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Staying connected but not too connected can be tough
By Wan Lixin |
May 5, 2012, Saturday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
AFTER the May Day holiday, a colleague of mine was asked about the planned out-of-town trip he mentioned before the holiday.
They did not make it, he said, because his son did not like it.
Of course, dazzling cyberspace is much more fascinating than any tourist destination on earth that can only be, by comparison, dull.
As a matter of fact, my 10-year-old has evinced a similar indifference to trees and flowers, whether in town or out of town, thus, I am rather thankful that his school had chosen Yangpu Park as their spring outing destination, yesterday.
Hence the coinage of the term zhaitong, home-bound kids.
The new generation has grown so estranged from the real, natural world that the real world in its unedited, unenhanced version has become something incomprehensible.
Another colleague of mine had a teenager niece visiting him during the holiday.
"Do you have wireless Internet access?" she asked upon arriving.
"No."
"Do you have broadband?"
"No."
"Then do you manage to survive it at all?" She was genuinely surprised. The teenager is already a prolific chuanyue fiction writer.
Chuanyue fiction is fantasy history novels in which a modern heroine would often transmigrate thousands of years back into the imperial harem, where she would strive to woo royal patronage and survive palace intrigues.
As the virtual world reigns supreme, this unwired life is quickly falling into disfavor, as an afterthought, something residual, or an inconvenience that one has to put up with for biological reasons.
In an opinion this week on People.com.cn, columnist Jiang Hongbing observes that as bookstores are dying, more and more people's eyes are glued to their mobile screens, and a survey finds that the most favorable reading is online chuanyue fiction.
Gutter oil, leather yogurt, or tainted gel capsules periodically strike fears into us, but who cares about those youths and adults who thrive on such crudely concocted spiritual fare?
The Internet's destructive potential is rooted in its indiscriminate and reckless power to duplicate and amplify. That can leads to more systemic instability.
William H. Davidow's "Overconnected: The Promise and Threat of the Internet" focuses on Internet's power to generate rapid institutional change and systemic instability by creating the chance of uncontrolled positive feedback.
As we have seen, when combined with overconnectivity, positive feedback may cause mass frenzies, instability and disruption.
The Chinese government's stepped-up efforts on cracking down on rampant rumors and lies on the Internet is just one gauge of Internet's disruptive power.
Contagions
"Anytime you create a heavily interconnected environment that links together active elements, there is a chance of creating positive feedback, driving rapid change, having accidents and spreading contagions," the author observes.
Davidow believes that thought contagions have deepened the 2008 economic crisis.
"Economic contagions are always accompanied by thought contagions, the irrational greed that drives prices up and the panic and fear producing the opposite reaction," Davidow argues.
He believes only intensified social and governmental regulation could stamp out rumors and such contagions.
Of course some countries today are also expert at leveraging rumors and contagions via social media to ferment disruptions in countries they do not like.
Other problems stemming from overconnectivity and the relative lag in regulatory effort in policing cyberspace include invasions of privacy, identity hacking, and the proliferation of pornography.
"The loss of privacy is a perfect example of the troubles that can arise in an Internet-powered environment," Davidow writes.
The Internet's power to spread sensational information, coupled with the near impossibility of absolute deletion, means that prejudicial or negative information about an individual or larger entity just remains out there in cyberspace, ready to be recalled anytime with a click.
By comparison, human forgetfulness is much more healthy.
As a matter of fact, the human psyche has been designed for much lower levels of connectivity than the Internet.
The Internet has dictated how people live, shop, make friends, structure their businesses, entertain, and obtain music and news in such a way that only the most enterprising and strongest can refuse to be enslaved by going with the flow.
How to stay connected, but not overconnected, may be part of the challenge of living up to the true promise of Internet.
They did not make it, he said, because his son did not like it.
Of course, dazzling cyberspace is much more fascinating than any tourist destination on earth that can only be, by comparison, dull.
As a matter of fact, my 10-year-old has evinced a similar indifference to trees and flowers, whether in town or out of town, thus, I am rather thankful that his school had chosen Yangpu Park as their spring outing destination, yesterday.
Hence the coinage of the term zhaitong, home-bound kids.
The new generation has grown so estranged from the real, natural world that the real world in its unedited, unenhanced version has become something incomprehensible.
Another colleague of mine had a teenager niece visiting him during the holiday.
"Do you have wireless Internet access?" she asked upon arriving.
"No."
"Do you have broadband?"
"No."
"Then do you manage to survive it at all?" She was genuinely surprised. The teenager is already a prolific chuanyue fiction writer.
Chuanyue fiction is fantasy history novels in which a modern heroine would often transmigrate thousands of years back into the imperial harem, where she would strive to woo royal patronage and survive palace intrigues.
As the virtual world reigns supreme, this unwired life is quickly falling into disfavor, as an afterthought, something residual, or an inconvenience that one has to put up with for biological reasons.
In an opinion this week on People.com.cn, columnist Jiang Hongbing observes that as bookstores are dying, more and more people's eyes are glued to their mobile screens, and a survey finds that the most favorable reading is online chuanyue fiction.
Gutter oil, leather yogurt, or tainted gel capsules periodically strike fears into us, but who cares about those youths and adults who thrive on such crudely concocted spiritual fare?
The Internet's destructive potential is rooted in its indiscriminate and reckless power to duplicate and amplify. That can leads to more systemic instability.
William H. Davidow's "Overconnected: The Promise and Threat of the Internet" focuses on Internet's power to generate rapid institutional change and systemic instability by creating the chance of uncontrolled positive feedback.
As we have seen, when combined with overconnectivity, positive feedback may cause mass frenzies, instability and disruption.
The Chinese government's stepped-up efforts on cracking down on rampant rumors and lies on the Internet is just one gauge of Internet's disruptive power.
Contagions
"Anytime you create a heavily interconnected environment that links together active elements, there is a chance of creating positive feedback, driving rapid change, having accidents and spreading contagions," the author observes.
Davidow believes that thought contagions have deepened the 2008 economic crisis.
"Economic contagions are always accompanied by thought contagions, the irrational greed that drives prices up and the panic and fear producing the opposite reaction," Davidow argues.
He believes only intensified social and governmental regulation could stamp out rumors and such contagions.
Of course some countries today are also expert at leveraging rumors and contagions via social media to ferment disruptions in countries they do not like.
Other problems stemming from overconnectivity and the relative lag in regulatory effort in policing cyberspace include invasions of privacy, identity hacking, and the proliferation of pornography.
"The loss of privacy is a perfect example of the troubles that can arise in an Internet-powered environment," Davidow writes.
The Internet's power to spread sensational information, coupled with the near impossibility of absolute deletion, means that prejudicial or negative information about an individual or larger entity just remains out there in cyberspace, ready to be recalled anytime with a click.
By comparison, human forgetfulness is much more healthy.
As a matter of fact, the human psyche has been designed for much lower levels of connectivity than the Internet.
The Internet has dictated how people live, shop, make friends, structure their businesses, entertain, and obtain music and news in such a way that only the most enterprising and strongest can refuse to be enslaved by going with the flow.
How to stay connected, but not overconnected, may be part of the challenge of living up to the true promise of Internet.
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