The Missing Link

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1.3. The Missing Link

‘Blaming the hardware seems even more foolish than blaming the victim when it comes to judging conditions of public life’ (Winner, 1985). Opposite to those technology diffusion theories that neglect the role of choice during the adoption of technological systems, authors like Patel and Connolly (2007) found the relationship between technology and state power as mutually responsive, in which Internet technology adoption depends not only on the characteristics of the technology in question, but also the country-specific characteristics. The approaches to Internet technologies sprang into a more complex and inclusive manner, in which they determined that technology, in a unique way, is both enhancing and undermining state power simultaneously (Cleaver, 1998; Sassen, 1999; MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999; Latham, 2007; Franklin, 2004; Carr, 2016). Thus, it is neither empowering the state nor devolving its power in a way. Given the essential aspects that Internet connectivity ascribed to ICTs, in which the Internet has no pre-determined path or a specific purpose, the expression of the interests and values of those who engage with Internet technology becomes more and more significant (Carr, 2016). As Larry Diamond (2010) once stated, technology might be seen as the technology prevailing over skirmishes, but one cannot assume that governments, organizations, and people will completely remain weak and unskilled against it; they rather will be the judge of this triumph.

In order to illustrate a better linkage between Internet technology and state power, this research underscores the missing link by equally relying upon the technical specs of Internet technology that allows for the engagement and disengagement between actors, and the actors’

use of ICT applications to enhance power–sometimes collaboratively, but mostly competitively.

In the same way, Lessig (2006) argued that the Internet attained a new characteristic of ICT:

controllability or being able to be regulated. Simply put, the regulation of the network and networked ICT and the rules and the freedoms allowed therein, or the values embraced to them, may differ. Thus, controllability becomes a function of its design (Lessig, 2006). Those who design the ideas and values of a given technology are fundamental to its structure and design (Lessig, 2006). Moreover, they are constantly reinforced through its use in determining the defaults of the technology: whether privacy will be protected, the degree to which anonymity will be allowed, and the extent to which access will be guaranteed (Lessig 2006; Carr 2016).

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Lastly, their decisions define what that specific technology is, and these decisions will influence the key sectors of that technology (Lessig, 2006).

The regulation can be performed in a variety of ways. Changes in the design of Internet technology that have been mentioned so far were to make regulation simpler in order for the state to create incentives for individuals and non-state actors to obey the rule, to take advantage on its threat, and to decrease criminal behavior to below zero (Lessig, 2006). The effectiveness of state power functions through traceability which builds stronger incentives to obey the state-regulated rules (Lessig, 2006). However, this research does not narrow down the view by focusing only on the complexities of state responses and regulations with regard to Internet technologies.

Regulation is also attributed to the design of the technology itself: the code. As Lessig (2006) defines, besides the state-backed command, the code embeds values, enabling or disabling control, and functioning as a physical constraint on the freedom of someone to enter a space like a locked door. As has also been the focus of this research, it is a tool of control, not necessarily of state control, but also the control of whoever does the coding. This research, therefore, aims to explore this distinctive mode of regulation as a step to understanding the interaction between technology and state power.

Just as Lessig (2006) described regulators using code to make behavior more regulable, regulators also use code to directly control behavior. As the ultimate power the state has a range of tools that it uses to regulate in direct and indirect ways (Lessig, 2006). By controlling code writing, it can achieve regulatory ends, usually with no political consequences, which the same ends would be yielded if pursued directly (Lessig, 2006). Those indirect constraints beneath the surface run the risk of not being transparent where people would experience these constraints as naturally, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Speed bumps are the example of an indirect measure that changes the code of the streets to keep speed beneath the limit, and in which case the actual source of regulation is unknown but no one is fooled about it (Lessig, 2006). Castranova (2005) put it in a better literary sense that the traditional or well-known type of governance in virtual worlds is made up of invisible hands of autocracy embedded in anarchy.

The missing link between state power and Internet technology is that the technically added specifications of controllability or being able to be regulated are consistent upon the character of the code: open code and closed code. Levy (1984) defines open code as free software, the opposite of closed code where the developing power secretes how technology functions by dispensing 1s and 0s, which are non-transparent as to the design of technology.

Hence, open code appears to be a constraint on state power which allows for a competitive

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advantage through transparency to vendors who use open code in other projects. This openness, open code and the way to access it mentioned here, is the reason why the Internet and Internet technologies became widespread, and why they too attracted the commercial attention for which the state power acted as security by creating licensing regulations (Lessig 2006; Carr 2016). Therefore, open code limits state power not necessarily by defeating all the power from the state but by changing that power, or in other words, disabling the benefits of hiding the constraints inside the code (Lessig, 2006).

One can guess closed code might be reverse engineered if there is enough opportunity to test where also another milestone appears that this research is engaged in. There are a limited number of studies that have suggested that a host of technologies were built to make the Internet work more efficiently by removing the ‘reverse salient’ of the current, which has also found to be the ones that make regulation simpler, albeit not perfectly (Hughes, 1983; Lessig, 2006; Carr, 2016). The term, reverse saliency, originally adopted from military historians, was introduced by Hughes (1989) define sections of an advancing battle force or front continuous with other sections that have fallen back as reverse salient, thus, slowing the process of the attack. This approach has seen the need for reverse-engineering technology coming out of a point of lag or a perceived risk/problem from the technology that is preventing it from fulfilling its potential (Hughes, 1989; Carr, 2016). Just as Rouse (2007) explains, technological systems are part of a dynamic which is derived from the concerns and decisions of the state, as much as the design of the technology itself is. Carr (2016), by using reverse saliency in his book, focuses on how the United States’ conceptions of power interact with approaches to technology to shape and influence the development of complex technological systems like the Internet. His book builds a conceptual framework for future studies of the relationship between state power and ICTs, and also brings the political context into the interaction with technological development. This research, thus, by following a similar path, is filled with the urge to reveal specifically how China has responded to Internet technology by observing the problems/risks perceived along the way, and how those problems are solved, or in a more general sense, how state power interacts with technology in a post-industrial model of ICTs.

Having experienced the age where properties and opportunities are different in which the power of regulation will be the indicator of who will prevail. Therefore, it is necessary to understand this power to determine whether or not it is properly exercised. Nevertheless, none of these studies are merely an application of any conceptual framework to Chinese context, and it therefore may be interesting and significant for this research to contribute this to the literature. The next chapter, therefore, explains why China is chosen to be the case study of

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this research and presents the methodology and empirical sources, then, formulates the theoretical model of reverse saliency in ICT adoption and innovation and hypothesis.

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Chapter III 1. Research Method

1.1. The Case Study of China

Mancur Olson’s convincing argument that many autocracies are not prone to innovate because autocrats rip off tax returns, and do not invest enough into public infrastructures and violate property rights if their survival is at stake, however, some autocracies, in contrast, held a more stable and long-term view in which they preferred preserving the political power over stagnation, and they sacrificed present income and economic embezzlements for the sake of the continuation of their legitimacy (Olson, 1993). China is one of that kind. The unique narrative behind the story of the use and the development of ICTs in China is central to this process of keeping the balance of preventing legitimacy loss through improving the regime, while encouraging innovation, which give the pillar motivation to this research to analyze the case of China.

The dilemma of innovation process rests on the fact that a steady economic growth should be produced to maintain the legitimacy, and that growth cannot occur in an economy that is unwilling to technological innovations, and the same technology innovation comes with the package full of unhindered information flows (Göbel 2013). The cost of innovation at social, economic and political level is the force behind a regime to improve its institutions and its social channels, and this process of paying costs is not for once; as soon as a technology adopted therein loses it marginal utility, the need of new appears, repeatedly after one another, thus, whoever make the decision of countering this dilemma will get to decide also to counter it by repression of a kind (Göbel 2013). China is a promising example in this regard that exerts pervasive and consistent coercive control over its population (Gurr 1970). Through an examination of concerns which have been emerging or found from the key problems to the Chinese power, thus motivating the need of this consistent control, this research tends to examine the unique methodology of Internet technology adoption, advancement and use in China.

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Of these concerns, however, only some had implications for the state power, three stood out as an issue that has been consistently regarded as crux of the relationship between ICT and the Chinese power. Those are the controllability dilemma, data security, and algorithmic authoritarianism in which all escalated with the introduction of the Internet technologies for the first time. Controllability dilemma created more tendency to control, unlike it has long expected to impose more freedom seeds on the cyber-ground. Control in the means of data is deeply rooted from growing insecurity of data and the growing number of users with access to it. The ways which China found to deal with its data insecurity, as parallel with its unique regime type, is long expressed as digital-authoritarianism, networked-authoritarianism, and lately it is called in this research as algorithmic authoritarianism as the technology advanced in China. These issues are identified not only through an assessment of the technology itself but also through the examination of new online boundaries state power builds to curb information flows. This approach is a significant shift away from the view that technology has its own path and produces universal effects (Carr, 2016)– a view which pervades much of the academic literature on the Internet and politics.

Given the design of the Internet is built through the ideas and values of the early developers and are therefore reinforced continuously through its use, the Internet today still carries bottom-up development indigenous to US values and concerns (Carr, 2016). Paradoxically, taking the role of the Communist party into account, Chinese concerns are not quite a match with this technical evolution. National security as the top concern of all, the Chinese government had no choice but to balance allowing broad access to Internet technologies to the degree which they can keep up with the today's requirements of the global system, and fulfill its citizens' need as well (Hachigian 2002; Harwit and Clark 2001;Chase, Hachigian, Mulvenon, 2006; Carr 2016).

The state is censoring sensitive information simultaneously because of the concerns towards the potential public backlash of which citizens who could use it to organize against the government (Harwit and Clark 2001). Hence, in bringing together the empirical and theoretical evidence, this research pursues to answer with case study how China had been dealing with its national insecurity of a potential uprising against its legitimacy caused by features of Internet technology.

The measures to deal with this national insecurity is required intervention to the current design as in the example of censorship of Google; the biggest searching channel to the information, Google, has been censored due to several incidents that Chinese government found sensitive content (CNN, 2006). However, Chinese government noticed that there was

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still place for citizens to access these channels eventually, thus, in an unusual way, they have created their search engines, online market place, and social media network to overcome this potential threat. China is the only state in which Internet and telecommunication infrastructure are completely owned and powered by firms indigenous to Chinese government like Huawei, Alibaba, and Tencent which are the leading Internet router, financial technology, and commercial application companies today. Chinese digital economy uniquely carries oligopoly qualities that are exclusive for the other stakeholders in the market. These all together allow the Chinese government to maintain ultimate control over the content. Even though there were some consequences of the rapid uptake of Internet technology in the case of China, it implements governance structures with fully understanding of their implications which gives the most significant momentum to this research aiming to theorize a model for the Chinese way in order to explain three questions: (1) How does the adoption, development and the use of ICTs accelerates differently in Chinese case?; (2) How does the Chinese government regulate the use of ICTs, and what derives the decision of that specific way of regulation?; (3) How these technical and political knowledge on the perceptions and concerns towards technology can be applied into Chinese intentions in order to give a sight into future plans?

A range of material have been examined in answering these questions. A major component of the empirical materials for this study have been secondary sources that examined the relationship between Chinese power and ICT technology. The literature is truly location-sensitive on the topic when it comes to actions taken by China in regards to new technology. It goes into a distinct division depending on whether its Chinese sources or Western sources that are taken as a kingpin. Therein a link is found between the shifts in the global role of the major actors and in geopolitical information landscapes with the Chinese breakthrough to the Internet and technologies with Internet connectivity in China. Why it has mostly been perceived as unexpected or as an abysmal circumstance in the international ground is still mostly uncertain.

Regardless of whether or not there is direct causation between these two, it still validates whether increasing Chinese influence is good or bad for the existing technological system. Yet, good or bad is valued according to the subject’s niche. Therefore, before getting into the rhetoric of subjective evaluations of the Chinese case, this research used the secondary sources of technical information to acknowledge what comes packaged with ICT: which capabilities are granted by default.

This research as a qualitative research first focuses on closely examining the data to identify the main themes and patterns in ICT advancement after the introduction of the Internet, and

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formulating hypotheses over the theoretical model, then aiming at applying the hypotheses in to the case of China through following the framework that is built through those patterns.

Several secondary sources which examines Chinese technology policy documents, legislations and speeches, though less frank, serve for the purpose of this research. They provide a map through which reveals the concerns and perceptions of China towards Internet technology. A third source of empirical material have been used in this research is the statistical and technical reports and Chinese technology policy papers. Linking the theoretical framework to the policy outcomes and statistical reports help to illuminate which approaches often become the loci of further innovation.

This chapter is mainly serving to the purpose of revealing the defaults of the ICTs with network connection and formulates the theoretical model gradually through a metaphor. The following subsections untangles the topic to support the technological knowledge that the majority of the literature was lacking and draws out the theoretical framework, the reverse saliency model. The next section is assembled under three key steps: control (force), preserve (momentum), spread (acceleration) which sort out the reverse saliency model through closely examining the main actors of control and the state of motion in ICT adoption in general, the interaction between these actors and the technology, and comes out with two main hypotheses.

The analysis of the case study derives from these hypotheses and sheds light onto predictions and engagements of these hypotheses with future through an analysis of big targets and policies set by the Chinese government that later applied in the research in search of the tendency that explains whether the newly found-pattern throughout the research is applicable to the future.

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2. Theoretical Model

2.1. A Metaphor of Internet Technologies

In its very naked form, Newton’s method investigates the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions, and then it demonstrates another phenomenon from these forces.

According to him, phenomena of any kind could and should be explained regarding mechanical notion. The mechanical simile of the universe in his clockwork universe theory is a rationally ordered machine governed by mathematical laws (Smith 2010). Likewise, this research aims to make aspects of Internet technology (the universe) predictable by demonstrating that dynamic of this system is ticking along like a machine with its gears governed by the laws of state, individuals and non-state actors (the forces).

The clock continues to go without the assistance of a clockmaker and tends to exclude the province and governance of the clockmaker (Smith 2010). The relationship between internet technology (the clock) and its engagement with users (the clockmaker), in a similar way, are the negative forces to each other: as much as users claims to engage and control the architecture, the technology resists due to its nature (Smith 2010). Thus, this motion is explained by Newton under three main laws. The first law, in other words, is that the inertia of

The clock continues to go without the assistance of a clockmaker and tends to exclude the province and governance of the clockmaker (Smith 2010). The relationship between internet technology (the clock) and its engagement with users (the clockmaker), in a similar way, are the negative forces to each other: as much as users claims to engage and control the architecture, the technology resists due to its nature (Smith 2010). Thus, this motion is explained by Newton under three main laws. The first law, in other words, is that the inertia of