Nicholas Barnard
December 5, 2002
Philosophy of the Internet
Dr. Charles Taylor
Note: Throughout this piece I have avoided the discussion of nihilism in relation to the political process and the press. This is decidedly the domain of political philosophy, and understandably beyond the scope that I wish to consider.
What goes in the paper today? How do we utilize the limited number of pages we have to print today's newspaper? I can only put one of these stories in the paper, which one is more important to my readers? How does my biases contribute to how I decide what to put in the paper, where to put it, and how it should be contextualized? These are a few of the questions facing traditional newspaper editors.
Editors are necessary to the proper functioning of a newspaper; they make a decision of what is relevant and how to present it, and how to emphasize it. Newspaper editors must make these decisions not only for considerations of the finite resource of paper that are utilized, but also due to the acknowledgment that the readers have an economic decision to consider if the newspaper is telling stories that are worth dedicating their time to reading.
If, Kierkegaard considered the edited newspaper to be a primary source of disinterested reflection, it would be logical for most to assume that the non-uniformly edited Internet is also a logical source of disinterested reflection. This argument extension assumes that the Internet is just a large slightly less well edited than an average newspaper. While many would argue the Internet is “editor-less” this neglects the fundamental role of the editor: to select what to make available. The Internet has editors, but often they also play the traditional roles of author, publisher, and promoter, in addition to being the typesetter. The creator of a plain personal webpage (one made without the use of automated tools provided by easy to use ISPs) has either knowingly performed all of the jobs listed above.
What doesn't make this apparent for those who compare the web to newspapers is that the editorial standards and choices of those creating webpages are significantly different than those of print media. In Tidbits #643 in an article titled “PayBITS: Acknowledging the Value of Information” Adam C. Engst describes the economic model of publishing:
Over the last few hundred years, information has been delivered in collections - the newspaper, the magazine, the record album, the cable television package. That's been necessary in part because the inherent costs in distribution offer economies of scale to collections. It isn't significantly cheaper to distribute a single article on paper than it is an entire newspaper.
Engst continues in to describe that specially prepared analysts reports, while often only containing information in the public domain, that is properly assembled can be sold for thousands of dollars. He suggests that:
…we need a compromise -- a financial model that values content irrespective of the distribution method or the physical medium while keeping that content both freely available and affordable.
So while more traditional media must be bundled and be delivered in neat concise self contained and thought out packages the Internet has no standard packages available to the average Internet user. (Notably, several online service providers have created packages to fill this void) Therefore, while each individual page of the Internet has had the services of at least an amateur editor, the Internet as a whole lacks an editor. There is no person charged with packaging the Internet into small relevant self-contained packages, which has made and continues to make print media economically viable.
While there are people who are editors of human created directories of the Internet, and they fill the role of deciding what is relevant to the specific subject, the pages they link to often point towards more resources. (These links of course have been chosen in the editorial process by the individual page owner.) This series of links to pages can continue for a significant link depth, with a number of different editors with different skills and objectives. Note, there still is no master editor of the whole Internet, despite a network of editors.
Dreyfus argues that this is only expanding the potential for disinterested pursuits and disinterested wandering on the Internet. He also further states in the conclusion that because everything is presented via the same technical distribution method that it is all equal. Applying this level of meticulous logic, The National Enquirer, Wright State University's Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times would be considered on equal footing. They are all prepared documents printed on newsprint paper on a regular basis and distributed via newsstands in high traffic areas. These newspapers are not equal, neither is the information provided by every hyperlink.
The populace at large has learned how to realize the source of their information on the Internet by viewing URL's or the header of the page. In addition people also on a less conscious level realize and take into account how the information is presented, information in presented in a more professional manner will be have a greater perceived accuracy over a random personal homepage with a visually distractive layout.
In a side note, when people are presented with a presentation in a deliberately nihilistic format, say for example a chart of numbers, they use learned processes to find the relevant information. In another example, The movie Solaris, which in which every scene is presented with no more emphasis than the others; each scene has unremarkable music, and are edited in a similar fashion as to not draw attention to any one scene. Solaris is fundamentally a movie presented in a nihilistic format. Usually movies are a media where filmmakers utilize specific techniques to draw audience attention and memory to specific scenes, therefore the audience's need to learn techniques for identifying what is relevant, is not normally necessary, ergo audiences should not have developed relevancy determination processes. Despite this, Solaris has scenes that are more memorable and are retained in memory better than others. As shown, people have the ability to take a nihilistic presentation and identify and remember the important information.
Even with these argumentative pieces in place it must be noted that there is anecdotal evidence that people become somewhat more nihilistic on the Internet than with other media. This is due to the comparative ease of access of the Internet compared to encyclopedias or a library. People can and have become engaged in nihilistic behaviors in libraries as well as sitting in front of the encyclopedia. Any person who has watched a young child randomly pursue the encyclopedia has witnessed this in action; they are pursuing knowledge for knowledge's sake. This is traditionally considered an admirable pursuit, but somehow when transferred to the Internet somehow illogically becomes considered to be a waste of time and an undesirable action.
Dreyfus goes on to further claim an Internet surfer's “Life consists in fighting off boredom by being a spectator at everything interesting in the universe and communicating with everyone else so inclined.” (p. 81) Dreyfus again makes the leap that this characteristic is exclusive to the Internet. Reiterating, the Internet makes this behavior easier to fall into, but this same behavior can be achieved in a library or with a set of encyclopedias.
The question of nihilism within a society where there are professional information preparers still exists, and is a valid consideration. The Internet definitely did not increase the prevalence of nihilism in our culture, but has perhaps exposed it to the point where people will stumble upon Kierkegaard's recommendation that we pursue a few things exclusively, and avoid disinterested contemplation.
The Internet, like any other medium is a reflection of its culture, but unlike any other medium, there is not an elite philosophical leadership, which has by virtue of both editorial decisions, and direct opinion pieces tainted the non-internet media from becoming true public-spheres.
In exploring nihilism in regards to the Internet it is important to realize the lack of consistent editorial control and vision that this medium exhibits and therefore realize that while all the information is presented via the same medium, the value is defined by the people viewing it for true personal interest, not by those engaged in random philosophical debates.