The Wild West Era of the Internet

 
All parents, of which I am one, make mistakes with their children. This is normal given that we would make mistakes everywhere else. Why not being a parent? Different generations have to deal with different problems, so it is not something that we can model on our own experiences. Every new generation faces new and previously unknown social phenomena. One of ours in the Internet and the broader implications of its characteristics on human behaviour.

It's a truism that the Internet connects us more closely to everything that is going on around us, just like TV and Radio, except with a major difference, in that the Internet is also about active participation rather than the passive nature of watching TV or listening to the radio. This can be a good thing but it can also create more worries, especially about what to believe and what to discard.

Last week, I came across an extraordinarily bad use of E-mail when my wife got landed with a piece of unsolicited information. Someone was denouncing a person well known in her work community for alleged personal misconduct to do with something that was entirely an individual or family matter. There occurred a wanton invasion of privacy, leaving the accused person helpless to erase suspicions. This small incident sets up a huge topic that needs public scrutiny and possibly legislative action to prevent the diffusion of unsolicited information about the other people's private lives.

I digressed to put into context the greater problem of exhibitionism and how the Internet user can get confused between private interest and public protocol. As far as I understand, it is a crime to undress in public places. One could be arrested for obscene behaviour and yet one just has to go to google and type the simple words "amateur videos" and out pours a million sites showing you ordinary people filming themselves while engaged all manner of private diversions. Is Internet not supposed a virtual replica of the world at large? If that is the case then quite simply, should not the same social rules apply albeit 'virtually' on the Internet? That is, is something that is regarded as obscene behaviour and therefore illegal suddenly stop being so because it is presented on a computer screen? In the public realm, there are places one can go to watch a strip-show or whatever other lewd entertainment that might suit one's fancy but the entrance to these places are strictly controlled and participation is not anonymous. By bypassing the social filters of real places, the Internet effectively connects the exhibitionism with voyeurism but how much of this occurs through consent and how much through coercion are contentious issues. Is voyeurism a healthy practice whether real or virtual? Is exhibitionism OK when it is all channeled 'privately'? Equivocal issues exist in the area of upbringing especially when we note that the Internet is an open channel that cannot physically guarantee the non-participation of under-age users both on the publishing and the viewing ends.

Internet they say is at its infancy, many say, the 'Wild West' era where everything is being tried. This is probably true since we are only just beginning to produce non HTML dependent content and alternative 'straight to air' publishing programs. Greater challenges however lie ahead in the areas of social transformation and innovations in ideas about morality, psychology, prudishness, censorship, all boiling down in the end to matters of... taste.
 

Rome, 13 12 2006