ABSTRACT
Contemporary discourses have largely compartmentalised the human rights challenges posed by digitalisation and the internet as impinging upon the right to privacy, or asserted that the freedom of expression must be preserved and defended online. This chapter discusses different vantage points to gain alternative perspectives upon the same underlying digital technologies and the capacities that these technologies enable. It highlights the disruption wrought by digital technologies to the very foundations of human rights. It explores some of the more foundational questions exposed by digitalisation and the internet upon the edifice of human rights itself. Viewing the human rights challenge of digital technologies from a systems perspective raises the spectre of human rights violations as “normal” accidents, which are a small and exceptional class of technologically induced accident. Digital technologies enable rapid interaction and continuous communication that form the foundations of digital networks exemplified by the world wide web. Digitalisation essentially provides the infrastructural basis for power, coercion, manipulation to flow.
