But, he said, one can safely single out two important economic consequences: computer networks reduce both transaction costs and coordination costs. As a result, industries can more easily spread their activities around the world. "Production processes, including formerly concentrated activities like automobile design, are broken down into smaller units, which are then distributed globally wherever they can find optimal combinations of infrastructure, wages, skills, and political conditions."
At the same time, networked computers facilitate centralized control. In
discussing this issue, people often talk about the employer as a baleful Big
Brother, snooping in e-mail files and closely monitoring individual
productivity. But, Agre said, the issues are more deep-
rooted and
complex.
"We have to back up and consider the deep logic of computer system design as it is currently taught and practiced," he said. "In order to support an activity, a computer has to be able to represent that activity. In order to represent an activity, the computer has to be able to `capture' that activity. And in order for this to happen, the activity itself must be reorganized." He cited bar codes and smart cards as examples of activities that have been reorganized for computer capture.
Intrusive workplace monitoring, then, stems in part from the "simple habit" of computer system design. This habit, and the entrenched systems that reflect it, produces "enormous inertia," Agre said. "I can't emphasize that enough. There is a huge variety of installed systems that just work a certain way, and it's very difficult to get out of those patterns. New technology is new only in some senses."
Adjustments such as anonymity and cryptography may help, he noted, but "employers have little incentive to use them in workplaces." He suggested that the solution may instead come from "what I think of as the light side of the NII--namely, its use by ordinary people and nonprofit organizations as part of the rediscovery of democracy and the flowering of a global civil society."
The NII is not monolithic or inevitable. Rather, it will co-evolve with a complex and varied range of institutions and applications.... There will be developments in 10 other important things, like containerized freight, which are just as consequential for the things that we're talking about. It's easy to lapse into single-factor talk.
Philip E. Agre
Professor of Communication
University of California at San Diego
