I think it is. First, lets look at something not directly linked to the subject at hand. Lets look at, and think about marketing in general. We know that the amount of money a person or organization spends on marketing is directly linked to their success with other people. Whether you are selling soda pop or a National Healthcare System, the more money you spend to get your product or idea in front of the people you are trying to convince, the better. Why is this?
It would seem that our brains tend to accept things they are exposed to frequently and/or repeatedly which do not induce pain. While consuming potato chips on the proverbial couch, and consuming advertising sound bites simultaneously, we in fact set ourselves up to more readily appreciate the things we are being shown. Have you ever found that the song you decided was garbage, the first time you heard it, you started tapping your foot to after hearing it a few more times? Maybe it isn't so bad after all. Having Heard it on your favorite radio station another ten times, you might have been caught singing it at the top of your drunken lungs at the local gin mill.
On the other hand, have you ever found yourself watching the television, while eating or drinking something, when something you don't care for strongly crosses the air-waves to your eyes? Do you remember putting down your drink, or your handful of chips from your mouth? I have. In a moment of political disgust, I have stopped consuming - usually to bark something obscene at the cable pumping junk into my mind.
You might say I stopped only to bellow like a barbarian at the television; but, I argue here that I stopped, firstly because I subconsciously did not want to enjoy my treats while consuming visual or auditory unpleasantness. And, then I bellowed like a barbarian. But the first thing was to stop the mixture of pleasure and pain. Give me one or the other - but don't confuse the reptilian part of my brain.
Meanwhile - back at our conversation about morality in the digital world...
I wonder what percentage of Americans took pornographic photos of themselves when the only means of developing their photos was to have an outsider develop them on their behalf. I wonder how that percentage has changed now that people can use a digital camera to do the same without anyone else being involved. Viewing them on a personal computer can also be done in relative privacy. Sharing them with others who share and share alike - this too would seem easier, perhaps "safer" than ever before.
I wonder what the massive amount of pornographic material available on the Internet has done to "advertise" a belief that it is acceptable. When I was a child there was a very small number of TV networks. Those TV networks played a big part in forming, or at least informing and reinforcing our societal values. Some will say that those same networks are changing to no longer uphold the same values that were once prized. This would seem to be the case. In the networks defense, and in an attempt to broaden the depth of this conversation, I will say that there was and continues to be new pressures that must be taken into account. The market landscape is changing.
One of these pressures, the first may have been the explosion of channels and content that came with the invention and commercialization of Cable Television. Let us quickly fast forward from that time to today. Today, we have something more vast than most of us can actually imagine. We have massive multimedia on demand by and large without censorship via the Internet. Everyone in the world with an Internet connection is potentially their own producer and distributor of "rich" multi-media content, for better or worse.
If a society can be based upon acceptable norms within a community of like-minded individuals, then it would seem that the Internet is giving birth to numerous societies of varying moral difference. What one group would find unthinkable, another embraces. Providing a minimal amount of anonymity, or at least the illusion of anonymity, two or more people who might have never crossed paths if they lived, say, in the 1950's, can find each other at the speed of fiber-optic light today.
More and more, the details of our personal lives are finding their way onto the Internet for consumption and judgement by people all around the world. Sometimes those details are in the form of text posted in chat channels and blogs like this one. So, certainly the development of online communities cannot be villainized wholesale. ;)
Just as surely, the more a person's morality, or lack of morality, is reinforced by their society (whether that is a physical society, a society subscribed to by mail order, or an online society) the bolder they will become in allowing others to see who they really are.
The Information Age is only just dawning. Will we tear each other apart as we come to find out that members of our neighborhood, village, or town seem alien to us? Or, will we be able to accept the differences of others and find solace in the fact that we know we can remove them from our "friends list"? After all, most work places discourage or forbid really getting to know anyone you work with through written or unspoken policies of "forbidden topics" such as religion, sex, and politics. The US Military says: "Don't ask, don't tell." The message is clear.
Do your work and go home - where you can go online and talk about how strange everyone else in the world is in the safety of your group chat room or Google Wave. The strangest thing of all this, to me, is that we spend more time at work than we do anywhere else in a waking state. What a strange life it would be, if I was only really myself with people I've never even met in the physical world.
Intersting blog. I like it and I have some thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the digital world has created subcultures who can now express ideas, organize, share, protest, (whatever may be case) with like minded individuals. Before this age of "digital enlightenment" many of these voices were alone in the darkness. As society defines morality, it seems perfectly approporiate to say that the term "acceptable" has taken on a much broader meaning, as there are multiple societies or at least a fractured society, where normal and moral become much looser definitions.
Many folks don't realize what they expose about themselves, because this is done in the "safety" of their home computers. While many wouln't publish their lives and thoughts in written media, there seems to be much less concern about exposing ourselves online through Facebook, twitter, blogs, forums, etc.. We also wouldn't not broadcast some of the stuff that we send in email, though many folks don't realize that we do this to an extent when we send our's non-encrypted. In fairness, someone doesn't have to be "on the Internet" to be "on the Internet" but people, both online and offline have a false sense of security.
The Internet is obviously a tool and like any other tool it can be used to magnify good or bad (hmm.. what are good and bad anyway?). While the Internet can be used to spread information that helps others, it can also be used to spread information used to hurt others. It is the utlimate megaphone, yet many folks tend to blindly trust words when they see them convincingly written across the screens of their computers.
Thanks for the excellent comments! You bring up some very good points. I'd like to highlight two of them:
ReplyDelete1. It does seem that folks are using complex technologies at entry levels of understanding. They manage to get by - and that is good enough for them, without understanding exactly what the unseen ramifications might be of exposing information about themselves on various social networking sites.
2. The issue of using encryption for email messages is something that really should be brought into focus. There are plenty of free means available (such as GPG), but most folks don't understand that sending an email without encrypting it is like sending a letter through the US Postal System on a post card.
Thanks again for the insightful words!