Whimsley

The Anarchist in the Library

The Anarchist in the Library, Siva Vaidhyanathan, Basic Books 2004.

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Siva Vaidhyanathan (see here and here) sees the central problem of the Internet and of society as a whole, as the tension between decentralization/freedom/anarchy and centralization/control/oligarchy.

The great challenge in the new century is to mediate between two divergent trends -- anarchy and oligarchy. In the war between distribution and concentration of information, the issues and conflicts seem intractable. [xvii]

In the world of the Internet, at least in the years leading up to 2004 when the book was published, these poles of anarchy and oligarchy manifest themselves technologically. Anarchy is the "ideology of peer-to-peer systems" such as the file-sharing and media-sharing networks that have followed Napster; it is characterized by a fluid, decentralized architecture in which "all the 'thinking'.. happens at the end point" and in which there is "no discernible command-and-control system" [17]. On the other side, digital rights management is the technology of oligarchy, imposing controls on what you can and cannot do with the software and media that you buy (or, increasingly, license). I don't usually buy the technology-determines-behaviour line, but his discussion of what it means for a technology to "have an ideology" is the best I've read, and is well illustrated by the distinction between technologies that operate on the basis of protocols (handshakes, conventions) and those that work on the basis of controls.

When I first picked up this book (from my library) I assumed that the author was another techno-utopian and that he is firmly on the side of freedom and anarchy over control and oligarchy (as who but the most unromantic of us could not be)? Not unreasonable, given chapter titles like Hacking the Currency and The Peer-to-Peer Revolution and the Future of Music, but wrong. In fact, although his heart is with the anarchists, Siva Vaidhyanathan is best described as a librarian. Not as in somebody who works in a library, but as in someone who is a fan of libraries:

Librarians should be our heroes. The library is not just functionally important to communities all over the world; it embodies Enlightenment values in the best sense. A library is a temple devoted to the antielitist notion that knowledge should be cheap if not free -- doors should be open. Supporting libraries -- monetarily, spiritually, intellectually, and legally -- is one of the best things we can do for the life we hope to build for the rest of the century. [Page 119]

Libraries seem anachronistic -- if they did not already exist, they could not be created now (in North America anyway) -- and yet they are among the most popular of institutions. People make jokes (deserved or not) about the service of the post office, the inflexibility of government, and the so on, but no one (well, apart from Seinfeld) pokes fun at libraries. Even some libertarians, who see any path laid by the state as a road to serfdom, love libraries. Our local libraries are always busy, and after a bad patch some time ago appear to be thriving with their mix of Internet access, DVD and CD rentals and, of course, loads of books. The popularity of the library surely comes from its nature as patron-focused but not commercial (no "consumers" here) and state sponsored but not monopolistic. It is populist and yet highbrow.

In the end Vaidhyanathan takes a dialectical stance and rejects both anarchy and oligarchy in favour of the library - a civic, noncommercial, open and public model. I didn't see this coming until well into the book, which after the first couple of chapters is more a set of essays around a common topic than a sequential argument. I thought he was heading towards one more simplistic agenda ("information wants to be free" anyone?) but he pulls himself back from the brink and ends up writing [185] "The heart of my argument in this book is a call for modesty and patience" and this:

The urge to break heads, to do the bidding of oligarchy by any means necessary is intimately linked to specters of anarchy. The urge towards anarchy depends on oligarchic abuses. Each creates the conditions that allow the other to thrive. The question for us in the twenty--first century should not be choosing anarchy or oligarchy by constructing and maintaining systems that discourage both. Anarchy is a reaction, not a vision or solution that can produce the best society and the best human future.  [187]

One of the reasons he pulls back is a debate with Randy Cohen of the New York Times, which he describes with admirable honesty [63].

"The history of popular culture is a continuous struggle on the artists' part not to get robbed... it seems to me that what MP3 [digital music] does is democratize the ability to rip off an artist," Cohen wrote to me. "And what's particularly galling is that you not only want to do it, you want to be praised as a social progressive when you do."
He got me. That's my schtick. By the guiding principles Cohen deployed in our peer-to-peer debate, I had no escape. He considered copyright to be an artists' right and concern; I consider the chief player in the copyright system to be the corporation.

The artists' struggle continues. The commercial oligarchs do whatever they can to avoid paying artists, as the Hollywood writers' strike showed and as recent press about royalty awards not being passed on to artists makes clear. But the free-use techno-anarchists exploit artists too. Greatest Living Englishman Billy Bragg writes in the New York Times about how he advised Michael Birch, the founder of social networking site Bebo.com, on how to handle artistic content on the site (via Nicholas Carr). Bragg was angry that while artists contributed to the site, Michael Birch sold it to AOL for $850million and the artists got nothing. Here is part of his op-ed:

He was hoping to expand his business by hosting music and wanted my advice on how to construct an artist-centered environment where musicians could post original songs without fear of losing control over their work. Following our talks, Mr. Birch told the press that he wanted Bebo to be a site that worked for artists and held their interests first and foremost.

In our discussions, we largely ignored the elephant in the room: the issue of whether he ought to consider paying some kind of royalties to the artists. After all, wasn’t he using their music to draw members — and advertising — to his business? Social-networking sites like Bebo argue that they have no money to distribute — their value is their membership. Well, last week Michael Birch realized the value of his membership. I’m sure he’ll be rewarding those technicians and accountants who helped him achieve this success. Perhaps he should also consider the contribution of his artists.

The musicians who posted their work on Bebo.com are no different from investors in a start-up enterprise. Their investment is the content provided for free while the site has no liquid assets. Now that the business has reaped huge benefits, surely they deserve a dividend...

If young musicians are to have a chance of enjoying a fruitful career, then we need to establish the principle of artists’ rights throughout the Internet — and we need to do it now.

Instead of cheering for one side or the other, Vidhyanathan's book foresees and acknowledges both these problems. And problems they are. He does not offer clear or simple solutions, but he points us thoughtfully in the right direction, and that's a very valuable contribution. So I definitely recommend the book, even though I wish it were a bit less scattered than it is (and that it had a better index). It's an exploration, not a recipe for the future, and has the rough edges that come with that territory, but there is a lot of food for thought in the pages.

The Anarchist in the Library, written in 2004, is already a bit outdated. Not the author's fault of course, but it is already odd to read a book about the Internet that has no mention of Wikipedia and no index entry for Google. These recent developments have changed the nature of the Internet. Peer to peer networks are still around, but I don't think they are the defining feature of the Internet. If we think of music we think of iTunes, not Napster; if we think of books we think of Amazon; if we think of social networks we think of Facebook and MySpace. None of these are peer-to-peer: they are centralized technologies built on the basis of controls, not protocols. Software architecture is often described as a stack, and while the low-level plumbing of the Internet remains a peer to peer protocol, the higher levels of the stack are "platforms" or client-server models of request and response. The techno-capitalist digirati have moved happily onto such platforms, and the centralization of ownership that they carry with them. In the era of utility computing, peer-to-peer networks appear to be on the wane.

There is one other place in which I think Vaidhyanathan gets it wrong. He underestimates the role of information asymmetries and transaction costs. He says that "Major record labels perform four basic tasks: production, distribution, price fixing, and gatekeeping" [48]. But there is a fifth, which is promotion. Simply putting a record on the Internet is hardly more effective than playing your music on your front lawn - the problems of finding something no one knows exists are far greater than he credits. One major function of libraries, after all, is to match readers and books ("Every reader his/her book" in one of Ranganathan's five laws of library science -- thanks John). When Vaidhyanathan tells a journalist that African musicians don't need record companies because "The artists can do it all themselves for less than $10,000" he is naive. Billy Bragg's friends on Bebo did the same, and it got them nowhere. Others have proclaimed this line before - for example Chris Anderson in my least favourite book talks about the band Birdmonster who eschewed labels

Label were calling with deals, but Birdmonster turned the offers down. As [lead singer Peter] Arcuni put it, “We’re not anti-label in principle, but the numbers (risk vs. reward) didn’t add up.”

A music label exists primarily to fulfill four functions: 1) talent scouting; 2) financing (the advances bands get to pay for their studio time is like seed capital invested by a venture capitalist); 3) distribution; 4) marketing.

From Birdmonster’s perspective, they didn’t need that.

Well, apparently they do now. The problem is that so much of culture is governed by asymmetric information, information cascades, and network effects. You don't know what a book is going to be like until you buy it, so simply knowledge of the existence of a book is insufficient - you need recommendations and reliable ones at that. I've gone on about this in various ways here and here and here. His neglect of these forces is one of the reasons I thought he was heading down the techno-utopian path, but as I say he ends up, thankfully, rejecting the "California Ideology" [155] in favour of something less catchy, less simple, but more hopeful.

Long Tail of News? Actually No.

Second in a series.

Ironically, Wired points to a report by the (American) Project for Excellence in Journalism on The State of the (American) News Media 2008. Here is a little excerpt from the Executive Summary.

The state of the American news media in 2008 is more troubled than a year ago.
And the problems, increasingly, appear to be different than many experts have predicted.
Critics have tended to see technology democratizing the media and traditional journalism in decline. Audiences, they say, are fragmenting across new information sources, breaking the grip of media elites. Some people even advocate the notion of “The Long Tail,” the idea that, with the Web’s infinite potential for depth, millions of niche markets could be bigger than the old mass market dominated by large companies and producers.1
The reality, increasingly, appears more complex. Looking closely, a clear case for democratization is harder to make. Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old-media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before. Online, for instance, the top 10 news Web sites, drawing mostly from old brands, are more of an oligarchy, commanding a larger share of audience than they did in the legacy media. The verdict on citizen media for now suggests limitations. And research shows blogs and public affairs Web sites attract a smaller audience than expected and are produced by people with even more elite backgrounds than journalists.

Mr. Google's Guidebook

Whimsley Hall is now strewn, like Miss Haversham's house, with cobwebs and dust. Most visitors no longer come in by the front door to take a tour. Instead, Mr. Google (a travel agent who doubles as our butler) directs them straight down to the basement where the family archives are kept and tells them to look at one particular historical document called The Netflix Prize: 300 Days Later. They  read this and then they walk right out.

I shouldn't complain. It's nice that they visit at all - much better than rattling around here by myself - so I should be very grateful to Mr. Google for bringing these people to visit, but it does leave me wondering why he always sends them to look at this same corner of the house. I have a few other items lying around that I think are just as pretty but Mr. Google takes the visitors right by them without so much as a glance.

So when he brought me the sherry decanter the other day I challenged him on it. I thought it was an innocent enough question to ask of one's butler. Little did I realize the terrifying journey I was embarking on with that one question. He explained that when you ask him a question he "understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want." That sounded a little presumptuous so I asked him how he could be so confident in his understanding and he replied, rather stiffly if you ask me, "If I did not give you exactly what you wanted then you wouldn't have asked me in the first place would you?" There was something about the slow, pronounced way he articulated this that made me feel like Wooster to his Jeeves so I didn't pursue the topic, fearing he would get upset. I wouldn't want him to leave; it's so hard to find good help nowadays.

As I sipped my sherry I realized that I don't really understand the man. For a butler and travel agent he seems remarkably well-to-do, and yet when I ask why he works so hard (I happen to know he is butler at several other houses in the county as well as mine) he insists he is only interested in helping people and points to his family motto, which he keeps on a little card that he brandishes frequently. "Don't be evil", it says.

Still, after a few glasses I still felt a little bolshie over Mr. Google's tone and I remembered that some months previous he had actually given me a copy of his biography (he is a most talented individual, I grant). He had told me it was an authorized volume with interviews and selections of his personal correspondence. I hadn't paid much attention to it at the time, but now I took a candle, wandered over to the west wing of Whimsley Hall, and climbed the stone staircase to the very top, where the library is. There I found the biography already lying on a table by the window, which was strange because I had never taken it off the shelf before, and as I sat down to read I realized that it does indeed tell me all about our Mr Google.

Was I surprised! The biography was a revelation. I don't get out often these days (it's the gout) and I am now woefully out of touch, but it turns out that there is more to Mr. Google than I ever dreamed. He is responsible for an astonishingly popular free publication called Mr. Google's Guidebook. It's one of the most remarkable books you'll ever read - if you open it twice you never see quite the same page. In fact the only book I've ever heard of to match it is a limited edition print called "The Book of Sand" that my friend Mr. Borges had in his library before he went mad.

Here is how Mr. Google's Guidebook works.

A long time ago, people used signposts to get where they wanted to go. Each signpost was a little underlined phrase in blue that took you to a new place. People would wander all over the place, hopping from one place to another, looking at signposts to see where to go next. These signposts made a sort of map. The complete map of the world is a very big and complicated thing of course, but here is a little piece of it (thanks to this article).

Mr. Google realized that most people don't really want maps, they want guidebooks. And he also realized how he could use those signposts to build a good guidebook. When someone puts up a signpost it shows that they feel this destination is a place worth going to. Mr. Google's Guidebook is very well indexed, so when you look up something like "I would like to visit a peaceful country retreat" it takes you to a page of recommendations. To generate these recommendations Mr. Google counted all the signposts that pointed to peaceful country retreats and pick those retreats that most signposts pointed to. "Here", he would say, "I recommend you go to Harburn House, or Green Mountain Bed and Breakfast". Mr. Google's Guidebook became something of a sensation. Once it was established, he put in a few advertisements alongside each question and made a pretty penny from it.

As I read further, a storm rose up in the west. The candle flickered as the wind came in through the ill-fitting windows. Maybe this forbidding atmosphere explains why the more I read the more I worried that there might be something a little sinister about our Mr. Google. Mr. Google's Guidebook has become very influential. In fact, I understand he now has a cave somewhere in view of the mountains that is full of large and noisy engines, with powerful pistons cranking away to produce new versions every day. That initial guide of his, so clean and tidy, has become a monstrous device like one of those machines designed by Mr. Goldberg or Mr. Robinson. He claims that every edition of his guide "considers more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms".

It was late at night by the time I read this remarkable fact, and I'd had several more glasses of sherry. A particularly strong gust rattled the window and I stood up to close the shutters. The wind blew the window open and I had to reach out to grab it. It was then that I noticed in the distance a flash of flame and a column of thick black smoke rising in the distance from right near Mr. Google's cave! It looked positively diabolical. I believe I actually cried out in shock.

After a tussle I got the shutters closed and, shaken, returned to my leatherbound armchair and took another sip to calm my nerves. My mind was racing. "Come on Whimsley", I thought, "You're just imagining things". How could there be anything sinister about the Guidebook? I opened a page of the biography at random and it set my mind somewhat at ease. Here is what I read:

At some universities, administrators are taking a new approach to deciding where to put footpaths. At first they don't put footpaths anywhere; they just let students walk across the grass to get where they need to go, wearing away the grass and creating rough tracks as they do so. Then when it is clear where the popular tracks go the university can just tidy them up, put down some paving stones, and they have a path in the right place.
It's called the Wisdom of Crowds. The students decide where the paths go by just going about their everyday life, and the university taps into their preferences to design an environment that reflects exactly what the students would want to do.
That's what we've done here at Mr. Google's Guidebook. We track how people walk around, which signposts they follow, and that lets us put paths in the right place, just where you want them to be. We can lead you just where you want to go; lead you to interesting and even unexpected destinations that will provide you with just what you asked for, and more.

Maybe that's all it is then, I thought. Maybe everyone wants to read about the Netflix Prize and no one wants to read 25 essays about the Long Tail. Maybe I've had one moment of startling insight amidst so much dross. But somehow, as my mood plumbed new depths, my brain clung to a stubborn belief that the prettiest thing in Whimsley Hall is an ancient manuscript that sets out, with wit and panache, the problems with toilets. This gem lies in a corner covered with grime and neglected by Mr. Google. How could I possibly explain such gross inequity? Pondering this problem, I fell asleep in the chair and drifted into a strange dream...

I was standing with my mother in York; one of many visits some years ago. She was pointing to a Chinese take-away restaurant that occupied one narrow division of a long terrace of houses and shops on one of the old streets of that city.
- Look at that, she said, Why is that restaurant right where it is? Why does it go from here to here (gesturing to the edges of the restaurant) rather than some other place?
- I have no idea.
- It's because of the vikings. Over a thousand years ago the land was divided, and then subdivided as it was passed down from father to sons. Each son inherited a narrower strip, so that it had access to the road, and as a result property lines were narrow. Over the years new buildings have been erected until the current use of land has nothing to do with the original, and yet the boundaries remain; archaic, obsolete, and yet fixed. Unless a new motorway comes through they may stay the same way for another thousand years.
- How strange, I commented.
- Not as strange as the egg rolls, she replied...
Then I was in a train, reading a newspaper article about Alfred Wainwright's classic hand-written guides to the paths of the Lake District. It explained that, while the routes of footpaths usually evolved over time rendering such guides as Wainwright's obsolete, the very success of Mr. Wainwright's magnificent effort had preserved their relevance. People used the guides to follow the paths, cementing the routes in place for much longer than would have been the case without them.

I awoke with a start. What an odd thing to remember. Why now? My mother is in fine fettle - no worries there. And Wainwright's Guides? I hadn't thought of them in years. It must be something else that produced that dream. And then I realized, it was all about Mr. Google's Guidebook. I struck my forehead, blinded by this insight, and rushed to the table. Picking up the quill pen, I dipped it in the ink and began to write feverishly on the pad of paper lying there...

Mr. Google is lying! (I wrote) His Guidebook no longer reflects the paths set out by travellers as they navigate their lives. It is no longer an outside observer of people's wanderings. Google's success has changed the way people find their routes. Here is the way it happens. When a new cluster of destinations is built there may be a flurry of interest, with new signposts being erected pointing towards one or another of those competing locations. And those signposts have their own dynamics, perhaps forming a power law as set out by Mr. Shirky or perhaps something different, as Mr. Shalizi has explained.
But that's not the end of the story. After some initial burst, no one makes new signposts to this cluster of destinations any more. And no one uses the old signposts to select which particular destination to visit. Instead everyone uses Mr. Google's Guidebook. It becomes the major determinant of the way people travel; no longer a guide to an existing geography it now shapes the geography itself, becoming the most powerful force of all in many parts of the land.
So my Netflix Prize essay got selected by Mr. Google's machines as one of the more interesting and insightful commentaries - the machines are perceptive, we must grant them that - and it soon appeared as number 3 on the list of recommended destinations for anyone looking for "Netflix Prize", right after the official site itself. And now no one is guided here by those few original links - the relevance of their effect is as vestigial as the effect of the Vikings' property rules. Mr. Google's Guidebook has cemented the verdict in place long after the early discussion has lost its relevance, like the edges of the Chinese take-away and like Mr. Wainwright's guides fixed the routes of the paths he charted. With little new being written about the Netflix Prize the Guidebook is the major source of new journeys. And so the Guidebook changes the pattern of the landscape from a rich, linked one with its power law shape (or other shape). Instead, there is a two stage process in the evolution of much of the landscape. The first stage is a brief discussion, from which Mr. Google picks a few winners. In the second stage, after that discussion has faded away, the continuing popularity of the winners is assured simply by their positioning in the Guidebook. Mr. Google has singlehandedly changed the way people travel, changing the selection of destinations from an ongoing referendum to a brief discussion from which he anoints a few winners.
Mr. Google no longer gives you what you want, he selects a winner from the crowd and then tells you it's what you wanted.

I was just about to put down the pen, exhausted now, when I heard a creak and the door to the library opened. I lurched around to see coming through the door --- Mr. Google himself! His face was no longer subservient as befits a butler. Instead it was smirking. And his teeth - surely they had not been so pointed before. I shrank.

But Mr. Google did not attack me with a knife, or bite me in the neck. Nothing so dramatic. He simply looked over at my scribbled notes and sighed a world-weary sigh.
- You don't understand do you sir?
- What do you mean Google? I understand everything now.
- Really? This document here? And what does that matter if no one reads it? And who decides whether anyone can come here to view it? Exactly how do you propose to publicize your absurd opinions if not through me?

My shoulders sagged. Defeat. Of course, there was nothing I could do. "So you'll silence it then. Keep people away. My revelations will moulder, along with that masterpiece about the toilets".

- No (said Google). That's what I mean - you really don't understand. You see, I don't care if people come and look at these hen scratches or not. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. As long as I can sell a few advertisements on that page of my guidebook I really don't care. After all, what better praise for a Guidebook than to help people find out what's wrong with it? Just leave your manuscript with me. I'll look after it.

He held out his hand, imperious now. I felt disheveled after my long night. My brain was spinning. I could see no alternative. In a vain attempt to maintain some self-respect I drew myself up to my full height and pulled back my shoulders, adopting a bearing appropriate for my class. "All right Google. Here you go. Don't lose it now."

"Thank you sir. You can be sure I won't lose it. I never do lose anything you know."

I turned away from him and stumbled down the stairs. I had ended up giving him an order, and he had accepted it. Yet I could not shake the impression, even as he brought me a glass of sherry that evening in my sitting room, placing the silver tray beside me with deference, that Mr. Google - far from being a butler and travel guide - was more a master than a servant.