[governance] The web is dead; long live the web

[David Goldstein]

Hi all,

The Sunday Times article below raises some interesting points. One is the anonymity raised by the internet enables users to be more vitriolic when there is no imperative to reveal who they are. The article refers to an earlier article from Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2054181,00.html).

Jonathan Freedland commented that 
 the anonymity made possible by web
 protocols is at fault. People find it easy to behave badly if nobody knows
 who they are.

A couple of his paragraphs on this are:
"My immediate hunch is that the anonymity of the web is the problem.
People do not tend to call each other Nazis in public meetings, or on
radio phone-ins, because other people would know who they were. But if
you're called DaffyDuck you can insult whoever you like. If democracy
means anything it means accountability - and that should include
accountability for our own words.

"Yet suggest a ban on anonymity
and watch the cybersky fall on your head. Web users regard it as an
almost sacred right. They cite the Iranian students or Chinese
dissidents, hungry for outside debate, only able to take part by hiding
their true identities. The truth may in fact be more prosaic: plenty of
commenters post their rants while at work and don't want the boss to
know what they're up to."

The Sunday Times also notes  a report by American
 psychologists, Inflated Egos over Time, that suggests "social-network sites
 such as MySpace and YouTube were promoting damagingly high — and illusory —
 levels of self-esteem among teenagers. Meanwhile, bloggers have been angered
 — it doesn’t take much — by two high-profile attacks from the land of “dead
 tree” journalism."

To me this is an important issue in internet governance. And *if*, and it's a big if, attacks such as those on Kathy
 Sierra spiral out of control, governments are going to get more involved in regulating issues such as content.

I have no answers, but it's an interesting debate and one that deserves thought.

Cheers
David

The web is dead; long live the web:As the internet evolves, the backlash begins. But is it really going to destroy our civilisation?
The web is dead; long live the web. The dead web is Web 1.0. It had dial-up connections, dot-com crashes and some of the worst business plans since Napoleon marched on Moscow. The live web is Web 2.0. It has broadband, enormous interactivity — or “user-generated content” — and Google, a faith-based operation whose employees proclaim “Thank Google it’s Friday” at the end of the working week. Web 2.0 makes money and owns the future. The downside is that Web 2.0 may be destroying civilisation. That, at least, is the view of Andrew Keen, a Silicon Valley-based British entrepreneur and author. He has written The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet Is Killing Our Culture (due out in June), which argues that the web is an antienlightenment phenomenon, a destroyer of wisdom and culture and an infantile, Rousseau-esque fantasy. “It’s the cult of the child,” he says. “The more you know, the less you know. It’s all about digital narcissism, shameless self-promotion. I find it
 offensive.”
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article1673425.ece

 
---------

David Goldstein
 address: 4/3 Abbott Street
           COOGEE NSW 2034
           AUSTRALIA
 email: Goldstein_David @yahoo.com.au
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