Is technology a force for good?
Overwhelmingly, it is. We can point to various ways in which technology is used, or can be used, for bad purposes, but all of these are dramatically outweighed by the ways in which technology is changing the world for the better. Today you can buy a smartphone in Africa for less than US $50 and in areas where we have negotiated agreements with cell carriers you can access Wikipedia for free—no data charges. So you have a massive source of information in your pocket for a very low cost.
Is access to information a human right?
Yes, it is. Think of it as the direct implication and corollary of our rights to freedom of expression. Just as the right to freedom of expression doesn’t imply that other people must supply you with a printing press, the right to access information doesn’t mean that other people must supply you with either the tools or the information. What it does mean is that the state has no role to play in preventing people from communicating with each other.
Can online activism be effective?
Yes, and I think the best evidence of this has unfolded recently in Turkey. Prime Minister Erdogan acted against Twitter and YouTube not because they are ineffective—but because they are effective.
Having said that, it is important that we are not naive about the possibilities. Yes, we can use online tools to educate others and to organize to demand positive change. But real activism also necessarily involves going physically to make demands, and that’s inherently risky and requires great courage.
There is something to the charge that people sometimes engage in “clicktivism”—the lazy approach of hitting “Like” on a petition and feeling that we’ve done something useful. But that doesn’t change the fact that online communities can have very deep and meaningful impacts on people’s lives.
Are there things you don’t want to know? Are there things we shouldn’t know?
Yes, there is quite a lot that I don’t want to know, and things that I think we shouldn’t know. I’ll talk about two important categories, but there are more.
First, there is a need for the recognition of the importance of privacy in a civilized world. Breaking into someone’s phone or computer to gain access to their personal information, as we’ve seen in the phone-hacking scandal in the UK and similar scandals elsewhere, is a very serious matter. Rather than spending their vast resources in spying on us themselves, I’d like to see organizations like GCHQ and the NSA more focused on investing in helping us to prevent such spying by encouraging the use of strong encryption everywhere.
Second, there are military and government secrets that are perfectly valid. I don’t think we need to know the exact details of every single thing that the government is doing in terms of spying. This is where I think Edward Snowden has been so powerfully effective: rather than releasing details of particular government operatives and operations, he’s released highly abstract information that gives the public the details we should have been given all along, so that we can have a proper, rational debate about the limits of state surveillance.
Is Silicon Valley in bed with the security services?
I don’t think so, but I trust some companies more than others. There’s an additional factor here most people haven’t considered: the engineers of Silicon Valley are virtually unanimous in viewing attacks on their infrastructure as horrific human rights abuses that should be countered with every effort they can muster. It would be impossible for any major internet company to issue an order from the top to build in back-door infrastructure to help the NSA. The engineers would leak it, and they know how to do so without getting caught.
That doesn’t mean that the NSA isn’t infiltrating these companies with people who are doing things that the rest of the staff would be horrified by, of course. It just means that it is pretty implausible that the companies themselves are directly “in bed” with the security services.
How have you resisted monetizing Wikipedia?
We are a non-profit charitable organization. We’re very mission-driven. For me personally, I feel sure that in 500 years, when people look back on this era, they’ll point to Wikipedia as something remarkable and good. I’m a big fan and user of WhatsApp, which recently sold to Facebook for $19bn, but I doubt if anyone will remember it in 50 years, much less 500.
Is net neutrality that important?
I differ from many of my colleagues, in that I don’t think net neutrality is super-important. The fear is that companies which control the “last mile” to the consumer will leverage that choke point to stifle innovation (unless they get paid extra for it happening). And that’s not an entirely crazy thing to fear, particularly because much last-mile infrastructure remains under inappropriate, government-granted monopoly privileges—or derived from those privileges in the first place years ago.
But if we are worried about a handful of companies getting control of a choke point and using it to squeeze out competitors and make massive profits, we don’t need to look at the layer of network infrastructure and network neutrality. We just need to look at the Apple App Store (and similar), where everything that runs on your iPhone or iPad has to be approved by Apple, with them taking a huge cut of the revenue at every step, with no real competition in sight. Consumers should be very worried about that.
Can you imagine the outcry if 20 years ago Microsoft had decreed that no third-party software could run on Windows without being approved by them, and bought through their proprietary stores? Yet today we accept this model on mobile devices (and soon, I fear, on our computers) without blinking.
Would you choose a benign dictatorship, or dysfunctional democracy?
Like the true geek I am, I can only answer a question like this by referencing Captain Kirk and the Kobayashi Maru.
In Star Trek lore, the Kobayashi Maru is a test at the Starfleet Academy with a “no-win” outcome. Kirk took the test twice and had his ship destroyed, so before trying a third time he hacked into the system to change the outcome. If our only choices are benign dictatorship or dysfunctional democracy, it’s time to hack the system and change the rules.
Where do you stand on piracy?
Commandeering and robbing vessels on the high seas? I’m totally against it.
Ha, you’re really asking about file-sharing. I think here the key is that we are finally seeing the argument move on from a rather useless debate about how to stop it by using the law (you can’t) into a recognition that, more than anything else, a business-model shift is the most successful way forward for creators of creative entertainment. We know that piracy falls dramatically when studios actually make things available for sale. Spotify, Netflix, iTunes, etc are the solution and are working very well.
Yes, some flat-broke teens are going to find ways to copy things that legally they shouldn’t. That has always been true. When I was that age, teens made cassette tapes for each other.
That’s not really the issue. Large-scale commercial piracy is a different matter and existing law seems to be handling that reasonably well. Minor tweaks are always possible, but perennial proposals to lock down the internet or give ridiculous powers to state censors are neither needed nor likely to be at all effective.
Do you vote?
I believe in principle in voting, but I live mostly in London, where I don’t (yet) have the right to vote. In the past I have voted, although I’ve also avoided registering to vote where it seemed to require me to make public my home address. It turns out that collecting “all the world’s knowledge” draws the attention of a fair number of threatening cranks, and I prefer for my family’s safety to keep a relatively low profile at home.
Are we all doomed?
The Onion is my favorite humor site, a parody of news. And one of my favorite headlines in the Onion was “World death rate holding steady at 100 percent.” So yes, in that sense, we’re all doomed.
Jemima Khan is the associate editor of the New Statesman. She tweets at: @Jemima_Khan
This piece originally appeared on newstatesman.com.