63Druæboslovne razprave, XVIII (2002), 40: 63-82
Raymund Werle UDK 316.774:004.738.5(4)
Lessons learnt from the Internet.
Hands off, hands on, or what role of
public policy in Europe?
POVZETEK: The evolution of the Internet challenges traditional approaches of industrial
and technology policy and seems to suggest a hands off policy. The cultural impact of
the network, on the other hand, appears to call for some regulatory intervention into its
future development. The article’s first part briefly examines the role of U.S. public policy
in the early stages of the Internet and then provides a critical assessment of institutional
and policy factors in the EU which slowed down the Internet’s diffusion on this side of
the Atlantic. Only recently can we observe changes. Telecommunications liberalization
and the emergence of market competition in this industry coincide with a new Internet
policy that recognizes the infra-structural significance of this network for a European
information society and the need to involve Internet users in order to exploit the potential
of this network. Another look at the Internet’s history in the article’s second part unveils
that the network evolved in a cultural context that was shaped by the communities of
designers and users whose members were either scientists and engineers or belonged to
the “computer hacker” community. The technical design of the initial Internet embedded,
reflected and reinforced elements of this cultural mixture. The technical ease with which
the Internet extended into many diverse cultural settings has provided incentives and
exerted pressures towards cultural change, and it has triggered efforts to control the use
of and the content which is communicated via the net. The resulting dynamics unfolded
as a consequence of the interdependence of technical and cultural elements. The cultural
effects are manifold: rather than a uniform mega-trend we observe cultural globalization,
cultural pluralization and fragmentation and also cultural convergence. Thus restrictive
political intervention to protect a specific national culture would be the wrong recipe.
KLJU»NE BESEDE: Internet, public policy, technology policy, culture, convergence
Introduction
More than other technologies, the Internet has challenged traditional patterns of
policy-making vis-à-vis technology. The evolution and the career of the Internet clearly
differ from other large technical systems with a high infra-structural significance. This
requires re-thinking technology policy and industrial policy related to the technical
infrastructure, which is the focus of the first part of this article. The global extension of
the Internet provides new opportunities for commercial transactions, for communication
and entertainment and for the political discourse ‡ to mention only of few of these
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Raymund Werle
opportunities. It at the same time brings about risks the prevention of which may
necessitate new regulatory policies at the national level, possibly embedded in a
transnational regulatory regime. Usually the regulatory needs of electronic commerce
attract the highest attention of policy analysts. My focus ‡ in the article’s second part ‡
will be on a different, non-commercial subject. I will examine the Internet’s influence
on culture and how regulatory policy may respond to it.
1. Industrial policy and technology policy
The telecommunications and information technology industry in Europe was
traditionally promoted and controlled by national governments. Until recently,
telecommunications, in particular telephone service provision was organized as a public
monopoly (PTT) with a small number of private equipment manufacturers co-operating
in a symbiotic relationship with the national PTT. Technical barriers to trade such as
technical standards and regulations (Werle, 2001a) protected the home market from
foreign competition. Government procurement of telecommunications equipment
through the PTT was a means of technology policy. If private companies developed
technical innovations and released them to compete with other products the government
rather than the market selected the winner.
While telecommunications was a regulated industry in most parts of the world the
information technology sector was unregulated. In the era of mainframe computers
American manufacturers gained the world leadership and Europe struggled to catch up.
Protectionism was combined with the promotion of a “national champion.” One company
or a couple of companies took advantage of all kinds of public support without, however,
being able to establish themselves in the world market.
With the advent of the Internet the old strategies of industrial and technology policy in
the information and communication technology industry have apparently become
obsolete. But this does not mean that public policy does not matter anymore. A look at
the Internet’s evolution shows that it will in fact benefit from a policy that provides
indirect enabling support rather than direct political guidance.
2. Evolution of the Internet and its present state in Europe
To assess the role played by politics we have to start with a brief look at the historical
evolution of the Internet.1  As is well known, the Internet started as ARPANET ‡ a
network that served research and, to a minor degree, military purposes in the USA. It
was launched by the US Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA). The pioneering Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
protocol stack, which facilitates the interconnection of heterogeneous networks in a
way that allows them to be used as if they were one single network, was implemented
in the ARPANET at the end of 1982. TCP/IP was a US military standard, but it was not
classified and could be implemented free of charge by anybody who wanted to use it. In
this sense TCP/IP was an open standard. Neither public nor private intellectual property
rights on this standard were claimed.
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In 1985, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) became involved in research and
education networking. The NSF initiated the NSFNET, a backbone network designed
to provide both access to remote supercomputers and a test bed for experiments in data
transmission and switching. Early on, the NSF officials responsible for the NSFNET
also had in mind to create an encompassing multi-purpose research and education
network. Rather than opting for one of the existing proprietary standards for computer
networks the NSF chose TCP/IP to be implemented in the NSFNET. In doing so, the
NSF created a niche in which TCP/IP was sheltered from market competition and could
develop into a mature protocol stack that attracted the development of complementary
software for a variety of applications.
With the advent of the World Wide Web (WWW) in the early 1990s, the research
and education network exploded and started transforming itself into the commercially
viable global Internet. Also in this case the non-proprietary, open nature of the basic
protocol (HTTP) proved to be instrumental for the rapid diffusion of the WWW. In
1995, the NSF ceased operating the NSFNET. Today the Internet is owned and operated
by private corporations, non-profit organizations and other collective entities.
Diagram 1: Internet Hosts per 1,000 Inhabitants ‡ January 2001
In summary, historically the Internet appears to be well described as what The
Economist magazine in July 1995 called “the accidental superhighway.” In its early
stages the Internet was promoted and funded, but not designed, by the U.S. government.
In this sense, the Internet is a product of U.S. science and technology policy. However,
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Raymund Werle
at no point in time did some kind of master-plan exist to guide the Internet’s evolution.
At the time the Internet took off in the U.S. it was not a well-known phenomenon in
Europe. Today, some seven years later, the network of networks is well established in
the member states of the European Union (some 13,7 million hosts in January 2001).
However, the absolute number of hosts as well as the density of hosts per country
(Diagram 1) varies considerably in different parts of Europe. The number of hosts per
1,000 inhabitants is much lower in Southern than in Northern Europe.2
Diagram 2: Internet Penetration in EU and US Homes (%) ‡ October 2000
We find a similar picture if we look at the percentage of households with Internet
access (Diagram 2). Again the Scandinavian member states of the EU and the Netherlands
have the highest penetration rates. A report for the European Commission argues that
“cultural differences, language barriers, income levels and the general lack of IT
infrastructure (such as PCs)” account for the imbalances in Europe. It is also emphasized
that “Europe is generally behind North America in Internet development” (Fischer &
Lorenz, 2000: 6-8). Only 28 % in the European Union, but 48 % of the Americans have
Internet access. Although the gap between Europe and the USA is narrowing Europe
still lags behind. The reasons for this delay date back to inadequate strategic political
action and a lack of appropriate incentives in the 1980s and early 1990s.
2.1 Obstacles to the diffusion of the Internet in Europe
Trying to detect why the Internet has had difficulties in Europe, we find evidence
that the reasons were definitely not a lack of inventiveness. Among the pioneering
technical inventions which facilitated the evolution of the Internet were packet switching,
the TCP/IP protocol stack and what we today call the World Wide Web (WWW). As
one can see in Diagram 3 all these innovations were invented or co-invented in Europe.
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But they were not taken up and developed further on this side of the Atlantic (cf. Abbate,
1999; Berners-Lee and Fischetti, 1999; Norberg and O’Neill, 1996).
Diagram 3: Pioneering Inventions in Computer Networking
While Paul Baran’s ideas concerning Packet switching became one of the technical
foundations of the Internet’s forerunner ARPANET, Donald Davies’ proposals to base a
new network on packet switching was rejected by the British General Post Office, which
at the time was the monopoly operator of the British public telephone network. Davies’
own organization, the NPL, did not have the resources and the authority to build such a
network.
Long before the datagram transmission and routing technology TCP/IP was employed
in the ARPANET, a similar technology was used in an experimental network project in
France called Cyclades. Funded by the French government and invented by Louis Pouzin
and Hubert Zimmerman, Cyclades had been explicitly designed to facilitate
internetworking. TCP/IP reflects the design of Cyclades. Pouzin and Zimmerman
struggled to convince France Telecom, the French public (monopoly)
telecommunications carrier, to employ datagram transmission in the public data network.
However, France Telecom and most other European telephone administrations (PTT)
opted for another, a connection-oriented, technology.
Finally, the foundation of the World Wide Web (WWW), the Hypertext Transfer Protocol
(HTTP), was laid by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau at CERN, the European Particle
Physics Laboratory, in 1990. CERN made the software available on the Internet but did
not regard it as lying within its responsibility to promote further development of this
technology towards broader usage or even commercial viability. In 1993 the basic ideas
were taken up by the National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) at the
University of Illinois, which obviously had no problem integrating WWW-related activities
into its work program although they had not much in common with supercomputer
applications. Marc Andreessen and his colleagues with the NCSA developed a web browser
called Mosaic. In 1994, Andreessen left the NCSA to set up his own company Netscape.
Europe USA
 Packet Switching Donald Davis Paul Baran
 First half of the 1960s National Phisical laboratory, RAND Corporation
United Kingdom
 Datagram Technology Louis Pouzin/ Vinton Cerf/Robert Kahn
 (TCP/IP) Hubert Zimmerman
 First half of the 1970s Cyclade project, France Advanced Research Project
Agency (ARPA)
 World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee/ Marc Andreessen
 (WWW) Robert Cailliau
 Early 1990s European Particle Physics National Center for Super-
computer Applications (NCSA)
Later: NETSCAPE Corporation
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Raymund Werle
2.1.1. Telecommunications monopolies
The first two examples indicate that the institutional opportunity structure of
European telecommunications was unfavorable to these kinds of innovations at the
time they were invented. The British General Post Office and France Telecom enjoyed
a monopoly status. Both organizations may have had good reasons to opt for another
technology but their monopoly position left no room for other organizations to take up
the innovations and develop them into attractive software products.
2.1.2 Failed standards policy
Technical standards played a strategic role in the area of public data networks and in
the European computer industry. The central focus was on OSI standards. OSI, the
Open Systems Interconnection Reference Model, was adopted as an international
standard in 1984. OSI’s seven-layer protocol architecture was meant to provide a
reference system for defining inter-networking protocols and application software similar
to TCP/IP and complementary protocols. It was the product of an engineering program
that was organized mainly in Europe. OSI was to realize the vision of a seamless global
network (Schmidt and Werle, 1998). But European computer vendors, European
governments and, in particular, the Commission of the EU saw the OSI program also as
an instrument of industrial policy to protect the European manufacturers from US
competition. OSI was specifically intended to arrest the widespread deployment of
IBM’s SNA network standard in Europe.
In the second half of the 1980s, also the US government officially declared that it
would switch to OSI with regard to its procurement policy. But it also accepted other
standards as long as OSI products were not available. Many European governments in
contrast were so strictly committed to OSI that they did not tolerate, let alone fund any
“deviant” activity including TCP/IP related research and development. However, the
hopes focusing on OSI were disappointed because it took extremely long until OSI
products appeared on the market ‡ too late for OSI to be regarded as a serious competitor
to TCP/IP. Thus the strong political commitment to OSI is another crucial factor
accounting for the fact that Europe is significantly behind the USA in Internet diffusion
and usage. Hands off standardization policy would have been the more appropriate
European political strategy.
2.1.3 Nationally fragmented industrial policy
Another obstacle to the diffusion of the Internet and comparable network technologies
was the national fragmentation of industrial policy throughout Europe. One of the most
spectacular examples of parochial policy can be found in an area where
telecommunications, data processing and TV broadcasting overlapped. It focused on
what was called “interactive videotex” in the terminology of the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU). In the late 1970s and the early 1980s, almost
simultaneously, telecommunications operators in the United Kingdom, France and
Germany, as well as in the USA, Canada, Japan and a few other countries, planned and
heavily promoted an information service for the public with a potential for professional
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application. Some functions were similar to the Internet ‡ though at the time, of course,
not as sophisticated. The system was called Prestel in the UK, Bildschirmtext in Germany
and Télétel/Minitel in France.
In contrast with the efforts in the other countries, the French undertaking with an
extremely high degree of concerted political and industrial action turned out to be a
success at the national level. Télétel, however, never developed into a transnational or
global system. The other European systems did not even take off within their national
confines. Each country followed the strategy of exporting its own system to other
countries while keeping the national market closed (Schneider et al., 1991). In an open
European market without telecommunications monopolies, interactive videotex might
have developed into a successful European service with national variants on a common
technical platform. In terms of the market, Télétel demonstrated early on that European
consumers were prepared to buy information and transaction services on screen. Before
the Internet started to gain ground in France the Télétel system had more than six million
private and business subscribers and had created many new jobs, directly and indirectly.
2.2 Breaking institutional barriers
The inherited telecommunications regime posed serious obstacles to the diffusion
of the Internet. Since 1987 the European Commission has been pushing to deregulate
and liberalize telecommunications . Only in 1998 have the markets for
telecommunications services and networks been opened to competition in most of the
member states of the EU. As a result, in countries such as Germany the rates have gone
down dramatically, in particular for long-distance and international telephony.
On the side of the EU Commission, telecommunications policy was also driven by
industrial policy concerns. A common market without any internal barriers to trade was
to enhance competitiveness of large European firms (Schneider and Werle, 1990). Also
publicly funded technology programs such as ESPRIT (European Strategic Programme
for Research and Development in Information Technology, 1984) and RACE (Research
and Development in Advanced Communications Technologies in Europe, 1987) were
to promote both communication and information technology and collaboration of
European business firms in these areas. But in effect the European technology programs
of the 1980s mainly created a technology push without an equivalent user-driven demand
pull.
In the early 1990s, therefore, the Commission tried to gear its policy to a model,
which one can call the old Information Society Approach. Emphasis was put on the
society’s need for an efficient and internationally competitive telecommunications
infrastructure, the provision of which was regarded as the responsibility of the public
sector. It has found an expression in the TEN (Trans-European Networks) program,
which originally included an ambitious investment plan, particularly for peripheral
regions, but later was cut back to a number of voluntary agreements among member
states of the EU. This approach was criticized because its attempt to align the projects
to market demand and to involve users often only occurred after the projects were
launched (McKnight and Neumann, 1995). More often than not the critical remarks
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Raymund Werle
explicitly referred European policy makers to the Internet, which for a long time ‡
perhaps too long a time ‡ remained in the background as a kind of hidden agenda
without a visible European commitment to this network. However, with the old
Information Society Approach the Commission managed to convince corporations and
governments to abandon national egotism and parochial policy and to help establish a
supranational liberal telecommunications regime.
2.3 Towards European Internet policy
The European Summit in Lisbon in March 2000 endorsed the Commission’s eEurope
proposal which aims at “bringing every citizen, home and school, every business and
administration into the digital age and online” (COM (99) 687). At last with this
endorsement a period came to an end which was characterized by considerable passive
ignorance of and initially even active resistance to the Internet and the underlying TCP/
IP protocol technology. The EU realized the growing significance of this network and
the Internet was acknowledged to be the principal infrastructure for electronic
communications (COM (98) 111).
The recent effort to establish a .eu Internet Top-Level Domain (TLD) complementary
to the national TLDs is more than just a symbolic action. It is to signal Europe’s presence
in a network whose technical specifications, functions and services have to a considerable
degree been shaped by the users and by small firms ‡ a striking difference to the
traditional telecommunications networks.3  From this angle the .eu-effort relates to other
activities geared at increasing user involvement, such as the Information Society
Technologies (IST) program, which provides funds for research, development and
demonstration projects towards a “User-friendly information society”.4
A series of regulatory actions aimed at enabling or accelerating electronic commerce
fits into this picture. They include digital signature, encryption, intellectual property and
privacy issues. None of these regulatory problems is trivial, and it is also an open question
whether EU-regulation, self-regulation, public-private co-regulation or no regulation at
all turns out to be most appropriate. Adequate answers require a broader participation of
those involved in the provision and use of the Internet. This involvement is growing. We
observe that in the EU an Internet policy domain is evolving which may provide appropriate
collective responses to the “regulatory needs” of electronic commerce and other Internet
areas including those which touch upon cultural values. This development is to be
supported. The stability and leverage of a European Internet policy domain will grow first
and foremost to the extent that barriers to access to the Internet are removed.
There can be no doubt that the high cost of Internet usage is still a significant barrier
to access. Most effective in terms of cost reduction has been the deregulation and
liberalization of telecommunications in Europe. Meanwhile some access providers offer
Internet users flat rates instead of charging for time. If Internet usage is to be increased
within a relatively short period of time and if a “digital divide” in Europe is to be
avoided, the EU as well as national public policy will also have to address other barriers
to entry to the Internet such as computer illiteracy and lack of public access to the
network in peripheral regions. In the USA we find a series of public and private initiatives
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to promote Internet access. They aim at connecting all schools and libraries to the Internet
and providing training and technical support. Some of the American efforts are copied
others are debated by the Europeans. They embody elements of a new Information
Society Approach which is not only passively open to the Internet but actively takes up
the needs, preferences and interests articulated by the actors in the European Internet
policy domain. In the new approach the user plays a more prominent and active role
than in the earlier European efforts.
2.4 Lessons to be learnt concerning industrial policy
and technology policy
The analysis of the development of the Internet leads to several policy recommen-
dations concerning technology policy and industrial policy.
1. The Internet was promoted and funded but not designed by the U.S. government.
Large technical systems such as the Internet cannot be put in place solely by
governments or companies.
2. Governments should neither pick the winners in a technology race ‡ what should be
left to the market ‡ nor should they block the diffusion of a competing technology.
3. The TCP/IP protocol stack developed in a niche where it was sheltered from market
selection for many years. This suggests that it may be beneficial to create and protect
niches in order to keep options for technological development open and prevent
premature “lock in” of incumbent technologies.
4. Public support for research on variant technologies and a continued widening of
technical options is to concentrate on the development and further enhancement of
technical infrastructures rather than specific technology based services.
5. No single technical solution will be universally optimal. Particularly for software
based technologies such as the Internet the involvement of the heterogeneous user
community remains a vitally important source of innovation. Governments are well
advised to support user involvement.
3. Regulating the Internet?
Regulatory policy concerning the Internet addresses diverse policy areas. In the
EU, for instance, a series of regulatory actions aim at enabling or accelerating electronic
commerce. They include, as already mentioned, digital signature, encryption, intellectual
property and privacy issues. I am going to focus on those regulatory issues which in a
very general sense are linked to the content transmitted via the net and which are triggered
by the global extension of the Internet.5  It is often argued that the Internet affects social
values and norms and shapes culture. While the early Internet was very much a U.S.
American network it has recently achieved a “critical mass” of users in many countries
(Diagram 1 and 2 above). As a result local cultures in different regions of the world
have come into closer contact with one another and with the culture being attributed to
and carried by the Internet. The cultural consequences of the Internet’s globalization
may or may not stimulate regulatory action by national or local governments.
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Raymund Werle
The hopes and fears concerning the Internet’s impacts are tempered by the
acknowledgement that they ‡ for the time being ‡ focus on the technology’s potential
rather than its actual usage. The contingent nature of the Internet suggests that (at least
some) people have a choice when using the net whether they want to block out
information and values that do not “fit” with their own beliefs and norms or whether
they want to experience these “foreign cultures” (cf. Shapiro, 1999). The window of
opportunity for such a choice narrows to the extent that the Internet matures. Particular
features of the systems’ software components or of certain conventions among network
users become “locked-in.” But neither the technological nor the socio-cultural features
which the system has assumed at a certain point of time determine its future development.
Given these reservations, technology does shape culture, which is to be understood
here as a set of collective social values and norms and the respective individual value
commitments and moral evaluations.
3.1 The early Internet culture
The Internet has developed into virtually the only public global computer network
open to corporate and private use. The original engineering concepts underlying this
network of networks were, as was already mentioned above (section 2.1.), invented in
projects funded and coordinated by ARPA. ARPANET linked the nodes of a distributed,
university-based community of research contractors engaged on ARPA’s programs. It
was a research rather than a military network and it provided as much a test-bed for
experiments in data switching and transmission as it facilitated communication among
the research community.
The TCP/IP protocol stack as the central interconnection standard provided a uniform
addressing scheme and transparent transmission of packets of data between the end
nodes, but left all other network functionality to be implemented in these nodes and not
in the infrastructure of the network. The in this respect “stupid” network, as the Internet
has been called recently, has departed radically from legacy networks of voice and data
communication (Isenberg, 1997). No single network operator controls the network of
networks which in an important sense constitutes an “unmanaged” system. In 1982/83,
TCP/IP became the official standard of ARPANET.
Another piece of history of technology has to be added in order to gain an adequate
understanding of the early Internet culture. It relates to the Unix portable operating
system which was invented in the Bell Labs of the U.S. telephone giant AT&T and
developed further by computer scientists at Berkeley University. Here it was modified
(in the early 1980s) to be used for computer networking, and the protocol stack TCP/IP
was built on top of it. Unix was free “open source” software developed collaboratively
outside the commercial world. At the time open source software was the domain of
“hackers” ‡ computer enthusiasts for whom programming is an expression of identity
(Holtgrewe and Werle, 2001). The central normative orientations of hacker culture are
the freedom of information and knowledge, universal accessibility of technology, and a
commitment to technological excellence and aesthetics (“elegant” code).
With the “fusion” of TCP/IP and Unix the community of scientists and engineers,
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most of them involved in research and development in universities and public and private
research and development organizations, intermingled with the hackers. This created a
cultural ambience that together with the heterogeneous technical context resulted in a
specific technical architecture and a corresponding set of cultural values which are
sketched in Diagram 4 (Werle, 2001c).
Diagram 4: Correspondence of Internet and culture
On the technical side we have a decentralized network structure requiring minimal
central coordination. The technical autonomy of each single network has remained
unaffected. Central parts of the Internet are based on open source and public domain
software. The transparent “end to end” nature of the Internet provides for a great variety
of technical options. The technical structure corresponds with cultural values such as
individualism, freedom and self responsibility and attitudes of mistrust towards
bureaucracies and hierarchies. Autonomy and heterogeneity are as highly respected as
are the norms of creativity, cooperation and participation which are seen to promote
innovativeness.
These technical and cultural elements have their early roots in the era of ARPANET
and open source Unix. They developed further and were strengthened after the National
Science Foundation launched its TCP/IP based NSFNET ‡ the backbone of the early
American research and education Internet. The technical architecture of the Internet
made it comparatively easy to connect ever more networks to the Internet which in its
early years first of all attracted other research and education networks. Among these
networks was the well known Unix (UUCP) based USENET. As a system of newsgroups
(bulletin boards), USENET was originally designed to provide a forum for Unix users
to discuss their problems and to assist each other in using this operating system. Very
soon it grew into a platform for a broad variety of newsgroups including anti-authoritarian
student groups and hacker communities (Hauben and Hauben, 1997). USENET relied
on self-organization and also on self-restraint. Many USENET rules and norms gave
rise to the informal code of conduct for Internet users sometimes referred to as Netiquette.
It includes rules such as “never disturb the flow of information” and “every user has the
right to say anything and to ignore anything.” Such rules can be viewed as natural
extensions of fundamental values of American society, such as freedom of speech and
free flow of information which will be addressed in the next section.
 Elements of the tehnical arhitecture Corresponding cultural values
 • Decentralized network structures • Individualism, freedom, self-responsibility
 • Minimal central coordination • Mistrust towards bureaucracies
   and hierarchies
 • Tehnical autonomy of networks • Respect for autonomy and heterogeneity
    soft integration
 • Open source software, public • Creativity, cooperation, active participation
    domain software
 • Great variety of tehnical options • Innovativeness
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Raymund Werle
The Internet’s history shows that it evolved in a cultural context that was shaped by the
communities of designers and users whose members were scientists and engineers.
Their enthusiasms for unrestricted exploration and experimentation fused with the
political milieu of anti-authoritarianism of the computer hacker communities that
emerged in the context of open source software development. The technical design of
the initial Internet embedded, reflected and reinforced these cultural elements.
3.2 Towards a global Internet and a global culture?
It was the technical architecture of the early Internet, the openness and connectivity
it provided, combined with its cultural attractiveness that spawned its growth. The
technical ease with which the Internet’s reach could be extended into many diverse
cultural settings provided incentives and exerted pressures towards cultural change.
This has been realized and debated for some time. Early on the tendency has prevailed
to regard the increasing globalization of the Internet and in particular its global
commercial use as a threat to local cultural diversity and a driving force towards
establishing a mono-cultural world.6  It has triggered ‡ as a counter-reaction ‡ efforts to
control the use of the Internet and the content which is communicated via the net. I will
not go into details concerning the control of the Internet but rather concentrate on the
question whether the dynamics that unfolded as a consequence of the interdependence
of technology and culture have resulted in some kind of cultural mega-trend, being a
trend towards either cultural globalization, or cultural convergence or cultural
pluralization.
3.2.1 Cultural globalization
As the Internet has developed into a global network it may sound like a truism that
it will potentially trigger cultural globalization. Individuals embedded in a local culture,
indeed, come into contact with new cultural elements when they enter the Internet as
users. They are afforded the opportunity to remain a member of their original cultural
groups and at the same time share the cultural values of the Internet. These values will
be global to the extent that the Internet is global if they are shared by the majority of
users. The technical features of the Internet create great tolerance for diversity. But
without adherence to the kinds of quasi-universal values represented by the cultural
elements included in Diagram 4 (above) and to the norms of the Netiquette, it might be
difficult to communicate, interact and associate in the open and relatively unregulated
cyberspace. The globalized culture of the Internet is the insulated culture of cyberspace
which allows “freedom without anarchy, control without government, consensus without
power” (Lessig, 1999: 4).
More often than not observers talk about this culture of cyberspace as a culture of
the past which has never more than marginally affected “real world” culture. The “Netizen
culture”, it is argued, has contributed in a very significant way to the growth of the
Internet, but it represents no more than a historical chapter in its development. With the
Internet’s diversification all kinds of social groups and commercial firms have entered
the network which has changed the character of cyberspace. If there has ever been a
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Lessons learnt from the Internet. Hands off, hands on, or what role of public policy in Europe?
homogeneous, cohesive and collegial Internet community it does not exist or at least
does not prevail anymore (cf. Gattiker 2001). But these changes have not done away
with the Internet’s fundamental characteristics such as decentralization, user involvement,
openness and self-organization and the corresponding elements of a culture of
cyberspace. The cultural foundation of cyberspace which evolved at the time when the
Internet was a research and education network appears as an “old cultural layer” but it
has not (yet) disappeared (Helmers, Hoffmann and Hofmann, 1998: chapter 1). The
cultural values are shared and upheld by the Internet pioneers and by many technical
people in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) which comprises a couple of
thousand volunteers developing technical standards and guiding the technical
development of the Internet. In 1995, when the Internet backbone was decommissioned
by the National Science Foundation and “privatized” and when it became obvious that
the Internet would develop into a global network the IETF issued a memo including
“Netiquette Guidelines” to help new users to become familiar with the Internet culture.
It is acknowledged in this memo that “in the past, the population of people using the
Internet had ‘grown up’ with the Internet, were technically minded, and understood the
nature of the transport and the protocols” while “today, the community of Internet users
includes people who are new to the environment. These ‘Newbies’ are unfamiliar with
the culture.” They would not need to know about transport and protocols but were to be
brought into the Internet culture quickly; and the memo offers a minimum set of behaviors
which is recommended (Hambridge, 1995, RFC 1855).
The appearance of formal instructions such as the “Netiquette Guidelines” indicates
that it has become increasingly difficult to keep the culture of cyberspace alive let alone
convincing the majority of Internet users to share this culture (cf. Leib and Werle, 1998).
Thus, it appears to be highly unlikely that a globalization of the culture of cyberspace
will be a dominant cultural trend.
3.2.2 Cultural convergence
The notion of cultural convergence refers to a “real world” cultural phenomenon
and not to the culture of cyberspace. It suggests that the Internet promotes a specific
“real world” culture towards which other cultures converge. We have observed such
tendencies in the few decades that television has been pervasive worldwide ‡
promulgating a set of homogeneous norms of popular culture in many regions of the
world. With the Internet the suggestion of cultural convergence is often associated with
a reduction of local diversity and the emergence of a global mono-culture. It carries the
specter of cultural hegemony ‡ the concern of many that the architecture and software
of the Internet so strongly reflects the language, values, and interests of the United
States that other cultures will be either disadvantaged or displaced as this network exerts
an ever-increasing influence not only on the language of commerce and discourse, but
also on community life, business style, education, and entertainment. Those who hold
this view point to the fact that the Internet originated in the United States and is deeply
entrenched in the U.S. culture. Although the Internet is currently growing faster among
non-native English speakers than in the English speaking world still 70 percent or more
76 Druæboslovne razprave, XVIII (2002), 40: 63-82
Raymund Werle
of all Internet content is in English (Frieden, 2000). The predominance of English, the
preoccupation of most providers with the U.S. political climate and also parts of the
traditional culture of cyberspace all are seen to contribute to this cultural hegemony.
In fact, when one group or nation comprises a significant, even dominant fraction of
the users, then the hardware and software and the preponderance of the information
available on the network are likely to reflect the interests and culture of that group. The
language used on web sites is clearly one measure of the extent of this kind of dominance.
A very large fraction of all web sites use English even if the providers are located in
non-English speaking countries. There is some evidence that English as the language
of the early Internet benefited from the “first mover advantage” of significant content
in English which encouraged non-English speakers to use English language web sites
(Gandal and Shapiro, 2001). To the extent that language accounts for the hegemony of
U.S. culture this hegemony has emerged in processes similar to bandwagon effects in
high-technology markets and it has not been imposed.
In a world of networked communication, language takes on an importance even greater
than that in broadcast or entertainment media because it affects not only how well one can
understand what is said or written, but also how effectively one can communicate. Thus
the requirement that one communicate in an unfamiliar language can be regarded as,
effectively, a restriction on freedom of speech. The English language in that sense exerts
soft pressure on those who have difficulties with foreign languages to bear the burden
of learning English. Those who raise the issue of cultural hegemony point out that the
problem could go even deeper. With English speakers dominating the network
population, market considerations dictate that a large fraction of the software written
for use in conjunction with networks will also be developed in English. At present, for
example, it is estimated that American companies develop about 80% of packaged software.
Thus English is not only the language of communication but also that of programming.
With the prevalence of one language and culture driving both the creation of and the
market for operating systems, databases, digital music, advertising, and the range of
Internet services, the content available on the Internet will primarily reflect that one
culture. To the extent that the Internet, through its efficiency and ubiquity, begins to
dominate the social and intellectual life of a nation, this would be tantamount to cultural
hegemony. If bandwagon effects and technological path dependence reinforce this
pattern, the hegemony could be long lasting and to a certain degree convergence on
U.S. culture appears to be inevitable.
The question then is, will convergence turn out to be the cultural mega-trend or
does the Internet represent a technology that is sufficiently flexible to be re-constructed
and modified in a way to adequately serve the values of non-English speaking societies,
and are “minority cultures” stable enough to resist hegemonic pressure.
3.2.3 Cultural pluralization
Cultural change is evolutionary change. Often it is unintended, and it usually cannot
be imposed politically. Although the U.S. culture dominates the Internet users can be
exposed to very different cultures. The exposure is an inherent component of the broad
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Lessons learnt from the Internet. Hands off, hands on, or what role of public policy in Europe?
range of activities and information exchanges that occur through the Internet. To a
great extent, the “foreign” cultures are experienced rather than merely observed. One
does not need to accept these new values or outlooks in their entirety, but to the extent
that they appear unfamiliar or “foreign” they create awareness of one’s own cultural
embeddedness. This awareness in a Durkheimian sense reflects and underpins rather
than replaces local cultural values. Meeting with an unfamiliar culture may also give
way to a more nuanced and relative perspective. Furthermore, space for new, culturally
localized content is virtually unlimited; it can and will be added as the penetration of
the Internet continues. Taken together these developments may trigger cultural plurality.
Moreover, the use of the Internet can help to preserve and transmit language and
culture of people who migrated from the less developed to the developed world. In a de
facto sense, language zones have already evolved in many parts of the developed world
(cf. Gandal and Shapiro, 2001). Most German, French, and Japanese computer and
Internet users can conduct most of their day to day activities in their native languages.
Also some content providers have already translated information for local usage. Similar
developments can be observed with the language of cultural minorities. The Internet
has made it rather easy to maintain close connections across long distances which
supports cultural diversity. As the locality as a cultural glue has lost significance many
territorially scattered cultural minorities reach a “critical mass” of interaction and
transaction partners via the Internet which helps to establish cultural identity and preserve
plurality (cf. Markus, 1987). Technical developments foster these different forms of
cultural differentiation. Service providers offer customized access and search capabilities
which help users to focus their attention on content which they prefer and screen out
senders and content which do not conform to their value commitments. Cultural
minorities can protect themselves from being exposed to a hegemonic culture by setting
up “intranets” sheltered by electronic “firewalls” from the rest of the Internet.
I have argued that cultural change is evolutionary in nature and usually cannot be
imposed by political means. If, however, cultural values, in particular values of the
political culture, are grounded in a country’s legal system some political or judicial
action may be required to alter these values. There are various instances suggesting that
the expansion of the Internet has brought about external political pressure towards
changing legal rules with a high normative or cultural significance. But in many cases
countries unwilling to compromise fundamental values withstood these pressures. Take
for example free speech and the tension concerning the interpretation of this value
between the United States and Germany, two culturally comparatively similar countries.
For both countries, freedom of speech is an important value, so important that it is
protected explicitly by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and by Article 5 of
the German Basic Law. The First Amendment has been interpreted very broadly by the
U.S. courts. They give the value of free speech more weight than essentially any other
value. Free speech also covers so called hate speech defined as the willful, public
expression or promotion of hatred towards any segment of society distinguished by
specific characteristics such as color, race, religion or ethnic origin. Attempts in the
United States to legally proscribe hate speech have invariably failed, struck down by
78 Druæboslovne razprave, XVIII (2002), 40: 63-82
Raymund Werle
the Supreme Court. Even though the U.S. is “clearly outside the international mainstream
in the area of free speech” legal changes to restrict free speech are not likely to happen
any time soon (Biegel, 2001: 351). Moreover, given the current dominance of the U.S.
culture in the Internet other nations are forced to reconsider their own more restrictive
rules and may adapt them to the U.S. norms.
In contrast with the United States the German legal system generally penalizes hate
speech. But the Internet which facilitates easy cross border communication has made it
possible that pamphlets using hate speech can be transmitted from an American source
to Germany and circulated there. German prosecutors have no leverage to take action
against U.S. sources of hate speech. This adds to the difficulties every government
already faces “at home” as to where the most practical point is to control and intervene
into Internet communication. Despite these considerable difficulties governments do
not completely lose control (cf. Lessig, 1999; Shapiro, 1999). This holds also true for
the German government which is unwilling to compromise hate speech legislation.
With the laws in the United States and Germany as different as they are in this case,
and with the strong consensus and deep, principled conviction that exists in each country
for its own law concerning free speech, it is easy to see that the differences will inevitably
lead and have already lead to conflicts. A fundamental dimension of these conflicts
relates to the question how much government intervention is needed given the availability
to users of technical means to screen out and shelter themselves from content which
they want to avoid. Filtering technology such as the Platform for Internet Content
Selection (PICS) developed by the World Wide Web Consortium which provides a kind
of content labeling infrastructure for the Internet enables users to selectively block
content. PICS relies on content rating and labeling by Internet Content Providers, third
parties such as government agencies or directly by the users (Resnick and Miller, 1996;
<http://www.w3.org/PICS/>). This solution is compatible with the American political
culture of preferring (industry) self-regulation to government regulation and with the
old Internet culture and its strong reliance on self-determination of individuals who
have the necessary technical expertise to protect themselves from harmful content in
the net. As filtering technologies usually do not eliminate content from the Internet but
only control access to or diffusion of content in the net they are, in principle, also
compatible with cultural pluralism.
Technology, in this case, appears to be neutral with respect to cultural developments.
Thus, it is unlikely that the principles of free speech will converge towards the U.S.
culture and also the pressure to harmonize laws concerning hate speech remains low.
Cultural pluralism will be preserved.
3.3. Towards soft regulation
The analysis of the effects of the Internet on culture concentrated on rather general
aspects. This rules out to provide substantive policy recommendations. A few rather
formal suggestions, however, follow from the foregoing. They point into the direction
of enabling rather than restrictive regulation.
79Druæboslovne razprave, XVIII (2002), 40: 63-82
Lessons learnt from the Internet. Hands off, hands on, or what role of public policy in Europe?
1. The Internet is only one among a variety of electronic communication media,
including TV, which affect culture. If policy makers believe that regulatory action is
necessary they should define what outcomes are desirable and undesirable and
regulate all media and not just the Internet.
2. Governments should seek to reinforce the self-coordinating and self-regulating
dynamics of the Internet. But it is also required to accommodate new forms of
hybrid public-private international regulatory regimes, in particular for small
countries because they do not have the capacity to control significant fractions of
the global Internet.
3. Besides a certain tendency towards cultural convergence the Internet also facilitates
cultural heterogeneity and pluralism. If governments want to preserve national
cultural values, they are well advised to promote access to the Internet through
removing barriers to entry, such as educational, financial and regulatory obstacles.
4. Accessibility in terms of affordability, usability and ubiquity of the Internet will
encourage “minorities” to establish their communities in the Internet and reinforce
their value identity. Thus, universal access and not universal governmental control
will be the best way to prevent global convergence towards cultural uniformity.
Notes
1. This section is based on Werle, 2001b and on David and Werle, 2000. For more information
about the author’s Internet related research, please visit < http://www.mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de/
internet/>.
2. Slovenia was added in Diagram 1. It is not (yet) a member of the EU.
3. Recent developments in the area of backbone and service provision indicate that similar to
the electronic media and the telecommunications industry big Internet players have emerged.
We observe a process of “consolidation”, which started before the “new economy” bubble
imploded. The likely consequences and public policy implications are discussed under the
heading “Balkanization” and “the end of End-to-End” (cf Frieden, 1998; Kende, 2000; Clark
and Blumenthal, 2000; CSTB, 2001; David, 2001; Lessig, 2001).
4. The IST program (1998‡2002) is part of the Fifth Framework Programme. It has an initial
budget of 3.6 billion EURO. See <http://www.cordis.lu/ist/home.html>
5. This analysis is based on background material and a report on “Global Networks and Local
Values” commissioned and put together by an American German committee of experts from
different disciplines under the auspices of the US National Research Council (NRC) and its
Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) (Committee, 2002; Engel and
Keller (eds.), 2000a; 2000b). The author is a member of the committee.
6. However, these propositions must be seen as an attractive starting point to stimulate the
discussions and not as the result of the debates. See, for example, the report of an interna-
tional “Working Group on Content and Cultural Values” (Kleeman, 1999) or chapter 4 of the
report of the European “Forum Information Society” (Forum, 2001) and also as an early
contribution CSTB, 1994.
80 Druæboslovne razprave, XVIII (2002), 40: 63-82
Raymund Werle
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Avtorjev naslov:
Dr. Raymund Werle
Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung
(Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies)
Paulstr. 3, D-50676 Köln, Germany
e.mail: Werle@mpi-fg-koeln.mpg.de
Rokopis prejet februarja 2002, dokonËno sprejet aprila 2002. Po mnenju uredniπtva
 je Ëlanek uvrπËen v kategorijo: vabljeno predavanja na znanstvenem sreËanju
(Letno sreËanje slovenskih sociologov, “Socioloπki
vidiki novih tehnologij”, Portoroæ, 25. do 27. oktober, 2001))