Monday, 1st December 2008
It’s the Internet stupid!
Abraham Biggs, Jr was a 19-year old from Florida. He is no more. He died of an overdose. This did not happen in some derelict flat or private place. It happened in public on cyberspace. He died of an overdose on the live video website.
Over one hundred people watched Abraham gasp for his last breath. The police were informed only when it was clear that the unfortunate young man was no longer breathing. When the police arrived on the scene it was too late.
"As a human being, you don't watch someone in trouble and sit back and just watch." This was the comment of Briggs Sr.
This is perhaps true in real life perhaps, but is it true of cyber life on the Internet?
The crowds that participated in the Coliseum lions against Christians “feasts” as well as those who made an outing out of seeing a public execution shows that there is a sadistic streak in all of us. But humanity has progressed since than. Most people would feel the need towards helping those in pain rather than relishing in the pain of others.
But the Internet brings with it a sense of anonymity. You are there but at the same time you are not really there. In cyberspace you do not face the others directly. You are behind the screen. Most probably you assume a different form of being from your own real existence. Nobody sees you. Nobody knows what you are doing. In fact you can have the feeling that it is not you who is doing what is being done but the Internet persona that you temporarily assume. That persona can be sadistic while you are still a decent human being.
People, even introverts, feel that they can be exhibitionistic on the Internet. How else can one explain the saucy pictures of adolescents and teenagers on the various social networks such as Hi5, Facebook etc? They think that placing such pictures on Hi5 is like having them in your album or showing them to a small clique of friends. They totally mix the private and the public spaces.
Are you a citizen of Second Life?
Same applies to relationships. Many feel that they can flirt around and be promiscuous on Second Life and in various chat rooms.
Let me open a bracket about Second Life for those who are not very conversant with the subject. This is a virtual country with virtual citizens, houses, lakes, shops, churches, brothels etc. There are cars, theatres and estate agencies. You can even sms in Second Life. Anything you find in a real country you can find in Second Life. It also has its currency.
You take on a character called an avatar. You can become a handsome six packer or a gorgeous blond. You can marry or divorce. You can buy and sell. Invite people for a party. Go to the bar for a drink. In this internet fantasy world, you can reinvent yourself and embark on the kind of adventures you’ve always dreamed of but never had the courage, audacity or luck to do in real life.
It may not be real, but a lot of people take it very seriously indeed: both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama opened campaign offices in this parallel universe. Companies such as Sony, Ikea, BMW and Coca-Cola also have a presence and Reuters and Sky News have bureaus.
This November the number of citizens of Second Life amounted to around 15 million. Not bad for a “country” that was founded in 2003!
Close brackets and back to reality.
Virtual relationship but real pain
Many who would even shun the thought of entertaining an adulterous relationship in real life would do feel that they can engage in adulterous liaisons in cyberspace. They would not even mind visiting the cyber brothels. It is their avatar who is naughty. They remain, they think, faithful and decent.
This is an illusion. Online cheating brings with it a lot of real-world heartbreak. Stories are legion and I will not go into them here.
What is true for people’s the attitude towards suicide and violence as explained above is also true about love and relationships. Professor Mark Griffiths, a psychologist at Nottingham Trent University said that it’s surprisingly easy to get emotionally involved online.
“The Internet is a disinhibiting medium, where people’s emotional guard is down,” he says. “It’s the same phenomenon as the stranger on the train, where you find yourself telling your life story to someone you don’t know, something you wouldn’t dream of doing in your local pub.”
Cyber vigilantes
Do you remember the vigilantes from the Westerns of yesteryear? They used to police the Far West and do their own rough kind of “justice” when the systems broke down.
This is now happening in cyberspace. In China there are the "human flesh search engines." The term is used to describe these latter day vigilante who team up to hunt down and punish those whom they perceive as wrongdoers. The Beijing-based freelance journalist Chris O'Brien at Forbes.com wrote about a women who committed suicide after her husband betrayed her with another woman. She placed all the information on a blog before jumping to her death. The cyber vigilantes put the husband’s picture on several Internet forums. The pressure on him mounted. He was disgraced, lost his job and was physically threatened.
There are examples of this Web vigilantism also from the United States.
In Malta we had a similar example. The photo of a paedophile was placed on the Internet after the Courts decreed that his name be kept secret though he was found guilty of paedophilia and was still working with childres.
Internet is wonderful
This is not a piece against the Internet. I am not an Internet basher. In fact I cannot image living in a world without the Internet. When the connection goes bust I am lost. It is such a wonderful tool. But like everything else it is open to abuse.
While surfing on it, though, we should be very conscious that the Internet is not a pastime. It is technology which in the fashion of communication technologies that came before it has morphed into a culture; into a new way of living our human existence. It is changing us and the world around us. By changing us humans the Internet is changing the economy, education, culture, entertainment, family structures, our concept of what is and what is not real as well as our concept of time and space
Try to think a little bit about this the next time you are on line.
Till next time I wish you all good bye and good luck.
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Comments
Its not worth the trouble...time to move on.
At the end of the day, everything boils down to taste...and endorsement. But I refuse to like anything just because someone tells me that I should like it.
I tend to blame the art critics who prefer to read worth in enigmas, possibly because they feel comfortable in giving their own interpretation, which, you can be sure, very often has no connection with the artist’s intention. They love enigmas, which they can interpret as an avant-garde expression. The art critic feels he has made a discovery, promotes it and the artist, and we misguided artists, who do not go along with his way of thinking, feel that the ground is slipping from under our feet.
We start feeling inadequate and lacking. We try to take an objective look at what the critic is promoting. See why we fail to see what the critic sees so worthy in something, which has no merit save that it is somehow different.
Sorry Fr. Joe, we are deviating.
No, Father, I beg to differ.
The problem with your blog, along with any other - your blog and theirs, there is absolutely no difference, hint, hint! - is that every time someone dares to give some fresh opinion which is different from that of one or two (generally two) 'resident' bloggers, the latter immediately jump out of their pension seats and try to tear that person apart. And you, a priest, never lift a finger to help but probably sit it out, with a smile from ear to ear.
So, why bother?
Ah, art.
re: "I would be very happy to give my views on what is passed off as art nowadays"
I am still trying to wrap my head around Tracy Emin's My Bed (This begs a question: so my unmade bed is a work of art every morning?) and Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995; Damien Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (1991) aka Shark in formaldehyde...
When I voiced my concern that I don't get this kind of art, I was called a barbarian...and worse, old-fashioned
Part one
Alice in Wonderland has had an extreme makeover...online. Today’s child and teen have access to a world more confounding than the universe Lewis Carroll’s heroine found beneath the rabbit hole. The modern version of the story could be entitled Alice in Cyberspace.
Before we used to blame TV for being used as a babysitter but now children are being raised online. Where Old Alice had merely to cope with a Mad Hatter, New Alice may be negotiating the Miss Bimbo website, on which pre-pubescent girls are encouraged to keep their virtual characters "waif thin" with diet pills and buy them breast implant surgery. For violence, Old Alice saw the Queen of Hearts screeching for blood. Her modern equivalent can watch real-life happy slappings on YouTube. One recent scene of brutality, entitled "Girl Beat Up In Street", had 1,300,000 hits
No wonder the mistrust is growing that the internet is the lonely, threatening habitat of bullies and predators. The modern Wonderland stands accused by many of inciting narcissism, idleness, obesity and even suicide. While some argue children are also being "empowered", doom-mongers are unlikely to be so sanguine.
Cultural pessimists, however, have often been wrong. For example, the warning by the media theorist Marshall McLuhan that new technology would kill off books ushered in a publishing boom.
Children have always been seen as prey, at the mercy of any monster invented by adults. Just as the big bad wolf did not kill Red Riding Hood, the big bad internet will not swallow up our pink, bouncing babies. Some of its risks are avoidable and unacceptable. But children, resourceful and resilient, have always sought a private world, free from adult scrutiny. When playing fields are concreted over, playgrounds deemed out-of-bounds and youngsters plagued either by failure or the pressure to succeed, it's not surprising they retreat into a techno-Narnia.
Parents cannot make this world completely safe. Maybe the best they can offer is to equip children better to deal with hazards placed in their way by adults. Ironically it is the firestorm whipped up by the media that pitches the parents and educators against the (largely unproved) evils of the internet. As the Queen shouted across the courtroom where Alice sat: "Sentence first - verdict afterwards."
In your previous blog you asked whether we are mature enough as a people to discuss our past . Sadly we amply demonstrated that we are not.
In this blog, we are showing even more how limited our horizons are when we cannot discuss anything beyond politics. I find this even in conversations with friends, It is very rare for me to hold a meaningful conversation with anyone about films (my pet love), culture, current events (unless they're not local politics etc)...
Why is this? why can't we think for ourselves?
It seems that many can only discuss local poltical commentaries. I think that this is a pity.
Video games now offer a feature to multiplay with other users.Voice communication between users is possible during such games which definitely generates a whole new experience. Text based communication is somewhat distant (in comparison) but now the very possibility of transmitting something authentic about yourself such as your voice creates a whole new social dimension.
I have played these games and I have to admit that it was not always pleasant . Its not easy to accustom yourself to players calling each other the unimaginable. The lack of respect of some players really falls below whats humanly acceptable. Obviously the experience changes when your friends are in it and you can talk and joke. I think that the latter is what the system was designed for, but still, some of these virtual game lobbies lack moderators. It is sad to see 9year old kids playing in 18+ multiplayer games. Where are their parents?