extremely well researched, with world and political detail that is interesting, but the book belabors its points severely.

[Artur Coelho · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh, you sweet summer child, pensei muitas vezes ao longo desta leitura. Especialmente nas passagens com deslumbre evidente pelo poder do social media nas primaveras árabes. Momentos em que as formas informais de contato e disseminação de informação foram instrumentos que abalaram os poderes tradicionais, mas o saldo final é muito negativo. Creio que só a Tunísia, berço dos movimentos, se democratizou. O resto oscila entre sangrentas guerras civis (Líbia e Síria), deposição de ditadura para ascensão de radicais islâmicos ao poder seguido de tomada de poder pelos militares e sufoco da sociedade civil (Egipto), ou estados como a Arábia Saudita e o Bahrein, que perceberam que algo andava no ar e restringiram preventivamente, e ainda mais, os poucos direitos dos seus cidadãos.

Aquele sentimento tão final da primeira década do século XXI, de que as redes sociais se tornariam importantes ferramentas no disseminar global da democracia liberal, foi hoje substituído pelo de amargura com as suas consequências. Não consigo recordar alguma network revolution que tenha sido bem sucedida. Mas estas falhas não mostram que a internet e redes sociais não são utensílios ao serviço do activismo. Pelo contrário. Outra lição recente, e que só nos últimos capítulos este livro começa a aflorar, é que ditadores, serviços de segurança (mesmo em países democráticos), estados autoritários, senhores do crime e interesses económicos perceberam muito bem o potencial da rede. Basta ver a complexa forma de ciberguerra russa, entre ataques cibernéticos a infraestruturas, exércitos de troll e serviços especializados de fake news, os sistemas digitais repressivos chineses (merecem todo um capítulo deste livro), ou o eficaz uso de redes para organizar uma espécie de renascimento do fascismo na Europa.

É o lado negro, nestes últimos tempos prevalente, de uma tecnologia que de facto, na grande maioria, tem melhorado as nossas vidas e permitido novas formas de ativismo com consequências reais positivas. Basta olhar para mim próprio, para grande parte (senão todos) dos projetos em que estou envolvido. Tal não aconteceria senão pelas redes, pela partilha e interconexão entre pessoas fisicamente distantes. É no campo político que as coisas andam a correr mal.

Pax Technica é, fundamentalmente, todo um conceito, o utilizar as redes e a internet das coisas para criar novos equilíbrios políticos, a favor dos cidadãos. É algo que por estes dias nos parece distante, mas o outro lado, o estreitar de conexões e os projetos possibilitados via web, mostra que talvez haja esperança. Infelizmente, o grande foco deste autor está no elogio a algo que falhou, às networked technologies como instrumentos de revolução positiva (falharam porque não chega interligar para revolucionar, há que manter a organização para reconstruir). A inocência que caracteriza boa parte deste livro vai-se perdendo mais para o fim, com o autor a admitir o domínio férreo que estados ou serviços de segurança detêm sobre ferramentas de hipervigilância. Faz também notar que a promessa da internet das coisas poderá traduzir-se em novas gaiolas, se as liberdades não forem acauteladas e se ceder aos interesses comerciais puros.

[Alexey · Rating 3 out of 5]

«Представьте, что интернет – это империя». Ховард – журналист, социолог, исследователь сетевого активизма. Ховард много изучал ботнеты, в том числе российские. Совместив исследования по ботнетам и хронику последних 20 лет, Ховард предрекает «Pax Technica» – новую историческую эпоху власти Интернета (по аналогии с Pax Britannica и Pax Americana). Эта эпоха, по мнению автора, будет связана не с гегемонией отдельной страны, а гегемонией нескольких акторов, состоящих из связок национальных правительств и IT-корпораций. В новом мировом порядке автор отмечает 5 тенденций, из которых только 3 стоит упомянуть.

1. Pax Technica приведет к интернет-сдерживанию, когда ни корпорации, ни правительства не будут использовать кибероружие, т.к. последствия могут быть разрушительными для всех.
2. Больше сообществ будут использовать альтернативные способы получения благ, источником которых ранее было только государство.
3. Основные столкновения и конфликты будут между сетями устройств, стандартами, медиа-экосистемами и конкурирующими технологиями.

Последняя выделенная тенденция мне кажется особенно актуальной, хотя я бы сказал, что очень важной темой, например, является конкуренция за лидирующий стандарт шифрования. Гонка платформ по включению всех аспектов нашей жизни в их экосистемы поражает своей скоростью. Мы радуемся, что в таком большим числе областей появляются новые цифровые сервисы, не до конца ощущая крупных изменений, происходящих из-за платформизации.

Заголовок книги говорит об «интернете вещей», но автор трактует этот термин очень широко. Описывая сетевую активность, собственно интернет вещей (устройства, передающие данные друг другу) автор упоминает вскользь. Зато понимает и как «сеть телефонов» описывая протесты (это, конечно же, сеть телефонов, а не людей, ага), заезженные иллюстрации Гаити, Арабской весны и других громких краудсорсинговых историй, кочующие у публицистов из книги в книгу. И от этого тема дико размывается. Помимо этого автор постоянно пишет в будущем времени. Уже в 2020-м году мы понимаем, что многие предсказания, о которых так уверенно писал Ховард, не сбылись.
Из интересного, автор предлагает рекомендации для будущих сервисов.

1. «гражданская десятина» – закладывать в дизайн проприетарных IoT-устройств мощности на использование в гражданских проектах. Идея кажется сложной для исполнения, но очень интересной в случае реализации. Сколько исследовательских проектов можно было бы осуществить в таком случае. Представьте, если бы данные сотовой связи можно было бы использовать для различных исследовательских задач?
2. Шеринг данных – государство должно делиться большим объемом собираемых данных. Чем больше данных государство собирает, тем больше данных оно должно отдавать исследователям и НКО.
3. Люди должны знать, какие данные о них продаются дата-майнинг компаниями.
4. Каждое устройство, собирающее данные должно быть в состоянии указать финального получателя данных, которые собирает.
5. С государствами нужно вступать в диалог по поводу формирования правил работы с данными.

Мне нравятся выводы и направление мысли Ховарда, но, в самом сжатом виде, их хватило бы на policy paper. А так пришлось все обильно сдабривать давними историями, что сильно размыло тему. Книгу всем читать не рекомендую – стоит прочесть если вы интересуетесь темой будущего интернета.

[Harry Fulgencio · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book manage to provide a lot of good use of IT by individuals in giving them one coherent political voice, however this book also provides a picture on how organizations (government run by dictators, democratic countries, or corporation, etc) has manage to use it in a negative manner.

As majority of the previous readers stated negative reviews about the IOT content and the relation to it's title. I would like focus more on the betterment of the book:
1) it would have been more interesting to have provided a thorough exposition of the political movements from various contents (provide them successively then expose the important ideas) rather than the existing arrangement that various political movements are mentioned in a every chapter or section just to suit the topic of that section.

2) The issue of standardisation has a huge set of literature in IT, and the drawbacks has not been explored in this book. It was partially mentioned but the book provides the assumption that if you set the standard, the standard setter will be able to capture the reward.. . This may apply on a national level like the US where it tried to address it from the entire chain, but as a private organization it can be tricky. Just look at the fight for the mobile Operating System - NOKIA lost (big company, have almost all the resources), APPLE (niche product, expensive) and (various) ANDROID (SAMSUNG, LG, etc.) surfaced as winner but they're still battling it out or probably not as this is good level of competition.

Overall, i find the chapters 4,6, and 7 to be the most interesting read for a person who have an IT background. The idea of putting your personal device to do social duty or citizenship duty is interesting. Overall IOT is just a concept and it is the toolkit and medium to utilize or mobilize this disconnected or unrelated devices that will harness the potential of the IOT.

[Reagan Chiu · Rating 1 out of 5]

This easily could have been reduced to 3 chapters at the most.
Repeating points over and over may drive the point home, but it also appears that there's nothing else to say and you need to hit a word count.
Creating and using a pseudo- Latin term does not automatically make you sound smart.



(Had to read this for a professional development class and it has no actually relevance to the class, nor will we use it in class, so I'm just super pissed about that and having to read this book in the first place.)

[Zhaodan Kong · Rating 3 out of 5]

A useful book if you want to gain some insights into how technology might/will change our political future.

A few caveats:
- The book is mostly about internet and social media not internet of things.
- Some of the arguments are rather simplistic.

[Peter Podbielski · Rating 3 out of 5]

While proffering an excellent contextual description of the Internet of Things, I was looking for insights into what future representation governance should look like.

[Gene Knauer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dense but really interesting look at the impacts from the IoT.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Howard's book looks at how the IOT, specifically cell phones and other devices change the way we interact with each other. He has some fascinating insights and believes in hope rather than fear about these devices.

"In this book, I argue that nation-states, polities, and governments need to be thought of as sociotechnical systems, not representative systems." xxi

"In 2000, only about 10% of the worlds population was online. By 2015, more than half the world's population has Internet access..." 9

"Cultural exports from the United States were an important part of the Pax Americana..." 15

"But what is emerging now is a political order constituted by the relationships between devices as much as the relationships between people." 35

"Power comes from designing information in a way that that you act on it." 90

[Maggie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was not good. It wasn't really about the Internet of Things. Instead, it was mostly about mobile phone and social media usage in countries outside the United States. This would have been fine, except the book also jumps all over the place and the author inserts random self-congratulatory examples into the text. There was no coherent structure, and the arguments the author makes completely lack nuance or depth. I read it to the end hoping to glean something insightful out of it, but that did not happen.

[Bitter Empire · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review of Pax Technica: Review: Why ‘Pax Technica’ Is A Good Book with a Bad Argument

[Mills College Library]

302.231 H8517 2015

[Matthew Humberstone · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately you can see the seams of a number of article having been stitched together. The same examples cycle through the book.

The final chapter is great however - a proposal for a more open internet of things and a more robustly civic technical infrastructure - proposal includes
A 10% tithe on all 'things' - handed over to the public good - 10% of a device's storage capacity, bandwidth used so that the device's sensors can be used to assemble public data, utilized in times of crisis and never be shutdown by abusive governments.
Data from the internet of things to be openly shared.
People should be able to decide what kinds of data from the IoT can be shared on the aftermarket.
Each device must be able to report the beneficiary of the data it is collecting
Technology companies to align with government policy to avoid situation such as Yahoo! snitching on dissidents from a few year back.
Wiring Africa with devices that run open than proprietary protocols (as is currently happening)
More rational export controls on information technology
As with nuclear scientists, the tracking of engineers who have the potential to cause deleterious effects on the internet.