Mapping the Information Environment

At the end every question concerning the information habitats may indeed boil down to a decision between freedom v. control. The legitimate function of this harsh and simplistic alternative is to remind us that there are always normative implications luring behind the surface of technology. The way we shape technology shapes the way it shapes us. But what are the main structures underlying present information technology that shapes the flow of information in society? If we ask for the normative consequences of informational design, what are the parameters the further development of the information environment will have to pivot around? Identifying these structural parameters may help us to refine our normative questions when we go on working to solve the conflicts between freedom and control in the concrete.
In my article "Mapping the Information Environment: Legal Aspects of Modularization and Digitalization" (co-authored with Andrea Ottolia), which was published this month in the Yale Journal of Law & Technology, I have highlighted the language of the digital and the principle of modularization as such parameters. Perceiving both the computer and the Internet as complex systems, the article looks at how modular design of these systems freed the functionality of applications from the physicality of infrastructures, describes the evolutionary gains adhering to modularity, and how to preserve them – elaborating on the issues of access to the cable platform for broadband Internet and to virtual networks for computer technology. In our second focus we show how digitalization of information makes possible the merger of content and its protection. Especially through the use of DRM systems, private actors can create right enforcement mechanisms independent of the State. The legal system therefore faces new and more complex relations between private will and public sovereignty. In such a merged system it is harder to maintain freedom – much like in the fusion of function and infrastructure.