Bruce D. Larkin. Professor of Politics. University of California at Santa Cruz.
Class meets MWF 11-12.10 in Room 156 Applied Sciences
This class meets in the wired classroom: Applied Sciences 156. We will exploit technology [computer-generated display, real-time Web access, ‘live’ whiteboard] to focus discussion and lecture on texts, many of them on-line documents students can consult further after class. Each policy issue will be illustrated by citing articles, reports, and policy documents. Moving between the original texts and my own lecture notes, I will develop contending claims and their political significance. Policy questions include Net and Web governance, censorship, privacy, encryption, taxation, transaction security, net security, access, police-state surveillance, globalization, and implications for the State, governance, accountability, and democracy.
This Syllabus is on line at
The Table of Links is on line at
Announcements and Email Addresses of class members, for registered UCSC student use only, is at
This course takes "the Internet" to be a community of culture, practices, relationships, economies, governance, rules, claims, arguments, and decisions. It is a form--a novel form--of polity. It has some affinities to the worlds of one-directional communication [newspapers, radio, television] with which it can be usefully compared, and which it may come to encompass. As in a state, there are issues concerning economy, security, and organization; here 'organization' includes the question how authoritative claims are made. Who governs? and how? by what rules? and how are those rules themselves subject to change?
What is the relationship of the State to the Net and Web? Does the State shape the Net? And what are the prospects that the Net will change the State?
On key issues--copyright, encryption, censorship--states have already declared intention to regulate the Net. Was Justice's successful effort to compel Microsoft to disengage its browser from Windows 98 an old-fashioned anti-trust move, or novel claim required to sustain a vigorous Web?
What of politics among non-State actors? For example, Microsoft and Netscape are in a complex contest for market share and future position. The Universities, racing against each other, are hell-bent on securing control of education on the Net through 'distance learning' and 'certification.' Corporations are clashing over whether systems are to be 'open', or 'proprietary.' Is the Net bringing and forcing these issues? Shaping outcomes?
Berners-Lee, Tim [with Mark Fischetti]. Weaving the Web: The Original Design and Ultimate Destiny of the World Wide Web (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1999).
Cairncross, Frances. The Death of Distance (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1997).
Grossman, Lawrence K. The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age (Penguin, 1996).
Lessig, Lawrence. Code: And Other Laws of Cyberspace (1999).
Loader, Brian [ed]. The Governance of Cyberspace: Politics, Technology, and Global Restructuring (London and New York: Routledge, 1997).
Grossman, Wendy M. net.wars (New York: New York University Press, 1997).
Hafner, Katie and John Markoff. Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991).
Lanham, Richard A. The Electronic World: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993 ).
Lyon, Matthew and Katie Hafner Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).
All registered students enrolled in the class are urged to use the detailed P80X Table of Links, which complements this syllabus. The readings and sites to which the links lead are recommended, not required. Reference will be made to many of them in the lectures. You are free to draw on these in writing your papers. For these reasons we strongly recommend that you incorporate use of the Table of Links into your personal study program for this course.
If you are not enrolled in Politics 80X, and even if you are not a student at UC Santa Cruz, you are free to organize your own program of self-study around the P80X Syllabus and P80X Table of Links. Although Visitors must rely on their own circle of friends for discussion and comment on their work, we are quite ready to tell enrolled students of your interest in the class and share your inquiries with them. You may identify yourself as a Visitor by email to larkin@learnworld.com.
Week 0. Introduction.
Week 1. Political origins of the Internet. Design of the Web. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3). The domain name controversy. "North-South" differences. Standards. HTML. Browser competition.
Week 2. Access. "Citizenship." Exclusion. Costs. One net, or several nets? Marginalisation. English-language hegemony? "North-South" differences?
Week 3. Privacy. Concealing identity. Encryption. Personal communication. Communication in aid of criminal acts. State assertion of authority.
Week 4. Internet security. Attacks. Preventions. Responses. Deterrents. State authority. Can the Net ever be safe from attack?
Week 5. Commercial transactions. Scams. Frauds. Secure payments. Digital signatures. Commercial tie-ins. Advertising. Spam: is there no answer to spam? Commerce: will money shape the Web to serve profit? Anti-trust.
Week 6. Security of society. Infrastructure vulnerabilities. Banking transactions. Power transmission. Air traffic. Databases. Internet as instrument of war.
Week 7. Intellectual property rights: software, music, graphics, text. Illich thresholds. State authority. Enforcement. A 'free public library'? or copyrighting history?
Week 8. Free speech. Pornography. Filtering. State censorship (China, Germany). Do duties rightly fall on Internet Service Providers?
Week 9. Taxation. Regulation. Jurisdiction. Courts. International agreements. Import-export of digital files?
Week 10. Political design questions. [See below] Are the Net and the State compatible? Should there be Web access to all state documents?
(A) Should our particulars (of medical, insurance, auto, residence, voter registration, legal, and other facts) be accessible on-line? Convenient in medical emergencies, for example, or in preventing vote fraud, would that be consistent with privacy and personal rights?
(B) Do the Net and Web render universities obsolete? Under what circumstances? If the functions now performed by universities were lodged from scratch in a web-rich world, what would institutions and practices look like? Does a similar argument apply to the public school system?
(C) "The Net and Web are more nearly like fresh air, which the polity does not control, than anything subject to state regulation. The pertinent phrase is 'free as the air we breathe.' The reason for this is that the marginal cost to create a new instance of a file and transmit it to a requester is close to zero. Therefore the State should not regulate the Net and Web." Discuss.
(D) The Web will make direct democracy possible. Would that be desirable?
Each student will write four five-page papers and a two-hour in-class final exam. These are pedagogic exercises, not certifications. The papers will be on the rough themes of the State and (i) the individual, (ii) security, (iii) free speech and proprietary utterance, and (iv) democratization. The final exam will consist of two essays, each an argument on the political significance of brief texts, which will be supplied. The final exam will be take place at the time assigned, in the classroom in which the class meets.
Office hours: M 1-3 pm, at Cowell 183 (southwest corner of the Cowell Library). There is a signup sheet. The first 15 minutes are set aside for brief drop-ins.