As I enter my office to begin a day's work, I reach up and touch a small container on the door frame, within which is a piece of parchment. On that piece of parchment is written a prayer that begins with the words "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad."
Hear O Israel, the Lord is our G-d, the Lord is One.
I do not claim to be the most strictly observant of Jews, and by religious standards I am almost completely illiterate. Nevertheless, I can at least read the Shema, in Hebrew, just as my people have for some thousands of years.
But this is not about religion. Not exactly.
In the course of a rather free-flowing and largely public discussion with Tim Stevens about issues related to Internet use by jihadis and processes of recruitment and radicalization, I let loose with a pretty bleak, albeit poetic, assessment of the Internet and information technology generally.
This led Tim to wonder if my view of things was perhaps the result of the many death threats I have received.
The short answer is "no."
My own experience has been quite positive. While death threats are an annoyance, they also have the effect of validating the worth of the work I do.
No, my negative outlook is related to a couple of issues:
• The clear and demonstrably negative impact that computer mediated communications has on the behavior of the participants, both as individuals and in groups.
• The dangerously unstable and/or ephemeral nature of digital data storage and retrieval.
• A certain asymmetry in human cultural development (culture here being very broadly defined).
Starting with the last item, it seems to me - and I'm sure I'm not the first to have noticed - that we owe much of human advancement to just a tiny fraction of our forebears and contemporaries, while the rest of us continue to grunt and drag our knuckles through each day. The only reason we can get away with this neat little scam is that some of those forebears thought up a clever way to affordably produce books, where the knowledge and insight of those few bright lights might be saved and passed on to the next generation.
This brings us to data storage and retrieval.
It is fashionable to criticize anyone who admits to believing in some form of divinity. However, you have to ask who is more guilty of blind faith, those who believe in G-d, or those who believe in information technology, cyberspace, and the so-called Information Age.
Consider that container on the door frame of my office. It does not require a steady supply of electricity, and the text on the parchment will be readable by the next generation of Jews just as it could have been read a hundred generations ago.
Try that with a .PDF
Religions have survived for millennia because they are founded upon scripture - text, written on stable media, that doesn't require a highly specialized industrial product in order for the text to be read (in addition to basic human literacy, which can be difficult enough to achieve).
Then there is computer mediated communications (CMC).
For an assortment of reasons CMC enables a broad range of aggressive and anti-social behaviors. For those who doubt, I recommend a literature review on the terms "computer mediated communications" and "aggression".
When the extremists of the world cohabit in cyberspace the results are predictable.
And so, while I would like to think otherwise, I still consider it most likely that we will make of cyberspace a new Hell, populated by creatures made in our own image, rather than any more positive outcome.
And when the lights go out - then what?
And now, for a bit of Yeats:
Turning and turning in the widening gyrePosted on 04 October 2008 @ 16:49
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
