The promises and disappointments of the Internet
Now, a rant.
The pioneers of the World Wide Web thought it would usher in an era of people power and the free flow of knowledge. Serious journalism would be accessible to all, freed from its proximity to government. Nation states would become obsolete and social hierarchies would be dissolved. And more mundanely, but significant to my own experience: early in the twenty-first century it seemed that emerging conventions in web site and browser design would foster a professional approach to online publication adhering to standards that would ensure a pleasurable and accessible experience for all the users of the web.
As things turned out, it's clickbait, slow load-times, sophisticated but bad design, innovatively annoying adverts, kitsch, Twittermobs, conspiracy theories, disastrous social media revolutions, and increasing monopolization by big capital.
With the fragmentation of information and journalism, authority, expertise, training, and knowledge are held in suspicion ("I don't trust the mainstream media"). At the same time, the web has enabled people to retreat from the confrontation inherent in real communities into discussion groups and online communities of like-minded people, i.e., people with the same beliefs. At its most extreme this leads to any intellectual challenge being seen as an act of violence. Perhaps even the popularity of "safe spaces" in universities is connected with this.
The original Dark Ages, it turns out, weren't really all that dark; the period has been unfairly maligned by anti-clerical propagandists. But that doesn't mean we couldn't experience a real Dark Ages, in which you go to David Avocado Wolfe for your cancer treatment, to Jim Carrey for advice on how to protect your children from measles and polio, to David Icke for your lessons in geopolitics, and open up the Protocols of the Elders of Zion--which has made a web-enabled comeback--to learn about the recent history of the Jewish people.
So like the Order of Leibowitz, I see our role at TPF growing into nothing less than the preservation of civilization.
The pioneers of the World Wide Web thought it would usher in an era of people power and the free flow of knowledge. Serious journalism would be accessible to all, freed from its proximity to government. Nation states would become obsolete and social hierarchies would be dissolved. And more mundanely, but significant to my own experience: early in the twenty-first century it seemed that emerging conventions in web site and browser design would foster a professional approach to online publication adhering to standards that would ensure a pleasurable and accessible experience for all the users of the web.
As things turned out, it's clickbait, slow load-times, sophisticated but bad design, innovatively annoying adverts, kitsch, Twittermobs, conspiracy theories, disastrous social media revolutions, and increasing monopolization by big capital.
With the fragmentation of information and journalism, authority, expertise, training, and knowledge are held in suspicion ("I don't trust the mainstream media"). At the same time, the web has enabled people to retreat from the confrontation inherent in real communities into discussion groups and online communities of like-minded people, i.e., people with the same beliefs. At its most extreme this leads to any intellectual challenge being seen as an act of violence. Perhaps even the popularity of "safe spaces" in universities is connected with this.
The original Dark Ages, it turns out, weren't really all that dark; the period has been unfairly maligned by anti-clerical propagandists. But that doesn't mean we couldn't experience a real Dark Ages, in which you go to David Avocado Wolfe for your cancer treatment, to Jim Carrey for advice on how to protect your children from measles and polio, to David Icke for your lessons in geopolitics, and open up the Protocols of the Elders of Zion--which has made a web-enabled comeback--to learn about the recent history of the Jewish people.
So like the Order of Leibowitz, I see our role at TPF growing into nothing less than the preservation of civilization.
Comments (55)
I would rather a world without all this technology, to be honest. A world perhaps not too dissimilar to the Dark Ages.
Quoting jamalrob
You have my sword.
What I think is causing a lot of disappointment is, sorry for the lack of a better term, the horde of ignorant people doing their thing. Their presence would destroy any pre-conceived romantic setup. I'm not blaming them entirely for being so; there sure are systemic problems. But it doesn't change the fact that while their activities help one to learn more about the human condition, it can also get really really annoying.
That is rather a lot of transformation to expect in 25 years. Expecting all these things from the Internet is similar to the early high expectations for photography, telegraph, telephone, recorded sound, radio, and television. Wired and broadcast communications have had huge benefits, and some drawbacks, true enough. But so did Johannes Gutenberg's printing press. Both the sublime and the fecal would end up in book stalls.
It may be that electronics will yet deliver but more likely, counting on wiring schematics and total digitalization of everything to deliver the goods will be a non-starter. That's because the listed benefits of the Internet derive from social activity, not from bytes and bits flowing along wires or through the air.
To the extent that the Internet improves social activity, it can be a good thing. But freedom and totalitarianism are both outcomes of human social activity. To the extent that the Internet fosters acedia, alienation, angst, anomie, atomization, and all that, it is a bad thing. But "all that" depends on individual and social actions.
We all need to get out more to mingle, mix, socialize, gossip, agitate, organize, argue, make love, make war, make peace--real stuff, not virtual reality.
The internet is radically democratic, and it has taken on the status of almost a birth right. A journalist with the internet can reach people far removed from the paper's local circulation and it gives voice to people who would never be heard otherwise.
Ads are problematic. I installed Ad Blocker, now several sites see that you have Ad Blocker and limit your viewing. There appear to be new ad blockers coming out that claim to be invisible, but I have not tried them yet.
As far as porn goes, I think it is healthy. It enables fantasy, the blue pill. There is a study I have read that suggests that societies which have very liberal attitudes toward porn also have less problems with rape, pedophilia and other real problems, the red pill.
http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2010to2014/2010-porn-in-czech-republic.html
Bullshit.
No we don't. Everything you mentioned is superfluous garbage. People need to read, think, and be compassionate. All else is howling in the void.
"Life together" is howling in the void?
How do you suppose the people of the middle ages carried out their lives, if not by mingling, mixing, socializing, gossiping, agitating, organizing, arguing, making love, making war, making peace, etc? Literacy levels weren't very high in the middle ages, so they weren't doing a lot of reading. As for compassion, one has to be in real personal contact with other people in "life together" to be able to exercise compassion. (That's still true.)
Life in the middle ages, at least where it can be documented, wasn't all that bad, at least in good weather and between outbreaks of major illness, crop failures, etc. People sat together, ate together, talked, laughed, danced, worked, all that real stuff.
Pornography hasn't been understudied. There have been efforts to nail down the effects of sexually explicit, and explicit violent material, for many years, without conclusive results. I like porn, and my guess is that yes, it probably does have effects on young people, just like reading Jane Austin or becoming very interested in mycology or baseball has effects on young people. I'm not sure what the effects are, of course, and nobody else does either.
Pre-pubertal children should absolutely not be surfing the XXX Internet; maybe children should not peruse hard core porn before they are...13? 14? 15? At some point, though, like it or not, porn is available and has been available in one form or another since sometime in the mid-20th century. Teen agers (boys, especially) will, sure as the day is long, use it for masturbation. IF they don't mingle, mix, socialize, rub up against each other, and so forth, that's about all they will be doing. Elites had access to porn. It could be explicit, but it was drawn rather than photographed.
Films depicting (not documenting) gang rapes, S&M, etc. should be reserved for consenting adults.
One certain effect of pornography is that it defines what sex is for the uninformed. That's why younger children shouldn't be exposed to porn -- they are not biologically, psychologically, or socially ready yet. Once they are ready, it would be much better if they saw porn devoted to basic heterosexual or gay sex. Save the four-ways, double entry, S&M, and all that for a bit later. Young people should have good, ordinary, vanilla sex before more... exotic experiences.
If you go to Las Vegas to try your luck, are you a gambling addict? No, I don't think so, but a small percentage of those that do go there do have a problem.
If you like a draft beer in the evening, does that make you an alcoholic, no but if you can't stop drinking then you have a problem.
Moderation is the key, to enjoyment. Too much of most anything can be harmful or addictive.
The study I cited looks the effect on a society where porn was previously rigorously censored. The Czech Republic and it
"... found in all other countries in which the phenomenon has been studied, rape and other sex crimes did not increase. Of particular note is that this country, like Denmark and Japan, had a prolonged interval during which possession of child pornography was not illegal and, like those other countries, showed a significant decrease in the incidence of child sex abuse."
I am not denying porn's addictive potential, no more than I am saying that drinking, gambling or other potentially addictive behaviors cannot be harmful. What I am suggesting is that such fantasies in normal adults is not harmful, rather they are healthy.
I mean... you don't have to use the internet...
Technology has been and is the best way of improving the quality of life for human beings.
Had you lived in the Dark Ages, you would either have been (likely unimportant) priest or a serf/peasant on the estate of your lord, tilling the land, or maybe a liege knight of a petty king. You apparently had more free time back then, but then again there wasn't much to do, education was little to none (so much was lost in the sacking of Rome and the burning of Alexandria), income was little to none, life expectancy was mid forties to fifties, medicine was herbal and inefficient, pain killer was practically non-existent (alcohol was the only real one known), sanitation was quite relaxed in comparison to today (especially in cities and castles), and depending on where and when you lived you had to deal with the very real threat of invasion, or being conscripted (since you are a male), or dying in childbirth (if you're female), or plagues, not to mention the general superstition and irrational thinking that you of all people would have abhorred. Even the Catholic Church was filled with superstitious priests (it was a religion after all), corrupt higher-ups, and only a select few actually knew how to read and write and even less did philosophy. You're chances of being an Aquinas, Anselm, Augustine, or the Medieval Schopenhauer would be negligible.
All in all the Dark Ages would not have been like an extended camping trip in the wilderness. So many people fail as ascetics, or just hermits, because they aren't able to let go of all the comforts of modern life. There's a lot of trouble that comes along with these comforts, but I think it would quite decadent to say that these technological comforts are bad when you're currently benefiting from them.
I feel here's the foundation of the problem.
Did the pioneers of the World Wide Web simply assume that the people could handle this power much less possess knowledge to let free to flow?
How often were they out of the lab?
Meow!
GREG
With regards to the mainstream media, in some cases, rightly so. Need I provide examples?
One theory is that some people are prone to becoming "addicted" to whatever gives them pleasure, be that drugs, alcohol, gambling, sex, exercise, pornography, etc. Couple that with the tendency of some people to behave impulsively or in obsessive/compulsive patterns, quite apart from any addiction. "Some people" is a small minority of the population as a whole. Most people occasionally use drugs or drink alcohol; gamble; have sex; look at pornography, and so forth. They find them pleasurable, but not so compelling that they become addicted.
If 10% of the population becomes "addicted"or "dependent" or "compulsively attached" to drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography, and so on, the 90% who do not need not be "protected" from exposure.
I understand the desire of persons who have been harmed by addictive substances (directly or indirectly) to restrict access to adults. It is unreasonable, though, to restrict access to everyone because some people are harmed.
I didn't say I wanted to live in the Middle Ages exactly as it existed.
Quoting darthbarracuda
And I'd rather not, and in fact, my plan for the future is to be independent and financially stable enough so that I can drop kick this stupid machine out the window. At the moment, however, I have to use my computer and the Internet.
Quoting darthbarracuda
No, I would have been a monk.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Ditto my reply to BC above.
I find this dubitable. What counts as addiction? Some shrink putting a stamp on your forehead? I think we're living in unprecedented times, when adolescents and adults, mostly males, and virtually all of them, can and do view as much sex and, from a biological perspective, potential mates as they want, something which they haven't been able to do in the 100,000+ years of our evolution. How many who look at porn would be able to go cold turkey at the drop of a hat? Not many. Head on over to the reddit NoFap page to understand just how difficult that is for many people. They are slowly realizing that pornography addiction is much more powerful, widespread, and insidious than they first realized.
If everyone is an addict, then no one is an addict. The standards of sexual addiction have dropped to such an extent that it is not difficult to come across soft core porn on television ads for general audiences.
It's not too late. Even though the Middle Ages are over, some of the institutions spawned back then are still in business. You can still become a Benedictine monk, live a monastic lifestyle, wear a dark brown wool robe, and practice poverty (been there, done that), chastity (horrors) and obedience (double horrors). You could even be a cloistered monk and never have to type www again. (Even cloistered monks have web pages these days ... http://www.carmelitemonks.org)
I agree that porn is a scourge but I know from hard experience that criticizing porn on an internet forum is like criticising beer in a pub.
There was a television documentary in Australia about 4 year ago about internet-enable criminal activities, and it was truly frightening. The hard-bitten federal cop in charge of the policing efforts was in no doubt that internet malfeasance posed a real and present danger to the social order; he said the day would come when therre would be talk of cutting off access to it. The Dark Web is a truly scary global ciminal conspiracy, I'm betting we don't know 1% of what is going on.
Just last night, the national census was knocked off line, by hackers, for fun. (Mind you, they should have stuck with paper.)
Zing! I might have to use this one....
I like this.
And I guess, by extension, everything that mankind gets its hold of and how it's used, reflects the condition that he is in -- there's a lot of potential for something great but at the same time lost, alone, and without any particular direction.
For those willing to listen to the mainstream media to begin with, the internet is not going to ameliorate that defect. But for those who had no inclination to begin with, it offers new and exquisite pleasures: fringe thinkers, social outcasts, dispirited academics and reconstructionist cults (along with storage of mainstream intellectual life, of the kind published in Mind). There are places on the internet that have taught me things about people that I just couldn't have learned otherwise. No one who learns of the existence of a Christian Weston Chandler or Henry Darger, and absorbed what they've done, rather than dismissing it, can look at the world in the same way. It's given me an appreciation for how broad and bizarre human experience is. There is also a post-ironic kind of discourse that only occurs on the internet, and that can really become your bread and butter once you get the hang of it, and make every other mode of human interaction look like socially retarded trash, or culturally dated.
I agree about pornography, though. I consumed a large amount of it as a teenager, much of it not at all socially appropriate, and I hit a backlash at some point in the last few years. I can only speak for myself, but on me it was a bad influence, a bad experience, and helped devalue sex and life.
Sure, we also have access to uncountable web resources, and can google the answer to any question. Social media are often beneficial and the internet provides great opportunities for relationships, employment, collaboration, and creativity. But the silver lining comes with a cloud.
I'm honoured.
And though I used to be one of those who defended pornography, I've changed my mind about it now. I think it really is changing the way people relate to each other, and not in a good way.
Quoting Sapientia
No need. You're right, but it's a baby/bathwater thing. It's one thing to dismiss Fox News, but it's another thing to dismiss work by professional journalists in favour of sensational conspiracies peddled by YouTubers.
Quoting The Great Whatever
What exactly do you mean by this TG? I ask because I'm instinctively one of those who agrees with statements like this from BC:
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yet it feels a bit too easy to think like this, as if I'm falling back on prejudice. It's facile to say that virtual relationships are eroding real relationships and it's the end of civilization, even if there's some truth in it. I'm interested in an alternative attitude, one that embraces quite different ways of living and interacting.
Quoting OglopTo
I do too. It has certainly enriched my life. I wouldn't have been able to read and discuss philosophy without it.
The thing is, often when I'm out and about I can't remember whether I've actually been there before or have merely seen it on street view. In fact I've been sure I'd been to places that, as it turns out, I'd only seen online. There's something about using street view, quite different from just looking at photographs, that makes it feel like you've really been to a place (no doubt the moving around is a big part of it). And being out, as opposed to being at my computer, although it's great and everything, it doesn't really have the feel of the primary experience any more. Real things are a bit flatter than they used to be. (I suspect this is partly an age thing though.)
After getting a taste of the way people interact in certain environments, it gets harder to care about the way they interact in others. I know people generally understand that certain phatic or 'cocktail' forms of small talk are supposed to be banal, either because the content of the speech isn't its main purpose, or because it's just an unfortunate facet of life you have to accept since not everyone can be close to everyone else, or share their interests and specialized modes of emoting.
The internet, for whatever reason, lends itself to a certain kind of irony that then collapses in on itself and becomes again, not sincere, but for lack of a better term, post-ironic, made with self-conscious irony that hits on truths without committing to them straightforwardly, and has a casual contempt for the sincerities of the real world that reveal, rather than mere contrarianness, a kind of deeper sincerity, or I shouldn't even really call it that, but a new way of thinking that is past being sincere. After tasting the kind of expression that's possible in that mode of interaction, it's just hard to be surprised by or interested in what passes for even 'real' conversation in the real world. It feels like a kind of irreversible disillusionment, I don't know. And certain places on the internet of course are better at it than others, and many don't partake in it at all, treating the internet as just an extension or proxy for real life.
I'm unsympathetic to the appeal to a return to real-world interaction because I think disillusionment of this kind is a one-way street and that once human interaction is seen as trivial you can't reverse seeing that. There is nothing 'real' about what goes on in the real world.
Probably, yeah. Age flattens everything.
My point was that you're currently using the internet to contribute to a philosophy forum, a forum that I suspect you do not have to use.
The grass is always greener on the other side.
I wouldn't go as far as to say the internet is evil or a bad influence on society per se, just that it's a technological marvel that isn't being used to its full potential. To those who say we spend too much time on the internet, I'd reply that had we not had the internet we would have just been doing something else as a time sink.
As a way of communicating ideas and information, the internet has been an unrivaled success.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikisource/en/4/42/The_Legacy_of_Totalitarianism_in_a_Tundra.pdf
Novel written collaboratively and anonymously over the internet.
It's not flattening my gut. Clearly your theory is flawed.
Maybe the meme, which appears in the novel and, I presume, all over 4chan, is a good exemplar for what you're talking about. But the thought occurs that these accumulating levels of mockery, irony, sincerity and sympathy already happen in face-to-face conversations, especially in banter; it's merely the form that differs. On the other hand, what's crucial in the message board is that this honesty happens more quickly and easily because of the anonymity, and this likely generates interactions of a different kind.
For me these kinds of irony seem to work mainly to enrich relationships that are both on and offline, rather than to distinguish on and offline relationships. But it's quite true that some of the most memorable moments I've had with certain people were chatting online, that it was more than just a peripheral means of communication, and more than just face-to-face conversation carried on by other means.
Just as you're unsympathetic to the appeal to a return to real-world interaction, I'm equally suspicious of the idea that online interaction is a liberation of the true potential of personal relationships, free of the artifice of politeness etc. I know you're not quite espousing that idea yourself, but I imagine there are those more optimistic than you who see it that way, who see a bright authentic cyberfuture rather than disillusionment.
Reading it as a novel, I can't say I like it, exactly. For a start, I'm much too unfamiliar with those communities. And it reads a bit like any old just-for-fun collaborative novel, only with the 4chan and PoMo references specific to their subculture. Plus I found it hard to wade through all the ropey tendrils of spooge.
I've studied pornography quite a lot. I haven't yet gathered sufficient data to form any reliable conclusions, though.
Possible reason for online interaction being more appealing to some...
- online communication eliminates non-verbal aspects of communication
- written communication draws on a set of communication traits different than spoken language. Most people have separate (but overlapping) vocabularies for comprehending and generating speech and text. People also think in another overlapping vocabulary.
- some people find it easier to express thinking through a keyboard than with a pencil or speech.
The differences between speech and writing have been noted for quite some time, but the printing press (Guttenberg died in 1468) brought the issue to the fore. The invention of readily usable typewriters (19th century) introduced a new element in communication: direct thought to print. A typewriter produces a line of print which is, apparently, psychologically quite different than a line of script. Electronic "word processors" (ghastly name) were introduced in the 1970s. A CRT screen displayed the pages of text entered by way of an electronic keyboard. The text was outputted to what was essentially an electronic typewriter. It wasn't quite WYSIWYG.
The Apple Macintosh introduced real WYSIWYG screens. The personal computer presented users with something different than ink on paper output of typewriters: now you could see what you were going to get, and it was easy to edit. No more frustrated ripping the paper out of the machine, wadding it up, and throwing it across the room. Now the writer could redo it at no psychological cost at all.
I experienced the progressing from manual typewriters to electronic typewriters to word processors to personal computers. I can vouch for the significance of the method of expression.
Just modern life, or the lives of those who don't have anything better to do?
Boredom pales in comparison to physical pain. Boredom is what made art, philosophy, sciences etc all possible. We've always struggled against boredom, it's just that today we're less and less able to find that psychological "flow" when we're forced into cubicles.
So modern life can be characterized as a bland persistence of laziness and servitude to our sensual desires, without the required energy to sublimate ourselves into the aesthetic. It's easy to stave off the boredom but it's ultimately ineffective because it's not aesthetic in nature. There's no effort required to be entertained.
Taken a long, hard look at it, have you? >:)
Internet make you see some things faster, that's all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unoMMru4-c0
Honestly, I'm not really sympathetic to the virtues of human interaction generally. People are disappointing, and I don't think interpersonal interaction is as important or enriching or even as interesting as it's made out to be. I'd prefer a future in which people can mutually support each other without having to get in each other's way, unless they want to. We need each other materially, but not spiritually.
I don't see a future in the internet, only a distraction from present pains. The internet will probably merge with real life in the future, making the anonymity it offers now disappear, as it gets tamed by corporations and the government. At which point real life will be even more intolerable because it will meticulously log everything you do and flood you with advertisements.
I think it's good, and I'd read it over just about anything non-classical in a Barnes and Noble. But I'm in the target audience. It has a coherency to it and a genuine esotericism, despite being funny, and in a way, it does ruin some forms of literature with its quality. I can't read about a middle aged white woman trapped in a failing marriage who spiritualizes the prospect of having an affair anymore. I just can't do it.
Concretely, which contemporary novels are you referring to here? Sounds like you've read a lot like this! (cf 'anymore')
sorry, jk, but seriously
I don't think 'post-ironic, trans-sincere' literature originates with the internet. Bartheleme had mastered the form by the late 60s. Maybe the internet just makes over-culturalization more widespread?
I think the more pressing point about the post-irony is that on the internet it isn't affected or academic or literary or part of an experiment, but actually comes quite naturally as a mode of casual discourse, and as something superior its lesser cousins, like (God help us) 'snark'
How do you know my soul!
"It is 1943—the height of the Second World War. With the men away at the front, Berlin has become a city of women.
On the surface, Sigrid Schröder is the model German soldier’s wife: She goes to work every day, does as much with her rations as she can, and dutifully cares for her meddling mother-in-law, all the while ignoring the horrific immoralities of the regime.
But behind this façade is an entirely different Sigrid, a woman of passion who dreams of her former Jewish lover, now lost in the chaos of the war. But Sigrid is not the only one with secrets—she soon finds herself caught between what is right and what is wrong, and what falls somewhere in the shadows between the two . . ."
Ok, yeah, I hear you, but I think I'm with jamalrob on this one. The natural, casual thing is a function of being in a safe space where there's no pressure play a certain role. The internet's one place, but just hanging out with friends at someone's house, or a bar, or around a campfire or wherever is just as good.
1) liberating technology provide decentralized networks, community-developed software and services.
2) cosmopolitanism, education accessible for all, fair competition based on merit and not heritage.
3) the possibility to publish and discuss topics incognito, or to critique power without risking punishment.
4) an alternative or parallel "world" open for exploration, inspiring creativity in a variety of fields.
Disappointments of the internet:
1) Private corporations provide centralized social networks, and exploit users' privacy as a product.
2) Marketing and bigotry thrive on easy and fast online distribution more than anything with content.
3) Unmoderated fora enable bullies to get away with persecution.
4) A world replete with creative works, freely available by file-sharing, might demotivate creativity.