False Panic: Is the Internet something we should really be afraid of?

It’s just so hyped up right now because it’s something new. It’s something new that’s starting to infect the whole world. As with anything new, people are normally critical, doubtful, scared, curious. About what it can bring and what it can do. We’re just excited. In particular, I think people who have lived most of their lives in a none-digital world before are the ones who have more cynicism for the Internet. But for kids born in the digital age, the so called ‘digital natives’, this is all normal and alright. What the might and fright old people feel about the Internet is something not so big for these kids. Maybe we’re just building something up. Maybe we’re just imagining a monster, when there is really none.

I believe the Internet is something good, and is something that brings more good than bad. I think the doubts about the Internet are from extremist views, and furthermore, are still might be’s as of now. It’s like Stephen Fry’s analogy of the Internet and the car. When the car was new, everyone was terrified with how people die while using it. But cars are still present today.

Analogy

How about the world where there was no television yet. People got their information in more difficult and in slower means. Entertainment on the other hand was obtained infrequently, often in vaudeville shows, or in comics, or in panoramas. When television came in, information was more easily available. Information and entertainment started to be quickly disseminated and broadcasted. I’m sure people had lots of feelings of threat and worry over what the television might bring to people, and true enough there were, and up to an extent there still are; like the TV as becoming the idiot box of teenagers instead of an information medium, the proliferation of junk in TV as they say, the poor regulation of values and morals in television, leading to assumptions that TV has a tendency to corrupt minds, teens spending more time watching TV instead of reading books, making them dumber. I myself experienced this assumption by my parents and relatives. I was a voracious television consumer of cartoons and Disney characters, and later on HBO movies.

But look at how television came out to be now. Is there still anyone scared of those assumptions made out of television? Television has become so normal in our lives already that we aren’t so scared of its implications anymore, partly because maybe over the years, time has proved that television doesn’t make people’s lives abnormal. It’s true that there are good and bad sides of it, and the good thing is that people always grow smart enough to sort out the junk from the valuable. And in the long run, television has helped humanity vastly. It has helped us more than it has hurt us. I believe the same is true with the Internet.

Now television is already regulated in different ways to solve most of the problems about content. I think it’s just a matter of time until the Internet too will be encountering balancing actions to uphold more of what is good above what is bad about the intricacies of the medium.

Depth

More use of the Internet doesn’t mean that the way people think has less depth now. For me, you cannot generalize the effects of the Internet. The effects of the web differ with the differences in people; differences in demographics, social status, educational attainment, age, attitude per se, and web literacy. I believe how the Internet affects individuals are relative to these factors, and to a whole lot more others. In my opinion, there are people who have more depth in their stands and realizations of particular topics because of the Internet. Since the Internet gives people the power to access, almost all parts of a topic, and all related and relevant sides to it, it even helps people make better and more in-depth judgments. Again this is true only to some people, but refutes the negative generalization about how the web affects how we think.

Acceptance

We shouldn’t be scared with the changes the Internet brings. Humanity, life, is that way. People change. Life changes. Culture changes. The change the Internet brings is the same kind of thing television brought before, it’s just a different object now. Like television, the Internet is just a new medium for communication, not to mention that it’s better, faster, more interactive and more accommodating of all formats. People communicated differently before there was television, and we’ve evolved to communicate the way we are now, after it. We wouldn’t have developed this way without the television, radio, telephone, and all the other technological innovations that seemed bizarre then but has lead to so much development now.

Things are naturally progressive. From weak one becomes stronger, from dim one becomes smarter, from foolish one becomes wiser, from slow one becomes faster. We shouldn’t be surprised that the world is heading the faster way. I believe in a world that is faster. When we have reached the fastest, well, maybe things will revert back to being slow. Like how broadcasting developed into narrowcasting, and maybe will revert back to broadcasting again. But, we just have to accept that this is the kind of change we’re having now. So what if this is the change we’re heading to. Are we going stop it? No. We can’t even stop it. We just have to accept it, and maybe learn to use it effectively and more positively than negatively. Regulate it? Yes maybe. But we can’t stop the Internet and the changes it brings. We just have to be ready for it and open to what it can bring. 


Sources:
The Virtual Revolution Episodes 3 & 4
Palfrey, John, G., Born Digital, New York: Basic Books, 2008.


Faith