Citizenship

By Stephen Downes
Dec 24, 2021
Transcript of Citizenship

Unedited

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to ethics analytics of the duty of care. We're in module eight, the third part of the module which looks at culture, generally. And in that part of the module, we're looking specifically in this video at citizenship and the way I want to frame this after what might have been a bit rough discussion of culture and I might want to clean that up a bit.

But the the question that we're going to look at today in this is could be framed. As as something like what does it look like to be a good quote, unquote member of a culture? And this is something that often gets expressed in terms of a concept of citizenship.

And I want to be clear here. That when I talk about citizenship, I'm not just talking about and being a person with the right sort of papers in a national entity, like a country or a federation. Right. I'm talking about citizenship as being a member of a community, a culture or a country.

You know, the more broad sense of citizenship in other words, again, there's tons of stuff in the world that has been said, on citizenship, I'm not going to cover all of my hair out clearly, right? So I'm interested in the concept of citizenship as it intersects with, our main inquiry, which is ethics analytics and the duty of care what are, and how can we get ethical analytics?

And artificial intelligence. So, having said that, let's think about what is citizenship. This is a pretty typical place to start and, you know, nobody's really going to be surprised that I started here with the concept of community and responsibility and some borrowing from station cock here and so there's two aspects, right?

Citizenship as community, that actually belonging to the communities and important part of it. But also this sense of community is some sort of sense of interest in the common good and we saw in the discussion of culture how that how much that plays in as well? You're you remember of a culture.

Very often has a lot to do with your sense of the common. Good of that culture, Similarly, citizenship as responsibility includes such things as and and your mileage may very here such things as helping. Those who cannot help themselves, educating marginalized individuals or educating those in positions of power.

So helping and educating our the responsibilities at least on this account of citizenship, right. I was will see. There are many accounts of citizenships but the key component here seems to be active participation and service to the community.

Participation is a big part of this and in Mossberger Tolbert Neil's discussion of digital decisions. Citizenship, they take that perspective largely because they're working from an American context and that pretty much is what's definitive of citizenship from, you know, the American perspective but also because it provides, you know, a good frame to to talk about different ways of being a citizen.

And as his characteristic, in the US tradition, we we can break it down between what we might call liberalism and Republicanism of a, you know, this is 2008. Now in 2022, those definitions have become all mixed up with each other, but what we'll stay with their starting point because it gives us, you know, a way to talk about this.

So, on the one hand, you have, what might be called, locky and liberalism where people are free to pursue the good life, whatever that may be, and be free from unreasonable government interference. And this is characterized by a prior belief, which is described by detox. Reveal in this book democracy in America, that everybody in the country is quote, born equal.

Now we know that that is not really the case but we'll leave about aside from them. That's an aspirational prayer belief, let's say. And then the other thing is that it's based on this idea of an almost libertarian competition with presumption of fairness.

So that's one perspective. It's the kind of perspective that informs a lot of the people who were involved in the creation of the digital economy, digital technology in the first place. It's certainly a perspective that would characterize, you know, the, the Berkeley school of development or even Harvard MIT, you know, that crowd if you will.

And when I actually write this out, I'd want to be a little bit more specific. But, you know, it's the, the Stewart brand, Richard Stalman and sort of approach. What's what's the other guy from the electronic frontiers foundation. But that perspective, the other perspective is what's called in this book.

Republicanism which now, no longer resembles, what we call Republicanism today, but still this idea of why spread participation of citizenry and government. Where the basis of participation is a duty toward the community and then following from Thomas Jefferson, the idea that public education is necessary to develop the means and the skill.

And we could see, you know how these two ideas. These two sets of ideas, could combine to form a pretty coherent and defensible concept of citizenship, that would lead toward a productive and ethical culture. We could certainly see that and to, you know, and arguably that did work for many, many years But we did get the digital revolution and we did get what was called at the time, the digital nation.

And I remember especially an article published in wired in 1997 by John Katz called the digital citizen in the birth of a digital nation. And it followed, the, I think was John Perry, Barlow's declaration of the independence of cyber space and cats describes it. As something that blends, the humanism of liberalism, with the economic vitality, of conservatism rejecting the intervention is dogma of the left, and the intolerant ideology of the right and to embrace rationalism.

Revere civil liberties and free market and economics of that was the promise in 1997. Buzzfeed 2019 says, we were promised community civics and convenience. Instead we found ourselves dislocated distrustful and disengaged. It is arguable that the concepts that created this idea of digital citizenship or not checked failure arguable.

I'm not sure. I would completely agree. Well, there are certainly some very bad spots on the internet, but I don't think the all of the internet is that I'm hoping for example that this contribution volume is no, it may be is the opposite of that. And that's what we want to talk about.

Would what makes the difference here? Well, let's go back to the idea of citizenship itself.

And get beyond the politics of citizenship here from from a thing. And teach thought citizenship, as an idea of its own, is both crucial and crucially, misunderstood both, often reduced to political notions, such as be heard, vote or those ecological. Always recycle consider, how infrequently many adults can consider how the work they do.

The things they buy or the food, they eat affects national or global citizenship. This is all big picture thinking that is somehow easy to miss.

And I think that's a really good point. Citizenship isn't just in these big political acts, citizenship is in all the little things that we do every day, including big political acts. But not just that We'll be talking about democracy later and one of the things I'll want to say then, but I might forget.

So, I'll certainly say it. Now, a democracy isn't all about politics either. In fact, politics is pretty much the smallest part of it. And, and, you know, the idea of political campaigns and voting does not in any serious and meaningful way. Capture the concept of democracy. At least not democracy has.

It needs to be understood and 2021. Of and the same holds true of digital citizenship. And it's interesting that when we look at what people are teaching, when they're teaching digital citizenship, they're not teaching these big pee political things like like voting or ecology. Here's Terry height, citizenship quote consists of self-knowledge, interaction and intimate, knowledge of a place, it's people, and it's cultural history.

And so digital, citizenship is self-monitored participation that reflects conscious interdependence with all visible and less visible community members and the quality of hobbits actions and consumption patterns, that impact, the ecology of digital content and communities. Because here's how about digital citizenship. So it's digital content and communities. So that's a little too knowledge to focused for me.

I mean, I don't think it's necessary to know the cultural history of a people or a place to be a citizen. Although it doesn't hurt but still it's the idea that it's all these little things and the it's the idea in this case of doing of being conscious about these things.

Right. Self-monitored participation that reflects conscious interdependence. It's this idea of knowing that the things that you do depend on other people and that other people depending on you, or as George Christenser, would say, we live in a society that sort of thing. Okay. Mike Ribble has come up with an offed quoted set of nine themes of digital citizenship.

And if there's I've seen them represented in various ways, I'm splitting them into two and I'm splitting them into two because I think that he's combining elements of the legal and formal the regulatory or the the, you know, the the practices frameworks kind of approach with the informal and more personal kind of approach.

In other words, half of his themes, dragged as backup, stairs, and half of these continuous honor of downstairs, using the stairs metaphor I've been using throughout so commerce, collaboration, law, rights, and responsibilities, security, and privacy. These are all the structural elements of citizenship. They are what we might call.

The petri dish, right? The ecosystem are the environment in which a culture thrives but distinct from the culture itself. Meanwhile the culture itself or actual citizenship, in our case or things like access communication, etiquette fluency health and welfare and now that we've got both of these columns started, we can probably continue to add on to both of those.

And it's interesting when when we look at this, at least the way it comes out, when we look at digital citizenship, edited educational materials online, how the things that pull us back upstairs are basically, framed is duties and the things that bring us down. Stairs are a fairly consistently framed as virtues, and I'm not sure, that's the best idea.

What I want to show that that's the case. So look at for example, this thing from AES education Chris Zook talking about teaching digital citizenship seven key concepts empathy how the internet works understanding user data. Practicing digital literacy acknowledging, the digital divide practicing digital awareness securing digital devices. The the ones in blue are the legalistic formal aspects, which includes securing and acknowledging.

The digital divide, you know, your duty and responsibility by presume to other people and I might include even some of the others, like understanding how the internet works and understanding user data also as duties. And then the things that are based on virtues or character are things like empathy, digital literacy digital wellness and attending to those are characteristic of digital citizenship and okay, here's another example, from common sense education.

Again, this is very widely cited out there in the internet world. We've got six basic areas of focus, so pulling us toward duties or things like privacy and security. Again, digital footprint and identity, cyberbullying drama, heat speech. These are the structural things but on the side of character or virtues is media balance and well-being relationship and communication, news and media literacy.

Listen, it's kind of a rough and ready distinction between the duties and the virtues and awful lot of overlap between a duty and a virtue. But still, it's not like we're talking consequentialist here. We're not even like, we're talking social contract here. We're talking duties and virtues and that very often is what characterizes discussions of digital citizenship.

And for that matter, citizenship generally and that not unsurprisingly, is what characterizes our discussion of artificial intelligence. And analytics when we want to have ethical AI and analytics. We're often talking either about the duties and responsibilities or the virtues or character of the technology pressing on.

What is an ethical? Digital citizen. Here's one from educational world almost entirely focused on duties, take care of tech equipment, explore a appropriate and safe sites, copyright law, prevents cyberbullying self-image is important. Make use of netiquette always give credit to original source etc, right? So it's almost like he's telling you what to do.

These are your duties while you're online and there's also the virtues based approach Jason Ohler. I think is someone I've seen quoted quite a bit on this, where he says, for example, schools have already started unofficially addressing digital character, education in the form of acceptable. Internet, use agreements that specify virtual behavior standards for students.

And he says, we need to create formal digital citizenship programs that deal with character education in the digital age, deeply directly and comprehensively. Again, these are just examples, you know, relatively frequently cited examples but nonetheless just examples there may be more authoritative sources of these elsewhere in those literature.

I leave it as an exercise of the reader, but I think that digital citizenship is very often expressed in these terms and that's what I want to challenge.

When wired came out, who is this article and digital citizenship? I responded quite frankly, pretty negatively. I asked the following or I said to follow. If a defining characteristic of a nation is actually embraced diversity of opinion, then you cannot define membership in that nation according to the opinions held by its citizens, we can say it's descriptive by analogy, Americans identify with life liberty, and to pursue of happiness, most Americans, if asked would embrace these values.

But that's not weight defines an as an American rather. What definesome as an American is being born in the United States or having legally immigrated. You see the distinction here. And if we want to talk about being a digital citizen, the one requirement is that you be digital, you're actually be part of that digital nation.

And if we want to talk about being a good digital citizen, it can't be by defining certain duties or certain virtues because these are not going to apply to all or even a majority of the people who are online in the same is going to be true when we get to artificial intelligence and analytics.

And I think that I've shown that pretty decisively in this course, we cannot actually articulate what the duties are of AI company or AIs themselves. We cannot actually articulate what the virtues are of virtuous, AI or analytics. We just simply can't say. And in fact we want to be open as much as possible to a diversity of opinion on these subjects.

Otherwise, we're not capable of discussing them at all.

And it's the difference at least as characterized here between being a digital citizen and a digital leader. Now, I hate the whole leadership, talk, but I like the idea of moving beyond the idea of someone who is to the idea of someone who does. I think that's really important, really important.

The digital citizen here is described as a set of values that we may or may not accept. For example, one of the values is I treat others. The way I would like to be treated. That's the golden rule. We discussed the golden rule back in module four and it's a terrible rule and and it's a terrible rule because there are many instances where others would not like to be treated the way we would like to be treated.

But when we get to the doing side, which they're calling here, a digital leader and teach thought by Soviet Duckworth. And Jay Cassat were getting to the doing to learn, and share learning to empower others. With no voice to address, social inequality, to promote important causes to be a more positive influence in the life of others.

See the distinction. It's not what you are anymore. It's not what you believe anymore. It's what you do. And I think that's a pretty important distinction. Henry Jenkins his kind of faded a bit from the mainstream, at least through my perception. But who was really active for a while wrote a lot about participatory culture and it shifts.

The focus of literacy hero, from individual expression, to community involvement. And we could use a here to shift the focus of citizenship from individual expression, to community involvement. So, what other requirements for a purchase inventory culture again? Now, this is Petrie Dish thinking, right? But relatively low barriers to artistic expressions, strong support for creating and sharing creations.

Some type of informal mentorship members who believe that contributions matter members who feel some degree of social connection with one another so petri dish, right? The question comes up, what is it like to live in this purchase of being participatory culture? What grows in this culture? Because that's going to tell us what citizenship is.

Well, we get at that by kind of refining. Our objectives instead of trying to define for all time, what is going to count as a good citizen? We try to focus more what counts as a citizen. If we can get people to be citizens in the act of sense that is necessary, before.

We can even think about getting to be good citizens. And in fact, the idea here is that they would define for themselves. What good citizens is. So what is this narrow or focus? Well, here, Johns and Mitchell focus on respectful behavior on line and online. Civic engagement, only say both online, respect and civic engagement were negatively related to online harassment perpetuation and positively related to helpful bystander behaviors after controlling for other variables.

Okay. So that's sort of evidence for the statement that focusing on citizenship as you know, behavior and engagement leads to some of these outcomes that we would define as ethical. So instead of talking about, you know, a person is a good citizen. If they don't harass people or a person is a good citizenship, if they help other people.

It's more. Like if we have an environment where we focus on the behavior and engagement, then these are the sorts of things that we could use to describe what the outcome of it. Step by step, step by step, right? So the people at cyberbullying.org, have come up with a concept that they've called digital citizenship plus, which they define as the skills needed for youth to fully participate, academically, socially ethically, politically and economically in our rapidly evolving digital world and it covers everything from AI to digital literacy to privacy and reputation to data and contact.

So, all the other stuff that we've talked about in this course, but the key thing that I'm interested in here for our purposes, are the words the skills needed for youth to fully participate and indeed, not just youth, like, why would we define it as for youth only, I mean, their focus is on teaching, young people, but citizenship consists of the skills needed for people to fully participate.

Okay. I've had said since my days as an editor at the gauntlet and the University of Calgary in the 1980s, the price of democracy is participation. Make that work and everything else works.

And for most of my life, I've seen that actually work out, you might be asking quite fairly quick. What does that have to do with analytics and AI? What would should change? How we think about this? Here's what I think the concept of ethical analytics in AI or going to come down to somehow describeing and analytics engine or an AI as an ethical citizen.

Now, that doesn't mean granting them, personhood, autonomy. And all of that that's not what I mean What I mean is that when we're talking about ethical AI, we're going to be talking in the same sort of terms that we that we would use when talking about an ethical citizen right now.

We have a tendency to describe an ethical AI or analytics engine or the people who develop them, or the companies that develop them in terms of virtues and duties. That to me, ultimately is a dead end. And in fact, I think ultimately describing it in terms of any of these ethical principles but we've been talking about is a debit.

We can't define what we mean by ethics in analytics. In AI. We're not going to be successful and in the end it's not going to matter in the aim. That's going to come down to citizenship not citizenship in terms of virtues or duties the way, we teach very young children but citizenship the way we think of it as adults on how we interact together and when we're talking about AI and analytics, it'll ultimately come down to how well AI and humans can interact with each other.

And that's how citizenship ties into the ethics of analytics. And artificial, intelligence got one more for this section, one more video for this section where we're going to talk about. What all of that entails? See you just a few minutes. My time could be years there. A time, I'm Stephen Downs.

Seeing in a bit.

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