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  • Technological Turf Wars: A Case Study of the Computer Antivirus Industry
  • Nathan Ensmenger (bio)
Technological Turf Wars: A Case Study of the Computer Antivirus Industry. By Jessica Johnston. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. Pp. ix+222. $22.95.

The title of this remarkable new book by Jessica Johnston is at once accurate and misleading: although the book is indeed a case study of the computer antivirus industry, the narrow focus implied by the title belies the significant [End Page 1054] contributions it makes to a much broader literature. What Johnston provides is not only a detailed analysis of the challenge of computer security as a social, organizational, and technological dilemma, but also an exemplary examination of the social construction of software technology. Historians of computing have been calling for years for more research on the history of software, and Technological Turf Wars represents a major contribution to this as-yet underdeveloped literature.

The book begins with a brief history of the computer virus metaphor as it has been employed by the computer industry and suggests that the metaphor is not merely a "picturesque anthropomorphism" that makes comprehensible an otherwise complex and intangible threat. Rather, Johnston suggests, the metaphor reflects and embodies larger concerns about the risks associated with computerization: anxiety about the changing relationship of humans and computers, fears about the vulnerability of complex technological systems to malicious technological subversives, and the apparent inability of traditional social structures, including the law, to keep up with rapid and profound changes that computer technology seems to be imposing on the broader society. The antivirus industry—and, more specifically, the small number of computer-security experts and researchers who specialize in antivirus research—mobilizes this sense of perpetual crisis in computer security as a means of maintaining their own power and authority. "By shrewdly cultivating insecurities, promoting worst case scenarios, and adroitly resolving these crisis with new technical insights and product innovations," Johnston argues, the industry maintains and reinforces a "symbiotic reciprocal cycle" with computer users that ultimately becomes impossible for these users to escape. "Once you get into antivirus you can never get out" (pp. 39–41), as one of Johnston's corporate informants ruefully laments.

At the heart of Johnston's analysis is a network of antivirus researchers known as CARO (Computer Antivirus Research Organization). CARO members are an elite group of experts who sit at the intersection of academic, scientific, corporate, and technical networks. Although CARO members freely share information within their network, they carefully control access to this information by others—including, in many cases, their corporate employers. In doing so, they cultivate and maintain a "knowledge monopoly" that allows individual CARO experts an enormous degree of personal authority and prestige. By limiting access to extremely time-sensitive data on new strains of computer viruses, CARO can effectively discipline its members—and indeed, entire corporations and industries. Without access to the information distributed throughout the CARO network, antivirus manufacturers are effectively powerless to respond to threats, a situation that CARO members exploit to their own advantage. Although some manufacturers have attempted to circumvent CARO by forming alternative networks of experts and informants, CARO continues to maintain [End Page 1055] almost exclusive control over the global antivirus industry. In the last chapter of the book, Johnston addresses directly the Eurocentric and highly masculine culture of CARO: as of the book's publication, there were no Asian members of CARO, no South American members, no African members, and no female members of any nationality (p. 182).

In addition to her detailed discussion of the producers of computer security expertise and innovation, Johnston also provides an insightful analysis of the users of antivirus technology. In this case, "user" is a complicated category: although one imagined user of antivirus technology is, of course, the individual, the primary user is actually the corporate IT department. Johnston charts the complex relationship between these users, who are often denigrated by antivirus experts as naive or technologically deficient: on the one hand, these corporate users represent large and important markets for the antivirus vendors; on the other, it is the vendors who control access to knowledge and are therefore able to frame the terms of...

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