Internet ethics is obviously a very debatable and controversial topic - and is something which is explored in Mark Poster's essay on 'the good, the bad and the ugly' of the virtual space. Our everyday life is constructed in accordance to rules and boundaries, set out to protect and control what people in society can and cannot do. It is important to note, these laws are set out by the government and mostly enforced through the local police.
However, when we move to the virtual space, boundaries and control is all but set free - enabling the entire world's population to interact and communicate with each other. While this "freedom" is often seen as empowering and Utopian like, it also raises some questions of what is 'ethical' and 'morally right' when taking part in the virtual world. There are no police (the governments can control some webspace (ie. China) but for now the internet is at large unregulated), there are no physical boundaries, and people now have an anonymous identity where everyone can talk as equals disregarding age, gender, race and class. These critical aspects of cyberspace is what makes it so unique - it is basically a world entirely separate from reality.
Poster's first discussion underlines the difference between cyberspace and reality, and the two different boundaries and norms. He asks: "...if new ethical rules are required for mediated culture, perhaps the earlier system of ethics was itself flawed..." I think this is a very interesting question, as it attempts to explore just how much of cyberspace can be compared to reality - and if the laws we have today are suitable and adequate enough. Poster also references Nietzsche's approach, in which Nietzsche defines ethics as a historical construction. He also points out the "standpoint of the group is crucial to the type of morality it will create." The 'group' refers to 'the noble' or people in power -in our case, we have governments which create the laws for society to abide by. This leads to my first question: Do you agree with Nietzche's approach, and why?
Poster next describes the pitfalls of the openness of the internet with things such as spamming and flaming. Censorship is also an important issue - including things such as religion and pornography(discussed in the other articles for this week). Censorship is continually pushed in cyberspace - for example one surgeon in the article decided to broadcast on the internet a live surgery of a sex change operation. There has also been other cases which have raised questions over the morals of broadcasting questionable content online. This is slightly on a tangent but I recently saw the movie 'Untraceable' which also has a strong theme of internet morality in it - in fact the whole plot is based on the immense power of the internet and the ability of the public to control what happens on it. People are naturally curious, and because of the openness of the internet(and the almighty Google), people can look up and research anything they want. Protection of young children and teenagers may also come into context here - Poster raises the question of the ethics of child pornography and the downloading of pornography online. This leads to my next question...
Has the public/private changed alongside the growing rise of new media? In fact, is anything private anymore?? Just thinking of sites like Facebook...once information is stored on a database its hard to get rid of. Furthermore there is the issue of the distribution of personal photos and such...
Anonymity is also a very interesting concept in relation to cyberspace. We talked about the case of ICERED a few weeks ago, and that touched on internet ethics and the abundance of extreme views and opinions online. I posted in the comments for one of the other presentations a while ago, but I think the most widely known anonymous forum today is 4chan.org - mainly because it is the source of a lot of controversy and internet fads (most arising from the /b/ board). They are often associated with hackers, and they call themselves 'Anonymous'. Most recently, there was the case of Sarah Palin's yahoo account being hacked by a forumer from that site. Not only did this question the right of privacy, the anonymity of the forum meant all the users could post whatever they wanted without being prosecuted. It also resulted in masses of users attempting to log in to the account, and screenshots being broadcasted of the inbox etc. Read more about it here (the comments section has an interesting discussion about internet ethics and anonymity too!!).
So from this example, anonymity online clearly changes the way people interact with each other, as well as the actions people take. I still remember a few months ago, there was the Youtube scandal of those 6 girls who beat up this other girl at a house in order to gain 'Youtube fame'. Arising from this, some people were posting phone numbers and myspace pages of the accused alongside Youtube videos - resulting in death threats and mass calls from all over the world. Some say the internet "promotes irresponsibility", while others think freedom of speech - no matter what the opinion - is a human right. Of course some of society's culture can transfer on into cyberspace - "netiquette" is a term used to describe how one should behave when online. Anonymity is clearly an important factor when looking at morals online though - the freedoms the internet gives everyone allows people to express their true feelings and thoughts without much consequence. There are pitfalls from this utopian ideal of free speech though - of course not everyone will agree with everything that is suggested online. So from this, I ask:
Has the anonymity on the internet altered your identity online at all (eg. on forums, in online games, commenting on a blog etc.)? Have you taken advantage of anonymity online, and have you been able to express yourself more through the medium?
Identity is further discussed in Poster's essay, with our real life identity compared to the online one. In conclusion, Poster urges us to think about Nietzsche's approach of the good and the bad of the virtual world. With cultural transformation, ethics may also evolve to suit cyberspace - especially through the aspiration for an enhancement of life. Politics are now very much involved with the ethics online - especially since the internet has cut all bounfaries between people of different cultures and countries. It seems politics will continue to be strongly linked to the ethics of cyberspace - linking not just individuals, but communities together in terms of power. This leads to my final question:
Do you think the internet should be regulated, and why?
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7 comments:
I guess Nietzche's statement applies to Internet as well. If you think for example highly conservative or religious sites compared to for example porn sites, it is clear that their standpoint is different and their perspective of the world also defines their moralities.
Answering your second question, I would say that something is definetly still private. Like your private space, i.e. home. Thank god now one is surveilling what i'm cooking for dinner tonight... I guess what i'm traying to say is that even is the rise of mass media and especially Internet has of course blurred the limits of private and public, the Internet is not something that accompanies us wether we want or not. It still a matter of choice to communicate online and reveal things about yourself. In real life, you cannot avoid this.
Continuing to the thrid question... For me the Internet is primarily a source of information, and i don't really use it for social networking that much. However, i do remember being in my early teens when the net first arrived in our school. Oh, it was SO much fun go to these "chat-sites" and pretend to be someone else. It was simply fascinating to think that you could present yourself as anyone you liked.(normally older) This way approaching boys? seemed so much easier. In a way, I think it was very good for the young self esteem to be able to act beyond the physical appeareance when you are kind of on the search for your self anyway.
I won't go into the last question, because I think we already discussed the internet regulation into great lenght in earlier weeks?
Thanks for jakki's presentation. I would like to answer your second and third questions as they are really interesting issues to dicuss. I may touch on the fourth question as well.
2. I guess everything is no longer private on the Internet (but not necessarily on new media) as puting your own private information to the cyberspace. Such as a registration of an account in the online forum, or upload your images on FACEBOOK...etc. Since "sharing" is the main focus of many websites. The DOB,the photos etc. are no longer private at all because they are on the Internet and browsed by hundreds of users (whether they recognize the holder or not).
3. I am somewhat agree with Poster's statement of "Anonymity promotes irresponsibility". In fact, vast and massive dialogues in chatrooms, forums and online games make us difficult to analyse the content before we type. Furthermore,a new kind of "human search" exists alongside of the Internet. It is an action taken by online users to actually finding an ill-will poster by distributing his/her address, workplace/school or images and posted on several forums, in order to disgrace the ill-will poster(these cases existed in China and Hong Kong as well).
However, I guess there is no absolute degree of anonymity on the Internet, as there is a risk posting threads or comments on forums since IP address shows the location, and it's easily to be attacked by hackers. The openness of the Internet gives loopholes to hackers and other Internet users as "Anonymity promotes irresponsibility" in various ways.
4. I think I have answered in my tutorial presentation and there are many responses about this particular issue. I think Internet regulation is more relying on self-discipline, rather than relying on an online "contitution" or "secret surveillance"(in China) to regulate our behaviours on the Internet.
Thanks for your presentation Jakki.
I wanted to respond to your question about privacy online.
I don't think that we have a lot of privacy at all. While we are online we are tracked as to which sites we visit and from which IP address we are surfing the net from.
Sites such as facebook and myspace are also threats to our privacy. We put lengths and lengths of information onto our profile pages, about the kind of person we are, and we often don't even think about it. What is also scary is that once we upload information onto out pages, they become the property of facebook, and are therefore very difficult to remove from their records.
These are just some of the examples of the way are privacy is limited by the internet.
Hey Jakki, interesting presentation =]
I’m not quite sure whether you’re asking if I agree with Nietzsche’s approach in terms of it’s application to reality or cyberspace so I’m just going to go with cyberspace. I thought that the way that Poster explained Nietzsche’s approach with nobles, slaves and the priest was interesting and my first thoughts directed me to thinking about comparisons to online communities. What Poster seemed to be explaining was that the elite make the rules, like the authorities make the rules in reality and to go above such rules, someone else creates another environment in which they negate the rules of the authorities to become to new and separate elite (think of revolutionist movements maybe?). I think..? I’m getting a bit confused.
What I’m trying to say is that I think I agree with Nietzsche’s approach in terms of online communities in cyberspace. In online communities you have the same equivalent to the authorities in real life. They have a code of ethics (which for example may be no swearing, no flaming and no posting of links to outside sites) that moderators enforce, which act as a sort of ‘code of ethics’ or a set of rules for the active users of the site to abide by. The moderators become the elite and the users, the slaves. For users who are discontent with the ethics on the site, they create another site (where their rules differ from their old online community) and users from the old community can join thus, making the non conforming users who created the new environment the priests…
However, I don’t really think that Nietzsche’s approach applies to the internet, as a database at large. I guess it kind of ties in with regulation on the internet? There aren’t really any elites or slaves as people essentially chose what they upload, view, read, comment on etc. However, then again, you could definitely say some of the elite do exist in countries such as China where content is censored and the ‘slaves’ aren’t allowed to access anything other than what they are allowed.
Slaves, elite, preists?! What. Continuing on…
In answering your second question I definitely think that the public/private has changed and I think this has happened very recently and at a very rapid rate. I still remember the time when I was extremely paranoid about entering my surname on the internet for fears of being tracked down by some mass murder and slaughtered. Now, I use MySpace and Facebook, readily giving out loads of personal information, and do things like pay bills and rent, shop and bank online – all of which is information that could be accessed by some technological ‘higher-power’. As dichotomous as it sounds I think that now we are so aware of the lack of privacy, we’ve become so desensitised and nonchalant about it we just don’t care. For example, I would be more horrified by someone finding out about information about me from another person… or from CCTV than from online. Why? Because I’ve put that information up there myself. The fact that this supposed lack of privacy comes from the internet, a relatively new form of media then from say, a newspaper (that say, reported your daily moves) also is a definite reason why they public/private has changed. We just EXPECT it.
In terms of anonymity I definitely think that anonymity allows people to be much more open and out there about themselves and their opinions because they become separate from their offline selves. I think that because on the internet we are completely free of our actual identities from real life, we also feel rather free of our own inhibitions and even our morals on some level. Poster discuses flaming on the internet and I think that majority of this comes from the very feeling of liberation anonymity gives on on the internet. For example, an employee could go home, log on to some online community and completely slag off their boss to a bunch of other anonymous people recieiving replies, but not ctually having any consequences. Should an employee do this in reality, they would most likely lose their job. Why? Because they are not anonymous. They have their physicality attached to them, which in some way would denote their success, their status, their gender, age or ethnicity, which then could denote their workplace… and then the boss. And then kaboom, the boss finds out, gets very angry and fires their ass. People definitely take advantage of anonymity.
I have even in the past, taken advantage of anonymity. Needing an avenue to vent I have possibly, maybe acted like a complete ass online to some unknown stranger on the other side of the world… just because I could. And, correct me if I’m wrong. I’m not that assholeish in reality because I am little and would have my ass kicked. Anonymity allows for a lot online in terms of identity. Just think of child predators, and lonely, bullied teenagers who build up another online identity that society regards as “cooler” or more accepted than their identity in reality.
Blah blah blah blah… Hehe.
Thanks for all your opinions everyone! :P
Oh yeah.. haha sorry bout repeating the question from last week....you guys can just ignore that one :P
I definitely agree with you guys - so much more information is now in the open now...I actually tried deleting some stuff from my facebook profile yesterday and it wouldn't even let me so I guess that's kinda imprinted on the database memory now lol.
I think people have definitely become more dependent and used to the idea of the internet that people have become a bit naive or unaware or as Poster said - irresponsible - of using the internet. I was reading this blog the other day of "tattoos gone wrong" (its pretty hilarious) and this one person had objected to having their picture posted on the blog for everyone to see. Apparently, this wasn't against copyright though, because it was on another server. So the guy simply put a link on his page to the picture(instead of hosting it on his own server).
And yeah Kylie I think I got that idea too - I think Poster was trying to say it was the nobles/elite that controlled the laws and subsequently everything revolved around their ideas. But at the same time priests 'invented' a higher 'world' which slaves could aspire to - and forget about the laws of the elite. So I guess this is kind of like an analogy to our reality/cyberspace??
Nietzche sugessted that in elevating the slaves to this higher world, all earthly laws and morality of flesh and blood were discarded - except Poster recognizes this idea also has problems to do with the ethical and the media saturated world we live in today. And this would lead to problematic internet control such as China who strictly monitor all content in cyberspace...
I agree with Nitzche's argument that ethucs are a historical construct, especially in that institutions play a big hand in the shaping and codification of our ethical standards. these institutons are guided by other factors, such as; technology, media, and socioeconomical gain. These ethical historical constructs govern how most act in accordance with the ethical standards of the time.
depending on whether or not you wish to participate on sites such as facebook or myspace dictates the level of privacy in whitch you want in your life. it is pretty well known now that people can find things out about others using these sites. I feel that people that open accounts on these sites knowingly let down there privacy gaurds (even just a little) when they wish to participate in cyberspace social networks. Even by setting your profile to "private" puts you at risk.
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