The document discusses the relationship between technology and human rights. It argues that techno-optimism has led to empowerment through increased autonomy, freedom of information, speech and access to infrastructure. However, technology is also challenging rights around privacy, censorship and democracy as gatekeepers control algorithms and infrastructure. The document raises concerns about surveillance, identity curation, regulation of users and technology, and the need to appreciate how technology itself regulates society.

1. Will technology set us free? Mathias Klang
@klang67
Techno-optimism
& human rights

2. Critique:
technology 
Empowerment 
Autonomy, FoI, Speech/censorship,
democracy privacy & access to infrastructure

3. It cannot be helped, it is as it should be, that
the law is behind the times. Oliver Wendell Holmes

4. Rights of citizen & Man (1789)

5. Killer app 1789

6. Universal declaration of human rights (1948)

7. Killer app 1948

8. We have moved on

9. It gets worse…

10. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is
normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the
way the world works. Anything that’s invented between
when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting
and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in
it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against
the natural order of things.
Douglas Adams

11. if law ignores technology,
technology will rule us.

13. How did we
end up here?

14. Living the
cyborg dream

15. Egyptian wood & leather prosthetic toe (ca
1069 to 664 B.C)

16. Portrait of Hugh de Provence (1352)

17. Ludicrously brief history of
computers

18. hollerith

19. Generation 3 (1964-72)

21. The digital is the original
& everything is copy

22. Killer apps 1995: Browser wars

23. Everything is miscellaneous

25. 91 % Access to the Internet at home
83 % Access to broadband at home
7% Never used a computer
Source: Sweden Statistics 2011 (*Individuals aged 16-74)

26. Blogger 1999
Google 1999
End of communications monopoly

27. Normalizing the abnormal

28. Social Norms

29. Players compete to find the most unusual and original location in which
to play… Rigidity of the body must be maintained to constitute good
That’s Good planking planking.

30. The regulation of technology
is the regulation of democracy
Autonomy

31. The theoretically possible
becomes the inevitable
Digitalization
Connectivity
Devices
Storage

32. realizing the promises of the
enlightenment

33. technooptimism

35. Sapir–Whorf hypothesis

36. Only technology
(spot the ethical dilemma?)

37. Technology makes society

38. personalization

39. A Squirrel Dying In
Your Front Yard May
Be More Relevant To
Your Interests Right
Now Than People
Dying In Africa
Mark Zuckerberg

40. It will be very hard for
people to watch or
consume something
that has not in some
sense been tailored for
them. Eric Schmidt, Google

41. The internet is shows us what it thinks that we
want to see – not what we need to see Eli Pariser

42. Identity & Information junk food.

43. Freedom of information

44. “In every society, the definition of marriage
has not ever to my knowledge included
homosexuality. That's not to pick on
homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on
child, man on dog, or whatever the case may
be.”
Sen. Santorum (2003)
compares homosexuality to
pedophilia & bestiality

45. Neologism & Google
bomb

46. Santorum = “the frothy
mixture of lube and
fecal matter that is
sometimes the
byproduct of anal sex”

47. June 2011,
Santorum
asks google
for help

48. Freedom
of
speech
triumphs

49. February 2012 Google
algorithm ranking change

50. Freedom of Speech

51. iTunes censor fail

52. The Facebook
Elbowbreast

55. censorship

56. At any given moment there is an
orthodoxy, a body of ideas
which it is assumed that all
right-thinking people will accept
without question...
Anyone who challenges the
prevailing orthodoxy finds
himself silenced with surprising
effectiveness.
fear

57. “Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold
content from users in a specific country”
Twitter

58. (1) we will attempt to let the user
know,
(2) we will clearly mark when the
content has been withheld.
(3) As part of that transparency,
we’ve expanded our
partnership with Chilling Effects
when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a
specific country

59. The norms of others

60. privacy

61. PUL
1998
Data Protection
Swedish Datalagen Directive
1973 1995
1984 1997
Mac Classic Nokia 6120

62. Surveillance: gaze from above

63. Power relationship

65. Everybody exhibitionism

66. We used to leak information

67. Compartmentalization

68. Analog social norms

69. Protection from the outer gaze

70. Sousveillance: the gaze from below

71. “friends”

72. Autoveillance: performance lifestyle

73. How is autoveillance possible?
Exhibitionism?

74. End of privacy?

75. The Hive-mind

76. If you have done nothing wrong,
you have nothing to fear

77. Damaging information does not have to
be wrong, illegal or immoral.

78. Access to
infrastructure

79. The memory hole

80. "We have found your account is directly related to another
which has been previously closed for abuse of our policies.
As such, your Amazon.co.uk account has been closed and
any open orders have been cancelled. Please understand
that the closure of an account is a permanent action. Any
subsequent accounts that are opened will be closed as
well. Thank you for your understanding with our decision."

81. Closing thoughts

82. Control in
digital world
Law
Contextual &
programmed social
rules
Architecture
Control in
analogue world

83. Problem 1: We are stupid

84. Problem 2: We don’t know what
we don’t know

85. Problem 3: who I want to be & who I am…

86. Problem 4: The keepers of
algorithms know this

87. There have always been
gatekeepers.

88. We have (theoretical) control over
Big Brother

89. Regulation of technology is the regulation
of democracy

90. Law without infrastructure

91. Why is the law behind the times?

92. Regulating users:
The problem
with autonomy

93. Regulating technology
providers

94. Underappreciating the regulatory
effects of technology

95. Conspiracy theory

96. THANKS!

97. Mathias Klang
klang@ituniv.se or @klang67
www.digital-rights.net
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