Cyberpessimism
David Isenberg points to an article titled "The Infrastructure of Democracy." Ethan Zuckerman notes Benjamin R. Barber’s dissent.
Barber’s assertions include:
- The internet is horizontal and privatized, which means that it’s
highly segmented. Most people talk to people like themselves, and as a
result, debates are often infantile and puerile. - There’s no source of authority on the net, so it’s hard to tell gossip from fact and lies from truth.
- The fact that the Internet is unregulated means that it’s
a monopolistic enterprise, dominated by corporate interests, notably
media, hardware and software monopolies. - One third of the net’s search engine hits are for pornography
- Virtual relationships are different - and not as important - as real ones.
Most of this seems undisputable and proof that the net is a high noise-low signal environment. For validation of number one, we need go no further than the incessant posturing in the comments of A-list bloggers. But there are break-out points and bridges between conversations. Powerful memes gain broad distribution because perfect isolation does not exist.
Number two, the power of falsehood is a threat to democracy across all media from dead trees to pixels.
Number three is neither good nor bad. How many of us want to be bothered with the complexities of Multi Protocol Layer Switching? The market power of Intel and Cisco and Microsoft and the international carriers speaks to accumulation of capital and investment of same… arguably "the way things work."
Number four… well, I’m not surprised but I don’t see the relevance.
Number five has the germ of truth… without looking into each others’ eyes, sharing pheromones, breaking bread, something is lacking. But the tools are here to expand our reach, and nobody would say that telephonic conversations are less authentic than face to face, although we all understand that they are mediated differently, that norms for information exchange are subtly differnet on the phone from face to face. I see the net as a powerful force for expanding my circle of personal relationships, and I find Barber’s observation remarkably limited.
I read Jon Lebkowsky’s comment on this and I find that I reflect some of what he said. This is not surprising since he and I share space in an echo chamber.
