COMPLEXITY, TRUST, AND TERROR
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Source: NetFuture.org
COMPLEXITY, TRUST, AND TERROR
By Langdon Winner
The beguiling but ultimately mistaken notion that technologies
are "merely tools" -- things we pick up, use and then easily put
away -- poses a major barrier for understanding how we live today.
Missing in the tool/use perspective is acknowledgment of a basic fact
about people's relationship to the technological realm: our utter
dependence upon the large, complex,artificial systems that surround
us on every side, giving structure to everything we do.
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For countries in the North, such dependence is welcomed with open arms
because it seems crucial to prosperity and freedom. Large-scale,
geographically extensive technologies enable us to move about as we
wish, to communicate freely and to be released from the urgent
demands of day-to-day survival that confronted previous generations
and that still vex the less prosperous nations around the globe.
But now another, more troubling dimension of technological complexity
demands attention. Dependence on complex technological systems looms
as a source of vulnerability. If any major component in the systems
that support modern life ceases to function for a significant period
of time,our prosperity, freedom and comfortable lives are
threatened. This was a major concern in 1999, you'll recall, as
people agonized about the possibility of disastrous system collapse
caused by Y2K programming. There were widespread fears that the
energy grid, airline transportation, banking system, and other
systems would be disrupted by computer malfunctions, plunging society
into chaos. It turned out that, despite minor glitches here and
there, the predicted Y2K chaos never arrived. But during the last
months of 1999, the perception of vulnerability bordered on mass
hysteria.
Responses to Vulnerability
--------------------------
There are several ways that our society routinely deals with the
specter of vulnerability. One strategy is to ensure that technical
devices and systems are well-engineered and protected from calamitous
failure. Engineers and systems designers make sure that structural
parts can hold an increment more than the normal loads they must
support. Redundancies are also built into many systems so that if one
part fails, another part takes over.
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But good engineering is only part of the story. In free, democratic
societies there is another way in which ordinary people have managed
their relationship to vulnerability: they embrace an attitude of
trust, holding on to the reasonable expectation that key technologies
will always work reliably and not break down in ways that jeopardize
our health, safety and comfort. This relationship is reciprocal;
trust also informs the structure and operation of technological
systems themselves. Many key components are built in ways that leave
them open to the possibility of inadvertent or deliberate
interference. Electrical power lines, phone lines, gas pipelines,
dams, aqueducts, railroads, airplanes, elaborate works of
architecture, and the like are often more or less naked to the world,
open to view, minimally guarded from the kinds of interference that
could render them inoperable. For many decades a common but largely
unspoken expectation has been that people in prosperous industrial
societies can be trusted not to disrupt or destroy the workings of
the key parts of the global technological order.
Most people accept the presence of major complex technologies because
their well-being hinges on them, because there's no good reason to act
destructively and, of course, because the law punishes overt acts of
sabotage. Exceptions include occasional bombings by anarchists in the
early twentieth century, acts of destruction by the Weathermen and
political extremists in more recent times, Timothy McVeigh and the
Unabomber, among others. But for the most part, the relationship of
openness and trust between individuals and complex systems has proven
fairly resilient.
A much different understanding of how to manage large, complex systems
characterizes closed, guarded, totalitarian societies such as the
Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin and Kim Il Sung's North Korea.
Regimes of this stripe have hardened the design of their technologies
and installed vast systems of policing and surveillance because they
did not trust their own people. For any society that adopts
strategies of this kind -- pervasive suspicion and obsessive
protection of core technologies -- an inevitable consequence is the
destruction of civil freedom.
What would happen to our own society if the long-standing conventions
of openness and trust were suddenly afflicted by a pervasive sense of
vulnerability and dread? Would our rights, liberties and democratic
institutions survive?
Vehicles for Destruction
------------------------
In the aftermath of the attacks upon the World Trade Center and
Pentagon, along with the subsequent anthrax scares, such questions
have renewed urgency. Americans are now profoundly aware of their
vulnerability. Dams, reservoirs, bridges, power plants, chemical
plants, aqueducts,electrical transmission lines, liquid natural gas
tankers -- even the daily mail and systems of food supply -- all seem
wide open to attack.
As far as I can tell, both planes that left Boston on September 11 on
the way to the twin towers of the World Trade Center flew right over
my house in The Hudson River Valley. If the pilots had wanted to do
maximum damage to the region, a far better target would have been the
nuclear reactors at the Indian Point electrical power plant about
sixty miles south. Since these facilities were not designed to
withstand a direct hit by an airliner, targeting them might have
caused catastrophic failure, and possibly a core meltdown as the fuel
sank into the mud and water of the Hudson River. The resulting plume
of radioactive steam and debris would have killed thousands of people
very quickly and rendered much of the Northeast permanently
uninhabitable. Perhaps we are lucky that the al Qaeda terrorists
were so obsessed with the symbolic value of the World Trade Center
that they neglected what may have been more destructive targets,
America's 103 nuclear power plants.
Within the collection of infrastructures upon which we depend, there
are many others that are essentially wide open, loosely protected. The
nation's containerized cargo system provides a good example. Each
year some six million sealed containers arrive from all around the
world. At present, only two percent of these are ever inspected
(although a new international program aims to boost the level to 5-10
percent). If anyone had the ability to make or purchase a nuclear
device or dirty bomb, a convenient way to deliver it would be to ship
it by containerized freighter and at the appointed moment, set it
off. A recurring nightmare: One morning we turn on our televisions
to find that San Francisco, San Pedro or New York has been leveled by
a nuclear blast from a weapon hidden in one of those large steel
crates.
There are many other horrifying scenarios, of course. If anyone had
the desire to use it, a readily available, flexible delivery system
for maximum destruction is the automobile, a fact all-too-clear in
Ireland, England and the Middle East in recent decades. There are now
some 230 million registered cars and trucks in the USA. The Oklahoma
City bombing demonstrated how easy it is in an open society to fill a
rental vehicle with explosives made of readily available chemical
fertilizers and set it off in the middle of town. Just as we
previously had not thought about commercial airliners as flying
bombs, Americans do not regard their beloved automobiles as flexible,
ubiquitous instruments of destruction, although they sometimes serve
that role in the Middle East and other troubled regions of the world.
Recognition of the vulnerability of open, complex, geographically
extended, technological systems is by no means new. In 537 A.D. the
Gothic chieftain Vitiges and his forces laid siege to Rome. A crucial
part of Vitiges' strategy was to cut the aqueducts leading to the
city, forcing the Romans to rely on the inadequate stream of water
from the Tiber River. As a result, the population fled Rome in
droves, as much in response to water shortage as to flee the sack of
the city. Scholars have long debated the various developments that
caused the fall of the Roman empire. But as geographer Gray Brechin
observes in *Imperial San Francisco*, "the destruction of the
aqueducts conclusively ended the rule of a city that had once boasted
of itself as the caput mundi -- the world's capital."
The Withdrawal of Trust
-----------------------
Following the atrocities of September 11, the world's current caput
mundi, the United States, has struggled to find ways to confront
revelations of its own vulnerability. To this point most of the
emphasis has centered on a rapid shift from trust to mistrust,
installing muscular sociotechnical fixes that promise security
against terrorism and place our whole population under suspicion.
We cannot know the specific intentions of the September 11 terrorists.
But if one of their aims was to render our way of life much less open
and free, they have surely succeeded. At present Americans are
restricting freedom of travel, limiting access to information,
narrowing the boundaries of political speech, and learning to live
with an increasingly secretive government.
In addition to the ominous provisions of the USA-PATRIOT law, we now
confront the apparatus of the Homeland Security Act which institutes
a host of Orwellian measures including the "Directorate for
Information Analysis and Infrastructure Protection" authorized to
collect and analyze an unlimited range data from government,
corporate and personal records, including one's email and Internet
browsing. Also established by the Act is the Homeland Security
Advanced Research Projects Agency that promises to advance the state
of the art in paranoid technological innovation to unprecedented
levels. A forerunner of this operation is already at work in the
Pentagon, the Total Information Awareness System that deliberately
seeks to construct the all-seeing electronic Panopticon long feared
by lovers of human freedom. In charge of the Total(-itarian?)
Awarenss Information System is none other than retired admiral John
Poindexter, shadowy figure who destroyed official documents,
obstructed Congressional inquiries and was convicted of a five
felonies (later overturned on appeal) during the Iran-Contra
scandal.
Thus, in little more than a year and with astonishingly little debate,
the Bush Administration and a supine Congress and have modified our
way of life in ways that define people as suspects rather than
citizens. In all deliberations about public policy and public funding
(regardless of topic) terrorism and security have now become the
overriding concerns.
Other steps in this vein include changes in America's immigration
rules that allow the Attorney General to keep foreigners in detention
even though an immigration judge orders them released. President
Bush issued an executive order aimed at creating special military
tribunals for foreign nationals suspected of terrorist acts, courts
that lack many of the protections afforded by our laws and
Constitution. Along this path hundreds of Muslim and Arab persons
have been detained before being charged with a crime or breach of
immigration status, in direct contradiction to the U.S.
Constitution. Even now, more than a year after the attack, it is
difficult to obtain accurate accounting of who is being held and for
what reason.
As the shadow of secrecy and suspicion has fallen across the land,
useful government information about the nation's technological
infrastructure -- web sites on water systems, nuclear power plants,
chemical plants and the like -- have been removed or are severely
restricted in content. For scholars, it is now much more difficult
to study what used to be regarded as a perfectly mundane question:
the structure and operation of technological systems. What used to be
public information freely available to citizens, is now regarded as
crucial national "intelligence" to be shielded from the grasp of
spies and saboteurs.
The wave of new federal legislation and regulation is now mirrored in
a host of anti-terrorist laws passed by state legislatures, ones that
feature strengthening the power of police to monitor the activities of
citizens who for one reason or another must be watched. In this new
mood, the definition of terrorist activity is sometimes so broad and
vague that it casts a shadow over a wide range of political
activities -- organizing public protest marches, for example. Civil
liberties groups are concerned that ordinary forms of political
protest could be defined as terrorist and suppressed. This might
include, for instance, the public gatherings to protest globalization
like those in Seattle and other cities in recent years.
Unfortunately, episodes of political repression during times of
civic distress -- the Palmer raids after World War I, the
incarceration of American citizens of Japanese decent during World
War II, the malicious persecution of dissidents during the McCarthy
era of the 1950s, and so on -- are all too common in American
history. When the nation feels threatened, freedom takes a beating.
A Public Chill
--------------
On radio and television talk shows and in newspaper editorials since
the 9/11 attack there has been a strong tendency to define terrorism
in broad,loose, inflammatory terms. The same penchant also afflicts
lawmakers at all levels. Last spring the Maryland House of Delegates
passed an anti-terrorism law extensive in its sweep. Dana Lee
Dembrow of the Maryland House of Delegates remarked, "I realize that
this bill basically says you can tap someone's phone for jaywalking,
and normally I would say, 'No way,' ... But after what happened on
September 11, I say screw 'em."
The nation's obsession with security now casts a chill upon public
life and the only question is "How cold will it get?" For example,
since the 1960s there has been a lively debate about privacy and
personal liberty in the age of electronic data. A rough consensus
formed that citizens ought to be free from the snooping of
government, corporations, and private individuals. That consensus
has now been demolished by the belief that widespread surveillance is
necessary and that ingenious systems like the FBI's Carnivore (which
can monitor everyone's email and Internet activities) are exactly
what is needed to defend the country.
Within post-9/11 security measures, protections of the U.S.
Constitution have been seriously weakened. Thus, the fourth
amendment insists, "The right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches
and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but
upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and
particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or
things to be seized." But under provisions of the USA-PATRIOT Act,
authorities can now search everywhere, indefinitely, online and off,
with one general warrant.
There is, alas, widespread spillover of these measures into civil
society as a whole. Hoping to deflect suspicion, many Americans have
become guarded and self-censoring. How often in recent weeks have I
heard people say, "No, I don't worry about anti-terrorist
legislation. I'd never do anything the authorities would be
interested in anyway." Evidently,patriotism requires us to be
compliant and predictable.
Typical of the mood of panic just after the 9/11 attacks, there was a
news segment on NPR that asked security experts about everyday
vigilance against terrorism. What should ordinary folks watch out
for? Look for any signs of "unusual behavior," one expert advised.
This would include people wearing clothing that seems out of place,
or saying things or making gestures that were not appropriate for a
particular place or occasion. As I listened to the story, it struck
me that what was identified as dangerous "unusual behavior" were
simply varieties of freedom -- wearing what we like, saying what
comes to mind, acting freely in public.
When Stable Structures Dissolve
-------------------------------
We cannot know the specific intentions of the September 11
terrorists. But if one of their aims was to render our way of life
much less open and free, they have surely succeeded. At present
Americans are restricting freedom of travel, limiting access to
information, and narrowing the boundaries of political speech. In
programs like the Justice Department's "Terrorist Information
Protection System" (TIPS) we are modifying social life in ways that
define people as suspects rather than citizens. In all
deliberations about public policy (regardless of topic) terrorism and
security have become the overriding concerns.
Just as sixth-century Romans abandoned their city when the aqueducts
were cut, Americans seem to be abandoning essential parts of the
democratic civic culture that developed during the past two
centuries. This appalling turn of events is certainly evident in the
material features of public buildings and grounds. A visit to
Washington, D.C., shows the place transformed by ever-present ugly
cement barriers, recurring security searches and ubiquitous
surveillance cameras. The city has been redefined as capital of
Homeland, a strange new country where once-cherished freedoms of
thought, expression and movement are regarded as luxuries too
dangerous to afford. (Citizens should ask: Is Homeland governed by
same constitution as the old U.S.A.?)
In the current mood, people view terror as something that has suddenly
arrived from outside, inflicted upon an otherwise contented,
harmonious society by "evil doers" from distant parts of the world.
Obviously, there's much truth in that view. There are malevolent
actors out there prepared to inflict death and destruction.
But seen from another vantage point, the terror we experience -- the
dread that now afflicts everyday life -- resides in the very systems
we have so ingeniously built during the past century. Modern,
complex technologies succeed by wresting enormous stores of power
from the natural realm, seeking to direct these powers in ways that
are controllable and useful. An unhappy possibility can never be
entirely eliminated, however: the prospect that these enormous
forces will somehow be unleashed uncontrollably from systems and
infrastructures originally built to contain them. In recent years,
fears of this kind have focused on rare technological accidents --
the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, for instance. Such
misgivings also underscore contemporary evidence about
environmental ills, including global warming. Our technology's
controlled use of fossil fuels over many decades has generated
uncontrollable, highly destructive shifts in climate.
Following the 9/11 attack, the horizons of catastrophe have shifted.
The accomplishment of a jet airline is to contain and direct the high
energy fuel whose combustion enables rapid flight; the achievement in
the engineering of skyscrapers is to defy gravity by ingeniously
stacking tons upon tons of steel and other materials in high
structures so that -- despite their obviously precarious position --
they will not fall down. But what if the physical potential in these
achievements were suddenly released in ways not part of the original
blueprint?
The horror of the World Trade Center attack was that the power of two
wonders of modern technology -- the skyscraper and the jet airliner --
came crashing together causing the carefully contained power of both
systems to be released in catastrophic explosion, inferno and
collapse. In this light, the ingenuity of the terrorists is to
trigger processes that cause stable structures to dissolve.
Deeply buried in our experience of modern technology is the elementary
terror that powers we sought to control will escape our command and
come back to injure or destroy us. Perceptions of this kind have
surfaced in countless science fiction novels and cinema of the past
century, turning our worst fears into mass entertainment. But beyond
the paperbacks and movie screens an urgent question now sounds. How
many systems of megatechnical might can one introduce before they
begin to overwhelm the culture of democracy? As we construct
complex, tightly coupled, geographically extended, powerful, but
ultimately precarious systems, one result is a world filled with
ticking time bombs waiting to go off.
A Fortress Mentality
--------------------
America's knee-jerk response to this terror at present is the familiar
strategy of hardening systems to prevent disruption. We are building
new barriers around crucial systems and strengthening their internal
components, surrounding them with elaborate methods of policing and
surveillance. If it continues, this strategy of hardening
technological systems will be a major drain on our economic resources
and a hazard to both freedom and civility. But for the time being
Americans and their leaders seem prepared to pay these costs, even
though they will rapidly degrade our institutions -- further starving
schools of funds and commitment, for example -- and weaken the fabric
of democratic sociability.
Unfortunately, it is far from clear that the new measures will
succeed. A study by the Department of Transportation released last
spring found that in attempts to smuggle weapons through newly
bolstered airport security gates, thirty percent of the guns and
seventy percent of the knives got past the guards and scanning
devices. Similar tests of security at nuclear power plants also
produced disappointing results; breaching the barriers around these
facilities seems to be fairly easy.
The human demands of policing complex systems are, over long periods
of time, probably beyond people's ability to bear. You may recall an
episode just after 9/11 when the Golden Gate Bridge was rumored to be
a terrorist target. Passage was closed for a while and then national
guard troops were brought in to screen the traffic. But television
coverage showed exactly what you'd expect, guardsmen standing around,
bored, shooting the breeze, not paying attention to the vehicles
going by. And this was a nationwide terrorism alert at the highest
level!
Faced with shortcomings of this kind there are calls to redouble our
efforts by spending even more money, installing more sophisticated
equipment, hiring more security personnel, subjecting the public to
spiraling levels of hassle, search, surveillance and mistrust. An
impartial observer looking at us from afar might be puzzled by how
quickly and thoroughly these initiatives have begun to modify the
American way of life. Why didn't the nation explore more fruitful
ways of responding to the terror people feel? Why didn't Americans
try harder to preserve their traditions of openness, trust and
freedom?
In quest of security the nation is now preparing to go to war with a
large nation said to belong to an "axis of evil." Again, this
conveniently defines terror as something "out there" rather than
acknowledging some of its foundations "in here," within the very
frameworks that support high-tech ways of living.
Toward Safer Systems
--------------------
In my view, there are far better ways of responding to 9/11 than the
kinds of knee-jerk militarism, Orwellian surveillance and pre-emptive
strikes on human rights that our leaders currently prefer. Urgently
needed are measures that would address sources of insecurity and
terror found at the very roots of modern civilization. Hence, it
seems wise to design technical systems that are loosely coupled and
forgiving, structured in ways that make disruptions easily borne,
quickly repaired. Certainly it makes sense to rely upon locally
available, renewable energy and material resources, rather than
foster dependency on global supplies always at risk. It seems sane
to rely on technologies operated by people in local communities whom
we get to know in a variety of roles and settings, not just as
technical functionaries. It also seems high time to begin
reducing our dependence upon overwhelming, risk-laden powers wrested
from nature. Now we know: these powers may destroy not only fragile
ecosystems, but the habitats of freedom as well.
Fortunately, the richness of human knowledge includes workable systems
alternative to today's complex, power-centered, globally extended,
increasingly war-hungry dinosaurs. The construction of more peaceful,
resilient systems can be accomplished through imaginative efforts
(many of them well underway) aimed at living lightly on the earth
with justice and compassion. Moving steadily along this path could
also help eliminate grievances in the world's population that now
serve as spawning grounds for terrorist attacks.
As the present atmosphere of hysteria, acquiescence and political
opportunism subsides -- and I believe it will -- we must renew
efforts to build institutions that merit our trust rather than fuel
our fears.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
(This essay is adapted from an article that appeared in NetFuture, a
newsletter on technology and human responsibility, #137, October 22,
2002: http://www.netfuture.org/. You may redistribute this article in
its entirety for noncommercial purposes, provided the NetFuture url
and this paragraph are attached.)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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