is the Internet an inherently good force in the world, evil force or neither?
the other day i overheard a guy saying he thought the internet should be banned. I gasped and asked why and he said he thought it had not only done nothing to help humanity, it had actually set us back. what do you think?
Clarification added March 9, 2007:
a lot of people have opted to say "it's just a tool- it can't be good or evil." is that the same as "guns don't kill people; people kill people?"
Answers (13)
Reid H
Executive Chairman, Founder at LinkedIn
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A classic question, asked of many technologies – “good or evil”? I would not be surprised if similar questions were asked about the invention of the alphabet, the invention of beer, agriculture.
A classic answer, posited here in some of the answers, is that technology is a tool and good or evil lies only in the hearts of people. This answer is right, but partial. For example, inventing beer creates the possibility of drunkenness and thus the possibility of violence from drunkenness. However, the invention of beer also created a means by which water could be purified of contaminants, created the pleasure of a cool beer on a warm afternoon, and all of the sometimes artistic benefits of beer.
In addition to the classic answer, I believe technologies also have general attributes. One general attribute is predominant use cases. For example, many uses of nuclear technologies pose significant ecological risk – weapons, power, and so on. (However, on the other hand, people frequently forget the medical applications arising from the nuclear / radiation research.) Another general attribute is the new patterns of organization in society that technology enables.
Some people would argue that the internet is pure good. Creation of communications technologies is inherently good since it promotes discussion rather than violence. And, as a participatory medium, the internet is clearly better than television. On the other hand, the internet opens up cybernetic warfare and the possibilities of government control of the populace through information. So, my answer to the question is that the internet is largely good. Creating a society where people can learn from each other – it allows the possibility of a much nobler society. This is one of the central reasons that I decided that my entire professional career would involve the consumer internet.
A final footnote – usually the question of “is technology X good or evil?” implies to many folks that we have choices like whether we allow a technology or not. This implicit belief of control is very dangerous. Technology is not so easily controllable. First, if one tribe of people doesn’t invent a technology, another tribe will. (And what will this other tribe do with the technology?) Second, technology is the natural outgrowth of the human impulse to explore, learn, and discover. Technology will out.
Our only rational path is technology is to allow and encourage invention – both directed and serendipitous – and then try to influence the outcomes to the most ethical benefits. Many technologies have detrimental effects on the environment; how do we modify their creation and deployment for better impact? (Not: how do we stop them?)
The internet is generally a force for good: empowering individual user self-expression. We just need to make sure that it doesn’t become overly a source of governmental control.
Clarification added March 10, 2007:
Just to re-state clearly:
- technology is a human instrument, and judgments are subject to its use
- however, technologies do have both (a) enabling and (b) structural effects
- enabling effects are the sorts of things that people can do with them (nuclear and biological sciences having the broadest spectrums: death and medicine)
- structural effects: how the presence of technology changes the social pattern, given a wide variety of humans using it
- technology can be judged if its enabling effects balance negative, or its structural effects balance negative
So, my argument was:
- technology is inevitable; some tribe of humans will invent it.
- best we can hope for: influence the overall impact of enabling and structural effects.
- the internet is inherently great, since the enabling effects are communication (which is inherently positive) and the structural effects should be communication and understanding.
- but there are things to watch out for (government issues, or information glut)
Chris W
Owner at The Wireless Man
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As with any communication device, system or network it's only as bad as the people and the what the people choose to disseminate or 'send' across the network.
They said the same about the printing press and they tried to burn the books or pamphlets as they were then.
Communication has come a long way since then with the telegraph, phone, mobile comms and the internet but it remains the same story: it's only as evil, good or otherwise as the content of the servers or the content of the communications - I don't really see where a person can draw the line here - is it the fact that it's the ultimate mass communication and that the 'evil' (I presume that would be porn et al) is more visible or easier to access?
I personally think this attitude that you overheard is, although I defend his right to have the opinion, based slap in the middle of ignorance.
I also find that attitudes such as this one are hard, also, to convert so I shall not waste my breathe; but I'll say this...... the day that the people who share this man's attitude and view are put in charge of the human race then you can probably also say goodbye to TV, the phone, newspapers, free thought, any form of mass communications......
Burn the Nokia's - burn the books - hell, burn everything!
I would answer your question by saying that the internet is a powerful force. Like all powerful tools it can be used for good, evil or simply recreational stuff. Enabling people is not inherently good or evil, its the people that use the tool that have the choice between being a positive or negative force in the world
Adam H
Manager and Consultant specializing in China
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Evile. Pure evil. Muahahaha. Uh, what was the question again? Oh yea. A medium of communication is no more good or evil than a mirror is beautiful or ugly. It is a tool, and the ends to which it is manipulated reflects the purposes of the user. The Internet is used by many people for many different things.
I would venture that the most profound effects have been; 1) an increase in the rate of dissemination of information, 2) a decrease in the cost of research, and 3) a decrease in the difficulty of organizing people.
After at least 40,000 years of human culture we have only been able to use electronic communications for about a hundred. I seriously doubt that we were close to a societal equilibrium from the technological changes telephone and radio introduced even before the Internet came along. Many of the global sociopolitical changes that we talk about today were already happening before the Internet gained wide acceptance.
The long and short of it? Too damned early to say. It would be like saying that it will be a bad market day after the first trade of the opening bell.
Roger S
Owner and Principal Synthesist, TechSynthesis and Senior Programmer/Analyst at QSS
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What good is the Internet?
E-mail allows seniors to stay in touch with family and friends. I volunteer at a nursing home and many of the residents regularly correspond with children and grandchildren via e-mail.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission can get notice of recalls to consumers far more easily, both through their own mailing lists and through websites like Blogging Baby, which posts recall notices of interest to parents.
People with illnesses or other issues are better able to find others with the same problems for support and solutions. Patients and parents are able to do their own research allowing them to knowledgeably discuss the situation with doctors.
The Internet has given people a voice, allowing individuals to compete with politicians, big business, and the media in having their say. Everyone has a bully pulpit and if what they have to say is important or entertaining enough, people will listen and hear.
It's also a great tool for learning, from basic reading (http://www.starfall.com/) to MIT and other colleges making their courses available online.
Of course, it has also been a huge boon for anyone with just about any hobby. Before I had kids, I regularly conversed with people all over the world about Land Rovers, old computers, music, and so on. I learned a lot too. That's not really changing-the-world kind of stuff, but it is good.
Lastly, it has opened up avenues for business to people who would otherwise have been unable to work or earn an income. It lets entrepreneurs and inventors get their ideas out there for next to nothing. That's a good thing too, I think.
On the other hand, you've got spam, the nigerian scam, and so on. I would say the good far outweighs the bad, however. Mostly, though, it's a tool which, like any other, can be used for good or bad.
Chris B
Director of Development at RedBana US Corp
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It encourages the notion that consensus is reality. That's a good thing, when we're creating a future reality - a bad thing when we're denying or distorting actual reality.
The Internet is a tool. Tools amplify the good and bad inherent in men.
Things aren't evil, though sometimes the people who use them are. Any tool (or weapon) is only as dangerous as the person wielding it. By that token do I think that Internet users are evil? Not particularly. Though some individuals clearly utilize the power that comes from the democratization of data (creation of and access to).
The one thing I would say about the Internet, and many technologies for that matter, is that when people make the error of using the technology as a replacement for rather than an augmentation of direct personal interaction. While I do believe that the Internet has accelerated that process, I don't think that the Internet is to blame.
A lot of these answers revolve around the 'Net being a tool, which is a fair starting point. That said, anesthesia and nuclear weapons are also tools, yet there's a pretty wide berth in how most people view those two tools' impact on society.
I suppose we could take it a step further by asking whether the types of activities this tool enables are more commonly good or evil, and if the evil uses are inordinately greater (in number or impact) than the good uses or vice versa. Additionally, one might ask whether the Internet is inherently more attractive as a tool to good people than evil people, or vice versa.
Those seem like hard questions to answer quantitatively and, ultimately, they lend themselves to subjective interpretation. I keep coming back to the comment about the Internet as an amplifier of human thought and activity. Like the "one hand clapping" koan, the Internet doesn't have much of a function if no one uses it.
So the question migrates towards this: Are humans inherently good or evil? I'm going to side with William Faulkner:
"I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, <b>a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance</b>."
So my conclusion is that a tool, such as the Internet, in the hands of the being Faulkner describes can't be an entirely bad thing and, most likely, is overwhelmingly a good thing.
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Josh (Yash) N
Information Technology and Services Consultant - josh.nursing@gmail.com
It's more than a classical question in my opinion, it's a classical confusion. The technology or tool cannot have any inherently good or evil qualities if it isn't autonomous in some way.
Therefore, it's down to what ends humans use the technology. The knife you use to make your food palatable is a weapon for somebody else.
The underlying question of inherent good or evil in people is another philosophical chapter in itself, and your world-view will be shaped by what you choose to concentrate upon. I choose to concentrate of people doing great things.
The real issue is how to enable people to be more positive and do more good instead of stooping down to a level of evil intentions and actions.
The internet can enable this positive rise of consciousness, but the negative uses should be curbed.
As in most things in life balance is required, i.e. connecting with people through the net vs connecting with people in real life.
In my opinion, the Internet and its users (us) are an embrionic earth brain. The earth is becoming a thinking organism. This 'brain' will enable it to forecast and forestall potentially life-threatening external environmental cataclysms like asteroid impacts.
And this organism in time will want to reproduce itself.
More thoughts: Joël de Rosnay (the Symbiont), Dr. James Lovelock and Dr. Lynn Margulis (The Gaïa Hypothesis), Howard Bloom, Valentin Turchin and Francis Heylighen (Meta-System Transition Theory, Principia Cybernetica Web), Richard Dawkins (his books on evolution)
Clarification added March 8, 2007:
I wanted to add: when technologies will start to have autonomous capabilities, then a whole new slew of ethical and potentially dangerous concepts will have to be tackled. But potentially dangerous still cannot be equated to inherently evil.
Anything lacking volition can not be assigned an inherent moral value.
The Internet doesn't have a conscience and can't be classified as evil. It has no cognitive function and cannot act on its own, to perform good or evil. It is merely a vehicle in the hands of fallen men who choose to use it for their own self-centered purposes and according to their fallen wills and corrupt desires. There is no evil in this world except where man is concerned. Through one man came the lack of conformity to the image of God and now all follow that image!
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Sofia G
Policy & External Relations Advisor at Energy Retail Association
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Sorry about the lengthy reply.
I see in your clarification that you ask whether the argument "it's just a tool- it can't be good or evil" equates to the argument "guns don't kill people; people kill people"
For your initial question my first instinct was to reply that it cannot be good or evil - an argument many recorded here - but seeing your clarification I must admit I have taken a step back.
Saying that the internet cannot have ‘ethics’; is just a play of words if you like. The question does not assign a psyche to the Internet it talks about – ultimately – the people who use it. In other words the machines themselves do not produce content (so far, or what content they produce is a result of human-produced programming). Hence the question is whether the Internet as is used today can result in good or evil actions.
I don’t like the internet – gun analogy. A gun is part of a wider cultural / historical discussion. The gun itself has terminal and immediate results. Someone dying from the tool (gun) and someone allegedly being inspired to die by the tool (eg pages on suicide on the net) are not the same thing at all. Until the day we switch on a friend’s computer and we take a bullet in the head by accident via internet I don’t think the two are comparable.
Having said that, it would be simplistic to say that the Internet has not effects as we see them everyday. Whether we are talking about grassroots journalism, dissemination of knowledge, communications in general or just plain information overload changes are obviously taking place.
Yet your acquaintance is making a deeper claim here when he says that the Internet has done nothing to help humanity. That is a highly objective claim and it cannot be substantiated easily. As many examples as he can put on the table for ethics, time-wasting, misinformation etc. I can put the exact same number on ethics reversed; time used constructively, wealth of accurate information etc.
Ultimately the key is that we seem to expect a medium to have all the answers. It doesn’t. It’s a medium. A tool. Human beings fill it up. I recall that we seemed to have similar expectations from the press, then the radio and lately television. Gross exaggerations and pop culture representations of the fearless and ‘let the truth shine through’ journalist fuelled this expectation. Yet we see countless examples of misinformation and abuse of power in traditional media – whether we are talking about news reports or any other content. The Internet should be no different. The IMPORTANT difference is that if I don’t like a ‘channel’ on the Internet I don’t have to flick through until I find one that I like but I can create my own. And that is exactly why the Internet is a positive force AND a negative force. My views, my own ‘channel’ is not necessarily representative of all. Yet it is representative of me.
So how does one choose between good content and evil content? I don’t see why this question is any different than any ethics-based question in our societies. We choose according to out own ethics and our own teachings and background. We use what we like, we do not use the rest. Yet worryingly your friend reminds me of one who would not debate his point but shut the other person up right from the start.
Just because we don’t like what other people say that does not make them evil.
