Bulk unsolicited e-mail, computer viruses, computer cracking, distributed denial-of-service attacks, surreptitious user monitoring, access to age-inappopriate content and monopolistic software licensing are all examples of sociotechnical concerns related to widely deployed computing infrastructure. However, there are prospects for addressing these concerns through evolution of the infrastructure as well as replacement of particular infrastructure components. In particular, there is a growing deployment and use of public infrastructure through open interface standards and open source implementations of infrastructure components. To what extent can sociotechnical problems be mitigated or resolved through the design and deployment of public computing infrastructure.
A variety of ad hoc methods are often used to address sociotechnical concerns in current industrial practice. Databases of known virus signatures, known bulk e-mailers oe bulk e-mail texts, known software vulnerabilities and so on are widely used to mitigate sociotechnical problems. However, these approaches are limited to addressing known instances of concern on a case-by-case basis. This brings to focus the research question whether and to what extent systematic techniques can be used to address entire classes of sociotechnical concern.