|
Introduction
Three key aspects of
the Internet will be the focus of this chapter: the first, the ability
of the Internet to encourage and facilitate the human instinct to
affiliate in groups with strong
codes of morality, something that was not the case with previous
media innovations; the second, the tendency of the Internet to bypass
existing societal boundaries, and specifically nation states; and
the third, perhaps in the long run the most profound, the opportunities
offered by the Internet for people to develop alternative models
of society.
These three attributes
of the Internet are already combining to make it a potent agent
of change, and will considerably accelerate the transition to globalized
models of cooperation and governance in all of the dimensions surveyed
in Part One of the book - economic, cultural, political, legal and
fiscal.
The
'Groupishness' Of The Internet
The
Internet permits and even encourages the formation of groups entirely
at the wish of the individual.
Previous inventions
have been helpful in supporting groups: radio and television provide
groupish programming; books often appeal to groups; and magazines
are quintessentially groupish. But only the Internet provides such
a ready means of forming groups, of enhancing communication between
group members, and of allowing the development of a social environment
for geographically-separated group members.
Groups are often called
'communities' on the Internet. Virtual reality
communities such as World of Warcraft and
SecondLife satisfy wholly unfulfilled
human needs for social groupings, and are developing moral environments
that are at least as complex as those provided in the 'real' world.
The
importance of the group as a key building block, indeed foundation,
of human society must not be underestimated. Although consciousness
may have originated way back in animal evolution, there's no doubt
that cognitive power, and presumably consciousness as part of that,
expanded greatly with the arrival of social groups.
Despite the growing
role in social and cultural development of institutions above the
level of the basic human group, humans retain their groupish natures
because they developed before external, over-arching social institutions
became the focus of evolution, and genetically speaking, humans
don't appear to have changed greatly in the last 30,000 years.
The
Internet and the Nation State
At least as it is presently
organized, and perhaps permanently, the Internet is able to provide
a forum in which groups can exist pretty much independently of nation
states. Indeed, this aspect of the Internet is so threatening to
the less democratic - more authoritarian - types of nation state
such as China that they go to great lengths to circumscribe its
effectiveness. Happily, they are mostly unsuccessful.
Other chapters have
described the process by which the nation state has taken upon itself
the moral and behavioural regulation of its citizens, roles which
were once performed by more or less 'groupish' institutions such
as the village (the commune), the church and even (once, especially)
the family.
The
Internet As A Provider Of Morality
It is of the utmost
importance to notice that groups on the Internet are not just at
liberty to formulate codes of conduct for their members but that
they do so with great abandon; and these rules are in almost all
cases extremely moral, in the sense that they conform well to codes
of behaviour promulgated in the past by religions
and other moral authorities. This is partly because such rules are
deeply embedded in human nature as a result
of evolution, and will immediately come to
the surface in any grouping of people if there is no externally
imposed frame of reference. Partly also there is no doubt a degree
of cultural uniformity among some of the
populations that form groups on the Internet, which is reflected
in the rules they make for themselves.
Proposing that Internet
groups will have basically moral structures may sound rather extreme,
or a triumph of soppy hope over reality. But just look at the evidence
displayed by the following fairly random selection of Internet groups,
clubs or associations. It would be easy to find ten times as many
examples (and see Appendix 3, which consists of a survey of a number
of Virtual Internet Communities - VICs - including extracts in some
cases from their rule-books).
- Parmedia
is a membership news blog and has an extensive Compact setting
out the standards members are expected to adhere to. Here is a
short extract:
'The ParMedia Site is dedicated to
the free exchange of all ideas and viewpoints. Because it is our
objective to provide our contributors and readers (one and the
same) with the best environment for gaining knowledge and submitting
useful information on topical events, we request that our members
maintain certain standards and respect other people's right to
a differing viewpoint. If you disagree with certain Content, we
ask that you disagree with the viewpoints expressed and not with
the people that have them. In other words, we will not tolerate
vicious personal attacks, vulgarity or other unacceptable conduct.
Although we want to make this environment as open and uncensored
as possible, we ask that all members adhere to this Compact.'
- Print-Planet.com
is part of E-Communities, an extensive series of computer user
groups which requires a substantial amount of personal and professional
information before admitting members. It has a long user agreement.
One paragraph reads:
'Your use of the
Services is subject to, and you agree to not use the Services
in any manner that is prohibited by or facilitates the violation
of, any applicable local, state, national, or international law
or regulation. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing,
you agree:
'that you will not use the Services to: (a) stalk, harass, or
harm another individual; (b) impersonate any person or entity
or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity;
(c) interfere with or disrupt the Services or servers or networks
connected to the Services or disobey any requirements, procedures,
policies, or regulations of networks connected to the Services;
(d) collect or store personal data about other users; (e) post,
e-mail, or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized
advertising or promotional materials, "spam," or other
forms of solicitation; (f) attempt to gain unauthorized access
to other computer systems or to disable or circumvent any security
or tracking mechanisms included in or operating in conjunction
with the Services; or (g) interfere with anyone else's use and
enjoyment of the Services.'
-
Secondlife.com
is a prominent example of 'virtual reality' sites. Secondlife's
'Community Standards' are a good sample of virtual world 'ethical
codes'.
'We
hope you'll have a richly rewarding experience, filled with
creativity, self expression and fun.
'The goals of the
Community Standards are simple: treat each other with respect
and without harassment, adhere to local standards as indicated
by simulator ratings, and refrain from any hate activity which
slurs a real-world individual or real-world community.
'Within Second
Life, we want to support Residents in shaping their specific
experiences and making their own choices.
'The Community
Standards sets out six behaviors, the "Big Six", that
will result in suspension or, with repeated violations, expulsion
from the Second Life Community.
'All Second Life
Community Standards apply to all areas of Second Life, the Second
Life Forums, and the Second Life Website.
'Intolerance
Combating intolerance is a cornerstone of Second Life's Community
Standards. Actions that marginalize, belittle, or defame individuals
or groups inhibit the satisfying exchange of ideas and diminish
the Second Life community as whole. The use of derogatory or
demeaning language or images in reference to another Resident's
race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or sexual orientation is
never allowed in Second Life.
'Harassment
Given the myriad capabilities of Second Life, harassment can
take many forms. Communicating or behaving in a manner which
is offensively coarse, intimidating or threatening, constitutes
unwelcome sexual advances or requests for sexual favors, or
is otherwise likely to cause annoyance or alarm is Harassment.
'Assault
Most areas in Second Life are identified as Safe. Assault in
Second Life means: shooting, pushing, or shoving another Resident
in a Safe Area (see Global Standards below); creating or using
scripted objects which singularly or persistently target another
Resident in a manner which prevents their enjoyment of Second
Life.
'Disclosure
Residents are entitled to a reasonable level of privacy with
regard to their Second Lives. Sharing personal information about
a fellow Resident --including gender, religion, age, marital
status, race, sexual preference, and real-world location beyond
what is provided by the Resident in the First Life page of their
Resident profile is a violation of that Resident's privacy.
Remotely monitoring conversations, posting conversation logs,
or sharing conversation logs without consent are all prohibited
in Second Life and on the Second Life Forums.
'Indecency
Second Life is an adult community, but Mature material is not
necessarily appropriate in all areas (see Global Standards below).
Content, communication, or behavior which involves intense language
or expletives, nudity or sexual content, the depiction of sex
or violence, or anything else broadly offensive must be contained
within private land in areas rated Mature (M). Names of Residents,
objects, places and groups are broadly viewable in Second Life
directories and on the Second Life website, and must adhere
to PG guidelines.
'Disturbing the
Peace
Every Resident has a right to live their Second Life. Disrupting
scheduled events, repeated transmission of undesired advertising
content, the use of repetitive sounds, following or self-spawning
items, or other objects that intentionally slow server performance
or inhibit another Resident's ability to enjoy Second Life are
examples of Disturbing the Peace.'
With fairly minor adaptions,
this would do very well for a code of social ethics under which
most 'real-world' inhabitants would be only too happy to live their
lives!
Alternative
Social Models On The Internet
As
noted, the Internet expands people's ability to associate by making
it very easy for an individual to find other, like-minded individuals.
It also allows an individual to pretend:
perhaps this can be seen as the cyber-space equivalent of an amateur
dramatic society, and that's just what it looks like in the case
of virtual communities such as World of
Warcraft. The anonymity of the Internet can have bad results (middle-aged
paedophiles pretending to be football-playing 15-year old girls),
of course, but this may be a short-lived phenomenon (see evolution
of the Internet, below).
Alongside
sophisticated internal bodies of laws governing behaviour, with
severe sanctions for those who break the laws, Virtual
Internet Communities (VICs) also have 'real' economies, in which
actual money can be made or lost through trading
activity. Although the progenitors (and supervisors) of these games
(as they were originally) are ambivalent about this commercial activity
or in some cases opposed to it, the only way in which they'll stop
it is to become like a State, and this is
probably not what their players want. There is completely transparent
competition on the Internet, and few external limits (yet) on how
players should behave. In the case of E-Bay,
coming from the opposite, commercial, direction, sub-economies have
already sprung up, many of them 'groupish' in nature; E-Bay also
has had to construct a complex body of law dealing with the behaviour
of its users.
Perhaps because alternative
communities on the Internet are the special home to young people,
older people and particularly the 'authorities' worry about whether
they encourage violence or sexual permissiveness, and about whether
they so distort a youngster's idea of 'reality' that she will be
somehow unfitted for life in the 'real' world.
What is the 'real world'?
Surely it is no more than a series of social situations in which
a person has to behave with her peers in such a way as to maximize
her success in terms of the goals of life, including but not limited
to survival, mating and the pursuit of happiness.
It is very hard to see why 'alternative' reality communities should
not serve these purposes just as well as 'real' ones. Perhaps they
don't ideally do so at present, largely due to the relatively primitive
stage of development of the sites themselves; but even now they
are not doing a bad job.
This is a large subject,
and in terms of the social change that may flow from the seemingly
inevitable dominance of the Internet as a communications
medium, it is addressed from some different angles in later chapters.
Here we will consider a few aspects of the Internet which are important
to its future role as an agent of social change.
Deception
on the Internet
One of the characteristics
of the Internet that most worries critics of its influence on young
people is that fact that you don't know who you are talking to.
In fact, deception is nothing new among humans, and we are well
equipped to deal with it.
Deception is widely
described among proto-social groupings of animals (eg
monkeys) but it doesn't seem to have adverse consequences for the
social position of the individual until
the group acquires more sophistication. It is one weapon among many,
that is all. But once the group starts to have internal organisation,
and individuals have knowledge of each other's characteristics (roughly
coeval with the use of language and the increase
in brain size that led to the emergence of homo
sapiens) then deception, if practised in the group, is rapidly noticed
and punished by expulsion or withdrawal of group benefits (grooming,
access to females, inclusion in trade).
This is not to say
that deception disappears from the range of human behaviours because
of groups; of course not. What changes is that reputation
acquires a positive value, and it can be lost by aberrant behaviour
(aberrant from group norms). Reputation management is prime among
the social skills which people developed in early group social environments.
One of the main results
of the use of complex linguistic interaction among group members
is indeed the use of gossip to build or damage reputation. Barkow,
Cosmides and Tooby 2: 'Gossip from an
anthropological perspective is a means of social control, a sanction
that forces one to adhere more closely to social norms than one
would otherwise be inclined. Reputation is determined by gossip,
and the casual conversations of others affect one's relative standing
and one's acceptability as a mate or as a partner in social exchange.'
As the group becomes
larger, deception becomes easier to practice again, because you
can't know everybody in a settled community of 3,000 individuals,
with the difference that it has become established as wrong - because
it is hurtful to the group. The groupish instinct or nature of the
individual has many dimensions, and the wrongness of deception is
one of them.
Chris
Knight 3 summarizing Desalles 4
asks why it is that within human coalitions status is earned through
the efforts of the individual to display and acquire information,
whereas in ape society it may be earned more effectively by manipulation
or concealment of relevant information? For Lasalle, the answer
is that in the human group ownership of information has replaced
physical strength as the most important currency. In an ape troop
you hardly need a reputation for strength; you are strong or you
are not. In a human group, there is no physical attribute that says
you are wealthy in information, hence the need for reputation.
Trivers
5 points out that individuals can move
between groups as a result of social factors, for instance an individual
engaging in much deception can be expelled, or a cooperator can
choose to leave a group which permits too much deception. Nick
Emler 6 argues that much of our daily
use of language is in fact concerned with reputation management.
A
growing body of opinion links deception as practised by humans with
self-deception, itself closely associated with the psychological
mechanism of repression. Randolph M Nesse and
Alan T Lloyd 1 review a wide range of
research on this subject, concluding that the capacity for self-deception
may offer a selective advantage by enhancing the ability to deceive
others. Quoting Alexander and Trivers,
the authors propose that a person who consciously believes what
is being said to be true is more likely to convince others. If
evolution goes to such lengths to encourage deception, then it obviously
was adaptive. But it is not nearly so adaptive in a co-operative
group, which has therefore had to develop mechanisms to prevent
or discourage it.
On the Internet, deception
already takes many forms. We may include viruses, spam and impersonation
as deceptive behaviour. They are getting so bad that some people
give up the Internet as a bad job; but really it is just a kind
of Black Death situation. Viruses, as in animals,
have given rise to antibodies (patches or the equivalent) and doctors
(Norton, etc). Some of the remedies are even called Doctor this
or Doctor that. It is perhaps a bit early to say that viruses have
been defeated; they never will be, either in people or in computers.
But the vigilant, prepared individual (computer) should be able
to defeat them in almost all cases.
Spam is 'free-loading'
run riot. It is a kind of stealing, of the power of other people's
computers, and of their time taken to sort through the incoming
e-mails. Its effectivess in economic terms (for the sender) is wholly
based on anonymity and the costless borrowing (stealing) of data
and computer power, and loss of anonymity will rapidly prevent it.
It is a special case of impersonation, in fact. The issue is how
to deprive people on the Internet of the capacity to impersonate
others, or at least to make impersonation so difficult to achieve,
so easy to discover, and so costly when discovered, that there is
no incentive to do it.
In human evolution
this was achieved as regards deception by the emergence of groups,
or more accurately, it was a by-product of the emergence of groups,
viewed from a positive aspect of the development of individual reputation
as a kind of badge of okayness. Technologically, it would not be
that difficult to make the e-mail process completely transparent
on the Internet, but the resulting loss of confidentiality and the
extra powers given to regulators would make such a solution unacceptable
to most people. Spam filters are a partial solution, but are very
imperfect and are perhaps only a stop-gap measure. The solution
may come instead from some kind of positive, associative process,
in which a combination of certification, encryption and individual
reputation will allow safe e-mail communication within groups of
individuals, and between conforming groups. Identity theft would
still be possible, but it would be easily detected and traced. The
process of stealing an identity on the Internet requires something
like a virus, to penetrate a group's or an individual's defences,
and as seen above, that is a diminishing problem.
The
Springs Of Social Behaviour On And Off The Internet
Before trying to determine
whether the Internet will be a force for social good, or the opposite,
it is instructive to explore a little the psychological mechanics
of social behaviour.
The
starting point is the assertion that undesirable social behaviour
stems from lack of a robust internalized moral structure and that
this in turn results from the absence of group-delivered behavioural
rules. In Jungian terms, the anti-social individual
fails to share in a positive and effective collective
unconscious.
If
that starting point is accepted, then anything that can increase
involvement in (the right type of) groups is going to increase the
power of the individual's collective unconscious and decrease his
tendency towards anti-social feelings or behaviour.
Of course this is why
Lord Baden-Powell started the Boy Scouts; it is why Prince Charles
started the Prince's Trust; and there are hundreds of other examples
which go to prove that association is seen as a positive tool in
building 'the right kind of personality'.
The real world, as
it is called, is not going to deliver associative goods in the necessary
quantities. On the contrary, people are ever more individualistic
- and encouraged to be so by our culture - and for some time to
come (but not for ever) the State will continue
to squeeze out competitive deliverers of morality.
The 'empowerment' of individuals will continue, with bad social
results.
On the Internet, as
much as in the 'real' world, desired behaviour is the result of
moral rules which are taken on board, or at any rate, obeyed by
the individual. Broadly speaking, there are three levels or channels
through which these rules can be delivered, and these will apply
just as much on the Internet as off it:
- Unconscious imperatives
(eg reciprocal altruism as developed by evolution);
- Conscious imperatives
(eg 'I believe in the 10 Commandments' and therefore I will not
steal);
- Externally imposed
rules (eg by the State or a group to which one belongs).
Which of these channels
is more effective, or or off the Internet?
In order to answer
this question it's necessary to take a brief digression through
the question of consciousness, which was broached
in the Introduction, taken further in Chapter 2 (The Globalization
of Culture), and is continued here.
The problem of consciousness
is unresolved, but it is at least possible to distinguish the cognitive
activities that take place in the illuminated arena of awareness
from that awareness itself. There is no a priori reason why these
activities should have to take place within 'awareness' rather than
outside it. Thinking to oneself, 'Ah, that is Jones and look, today
he is growing a beard', is an activity that could perfectly well
take place in an unconscious part of the brain, and probably does,
alongside the fact that one is aware of it.
'What shall I do next?'
is a slightly more difficult case; but this is a question that the
brain is answering on all sorts of levels all the time. Again,
what is the biological or evolutionary benefit of having awareness
of the posing and/or answering of this question?
Many
evolutionary biologists believe that consciousness arose as a part
of groupishness: in their view, the complexity of the moment-to-moment
decision process when surrounded by perhaps dozens of your peers,
and needing to take into account a complex mass of moral precepts,
both internalized and external, requires a filtering process, and
they propose that consciousness is the most effective way of creating
such a filter.
This explanation does
not however sit well with the fact that, as noted in the Introduction,
the set of moral precepts that developed
along with the basic groupishness of humans is housed and delivered
unconsciously. The complex networks
of feelings that govern social relationships are also not habitually
experienced consciously; it would be extremely complicated (but
not necessarily unproductive) to try to be conscious of the intricate
balance of emotions and principles that cause us to 'behave' in
a particular way to a particular person at a particular moment.
When we do try to control our behaviour consciously, it often comes
across as 'contrived' or 'false', because of our lack of access
to the underlying data. Sometimes, after the event, one can analyze
the causative factors of a piece of behaviour, but for the most
part it is spontaneous and remains unexplained.
Pending the results
of further research on how the brain actually works in complex social
situations, one can only say that social behaviour is a complex
mixture of conscious and unconscious processes, and that there is
no reason to think that behaviour on the Internet in a group situation
will be any different from 'real world' behaviour in a social setting.
Moral behaviour, on or off the Internet, is delivered by an unconscious
set of precepts and feelings; and in addition in many or even most
situations there will be explicit group rules, as illustrated above.
External frames of reference will
also apply (the law of the land, for instance).
The
Role of the Internet in the Delivery of Moral Conduct
Based on the analysis
of human social behaviour set out in the Introduction, and amplified
in the last paragraph, we can make some assertions about the interplay
between human behaviour and the Internet, roughly as follows:
1. Humans have a predisposition
to affiliate;
2. Ingrained groupishness
carries with it a set of unconscious behaviours which are reinforced
by membership of multiple groups and are mostly beneficial in social
terms;
3. The moral structure
of society is defined and delivered largely through the agency of
groups;
4. The human unconscious
and consciousness are both involved in applying moral precepts to
social behaviour;
5. Use of the Internet
tends to increase the 'groupedness' of individuals and through their
acceptance of the moral precepts that are implied by group membership,
both at the unconscious and the conscious level, their social behaviour
tends to improve rather than otherwise.
For it to follow that
the Internet will be a force for good, socially speaking, it needs
to be true that individuals will increasingly use the Internet for
social interaction and to develop group memberships, and that the
Internet itself will continue to develop its potential as a means
of communication without too much interference from the State.
Both of these conditions seem likely to be fulfilled.
The
Role of the Internet in Human Evolution
Book One has attempted
to show that the march of globalization is
both unstoppable and largely beneficial, and that the Internet is
already playing a key role in that process.
Books Two and Three
address the difficult subject of how humans may change in the next
100 years, both in terms of their existing genetic endowment and
in terms of their technological interface with the outside world.
Human evolution is
certainly continuing; arguably, faster than ever, both in the strict
Darwinian sense of genetic evolution, and in the more general sense
of cultural and societal evolution. In Books Two and Three, the
Internet, or rather the set of communications and other technologies
of which it is a part, will be seen to exercise a pervasive influence
on both these types of evolution.
Footnotes:
1.
Nesse, R M (1992) The Evolution of Psychodynamic Mechanisms, in
The Adapted Mind, ed J H Barkow, L Cosmides and J Tooby,
pp 601-624, OUP, New York
2.
Barkow, J H, Cosmides, L, and Tooby, J, (1992) The Adapted Mind:
Evolutionary Psychology and the Generation of Culture, OUP,
New York
3.
Knight, C (2000) The Evolution of Cooperative Communication, in
The Evolutionary Emergence of Language, ed Knight, C, Studdert-Kennedy,
M and Hurford, J R, CUP, UK
4.
Dessalles, J-L (2000) Language and Hominid Politics, in The
Evolutionary Emergence of Language, ed Knight, C, Studdert-Kennedy,
M and Hurford, J R, CUP, UK
5.
Trivers, R (2002) Natural Selection and Social Theory; Selected
Papers of Rovert Trivers, OUP, New York
6.
Emler, N (1990) A Social Psychology of Reputations, European
Journal of Social Psychology, I, pp 171-93
|