Technology: Fueling Hatred and Misunderstanding

Red Leader. writes "This Thomas Friedman op-ed entitled "Global Village Idiocy" and this article by George Packer, entitled "When Here Sees There," both touch on some interesting observations regarding technology's impact on tolerance and understanding. My favourite quote from Friedman's piece is "the Internet, at its ugliest, is just an open sewer: an electronic conduit for untreated, unfiltered information."" We've previously posted the Packer piece, but combined with other story, I think it's worth a retread.

Comments

Babel fish from HHGTTG

[mccalli]

From Douglas Adams on the universally translating Babel fish:
"...the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing the barriers to communication between all civilizations, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of the galaxy."

From the article:
"...integration, at this stage, is producing more anger than anything else."

Hmm...

Cheers,
Ian

The problem with the Internet

[jht]

The Internet is strictly a technical medium, with no inherent bias, filter, or viewpoint. As a result, all "news" has the potential to be more opinion than news, and there's no inherent correction for bias.

Take a look at the US for example, arguably the most tech-savvy nation of sophisticated media viewers on the planet. How many people do you personally know who take everything they read "on the web" as pure unvarnished gospel? How many people beileve the e-mailed virus hoaxes, chain letters, and Nigerian 419 scams?

A lot more than you'd hope, that's how many. And that's here in the US, where supposedly they'd know better. They don't.

Now take this human tendency to believe what's written, and take it to a repressive or technologically unsphisticated country that normally only sees the news their government wants them to see. Give them satellite dishes, but with channels that present events in the same fashion, agreeing with the prevalent viewpoint. Give them a media that exists at the sufferance of their host government, where if they stray too far from the party line they'll be shut down and possibly jailed. Give them no incentive to look at two sides of a story.

And then teach the citizens that do have access to more sophisticated and independent news your point of view so thoroughly that they assume that anything outside of that narrow viewpoint they subscribe to is just lies, distortion, and propaganda.

Watch what happens. We're even seeing it to a lesser degree here in the US - witness the rise of Fox News, the Washington Times, and all the specialty news presenters that have sprung up. People are not inclined to listen to viewpoints outside of their own worldview if viewpoints that correspond to it exist. Liberals think the media is too conservative. Conservatives are convinced the media is liberal. Both would rather get news from sources that tell them that their view is correct, and ignore the other side.

And we wonder how people can't see through the obvious (to us) bias on Al-Jazeera?

It's a similar problem here. It has nothing to do with the Internet per se, other than to say that it's easier than ever to confine your information sources to those that agree with you in the first place. What can we do about it? Very little, I'm sorry to say. The Internet is what it is, and humans seem to be by and large tribal in nature. I used to think that eventually all nations would be relatively harmonious, learing to live together as people from different traditions, religions, and cultures in the pursuit of happiness and prosperity together. But people don't seem to want it, and politicians won't let it happen even if the people did want it.

The human race is screwed.