User-centered Internet Policy
As a new President takes office, the online world is full of speculation about the future of Internet policy in America. Hopes are high, given that President Obama is considered to the most tech-savvy political candidate to date; in fact many are touting him as the first politician to really get the nature of web 2.0. A recent memo from John Horrigan of the PEW Internet project offers Obama some thought-provoking suggestions for technology policy that are motivated by an interesting analysis of the evolution of internet use.
Specifically, the memo highlights the role of user innovation in continually shaping the nature of the web and its importance to society. According to Horrigan, as late as the 1990′s, the internet was primarily conceived of as a vehicle for one-to-many communication, similar to traditional media systems like television. This shifted dramatically during the 90′s as many users began to actively converse with one another in dial-up online communities. The phenomenon of many-to-many communication was taken to the next level with the emergence of blogs around 2004; millions of users were suddenly broadcasting their own perspectives across the web. Horrigan suggests that the latest evolution of the trend is the mass collaboration enabled by broadband and mobile internet access.
Horrigan argues that the throughout its history, the web has come to be defined by “user co-creation“. In his words, “turning users loose to find ways to use communications capacity is the animating principle for innovation in the digital society“. Coming from the user-centered design tradition, this principle is not new to me. However, I find it interesting to imagine how this consideration might influence the formation of technology policy. In my discipline, we believe strongly in giving users a central role in the design of products and systems through methods such as ethnography, participatory design, and usability evaluation. But of course, every design is constrained and influenced by the organizational, political and economic systems that it inhabits. What would it mean then to apply a user-centered philosophy to the formation of these meta-structures?
Recently, a friend forwarded me a news blurb from Treehugger.com about a so-called “green hummer”. Other than the fluorescent-lime paint job, its purportedly green feature is that it runs on biofuels enabling a 40 mpg fuel economy. I was little less than enthused, especially considering that my normal honda civic gets about the same, even while carting myself, a friend and most of my belongings.