Science and Industry

After finishing my Master’s thesis, I’ve started to think further of the technology process and the politics and power structures involved in it. My thinking is strongly affected by Winner’s (1985) article, noticing

Anyone who has traveled the highways of America and has gotten used to the normal height of overpasses may well find something a little odd about some of the bridges over the park ways on Long Island, New York. Many of the overpasses are extraordinarily low, having as little as nine feet of clearance at the curb. Even those who happened to notice this structural peculiarity would not be inclined to attach any special meaning to it. In our accustomed way of looking at things such as roads and bridges, we see the details of form as innocuous and seldom give them a second thought.

It turns out, however, that some two hundred or so low- hanging overpasses on Long Island are there for a reason. They were deliberately designed and built that way by someone who wanted to achieve a particular social effect. Robert Moses, the master builder of roads, parks, bridges, and other public works of the 1920s to the 1970s in New York, built his overpasses ac cording to specifications that would discourage the presence of buses on his parkways.

As an example, organization might deliberately plan the expense claim application unusable, hoping that the employees feel frustrated and do not submit their travel expenses¹. Or, in case of election candidates, decisions have been made either to allow or disable interactive dialogue in candidate’s site (as an example, see Stromer-Galley, 2000). And, in voting advice applications, someone has made decisions about the questions and answer options available (see Haukio & Suojanen, 2004).

So, there are decisions and therefore power structures in the online environments. Lukes (1974) discusses on the three faces of the power²:

1. Dahl’s view of direct power relation
2. The extended view, including the powers of the agenda setting
3. Lukes’s view of power also visible in the cultural frames and preference settings

The power in system design can be seen as an instance of the second face of power, it relates to the possibility to decide how discussion and decision making of any given item is made. This, however, is not a surprising observation, similarly traditional media has these kinds of powers, and this has been examined in that area widely, such as the ‘power of the media’-discussion.

Therefore, the question remains, is there anything worth studying. As one colleague pointed to me, I can reveal that there are power relations in the design, then what? Can I use this to make the world a better place or even provide some design and implementation guidelines for organizations? This is the place I still need to ponder, what is the potential contribution of this work?

1. This example is just to illustrate the powers of design and should not be considered as a critic. [↩]
2. Now I actually start to see the utility of political philosophy, maybe I should revisit some of the materials to further my knowledge and thinking here – I took a heavy focus in research methodologies instead. [↩]

First, let’s go back a few years, when I was on my 3rd year in the university. One of our courses was methodology in political sciences, and one topic was the two different views of the world, one based on structures, such as institutions, and the other on agency, like individuals and actors.

So, I returned to the past, but why? William Dutton from the Oxford Internet Institute visited Helsinki to make observations about his new article on research-centered computational networks. However, what I thought to be more interesting was the difference he made on networked institutions and networked individuals.

The more Internet orientated social scientists had a meeting before Dutton gave his presentation, and we went trough what we study and how the OII functions. Dutton made an observation that in e-democracy field research tends to focus on networked institutions.

With networked institutions, Dutton meant maintaining and empowering the existing structures with the capabilities of computer networks. An example of this might be the university, which maintains its academic status by creating institutional support services, such as blogs, document repositories, …

However, as I understood it, Dutton’s argument was that information and communication technology could go further and redistribute the power currently held in the structures. As the Web enables one to publish and collaborate without the middleman, Dutton’s idea is that individuals should be studied as part of the networking society too.

In terms of e-democracy research, some terms already cover these topics. New social movement is the most obvious for me: it studies how humans group together and act on a common cause, but they are not organized as an institution. Concept ‘reflective action’ can also be used to describe the phenomena: reflective actors use network technology to advocate their agenda. However, as Dutton observed, lots of effort goes to understanding and prototyping the use of technology for institutions, the existing structures – not focusing on re-inventing new systems that could allow more direct responsibility.

This is just one sample of the structure vs. agency-fight, ongoing in the social sciences. And, as in most cases, this is not a black-white question; rather there are grey colors too. So, both of these views of the world have explanatory powers, and in the best case they should be used together to create a more complete picture. And the presentation was a good reminder for me of the methodology lecture I had totally forgotten.

From conference to conference, the travels continue. This time I’m attending the ending conference of EU Kids Online II, a big project focused on what children do in the Internet. I’ve studied children and families previously, and therefore interested in the recent developments in this field. And, compared to any study I can conduct, this research program provides a statistically valid dataset of 25 000 + families and children across Europe. And, yes, they are in the process of publishing this data for individual researchers, like me.

Well, I don’t attend conferences just to get one SPSS-file, there more in this. I’m currently working with Nokia to solve some of the threats and risks caused by children’s using Internet and connected context-aware handheld devices, or simply put: mobile phones and other gadgets. Based on my current understanding of this phenomenon, the key tools are to increase mediation with parents and peers and to develop media literacy and coping skills in this new World2.0.

As well pointed out by Kuno Sorensen: as we teach our children on traffic and correct behaviors there, we should teach the basics of mediated environments and communication in same way. And, I believe this can be achieved by increasing the interactions and guidance children receive when growing up.

Now you ask: “Well, Matti – that model is a nice sounding idea, but does that really happen … or is this just a daydream?” That is a good point, and requiring evidence is only sensible thing to do. I don’t know if mediation and support affect on the experiences of harm, it sounds valid and sound. But, after getting my hands on the File, I can run some of statistical analysis and see, if this makes sense with data too.