IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2017 - 15
OPINION
Renato Iannella
Tragedy of the
Digital Commons:
Amplified Zombies
he seminal work by
Garret Hardin nearly
40 years ago on the
" Tragedy of the
Commons" [1] clear-
ly resonates within the Information
Communication Technology (ICT)
community today. Opinion pieces in
the Communications of the ACM [1]
and IEEE Spectrum [2] have focu-
sed on the tragedies' "scarcity of
resources" paradigm and its implica-
tions for the Internet and Web. Cerf
concludes that this shared environ-
ment must be protected for the bene-
fit of all users before it becomes too
unsafe for reliable use. Lucky, more
pragmatically, highlights online social
behavior being in compatible with
"courteously" designed Internet pro-
tocols. In essence, the tragedy is still
with us, alive and kicking.
Hardin's original work also dis-
cussed an issue that has become
more relevant to our society. He
describes the "no technical solu-
tion problem." That is, how can we
solve something that cannot just
be solved by technical means? This
drives people to make decisions
that are usually always in-compatible
with society (hence, the tragedy).
He gives the innocuous example
of cheating in a tic-tac-toe game to
the more contentious control of the
overpopulation of the world (hence,
the scarce resources problem).
This conclusion is the same found
by Toyama in "Technology is not the
Answer" [4]. He found that technol-
ISTOCK/RAYBON009
T
ogy was an "amplifier" of human
capacity, but did not help in any way
to address our deficiencies. In fact,
technology was good at amplifying
human intent - both bad and good.
When technology is utilized and
human decisions are made for soci-
etal benefit, then the outcome is gen-
erally an improvement. But humans
can also utilize technology not only
for personal gain, but to intensify
their own position over others, with
detrimental effect. Toyama's "law of
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2017.2738081
Date of publication: 7 September 2017
SEPTEMBER 2017
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IEEE TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIETY MAGAZINE
amplification" [5] probably should
now be more widely quoted with
other formative laws of technology. He
calls on the immense influence that the
technology community has to engage
beyond our professional comfort zone,
and to challenge inequality, politics,
and social forces in humanity's favor.
If we take Hardin's original thesis
and mix it with Toyama's, then we end
up with an interesting dilemma for our
community. Our "scarce resourc-
es" are different from 40 years ago, but
15
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