Making the Intenet Better

December 14

Making the Internet a Force for Good

The internet clearly has great potential and is of great importance to the future of humanity. It behooves us as human beings to make the internet as great a force for good as we can. Many great things are already happening because of the internet; it has brought citizens of the world closer and made possible acts of altruism and helping that would not have happened otherwise; it probably made the election of Barack Obama possible; it has brought information to youngsters of all ages to further our knowledge and education; it has also made shopping more convenient. I recently saw a news report from Rwanda about how their government is in the process of giving a simple internet connected computer to every school child there. The possibilities and the examples of the internet's usefulness are boundless. However, the potential for harm caused by internet activities is also great. I have written this series of posts because I have witnessed both the good and the bad side of the internet, and consequently, I believe there is much that can be done to make the internet more of a solution and less of a problem.

The internet, much like radio and television before it, has become an important socializing force. Children are learning to use the internet and surpassing their elders in internet savvy. Yet, when I think about the good deeds which the internet has made possible, the large majority of these are being done by adults in their middle ages. Youth primarily seem to view the internet as another source of entertainment, or a shopping venue, although many view it as an educational tool as well. Young people need to think of the internet as a tool for doing good. Perhaps it will come with time, but they need examples and practice to make it work. A good example is the election of Barack Obama, which made many young voters use the internet actively in support of his candidacy. He had a very active campaign website, and now has a new one for his presidency (Change.Gov).

My major complaint with the internet is that, as business has been since the Reagan Administration, the internet has been too unregulated. It needs more reasonable regulation to prevent the internet from becoming a venue for crime, to prevent exposure of chldren to pornography, to prevent callous and cavalier sexual attitudes and behaviors from being promulagated through the internet, and to prevent the internet from becoming a training ground for various destructive and delinquent behaviors. Free speech has its limits, as does the right to privacy. Websites need a rating system, as television has, and certain language, themes, and images should not be tolerated, any more than high schoolers bringing guns to school is tolerated.

I mentioned previously that the three major factors shaping us are nature (biology, mostly genetics), nurture (environment, including the influence of other people), and free will. The internet makes an interesting study of the influences of nurture and free will. Whether or not one accepts the Humanist notion that we are basically good by nature and seeking self-actualization, the way we treat the internet has a major influence on how well people turn out. It is through nurture -- a caring, loving and accepting environment -- that we can be nurtured to become better persons, and it is a lack of nurture that has the potential to bring out the worst in people. If we make the internet a nurturing, caring environment, it will tend to bring out the best in people. The internet also extends the range of free will beyond what any past generation has experienced. Unfortunately, young people generally have less self-discipline in terms of making responsible decisions, so that the great freedoms afforded them by the internet often leads to poor decisions, and in extreme cases, disastrous ones. This points out the need for more internet regulation, especially with regard to minors. However, it is through the use of free will and decision making in a responsible manner, that morals and character are built and become internalized. People need the opportunity to make decisions for themselves, but within parameters which prevent them from making disastrous ones. This process will clearly require international cooperation, since it is indeed the worldwide web, but the opportunity for nations to cooperate in such a way should be a good thing, too.

Here's to making the internet a force for good and progress by all of humankind!

December 7

Is the Internet a Playground for Juvenile Delinquents?

A few days ago, Eunice and I went to the Moreno Valley Mall. We went to the main entrance, by the food court, which we do not usually do. As we approached, I noticed about 10 thin teenage boys, some smoking cigarettes, some looking almost emaciated, "hanging out" beside the entrance. After we entered, we saw that there was a large new video game room. There must have been 30-40 people in there, every one of them, as far as I could tell, a teenage boy, each huddled intently in front of a video screen, obsessed with game-playing, spending some of their parents' hard-earned money. Worse, all of the games seemed to involve scoring points by shooting "enemies." (I bet the military loves these games -- what a great recruiting device!) The only other thing I saw on some screens was a list of currently "hot" music, much of it by artists I had never heard of. Once again, I was reminded of the dark side of internet culture.

When I was in high school, everyone in my class was asked to read a book called "The Lord of the Flies" by an Englishman named William Golding. The book was about a group of English school boys who were shipwrecked on an island with no adult supervision. I don't think it takes a prescient mind to guess the theme of the book. Basically, the situation brought out the worst in the boys, and they ended up killing each other off for the most part. Personally, I find this to be what I would call a worst case outcome in a situation like this, but it is not one completely without precedent. The mutineers of the "Bounty" who all eloped with Tahitian women wound up on Pitcairn Island, where they settled. However, a few years later, when the group was discovered there, only one of the mutineers was still alive, although the women were still there along with some children they had with their mutineer boyfriends while they were still alive. Now, there are several hundred descendents of these original inhabitants of Pitcairn Island living there in peace. I also recall a story about elephants a few years ago with a similar theme. Of course, elephants are not humans, and apparently lack our intelligence, but they are large-brained animals. It seems that because of poaching in this region of Africa, all of the adult male elephants, who have the larger tusks, had been eliminated from the population. A few years later, when some of the younger males had grown up, rangers noticed unusual, bad behavior by the elephants, such as adult elephants killing young ones, and brutal fights between elephants. These kinds of problems never occur among elephants normally, but because of a lack of male role models, the more aggressive impulses among at least some of these elephants were given free reign.

Stories such as these make me worry about what is happening with the internet, where many websites are dominated by teenage boys and young men. Remember, young people at this point in history, use the internet more than older persons, especially since most older people are relatively computer illiterate, while their children and grandchildren are growing up using computer technology so much that it becomes "second nature" for them. Could we have a "Lord of the Flies" situation brewing here? In some cases, the answer, sadly, is yes. There have been at least two cases in the past year or so, on sites dominated by young men and teenage boys, where people have taken their own lives, with a live streaming video of their suicide being watched by many others, who if anything, for the most part encouraged them to do so until it became apparent that the person was actually going to die. One of these cases happened in Great Britain, the other, in the United States. The combination of testosterone and agression-encouraging socialization tends to make males in the teen to 20s age-range the most agression prone people. Still, I do not think it is normal for adolescent and young adult males to be violent or encourage violence. It is when they are immersed in a culture of violence, profanity, and cavalier sexual attitudes that such behaviors start to become acceptable or even desirable in their minds, and that is what I am afraid is happening with a large portion of the internet, as well as much of adolescent subculture as a whole. For example, date rape statistics are reaching sickening proportions. Too many young men are operating on a criminal level, attempting to get away with as much as they can, without regard for their female partners or the relationships they have with them. It makes me cringe to report that according to my Developmental Psychology textbook, about 2/3 of college freshman women have either been victims of date rape or attemped date rape. while about 2/3 of college men admit to having fondled women against their will, and half admit to "forcing sexual activity." This is one of those statistics I read and just hope the numbers are exaggerated. But even if they are on the high side, statistics such as these tell us that we have a real problem with the socialization of young men in today's society. Perhaps it has always been that way, but I doubt it.

How does it happen that antisocial attitudes become prevalent among young men, or young women, for that matter? I have mentioned a few of the factors in recent posts. One is the risky shift. Group attitudes tend to become more extreme over time. This trend is more pronounced when the most vehement among the group are also the most extreme, and it takes a dangerous turn when these people become group leaders who encourage aggressive or antisocial behaviors in others. Hitler, and his Nazi Germany, were a prime example of this. To be sure, Hitler had a great deal of help, but he was the catalyst for the atrocities that followed his rise to power. Websites in which the most antisocial among us dominate the conversation are a real problem. Another factor which aids the manifestation of antisocial behavior is deindividuation. The more anonymous people feel, the less inhibited they feel, so that they may commit destructive and aggressive acts under the cloak of anonymity that they would not have were their identities known. It is pretty sad to think that the only thing stopping some people from behaving atrociously is the threat of punishment, but in some cases, that is true. Being motivated by the threat of punishment (that is, fear) represents the lowest level of morality in just about any theory of moral development. People with an autonomous sense of morality should not allow themselves to get caught up in a mob mentality, but some adolescents or even young adults do not appear to have a strong enough sense of morality independent of others, to resist negative group influence. Another important factor allowing atrocious behavior to be accepted is a lack of empathy, an understanding of and feeling of the emotions of others. Perhaps the most important lesson a child can learn is have empathy for others. The way that adults, peers, and older siblings communicate with a child can help the child to engender a sense of empathy. Also, taking care of animals such as pets can help a child develop empathy. Even the sadness a child has when a pet dies can be an important, empathy training experience. Recent research continues to find that emotions tend to spread from person to person, which is a good sign of empathy. However, antisocial persons tend to lack empathy. Presumably, they do not feel others' pain the way that most of us do. And finally, of course, people learn from each other. They model each others' behavior, which in Psychology is called Observational Learning. People with antisocial role models move in that direction themselves.

My personal experience with the internet has included some lessons about the negative aspects of the internet, although, ironically enough due to privacy concerns, I had better not be too specific about them. One of my relatives had an argument with an acquaintance on MySpace, which led to an actual physical confrontation, injury, and arrest. Two of the first students who told me to go on social networking sites to promote my sites, both spent time in jail by the end of the semester (last spring). In fact, one of them was still in jail when the semester ended. I do not know what the charges were. In any event, these were the first two students of mine, as far as I knew, who had ever been put in jail. Whether my having these experiences was a matter of Karma, or whether they represented the antisocial, narcissistic or morally confused elements of society who are attracted to the social networking possibilities of the internet, there is a sort of connection here. Too many people are using the internet for the wrong reasons, and worse, too many people are learning the wrong sort of lessons in their use of the internet.

This is something which can be remedied with reasonable regulation, so by all means, that is what we as a society need to do. There is a great similarity between our economic situation and the state of the internet. Both are far too unregulated, and as a result, have had the inmates running the prison, so to speak. Our economy has been the playground of the corporate CEO, while the internet to some extent has become the playground of the adolescent delinquents and a showcase of their behavior. Perhaps these adolescents have been taking their lessons from our corporate moguls. In my opinion, the internet creates great potential to do good, and is doing good in many ways. There are many good websites and blogs which represent a prosocial realm of positive role models and good ideas, but there is another side of the internet which operates without conscience, where nastiness, impulsiveness, promiscuity and delinquency rule.

I do not see this as a matter of free speech. The internet can have reasonably free speech, as free as anyone's speech really can be without infringing on that of others, while having protections against causing harm to its users. Remember, all freedoms have their limits; there is no such thing as absolute freedom. Laws limit freedoms, and in the absence of law, something much worse will limit your freedom, perhaps the owners of some powerful corporation who make selfish and greedy decisions adversely affecting you, or perhaps some nasty, mean-spirited anonymous person who creates computer viruses or brings you down with verbal internet vitriol. I envision an internet in the not-too-distant future that is essentially prosocial. The internet should be structured so that it brings out the best in us, not the worst in us. But in order to do so, the internet needs to be a place where people, of all ages, take responsibility for their actions, not merely some sort of playground where people can live out their fantasies. The internet is for real. Don't forget that.

December 5

If it's not one thing, it's another. This week I have been sick. Apparently I caught an infection from my relatives while they were at my parents' house for Thanksgiving. A bunch of us got sick. Wednesday, I was so fatigued and sick that I lacked the energy to write a post or do any of my work. Fortunately, it seems to be a fairly short-acting infection and not very serious. My previous illness was pneumonia, which I had last winter in December and January. I was really sick that time, the sickest that I have ever been. It lasted for about 2 months, and delayed the opening of my websites, although I continued to teach (and make students sick).

Anonymity and the Internet

I read an article a few months ago about how nasty people have become on many internet sites. I think it was in Time magazine, but I don't have it anymore. This article reminded me that anonymity has once again gone too far. I wrote recently about the problem of anonymity in voting -- basically, that it makes it easier for people to cheat behind the scenes. Anonymity is also an issue in teaching evaluations. Students always do these anonymously, which is a way of giving supposedly unbiased objective opinions about a teacher. Of course, these evaluations are never truly objective. In fact, some students use anonymity as a shield against criticism, which allows them to criticize others in nasty and vicious ways, without fear of reprisal. However, in teaching, at least teachers have face-to-face contact with their students, and might even guess who might have said what. In the internet, anonymity has reached a level never seen before. People who have never met, using aliases, use the internet in many cases to lie to, mislead, manipulate and decieve each other, under the veil of anonymity.

What all of these instances of anonymity have in common is the fact that they fail to hold anonymous people accountable for their actions. In social psychology, the fact that people behaving anonymously are often observed performing antisocial behaviors which they would never engage in were their identities known, is called deindividuation. In short, the internet allows people who are so inclined to deindividuate and perform antisocial acts against others. The rationale for anonymity in all cases, is that individuals need their privacy to be protected in order to avoid undue influence by others. This is a valid point as well. Research on conformity shows that people are less conformist when being anonymous than when their behavior is publicly known. Thus, we are left with a balancing act, balancing the right to privacy against the dangers of anonymity. In my opinion, anonymity has gone too far in many cases, particularly with regard to voting and the internet. That is why we have difficulty trusting the results of elections in recent years, and it is also why the internet has become a gigantic, worldwide warehouse of unregulated pornography, obsenity, pettiness, careless thinking, and vicious personal attacks. This is really sad, given the enormous potential of the internet, and its obvious importance to the future of society.

The internet is also a great force for good, as the election of Barack Obama, the development of reasoned discourse among citizens all over the world, including China, the advent of self-help, prosocial websites and thoughtful, prosocial blogs all attest to. However, just as our economic system has become too unregulated, so has our internet been underregulated from the beginning. Perhaps the internet developed so quickly that it took legislators by surprise, but I think there are two other problems which have kept the internet from being reasonably regulated. One is that the internet came about at the wrong time, a period of corporate profligacy and derugulation, for which we are now paying. Thus, attitudes of legislators, at least in the U.S. or by worldwide corporate interests, did not favor regulation. This problem can be overcome. In fact, it is likely that there will be calls for reasonable regulation of the internet in the coming years. The other problem is that the internet is global. Thus, attempts to regulate it will involve global legislation. This may prove to be a more intractable problem, but not an impossible one. International bodies, such as the United Nations, will need to be involved. If not, we will continue to see the benefits of the internet being more or less cancelled out by the problems that it causes.

We also need to ensure that the internet does not become controlled by large corporations. If we do not maintain net neutrality, there is a danger that corporations may take over the internet, direct people to their websites, prevent people from finding independent websites, saturate the internet with advertising, and make people who use the internet pay for more and more services, either in a mandatory way, or a voluntary way to receive additional services. Perhaps there should be two internets, one for commercial enterprises that people could access when they want to shop for something, or advertise something, and the peoples' internet, one which everyone can join in order to communicate with each other and exchange information freely and openly, without being exposed to advertising or commercial websites. People could make donations to personal websites on the peoples' internet, but they would not be asked to pay for services.

All of this internet activity should take place in a public, non-anonymous atmosphere. In fact, the most important internet regulation that I can think of, is to make the true identity of every user of the internet available to other users. It may be fun to make up nicknames for ourselves, or even alter-egos, and that is fine, but our true identities need to also be available, with proof of identity. Otherwise, the internet will continue to be a bastion of nastiness, and that is exactly what we do not need the internet to be. It seems as though normal, civil people are often tempted to use the internet to find out how nasty they can be, and what they can get away with, encouraged by the mean-spirited among us. In the end, such nastiness brings us all down, and people find themselves becoming the nasty persons that in the beginning, they only pretended to be as a lark.

December 1

Well, I finally got everything from both the Box-Free Blog and Dolly-Verse downloaded to this computer, so now I can presumably get back to normal and post more frequently than I have been since the old computer went bad. I have a long list of issues I wish to write (or left) about, but obviously, I cannot do them all at once, so I have to pick and choose the order in which to do them. Since I have been dealing with computer and internet issues recently, I would like to start with a discussion of the culture of the internet. By the way, I am not through with politics; there are just many other issues to explore, some of which are politically relevant.

MySpace Culture: The Culture of Profanity and Banality

I have not been posting much on MySpace recently. I joined MySpace in May because I heard from some of my students that it was a good way to draw people to one's other websites, although from what I had heard of MySpace, I had major reservations about it. Those reservations have been confirmed by my experiences with MySpace. If you have been paying attention to the news recently, you may have heard of the case of the woman who is accused of causing the suicide of a 13 year old acquaintance of her daughter through the use of MySpace. Allegedly, the woman impersonated a teenage boy on MySpace, showed an interest in her daughter's acquaintance, then turned against her (all preplanned), and suggested that the world would be better off if the acquaintance were dead. Soon afterward, the daughter's friend commited suicide (by hanging herself, I believe). The woman's motivation was apparently that the girl who ended up commiting suicide was having some sort of dispute with her daughter. We have probably also heard of sexual predators using MySpace to take advantage of teenage girls. Of course, these incidences give bad publicity to MySpace, but they can be potentially be discounted as aberrations to the general usage of MySpace.

However, in being a part of MySpace, I have observed that while the criminal use of MySpace may be the exception, the normal use of MySpace is problematic, and makes its criminal use a strong likelihood. To present yet another list, here is my MySpace grievance list:

1. I wrote that I was married and not looking for a dating relationship in my profile. Despite this, I have received constant friend invitations from what I call "MySpace Spam Vixens," young women who offer nude pictures on another website, or dating with the expectation of sexual activity. I promptly put these in the spam folder, and many of them soon quit MySpace, but the offers continued unabated until recently, when I discovered that the secret to not receiving them was to avoid MySpace, and not post anything there. Most of these woman (at least they say they are women), do not show any photos of themselves, despite promising nude photos on another website, so for all I know, they may not be genuine people. Also, many of them have the exact same wording in their profiles, incontrovertable circumstantial evidence that they come from the same source.

2. Another sex-related issue is the ads on MySpace. Many of them offer sexually explicit "dating" services, including ones which offer discrete, no-strings attached sexual liasons for married people with new partners. Obviously, this is an invitation for infidelity to one's spouse.

3. Freedom of speech allows profanity to be used on MySpace. Unfortunately, in many portions of MySpace, profanity has gone wild. I tend to avoid those areas, but have seen enough to "turn my stomach" so to speak. Much of this profanity is probably being promulgated by teenagers.

4. MySpace also promulgates a culture of banality, which according the my dictionary means hackneyed, trite, and overused. Profanity is overused on MySpace, for one, but many other aspects of popular culture become overused on MySpace and other social networking sites. It's not just "the flavor of the month;" it is also OMG, LOL, and other social networking vernacular, much of which is unfamiliar to me. Eventually, common ways of wording one's thoughts become social memes which come to predominate a place such as MySpace. This process brings down the level of intellectual discourse which can be engaged in by users of sites such as MySpace.

5. The "shock" culture of MySpace is most disturbing to me. Whatever is most extreme and shocking receives star treatment on MySpace. Witness its homepage. Everyday, one of the first things to load is a set of links to shocking or exteme videos shot by amateurs. Other items loading on the homepage of MySpace are celebrity news (we all need to keep up with with Brittany Spears, Lindsay Lohan, and Paris Hilton are up to, after all), along with news of the latest "cool" music albums that have become available. This trend toward extremism is what is known as "the risky shift" in social psychology research. Group attitudes tend to be relatively mild when a group first forms, but over time, become more and more extreme as consensus forms, and those with stronger opinions gain undue influence over the group.

6. The anonymity of MySpace is one of the major reasons behind these problems. People can pretend to be someone other than who they really are, and not be held accountable. I personally feel that this lack of accountability is what makes the aforementioned problems so serious.

My next post will broaden the discussion of issues such as these to the wider internet community.