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Brave new world of Internet contains forces of control
By Wan Lixin |
December 24, 2011, Saturday
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MIDDLE-AGED people may still remember how people once fantasized about the advent of information age.
According to prophets, breakthroughs in communication would usher in a brave new world where people could access any information any time they want. What a blissful state!
Now most people are in this brave new world. The plethora of hand-held gadgets make possible real time communication and unrestricted online access.
But the new world turns out to be more a dystopia than a utopia.
A fact still eluding many is that technology tends to come up with more problems than solutions.
At the beginning, Internet access was lauded as enlightening, empowering and emancipating, but as it turns out, it appears even better at taming and enslaving. Just think how many violent criminal suspects in China meet their fate in Internet cafes.
Evgeny Morozov's "The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom" claims that the information revolution was not so liberating as once envisioned.
He talks about escapist media which makes life more tolerable, how some states can adapt these new tools to their own purposes, and how joining too many groups on social media paralyzes real political action.
The essential problem with the electronic transmission lies exactly in the light speed of electronic communication.
That speed exerts tremendous pressure on time-consuming content creation, which is still subject to biological limits of human beings.
To keep up with the online thirst for updates and novelty, creation in the Internet age is more and more of cut-and-paste work.
Meanwhile, the constant bombardment of information overtaxes human perceptive power, reducing them into addictive wrecks.
In theory, all information travels at light speed. In practice, only news about sex, disasters, and celebrities can aspire to that breathtaking speed.
By contrast, serious social or philosophical discourses languish into irrelevance, getting drowned in the exploding Internet trash.
Morozov correctly debunks near religious beliefs about the positive power of the Internet and total information access, demonstrating that this rosy view fails to take into account of more subtle positions and keeps governmental and societal attention focused on less meaningful activities.
"The view that technology is neutral leaves policymakers with little to do but scrutinize the social forces around technologies, not technologies themselves," Morozov observes.
This assumption about the neutral nature of technology is misleading.
It conceals the fact that online resources lend themselves particularly to control and manipulation.
It is no secret that media outlets like CNN are mouthpieces of American government.
While some Western powers are always ready to condemn other countries' Internet control and censorship, they are equally efficient in containing information that might compromise their public image.
The systemic effort at silencing and punishing Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, is a case in point.
Given their resources and technical edge, Western powers have been very successful at creating and ossifying stereotypes.
In the book author Morozov has been using words like "authoritarian" or "repressive" regimes exactly as defined by Western media.
If Morozov could spare a moment for reflection, it might light on him that essentially "authoritarian" and "repressive" regime are those countries coveted for their resources or market potential, but disliked for their non-compliance, particularly their lack of generosity. They would be pronounced free immediately after they become a nation of shoppers.
Such misperception is particularly easy to produce in the Internet age for cyberage citizen's memory span becomes so short that they depends heavily on the Google search engine for enlightenment.
As human memory is outsourced to Google, Google can shape our understanding by constantly obliterating and editing the past.
Control becomes easy as people become superbusy. In Huxley's "Brave New World," future citizens feel happier on regimentation, drugs, consumers goods and endless entertainment.
Today the internet has supplied sufficient addiction and distraction for netizens to be happy.
The seemingly vigorous online polemics are generally engaged in debating superficial, frivolous, sensational issues.
These discussions produce false impressions of engagement and participation.
In 2009 US President Barack Obama warned his audience about the contemporary flood of information becoming "a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment."
As machines are taking control, it's obsolete to gaze out the window, to watch the sunset - even without the pervading haze.
According to prophets, breakthroughs in communication would usher in a brave new world where people could access any information any time they want. What a blissful state!
Now most people are in this brave new world. The plethora of hand-held gadgets make possible real time communication and unrestricted online access.
But the new world turns out to be more a dystopia than a utopia.
A fact still eluding many is that technology tends to come up with more problems than solutions.
At the beginning, Internet access was lauded as enlightening, empowering and emancipating, but as it turns out, it appears even better at taming and enslaving. Just think how many violent criminal suspects in China meet their fate in Internet cafes.
Evgeny Morozov's "The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom" claims that the information revolution was not so liberating as once envisioned.
He talks about escapist media which makes life more tolerable, how some states can adapt these new tools to their own purposes, and how joining too many groups on social media paralyzes real political action.
The essential problem with the electronic transmission lies exactly in the light speed of electronic communication.
That speed exerts tremendous pressure on time-consuming content creation, which is still subject to biological limits of human beings.
To keep up with the online thirst for updates and novelty, creation in the Internet age is more and more of cut-and-paste work.
Meanwhile, the constant bombardment of information overtaxes human perceptive power, reducing them into addictive wrecks.
In theory, all information travels at light speed. In practice, only news about sex, disasters, and celebrities can aspire to that breathtaking speed.
By contrast, serious social or philosophical discourses languish into irrelevance, getting drowned in the exploding Internet trash.
Morozov correctly debunks near religious beliefs about the positive power of the Internet and total information access, demonstrating that this rosy view fails to take into account of more subtle positions and keeps governmental and societal attention focused on less meaningful activities.
"The view that technology is neutral leaves policymakers with little to do but scrutinize the social forces around technologies, not technologies themselves," Morozov observes.
This assumption about the neutral nature of technology is misleading.
It conceals the fact that online resources lend themselves particularly to control and manipulation.
It is no secret that media outlets like CNN are mouthpieces of American government.
While some Western powers are always ready to condemn other countries' Internet control and censorship, they are equally efficient in containing information that might compromise their public image.
The systemic effort at silencing and punishing Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, is a case in point.
Given their resources and technical edge, Western powers have been very successful at creating and ossifying stereotypes.
In the book author Morozov has been using words like "authoritarian" or "repressive" regimes exactly as defined by Western media.
If Morozov could spare a moment for reflection, it might light on him that essentially "authoritarian" and "repressive" regime are those countries coveted for their resources or market potential, but disliked for their non-compliance, particularly their lack of generosity. They would be pronounced free immediately after they become a nation of shoppers.
Such misperception is particularly easy to produce in the Internet age for cyberage citizen's memory span becomes so short that they depends heavily on the Google search engine for enlightenment.
As human memory is outsourced to Google, Google can shape our understanding by constantly obliterating and editing the past.
Control becomes easy as people become superbusy. In Huxley's "Brave New World," future citizens feel happier on regimentation, drugs, consumers goods and endless entertainment.
Today the internet has supplied sufficient addiction and distraction for netizens to be happy.
The seemingly vigorous online polemics are generally engaged in debating superficial, frivolous, sensational issues.
These discussions produce false impressions of engagement and participation.
In 2009 US President Barack Obama warned his audience about the contemporary flood of information becoming "a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment."
As machines are taking control, it's obsolete to gaze out the window, to watch the sunset - even without the pervading haze.
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