What most intrigued me about the material for this past week was the idea of the nascent Internet as a world independent of any central authority. There was a utopic idea of early "cyberspace" as a place where like-minded people would come together and share their space with an "unwritten code" (https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html) as a guideline for rules of conduct. That, to me, sounds incredibly naive and optimistic. With the proliferation of the Internet came the freedom for all sorts of less than savory things to proliferate, from revenge porn to credit fraud. Recently, I was targeted by a predator in my own workplace, where images of my body were spread on fetish websites (foot fetish, if you're curious ... I used to think that was just a bad punchline). It has taken months of constant fighting and co-operation with police, my workplace IT department, and YouTube, Flikr, Instagram, and FaceBook to take these images down. I know these images can never be permanently scrubbed from the Internet's memory. I'm sure that many of the images have been saved, printed, and beyond ... I lost my autonomy because of how vast and anonymous the internet is. While I do believe the internet can foster a positive environment, particularly for those who may be physically isolated, I am not guileless enough to believe that it can be a place where self-governance is sufficient.
- Cathleen "Maggie" Keenan
I'm so sorry that you had to go through that Maggie... and I wholeheartedly share your sentiments. The internet is not some self-governing body, and it is quite naive to assume that it, or any populated place for that matter, can be policed solely by "unwritten code". It is especially impossible to assume that a moral code can be followed when the environment in question allows a great deal of anonymity and therefore freedom from any repercussions of one's actions, regardless of the harm it causes.
ReplyDeleteThere may be a solution for this in the future, to take a step towards that utopic idea of cyberspace, but for now it seems highly unlikely.
This is a great post, Maggie. It certainly tempered my idealism a bit. But I think that, as Canadians particularly, we have a history of jurisprudence to help promote internet freedom while allowing us to prosecute people who abuse that freedom. The very first section of our Charter actually says that we are free within such limits as can be demonstrably justified within a free and democratic society. This tidy piece of language allows us as a society to promote freedom of expression while actively working to silence hate speech, white supremacy groups, etc. But how to move this into the digital realm?... Maybe I'll have an answer for that question twelve weeks from now.
ReplyDeleteMaggie, thanks for sharing this post. I think a lot of people use modern technology (especially the internet) carelessly. Although we hear a lot about "dangers" of the internet, many people separate themselves from these risks, believing that these internet dangers won't effect them. We often mistake our "personal profiles" as sites that are under our own control, it's scary to consider how things we say, photos we take or material we post can be "screenshotted" or forwarded against our will and used against us. I think we as information professionals, and users of the internet, have a lot to think about when it comes to accessing materials online and how freely we are willing to give up our rights and personal freedoms to use these technologies.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing, Maggie. I agree with you - I think it's naive to believe that self-governance is enough for the Internet to remain a productive, and positive space. Too often, the presumed freedom and the anonymity make it too easy for an individual to do/say things that they never would if there was no anonymity. It's the age old saying - with freedom comes responsibility - and I think collectively, we're losing grasp of that responsibility.
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