Social imaginaries of Ubiquitous Society and Human Rights July 12, 2008 Discussion Paper 08-08

Akihiko Morita

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Social imaginaries of Ubiquitous Society and Human Rights Akihiko Morita July 12, 2008 Abstract By focusing on the social imaginaries of ubiquitous society, we can identify continuity between ubiquitous society and the former world, which is quite often ignored by the institutional and technology-oriented perspective. Despite of the different and quite new appearance of ubiquitous society, there are certain continuities at the level of social imaginaries, a common understanding that makes common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy possible. But, ubiquitous society is unique in its transnational accessibility and radical individuating effect and we are now facing a new type of conflict in ubiquitous space, created by the fact that the people are situated in local contexts while ubiquitous society is of transnational accessibility. However, it seems that human rights, another form of modern social imaginary, is able to function as social norms even though they may have to be localized in legal forms and underlying foundations in some cases for effective application. In ubiquitous society, like the former world, the more we learn about the 2

histories and the underlying philosophies of the others, the more prepared we become to understand the others.

Key words: Ubiquitous society, Social imaginaries, Human rights

1. Introduction As Michael Ignatieff mentioned, we are now living in the age of virtual war where non-combatants in the developed world are situated as the disengaged spectator(Ignatieff, 2000). Those who live in the developed countries, not directly involved in the military operation become more and more moved and even driven by the major newspapers, magazines and television networks. In this sense, war becomes more virtual. However, it does not mean that we are living more and more in the virtual world. I would like to present one typical example, in which three young Japanese people were kept captive in Iraq on April 8th 2004. A young journalist, a 18 years high school graduate and a young female volunteer, have faced serious nation-wide criticism, named “Bashing”, mainly because their families asked the government to withdraw the Self Defense Force from Iraq upon request from the group in Iraq who kept their children. This nation-wide “Bashing” was apparently driven by the major media. The Internet also played an important role both positively and negatively. Some free discussion spaces on the Internet followed the major media and accelerated the Bashing while some NGO staff, politicians and journalists contacted with the local groups in Iraq directly through E-mail and took timely and proper actions in rescuing the three young fellows1.

1

Mike Godwin, a U.S.lawyer working on the Cyber-space-related legal issues, holds

that the Internet serves as a third source of information, along with print and broadcasting(Godwin, 2003: 9). Increasingly, citizens of the world will be getting their news from computer-based communications-electronic

bulletin

boards,

conferencing

services,

and

networks-which differ institutionally from traditional print media and broadcast journalism. 3

Recalling this case, I would like to put forward two observations. First, the virtual world including TVs, radios and movies, in which the Internet becomes more and more important, is deeply situated in certain local contexts. It is often mentioned that cyber space is radically meta-topical and communication through the Internet can easily cross remote distance and even national borders and enables people to find out friends and communities more fit to their own taste. However, even though people can communicate with each other over the distance, we can not remove them from their own physical and cultural localities, including their linguistic and religious backgrounds. In this connection, it should be also noted that unlike the early prediction that the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) will create a strict separation between physical space(real world) and information space(virtual world or cyber space), these two spaces are becoming more and more closely interwoven(Castells,1996 and Kluitenberg, 2006), which we now call “ubiquitous society” or “pervasive computing society”2. Particularly, wireless communication technology, symbolized by “Keitai” or the mobile phone, has been developed from the start as located in specific social, cultural, and historical contexts rather than as a cross-culturally universal(Ito,2006:5). For instance, in Seattle, U.S.A., autonomous but internetworked squads of demonstrators protested the meeting of the World Trade Organization, using mobile phones, Web sites, laptops, and handheld computers on November 30, 1999. In the Philippines, President Joseph Estrada stepped down as a result of demonstration by more than million people, mobilized and coordinated by waves of text messages, on January 20, 2001(Rheingold,2003:158). On the contrary, in Japan, there was no huge demonstration when millions people in the rest of the world took part in protests against the Iraq war in early 2003. The difference of behavior is apparently attributed to each local political culture. The ICT does not make ubiquitous society homogeneous. Second, ubiquitous society carries certain social imaginaries. The social Spend enough time on the Net, and you discover that the pictures we’ve been given by traditional mass media of the range of political opinion have been vastly oversimplified1. 2 According to Prof.Ken Sakamura, University of Tokyo, Ubiquitous society is the one in which real world and virtual world(cyber society) interact while virtual world(cyber society) is what computers and networks represented by Internet has developed. (Sakamura, 2007). 4

imaginary is not a set of ideas, but a common understanding that makes common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy possible 3 . The relation between practices and social imaginaries are not one-sided. The common understanding makes the practice possible and the practice also carries the understanding(Taylor, 2004: 2&23). Modern societies hold own modern social imaginaries. Likewise, ubiquitous society should have own social imaginaries. In this paper, firstly, I would like to examine my proposition that ubiquitous society is an extended form of modern social imaginary and there is substantive continuity from the modern social imaginaries of the real world. I would like to approach this issue by using the theory of modern social imaginaries of Charles Taylor. Secondly, I would like to highlight the new characteristics of ubiquitous society, the attitude of radical individuation and the transnational accessibility. Thirdly, I would like to present my second proposition that human rights can function even in ubiquitous society as the social norm. In the first chapter, I will present a brief sketch of the major modern social imaginaries, the economy, the public sphere, the sovereign people and the space of fashion, based on Charles Taylor’s recent work. In the second chapter, I would like to highlight several continuities in social imaginaries between ubiquitous society and the real world, particularly, focusing on the space of fashion. In the third chapter, I would like to focus on the conflict in ubiquitous society

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“By social imaginary, I mean something much broader and deeper than the

intellectual schemes people may entertain when they think about social reality in a disengaged mode. I am thinking, rather, of the ways people imagine their social existence, how they fit together with others, how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met, and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations. There are important differences between social imaginary and social theory. I adopt the term imaginary (i) because my focus is on the way ordinary people “imagine” their social surroundings, and this is often not expressed in theoretical terms, but is carried in images, stories, and legends. It is also the case that (ii) theory is often the possession of a small minority, whereas what is interesting in the social imaginary is that it is shared by large number of people, if not the whole society. Which leads to a third difference: (iii) the social imaginary is that common understanding that makes possible common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy”(Taylor, 2004: 23). 5

and examine the role of human rights, another form of modern social imaginary, in tackling with the conflicts in ubiquitous society.

2. Modern Social Imaginaries 2-1. Modern social imaginaries Taylor presents the economy, the public sphere, and the sovereign people as three major social imaginaries(Taylor, 2004:69). In addition, Taylor considers the space of fashion and human rights as modern social imaginaries. Modern social imaginaries have emerged as linked and interwoven with development of extra-political and secular social sphere. This new kind of social sphere has appeared as a space of economic agents and owners of property, the economy, and as an intimate sphere, the locus of family life. This development was firstly carried by the Protestant Reformation, which enhances the significance of production and family life. Whereas the dominant ethics that descend from the ancient world tended to treat these as infrastructural to the “good life,” defined in terms of supposedly higher activities like contemplation or citizen participation, and whereas medieval Catholicism leaned to a view that made the life of dedicated celibacy the highest form of Christian practice, the Reformers stressed that we follow God first of all in our calling and in our family. The ordinary is sanctified(Taylor, 2004:102). The direct connection between profane time and higher time was repudiated and whether we live good or bad lives became completely dependent on ordinary life and profane time. As a result, firstly, the private world of production, constituted extra-politically and secularly, now has a new dignity and importance. Secondly, the intimate sphere, the locus of family life, gains the enhanced importance as extra-politically and secularly constituted private sphere. These developments form the background to the rise of the public sphere and the sovereign people as modern social imaginaries. The public sphere is a space of discussion in which everyone can exchange ideas without any interference from power and upon critical debate, reflective and elaborated views can be formed about important matters, which are eventually to be listened to by power as legitimate. The public sphere as a modern social imaginary has two characteristics. The first characteristic is its extra-political locus. Unlike the ancient Athens and Rome, of which societies were constituted politically and given their identity by laws, the modern 6

public sphere which has emerged in eighteenth century owed nothing to political structures but was seen as existing independently of them. The second characteristic is its radical secularity, which stands in contrast with not only with a divine foundation for society, but with any idea of society as constituted in something that transcends contemporary common action. In other words, the modern public sphere is constituted only by common actions and in this sense, it exists only in profane/temporal time, in contrast with the spiritual one. The sovereign people as the third modern social imaginary comes out in two different paths even though these two can not be distinguish so clearly in reality. The first path is that the practice of self-rule through an elected assembly was absent among the popular classes and a theory may inspire a new kind of activity with new practices and in this way, form the imaginary of whatever groups adopt these practices. The second path is that the change in the social imaginary comes with a reinterpretation of a practice that already existed in the old dispensation. The United States is an example of the second path. The old legitimacy idea, that Parliament had its right place beside the king, mobilized the colonists for the struggle and was later transformed into an underlying foundation of the popular sovereignty, the people of the United States, which is something more than the peoples of the different states. This continuity was made possible by the universal acceptance among the colonists of elected assemblies as legitimate forms of powers. On the contrary, the French revolution followed the first path. The shift from the legitimacy of dynastic rule to that of the nation had no agreed meaning in a broadly based social imaginary. Practice of self-rule through elected assembly was absent among the popular classes in France, which, combined with the discourse and theory drawn from Rousseau, created the bloody scapegoating process in the French revolution. It took years for France after the Revolution in late 18th century to develop a new social imaginary around ordered representative institutions by participating in their election.

2-2. Space of fashion The space of fashion is a fourth structure of modern social imaginary. The space of fashion is different from the public sphere and the sovereign people, which are the sites of common action, and also different from the economy where individual actions concatenate while, in the space of fashion, we display each other rather than interact4.

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The modern social imaginaries involve double focus of consciousness of society. On one

hand, we grasp ourselves belonging to new kinds of collective agency grounded in 7

The space of fashion is one in which we sustain a language together of signs and meanings, which is constantly changing, but which at any moment is the background needed to give our gestures the sense they have. The resulting general gesture is not that of a common action, but rather of mutual display. It matters to each of us as we act that the others are there, as witnesses of what we are doing, and thus as co-determiners of the meaning of our action(Taylor, 2004:167-168). Referring to some of paintings of Manet and writings of Baudelaire, Taylor stressed how strongly this strange zone between loneliness and communication impressed many of the early observers of this phenomenon as it arose in the nineteenth century(Taylor, 2004:169). The general structure of the space of fashion is that of a horizontal, simultaneous and mutual presence (mutual display). Space of this kind becomes more and more important in modern urban society, where large number of people rub shoulders, unknown to each other, without dealings with each other, and yet affecting each other, forming the inescapable context of each other’s lives.

3. Continuity in ubiquitous society as modern social imaginaries Ubiquitous society has apparently some extended features of the modern social imaginaries. It is now well-known that the silent audience, called “ROM (Read Only Members)”, who don’t write and upload text messages on their own, but keep reading others’ messages, is increasingly important in the forums and BBS in cyber space. This silent audience takes a role as witnesses of what active members are discussing, thereby constituting the public sphere through their silent presence.

common action in secular time. On the other hand, we see society as objectified as a set of processes, detached from any normative order. Active categories that enable common actions and objective categories of process are both essential for the modern social imaginaries and play complementary roles. The modern social imaginary expands the repertory of collective action, and also that of objective analysis. The space of fashion is a modern social imaginary which stands in a range of intermediate forms(Taylor, 2004:163-173). 8

We can also observe a meta-topical “expressive individualism” as a global phenomenon, symbolized by widely spreading Blog. “Expressive individualism”, most obviously manifested as the consumer revolution in which the customers are encouraged to express own tastes based on their needs and affinities, is a mass phenomenon, which has widespread since 1960’s in the North Atlantic civilization and 1980’s in Japan. This new consumer culture is rooted in certain self-understanding, the culture of “authenticity”, that each of us has own way of realizing one’s own humanity(Taylor, 2002:88). This new “expressive individualism” has developed in the space of fashion where mutual display takes a more and more important role. Without widespread “expressive individualism” and anonymous readers as witnesses in the meta-topical space of fashion, millions of Bloggers would not have appeared in a few years. However, unlike the anonymous audience in the traditional space of fashion, ubiquitous space is now creating more direct contact based societies, represented by SNS(Social Networking Site) in which each member is connected only with his/her direct friends or acquaintances. So, theoretically, we can reach anyone if we follow these personal relations in SNS, which is apparently the opposite image of cyber society as an anonymous world. In ubiquitous society, we are not only mutually displaying but also interacting with each other. This interactivity is another feature of ubiquitous society. In this sense, ubiquitous society resembles the public sphere and the sovereign people, which is extra-political and secular, constituted by common actions. The mobile phone or Keitai has facilitated this interactivity and the nature of mutual display of ubiquitous space. In “SMART MOBS – the Next Social Revolution”, Howard Rheingold reported that a new mode of social communication, enabled by a new technology, had already diffused into the norms of Finnish society. Sitting at an outdoor café in Helsinki a few months after I noticed the ways that people were using Japanese “i-mode” telephones (in the year 2000), I watched five Finns meet and talk on the sidewalk. Three were in their early twenties. Two were old enough to be the younger people’s parents. One of the younger persons looked down at his mobile phone while he was talking to one of the older people. The young man smiled and then showed the screen of his telephone to his peers, who looked at each other and smiled. However, the young man holding the device didn’t show his mobile phone’s screen to the old two. The sidewalk conversation among the five people

flowed

smoothly,

apparently 9

unperturbed

by

the

activities

I

witnessed(Rheingold, 2003:xvi). Apparently, the newly emerging ICT tools are changing our perception, mode of behavior and social norms. But, we should not jump into the conclusion that newly emerging ubiquitous society is completely different from what we knew. The above mentioned behavior of the Finnish youth, described as “Absent Presence” (J. Gergen,2002:227-241), is not completely new, but an extended form of mutual display in the space of fashion, in which even those who are physically absent do matter to the other members in the cyber space as long as they are connected through mobile phones. The Finnish youth belong to spatially two different worlds simultaneously and horizontally. We should recall that simultaneity and horizontality are two major characteristics of the modern social imaginaries.

4. Human rights in ubiquitous society 4-1. Two dimensions of conflicts in ubiquitous society As described earlier, communication through the Internet can easily cross remote distance, even national borders and enables people to find out friends and communities more fit to their own taste and as a result, the people become more individuated. The radical individuation represented by expressive individualism is facilitated and strengthened in ubiquitous society. In Taylor’s account, one of the major results of this individuation is the erosion of certain moral boundaries, which gave a framework to the pursuit of individual good such as “family values” and the values of hard work and productivities. Taylor points out that the limits on the pursuit of individual happiness were most clearly set aside, particularly in sexual matters but in other domains as well after the Second World War(Taylor, 2002:92). Although it seems difficult to judge whether moral boundaries are increasingly eroding or not at this moment, we may agree that moral beliefs in ubiquitous society become more individuated and diversified. However, it does not mean that conflict over the difference will decrease in ubiquitous society. As Taylor replied in his interview conducted by Hartmut Rosa and Arto Laitien, cultural conflicts occur between people who share a lot but do not share one particular belief and if there were self-contained cultures, we would by definition

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not have cultural conflicts but we would be totally ignoring each other5. So, the first conflict in ubiquitous society is the one around cultural difference. On the other hand, the Internet enables the people to access to anywhere in the websites. This universal accessibility creates the serious problems around the cultural diversity in ubiquitous society. For instance, the cyber pornography, in which naked persons are videotaped or photographed digitally for sexual purposes and their copies are posted and distributed in the Internet, poses serious challenge to some countries, particularly the Islamic countries. Should the governments in the countries that are culturally more sensitive about the exposure of human body be allowed to have more liberty to impose more strict control and punishment in their territories ? However, if those acts are conducted trans-nationally and virtually, which laws could be applied to whom and how? For instance, if a Japanese 12 year old girl is kidnapped by a Korean group and videotaped as naked by the French photographer in the Philippines and the digitized videotape was transferred to the virtual studio in the PC Server located in Thailand in which several experts from U.S., India, Brazil and Russia jointly worked for editing and the copies are distributed globally through the Internet, which laws should we apply for whom? So, the second conflict in ubiquitous society stems from its transnational accessibility. In order to deal with the above-mentioned two conflicts, firstly, we need to design ubiquitous society properly. In other words, proper ubiquitous society does not come out automatically, in which conflicts can be mediated and settled in due course. For instance, Mike Godwin presented the following ten principles for making virtual communities work(Godwin, 2003:40-43). 1. Use software that promotes good discussions. 2. Don’t impose a length limitation on postings. 3. Front-load your system with talkative, diverse people. 4. Let the users resolve their own disputes. 5. Provide institutional memory. 6. Promote continuity by keeping old postings available. 7. Be host to one or more interest groups. 8. Respect children. An interview with Charles Taylor by Hartmut Rosa and Arto Laitine(Laitinen and H. Smith:2002, 178). 5

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9. Commit the system to maintaining public space for public communication and public events. 10. Most important: Confront the users with a crisis. We can easily find out certain similarity between these principles and the ones that Elinor Ostrom presented as principles for how communities develop self-governance institutions

for

the

mutually

beneficial

use

of

Common

Property

Resources(CPR)(Ostrom, 1990:91-102). 1. Individuals or households who have rights to withdraw resource units from the CPR must be clearly defined, as must the boundaries of the CPR itself. 2. Appropriation rules restricting time, place, technology, and/or quantity of resource units are related to local conditions and to provisions rules requiring labor, materials, and/or money. 3. Most individuals affected by the operational rules can participate in modifying the operational rules 4. Monitors, who actively audit CPR conditions and appropriator behavior, are accountable for the appropriators or are the appropriators. 5. Appropriators who violate operational rules are likely to be assessed graduated sanctions (depending on the seriousness and context of the offense) by other appropriators, by officials accountable to these appropriators, or by both 6. Appropriators and their officials have rapid access to low-cost local arenas to resolve conflicts among appropriators or between appropriators and officials. 7. The rights of appropriators to devise their own institutions are not challenged by external governmental authorities. 8. Appropriation, provision, monitoring, enforcement, conflict resolution, and governance activities are organized in multiple layers of nested enterprises. Apparently, both the above mentioned principles for the virtual world and the real world are based on the same modern social imaginary, a space of economic agents and owners of property, and contain certain philosophical view of humans and their society, which is that individuals are granted freedom and rights to consent to the arrangements under which they live(Taylor,1999:127). The basis of this particular philosophical view is the concept of subjective rights, which is that the possessor of rights, the subject of rights can and ought to act on to put his/her rights into effect. In other words, subjective rights give us a role in establishing and enforcing what rights demand to realize(Taylor,1989:11). So, we may conclude here that like the real world, 12

ubiquitous society is and should be guided by the basic principles, stemming from the fundamental concept of the modern social imaginaries, the subjective rights. In this connection, Godwin stressed that the individual rights protected by the First Amendment function overall to strengthen the rights of others, as well as to give rise to communities and to enhance the public life of the nation(Godwin,2003:3). The human rights are the clearest expression of the modern moral order and since there is substantive continuity between the modern real society and emerging ubiquitous society, we should be able to find out a way of applying the human rights into ubiquitous society as the moral order.

4-2. Conflict around the difference(Taylor,1999: 129-143) In order to tackle with the first conflict, it seems useful to look at the approach employed by Charles Taylor. Taylor proposed a tripartite distinction about the concept of human rights, legal forms, social norms and underlying foundation. Human rights exist at these three levels. The human rights embodied in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and in the first ten Amendments to U.S. Constitution are legal forms. The idea of strict prohibition of genocide is a social norm, which needs to find expression in proper legal language. Human rights also involve a certain philosophical view of humans and their society, of which the cornerstone concept is the subjective right. Some governments resist the enforcement of these legal forms and the others felt uneasy by the Western underlying philosophy even though they are ready to follow the legal forms6. Taylor presents four cases of conflict, in which he tried to find out how we can find out variations of philosophical justifications or legal forms that is consistent with human rights as a social norm. The first case is agreement over human rights as social norms based on different legal forms in Thailand. In this connection, Taylor refers to the role of offices

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Taylor takes up the two questions relating to the Confucian culture in China and the

Theravada Buddhism in Thailand(Taylor,1999:129). Can people who imbibe the full Western human rights ethos, which reaches its highest expression in the lone courageous individual fighting against all the forces of social conformity for her rights, ever be good members of a “Confucian” society ? How does this ethic demanding what is due fit with the Theravada Buddhist search for selflessness, for self-giving and dana (generosity)? 13

and institutions to maintain political trust, which is fulfilled by judges and the judicial process in the Western societies. Taylor observes that a similar role is taken by the royal office in Thailand, in which the immense moral prestige of the monarchy has been used to confer legitimacy on moves to end military violence and repression and return to constitutional rule. Taylor concludes that if the royal office with moral authority enhances support for a democratic order respectful of those immunities and liberties described as human rights in general, we can consider it convergence on the substance of

human rights even

though

it is different from the standard Western

model(Taylor,1999:129-133)(Muntarbhorn and Taylor, 1994). The second case is agreement over human rights as social norms based on different underlying philosophical foundations. Taylor contrasts Theravada Buddhism with the Western modern discourse of human rights and democracy. According to Taylor, in Thailand, there were several attempts to reinterpret the majority religion, Theravada Buddhism, in the nineteen century, which was described by the Sri Lankan anthropologist, Gananath Obeyesekere, as a “protestant Buddhism.” One of major facets of this reform movement is to return to the original core of Buddhist teaching, about the unavoidability of suffering, the illusion of the self, and the goal of Nibbana, which tries to separate the search for enlightenment from the seeking of merit through ritual, being very critical for the whole metaphysical structure of belief that has developed in mainstream Buddhism about heavens, hell, gods, and demons, which plays a large part in popular belief. Two major principles in this reform movement have created a basis for democratic society and human rights. The first is the notion, central to Buddhism, that ultimately each individual must take responsibility for his or her own Enlightenment. The second is a new application of the doctrine of nonviolence, which is now seen to call for a respect for the autonomy of each person, demanding in effect a minimal use of coercion in human affairs(Taylor, 1999: 134). Convergence on a polity of defense of human rights and democratic development comes out through the path, which is different from the standard Western trajectories grounded on a doctrine of the dignity of human being as something commanding respect. The third case is a possible path to the convergence through sympathetic understanding about difference at the three levels of human rights. 14

Taylor takes up the case of equality in the form of nondiscrimination. In the Western modern discourse, the notion of equality was closely linked to that of Natural Rights. As Taylor mentioned, Once right inheres in nature, then it is hard in the long run to deny it to anyone(Taylor, 1999:139). This view of equality has developed against the one that we are embedded in a meaningful cosmic order, which has been a background against which various forms of human differentiation could appear natural and unchallengeable. This process of transformation, took a long time in the West and it is still not yet at the end. This notion of universal equality often faces serious resistance where certain social differences are still meaningful. Instead of criticizing and repudiating these forms which look discriminatory to Westerners, Taylor points out that the way of framing difference serve as the reference point for deeply felt identities however oppressive it may be in practice. Taylor takes up the issue of conflict in converging gender equality and gender difference as a remaining form of discrimination in the West, Taylor holds that in order to realize an operative equality between the sexes, we need to redefine own identity and it is much easier to rebuild it in continuity with the most important traditions and reference points. Correspondingly, it gets maximally difficult when it comes across as a brutal break with the past involving a condemnation and rejection of it. The more the outside portrayal, or attempt at influence, comes across as blanket condemnation of or contempt for the tradition, the more the dynamic of a “fundamentalist” resistance to all redefinition tends to get in train, and the harder it will be to find unforced consensus(Taylor, 1999:140). Taylor concludes that the path to consensus should be through greater sympathetic understanding of the situation of each party by the other. The fourth case is the difference of legal forms between international human rights standards and certain facets of the Shari’s (Islamic law code) which justify the punishment such as amputation of the hand for theft or stoning for adultery. In this case, Taylor proposes looking at the underlying philosophies in order to find out the possible way of convergence in legal forms. Referring to the description of the torture, execution, and dismemberment of Damien, the attempted assassin of Louis XV in Michel Foucault’s “Discipline and

Punish (Surveiller et Punir)”, Taylor reminds us of the cultural change that the West has gone through. Taylor presents two factors which have caused such a change in the West. The positive factor is “the affirmation of daily life” in which pain and suffering 15

have been gradually seen more and more as something to deter. The negative factor is loss of the importance of pain which is that punishment has social meaning for restoring balance and undoing the evil of crime. Taylor concludes that for cultural revolution such as the affirmation of daily life in the West, we need reinterpretation and re-appropriation of the tradition, the underlying foundations of certain legal forms. In short, we need to find out similar reference point for reinterpretation of the tradition, incompatible with international human rights instruments, for its transformation. Like the public execution of Saddam Hussein, which was videotaped and aired on the web, we can easily find out similar cases of conflict about moral order in ubiquitous space, which is now widely spread in the globe, creating huge meeting points where the people of different backgrounds could come across more frequently. Some people, mainly in the West, consider the case of Saddam Hussein as barbarous and uncivilized and the others accept it as justifiable act given the bloody history of dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. In these cases, Taylor’s suggested means will be definitely of our great help in facilitating the mutual understanding between different cultures and overcoming the conflicts in ubiquitous society.

4-3. Conflict of transnational nature in cyber society In order to tackle with the conflicts of transnational nature in ubiquitous society, Taylor’s approach also seems useful because we don’t have a single unified legal system globally and we have to find out the point of consensus between different legal languages and cultures. For instance, in the case of child cyber pornography, we may reach a consensus about the social norm that any child should not be the object for videotaping and digital photographing for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation and then each government can find proper legal expression based on her own legal culture, which is a part of the underlying philosophy. We may also need certain coordination between states around the legal standards and the enforcement mechanism, in which the first, second and third cases of Taylor look worth referring. In cases of more complex nature such as the contradiction between censorship based on their own cultural traditions and the freedom of expression in cyber society, it seems more difficult, even though not impossible, to find one single social norm 16

globally(Godwin, 2003: 259-317). In such cases, it seems to me useful to use human rights as a language, a common ground for further deliberation and the shared vocabulary from which our arguments can begin(Ignatieff, 2001:95).

5. Conclusion I believe that by focusing on the social imaginaries of ubiquitous society, we can identify continuity between ubiquitous society and real world, which is quite often ignored by the institutional and technology-oriented perspective. It turned out that despite of the different and quite new appearance of ubiquitous society, there are certain continuities at the level of social imaginaries, a common understanding that makes common practices and a widely shared sense of legitimacy possible. But, we also found that cyber society is unique in its transnational accessibility and radical individuating effect. We also found that we are now facing a new type of conflict in ubiquitous space, created by the fact that the people are situated in local contexts while ubiquitous society is of transnational accessibility. However, it is also confirmed that human rights, another form of modern social imaginary, is able to function as social norms even though they may have to be localized in legal forms and underlying foundations in some cases for effective application. In this connection, it seems true that in ubiquitous society like real world, the more we learn about the histories and the underlying philosophies of the others, the more prepared we become to understand the others. Finally, it should be also noted that human rights can be utilized as a language for further deliberation.

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