Five Ways the Internet Is Ruining Our Culture
If you went back through the whole of human history, for the most part you’d find people living in poverty and ignorance under one sort of tyranny or another. Travel was difficult, disease was rampant, wealth was sparse, scientific advances were slow and uneven, and parents had little reason to think their children would have a better life than they did.
This really started to change, at least in the parts of the world you’d want to live in, less than 150 years ago. Many of the life-altering inventions that we take for granted today were invented during that very limited time period. Just to give you a few examples, here are the years when the following inventions first became mainstream enough to be acquired by 75% of American households: radio – 1937, refrigerator – 1948, television – 1955, telephone – 1957, automobile – 1960, and the VCR – 1992. The Internet just hit that same magic mark in 2007 and the ramifications of that may be more serious than we realize.
That’s not to say the Internet is a bad thing. To the contrary, every person reading this column could reel off a plethora of great things about the Internet: connecting friends across the world, cheaper communication via email and Skype, new business opportunities, games, MP3s, internet dating, file trading, social networking, streaming movies, Amazon, Google, eBay, Craigslist — it goes on and on.
The thing is, everyone seems to be able to tell you about what makes the Internet great, but the ways that it negatively impacts us seem to be slipping under everyone’s radar. That’s not shocking if you think about it. How long do you think it took the public at large to catch on to the hazards of drunk driving, drive-by shootings, and the Fast and the Furious series? The same thing could be said for the Internet, except it’s so new we have very little data to study.
In political culture terms, the Internet has not only allowed left-wingers to gain adherents, but also libertarians and Randians.
Yes, that’s right. Objectivism is taking over. The long reign of statists on the right are over. Boo hoo for you.
“Objectivism is taking over”
- God help us if that really happens. They will signal the end of our culture just as quickly, if not more so, than Liberalism.
This reads as if Mr. Hawkins aspires to be one of the “gatekeepers” the Internet has allowed his op-ed to bypass.
The Internet is a technology. A tool. Like all tools, it is value-neutral. It cannot, of itself, “ruin our culture.” They who use it for tawdry, deceitful, or evil ends are the active agents here. Blaming the Internet for their pollutions of information, their abrasions of discourse, and their coarsenings of entertainment is exactly the same as blaming firearms for the murder rate.
A wise man knows that it’s his responsibility to change the channel when the program offends him. He may deplore that there are others who actively seek trivia, lunacy, or filth, but he knows better than to demand that their freedom be taken away to suit his tastes and convenience. Are you a wise man, Mr. Hawkins? Or do you merely play one on the World Wide Web?
Yes. And the “last few decades” idea is just plain wrong. If Walter Cronkite, and all his buddies like Don Hewitt, were objective about the Vietnam War, I’m a fig pudding. They just knew that their advertisers, in those days, would have smelled a commie in a minute, so they had to be careful. Once Huntley/Brinkley was over, so was news.
As to the rest, a shallow and venal culture will use its tools in a shallow and venal manner. Give an aborigine a cellphone, and he will use it as a hammer. It was ever so.
Many truly great things can now be done by uncredentialed people, who rise and fall on merit alone. One poor man with an idea is empowered by the internet to research and explore in ways that Dr. Johnson could not even dream of. Can you just imagine what Johnson would do today, with a broadband connection? (Yes, I know full well that if he didn’t do what he did, we probably wouldn’t be doing what we are). Indeed, his methodology would work perfectly with the internet. Of course, he’d never have to leave his room (in his mother’s basement, in all likelihood), and would be a terrible hermit, and Boswell wouldn’t have ever known him, except perthaps, in a chat room, but the mind boggles to contemplate it.
Blaming the internet for sex, sloth, self-absorption, and craziness is hardly the answer. If you use it as a TV with lotsa buttons, you will be stupid. If you use it as the greatest sourch of information ever, you will gain. I remember the snowy Sunday when I discovered Caesar’s Chronicles online, and set to reading them. I would never have thought to get them from the library, or to purchase them, even though I was curious about them for years. There it was, and here I was. Now, I’ve read Caesar’s Chronicles, and understand things much better. Isn’t that the point of life?
Now, where was that porn site with the huge tatas?
Thank You Curmudgeon, your astute observation is as always right on point. Our culture continues to ignore the idea of personal choice & responsibility and obsesses over finding fault instead with outside inanimate objects.
The article IS about personal choice and responsibility.
I agree. I thought the whole article was kind of silly.
Well, for what it’s worth, you are also a person who thinks himself wise, and isn’t. I don’t remember reading in the article anything about unplugging the internet. The article is pointing out bad things that have made large in-roads and spread exponentially through the internet. Would you complain to your doctor when he points out that your cancer has progressed, and innanely remind him how it’s a natural consequence in life, cells replicating, caesura? It’s the same ole cancer as before, doc…
And that goes for many of the comments in here. They seem to miss the point, and reactively go on the defense for the “tool” that is the Internet. Yeah, we get it, it’s a fricking tool, and nothing new is under the sun. People talked and gossiped before and were disgusting, but not to this degree. I’m not suggesting that this is something new, but old cancer.
If this is not “something new,” then why is the headline of the article “Five Ways The Internet Is Ruining Our Culture”? The Internet is the only somewhat-new thing in the entire discussion, in recognition of which the headline, and by extension the article, must be taken as an indictment of the Internet. Apropos of which, we have this, directly from the article:
Do you seriously propose to quibble that the “it” that “negatively impacts us” refers to anything other than the Internet itself? Or would you like your portion of crow with extra horseradish?
“It” is the internet. But the article’s tone is not necessarily against the internet. It’s just playing the messenger, stating the facts. You know, it is real easy to solve. Only ask yourself: what is the author suggesting? I, for one, didn’t get any sense that censorship was the point, or that it was saying to somehow abolish the internet in some way. That being the case, I can only conclude that the author’s intent is to warn, and spread some awareness.
Except that the facts are being distorted. The internet is not ruining our culture. The internet is not creating the porn, the lack of ethics, the bias, etc. It is not distributing it. It is not marketing it. People are. Its back to the same old “guns kill people” vs “people kill people”. The tool simply lowers the requirement, lowers the investment to take an action.
It would be much more factual to say that the internet has lowered the time and effort required to invest in participating in immoral activities. Then again, it has also done so for moral ones.
What this article would do better to argue is that as less effort is required to do so, people are more likely to choose actions that ruin our culture.
But that doesn’t make a sexy title or sexy argument, does it?
Francis, I agree wuth you, but I could have condensed what you said into a single sentence.
“Hawkins, you are full of crap.”
I am the same, curmudgeonly, blunt spoken, sometimes impolite and sometimes downright offensive fellow that existed before the dawn of the intertubes.
You ain’t Marshall McLuhan, bub. And he already covered this. “A typewriter is a means of transcribing thought, not expressing it.”
PS: He was wrong about the media being the message, by the way.
Thanks for the soapbox, Francis.
The ruling class had great fear of the printing press, and the same points were brought up then as well. And in fact they were right, the Marquis de Sade out sold the Bible for many years. And the fear that providing a tool to educate the masses would result in great social change, in fact did ;
Monarchies were overthrown, Republics were established, and the United States was born. So yes, the ruling classes had reason to fear the printing press.
The Internet is the next great social revolution and we are watching in real time, but it is instant communication the internet provides that is changing the world in Egypt and the Middle east. It will change the world, we just cannot predict the end game.
However it is fascinating to watch.
This article echoes some television programs that imagine the internet as a source of further decadence on the route to permanent lower class revolt and terminal narcissism in the viewing audience. I wrote about it here: http://clarespark.com/2010/05/20/criminal-minds-and-the-pathology-of-rural-america/.
I am the first one to admit our culture is coarsening. But that the internet is the source seems to have come quite late to the party.
Our culture has become coarsened by exposure to wars we refused to win, TV, film, popular music, rap (it may be entertainment but it is not music), professional sports (not the sports themselves but the unworthy and unrepentant creatures that populate it and seem to be the only ones who are well known), the lame stream media and last but not least our political hacks who can’t seem to find the word “integrity” in the dictionary. Scandal after scandal after scandal. We’ve taken God out of the equation and put in who, what?
Children are given over to the state to raise, Peter Pan parents who never grew up and greedy, lazy, irresponsible people are the result.
The internet, it just shows us who we really are. Where we go, what we do are just a physical manifestation of our basic nature. The internet like TV, movies, and the media before it, is not inherently bad, but apparently we are.
Sad isn’t it.
I agree that the increasing coarseness of culture, including increasing rudeness, is not due to the internet but to the failure to inculcate the values, morals and behavior of polite society in most children. Why that is, may be harder to identify. Certainly raising children with those values, morals and behavior is very hard work, and a single parent is going to find it not twice as hard but three times as hard. Since some large percentage of kids are raised by single parents, that put a lot at risk. Society at large has taken steps to punish those who would help teach proper behavior; if teachers are not allowed to discipline students, if an adult cannot correct bad behavior of a child in public without being attacked or sued; if parents do not care that their child’s behavior reflects poorly on them – then we are going to have a lot of poor behavior.
“Society at large has taken steps to punish those who would help teach proper behavior; if teachers are not allowed to discipline students, if an adult cannot correct bad behavior of a child in public without being attacked or sued; if parents do not care that their child’s behavior reflects poorly on them – then we are going to have a lot of poor behavior.”
I don’t agree completely with the first part of your comment (because the quoted makes the job of even stable married couples 3 times harder – perhaps singles now have it 9 times harder?). But the above quoted part is, as the Brits say, spot on.
-Another Over 50…
I searched the Internet (world) over,
And thought I found true love.
You met another online and
Phht! you were gone…
What about women..? Girls, babes, chicks, wives, etc.
This article is biased – lopsided, unfair…
Recent research shows that percentage wise there are women consumers of porn (56%) than there are men.. More and more porn producers specifically target women because of this.
Research also shows that women get just as heated just as fast as men and they take longer to cool down. Now what’s a guy supposed to do?
Last, since this article went after the guys like a jilted, mad wet hen would what research proves that male forearm strength decreases when the amount of porn they watch goes up.
Common sense says that statement is backwards. You figure it out.
Has anyone researched how many people (male and female) would rather watch porn than Obama babbling about hope, change and raising taxes on the wealthy?
Does 95% and rising sound fair?
Ever notice how defensive wankers get when porn is mentioned? You know it’s wrong, guys, because you were born with a moral sense and nothing the polluted culture has done has erased that. It’s why you feel so guilty and, let’s face it, lonely.
Re: Banjo
Isn’t Banjo another word for a type of fiddle..?
And as a master banjo-plucker you’ve never fiddled with…?
See what I mean?
“People are ruder in general than they used to be, television is cruder, columns are more bombastic, and people’s interactions with each other generally feature far less politeness, manners, and dignity than before the Internet existed.”
Thant’s a cheap shot. I think you actually have it backwards. Television, movies, and the media in general were getting much cruder long before the Internet came along. We have been having arguments about bad language and inappropriate topics on TV since the 1970s and 1980s, long before the Internet took off. The Internet may have speeded up the process, but you can’t blame it for this from happening. Movies have been going down hill since the late 1960s and TV hasn’t been far behind, especially when it comes to bad language and sex. So ease up on blaming the Internet for all of our problems. America’s long slide into decadency and lousy behavior started long before we started using the Internet for just about everything. And Rap “music,” one of the worst offenders of crude and bad behavior and probably one of the major reasons why our society has gone into the toilet lately, started long before the Internet. So we should look at the media and our society in general before slamming the Internet for this.
The only people I know who say “Bush caused 9-11″ are agents trying to discredit ALL conspiracy theories… indeed to deny the very concept of lies and corruption, and to keep people believing mainstream news sources.
Oh, you are soooo right- the conspiracy deniers just want people to believe everything their fearless leaders, and the lame stream media that support them, say and do as being in our “best interests”. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then…you win when it all comes out. These big secrets require too many secret keepers to stay secret. It just takes one with a conscience for the lie to come apart.
I don’t know if I can totally blame the internet, but our culture is certainly coarse. I was out shopping last weekend and passed by a truck where three people were just sitting out in the parking lot and holding a loud conversation peppered with f bombs. They didn’t care who heard them. I wanted to say something, but I also wanted to live so I left quickly.
Call me a fogey, but I do prize decorum and manners and all those seemingly passe things.
Concerning the lowering of American/Anglo-Saxon culture for the past 50 years its interesting to compare atitudes towards courtesy and honor with regard to the French and other continental Europeans. They have had roughly the same exposure to modernism as the Anglosphere but retain more traditional manners and forms of social intercourse, as a whole, even in the face of massive alien invasion (both physical and non-physical). Why the British have become so cynical compared with the French could be a subject for an article or two somewhere or other.
Another problem–we see it here all the time–is reflexively calling anyone who disagrees with us a “troll,” thus sparing us the trouble of actually thinking.
Amen!
Another one that’s completely lost its meaning is “straw man,” which now means “you’ve said something about my side that I don’t like.”
And if you really want to hear ignorant people trying to impress, just watch for the overuse of “Occam’s razor,” which now seems to mean “nothing unusual ever happens in the world.”
Was this cross-posted with Cracked or something?
1) Pornography
His argument is a continuation of the “blame men first” attitude in Western culture. It does not occur to these people that men would much rather have a real flesh-and-blood partner than pornography. However, they’ve grown up watching their friends’ and possibly their own families self-destruct. Women file over 70% of divorces in the United States, and when they do over 90% of the time the man will have to pay dearly. And even before wedding bells are an issue, we have rampant female hypergamy unleashed by “feminism” (whatever that means anymore) where 80% of the women are chasing 20% of the men while whining that there aren’t any good men left.
The author does not even address the statistics of women who consume pornography because it is safer to perpetuate the stereotype of pornography consumption as being a completely male domain.
2) A coarsened culture
This argument has surfaced regularly for as long as I can remember, and I can actually remember before the Internet was omnipresent in our lives. The way the piece is phrased you’d think the world was all smiles and hugs until the Internet caused rude behavior “to leak over to the ‘real world’.”
The Internet is free speech unleashed. No campus speech codes, no societal pressure, no political correctness to hold you back. What people choose to do with it and how you choose to react to it are exactly that: choices.
3) Time-waster, concentration-breaker, short-term-attention maker
All the exact same things were said about comic books and pulp fiction when they were new. The only difference this time is the sheer volume of everything. We have less time to view every single link so we either skip many and focus on a few or give a few minutes attention to each one and see if anything grabs us. If anything it should make us more aware of what we enjoy as media consumers.
4) The rise of conspiracy theorists
This is probably the most poorly researched part of the entire piece.
Meanwhile, the saner media tends to deal with conspiracy theories the same way it always did: by ignoring them.
Ever hear of the October Surprise? The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy?
Then there was Rathergate, aka “Fake But Accurate,” where some great and observant Internet bloggers not only shot holes in a CBS-created conspiracy theory on the eve of a presidential election, but disgraced the reporter pushing it so badly he was forced out. Without the Internet that leftist smear campaign might have done real damage.
The Internet may be a source of conspiracy theories but it also gives people the ability to counter the lunacy of the leftist broadcast media outlets. The lesson, again, is that the Internet is free speech unleashed.
5) Dramatically increased press bias
If I understand this argument correctly, and I’m really hoping I don’t because its just that bad, the Internet is to blame for leftist media bias because the poor, defenseless leftist reporters who can’t make choices for themselves are attracted, like a moth to a flame, to lefty blogs with crazy lefty stories and then helplessly amplify them on the broadcast media.
You absolve the poor, defenseless leftist reporters of any responsibility for research or accuracy. Do you want CBS to give Dan Rather his job back, then?
If we’re not allowed to hold the leftist media to any journalistic standards anyway, then what are you complaining about?
In my opinion, the dying leftist mainstream media is lashing out as best it can to drown out the new media which they have no control over. The leftist media seems to believe if they can only shout louder and crazier than anyone else they’ll get more attention. They can’t possibly win though because the Internet is free speech unleashed.
“You can’t stop the signal, Mal.”
Hey, I agree, morality probably holds some sort of equilibrium through the history of the world, as far as deviations from a certain societal and public ettiquette standpoint. But you miss the significance of the underlying analogy. When a person has cancer at the early stages it is the same cancer that they have at the later stages. You know, right before they die. The problem with the rampantness of all this declining morality is that it is so widespread.
Nothing new under the sun.
A pretty accurate analysis of an inane piece of writing.
Arch has summarized my thoughts exactly concerning this article. Addiction to pornography, coarsening of the culture, ADD, and the increasing radicalization of the liberal press have been long-term trends and can hardly be blamed on the relatively recently introduced internet. As far as conspiracy theories, there is the implied assumption that anything that can be labelled a conspiracy theory is false by definition. But what exactly is a conspiracy theory other than an attempt to seek an alternative explanation for a phenomenon that differs from the official government narrative. We know for a fact that the government does not hesitate to withhold information from us and have been known to lie to us on many occasions, in big ways and small. So there is a natural tendency not to automatically accept the government version. Some conspiracies are quite real.
And, now that I think about it, there’s nothing remotely like chav culture in France other than Muslims and blacks.
I find this article to be disingenious since I am reading it at Pajamas Media on the the internet! The irony is one that only Conservatives could come up with. Denouncing Bill Clinton’s escapades and yet saying nothing of Newt Gingrich having sexual intercourse with another woman while his wife was dying of cancer is another example of holier-than-thou rhetoric taken to the embaressing nth degree.
Unless Newt Gingrich was doing the nasty on the floor of House of Representatives WHILE HE WAS SPEAKER from 1995 to 1999, why would anyone care? This situation w/his ex-wife Jackie took place in 1980. BTW, she asked HIM for a divorce, but if you need accurate info, it’s best not to get it from the “wife dying of cancer” who’s still alive 30+ years later. The “dying wife” tidbit was an figment of the media’s imagination (not that it happens often).
Newt’s story is just one huge soap opera. IIRC, Jackie started “dating” him while he was her student (ewwwwww and bad=Jackie). Newt cheated on her with Marianne (bad=Newt, bad and stupid=Marianne), then Jackie asked him for a divorce (makes sense), and he responded while she was being treated for cancer because that’s what he was supposed to do (nobody=bad here). Newt married Marianne (stupid=Marianne) and SURPRISE!! Newt cheated on Marianne with Callista while he was still married to Marianne (Bad=Newt, stupid and bad=Callista) and now I’m wondering which stupid and immoral woman is helping Newt to cheat on Callista. Oh that’s right!!! He found Jesus (or maybe just Fr Thomas Williams, LC with whom he collaborated on the JPII documentary)!
Did Newt perjure himself in a lawsuit against a woman who said he struck and essentially raped her? Subourn perjury by arranging false affadavits? Evidence and witness tamper? Because of all this and more Clinton lost 900K and his law license.
Newt had an affair and was brilliant at policy but stupid at politics (especially when the media picks the winner). Clinton was a sleaze and a criminal, but clearly the media has made it “about sex” and not criminality of the nation’s cheif law enforcement officer.
The article is spot on.
“In fact, it has been so effective that almost every major story is now covered differently based primarily on whether a Republican or a Democrat is involved. You really can’t take any political story at face value in papers like the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, or the Washington Post, and the Internet is to thank for it.”
No, no, no.
The Internet is the thing that lets us see the bias that was already there and lets us do something about it.
The Internet is doing much more to reveal and erase problems than it is creating and worsening them.
The hidden theme of your post is there is just a bit too much unpleasant freedom out there, and some much needed control is due.
How do you feel about salt in food?
If communication can ruin your culture, you are the reds…
Truth in posting: according to politicalcompass.org, I am on the libertarian right, not far from Milton Friedman, may his tribe increase. Let me make a point that the Left loves so much: The steady representation of murder for its entertainment value, as dominant in motion pictures and television, has coarsened our culture. This glorification of mayhem and murder did far more to coarsen culture before the Internet than the Internet has ever done. If life is a value, than ending it is pornographic and starting it is not. To affirm life, let the kids see people making love rather than shooting each other.
“To affirm life, let the kids see people making love rather than shooting each other.”
I was sorta with ya until this last tag line, which takes us back to porn (surprise, surprise). When was the last time you saw ANYbody “making love”? Let alone a married/committed couple? We see strangers doing the horizontal bop at the drop of a hat; no words exchanged, and forget feelings/emotions. I can’t even remember seeing a couple on the verge of sex kissing, looking lovingly at each other, or even moving slowly. It *does* all go back to the attention span — how can you connect with another human in 140 characters or less? Other than to say, “Wanna f**k?”
Suggestion to the author: Find copies of Dr. Marshall McLuhan’s books and read them. His speciality was the effects of technology upon society, and he covered the Industrial Revolution, modern advertising, technology and media. He was a University of Toronto professor who connected many dots through research. His most unforgettable predictions (made in the mid-60′s) was the Electronic Revolution, beginning at the time he wrote, and certainly in full force now. He predicted the global village we now inhabit, with instant news from around the globe. He also said the changes would be as great on society as the Industrial Revolution of the 1700′s. You’d have to be blind to not see the massive changes, including the freedom from having to live in cities. Already, virtual schools are enabling individualized instruction, solving the age-old problem of ‘teaching to the middle student’ of government schools. Brick and mortar is giving way in many areas to internet-based services. The internet is the modern equivalent of the printing press, and we’ve just begun to see its impact on the way we do business and communicate.
All of this revolutionary change has nothing to do with morality or culture; it just makes us aware of such. Oldtimers know the culture was obliterated in the 1960′s when nihilism took root via the ivy league hippie elitists who now rule the air waves as well as the government. The ACLU, beginning as the Kremlin’s invention to destroy the US culture, per the Verona papers, has been the vehicle of destroying all traditional practices, if you do your research.
Marshall McLuhan, what’a ya doin’?
As Marshall McLuhan observed; the medium is the message. With every advancement in humankind’s ability to transmit and receive information, there has been a corresponding influence on culture. The 20th century accelerated these inventions with the advent of so many mediums; the electrin light, movies, records, radio, TV, etc. Each of these influences has worked to level and democratize the culture, essentially removing the insulation that previously separated people by their knowledge levels. The internet is the most important new form of communication since the printing press made knowledge available to much greater numbers of people than previously possible over 500 years ago. The observations of Mr. Hawkins’ article are true and fairly easily understood on this basis.
Something very important to consider is the question of how much democratization is a good thing. Have the curves finally crossed to the point that we have made it possible to both create and receive too much information, too cheaply, and by too many people? Will the ultimate effects of this technology, which is still in its infancy, spell the doom of human culture by its indiscriminate and rapid mixing the world’s cultures and people? Will it lead us into a new Dark Age, or will we get over the growing pains of the effects of this radical interconnectedness and evolve into a new golden age of man made possible by this super democratization?
One thing is certain; we can’t go back. The world is always changing and not all change is good from the perspective of those who came before. A brave new world is emerging where people are losing privacy while gaining autonomy except to those with access to their information. We are entering an age where we are rapidly losing freedom in the name of security and the greater good. New behavioral patterns are emerging to accommodate all that is evolving. The internet is definitely ruining our old culture. Maybe the ultra democratized, lowest common denominator people in one hundred years will look back to 1990 and think it awfully quaint how those people lived in a world that demanded privacy and supported so many levels of manners and behavior.
You may have missed the greatest of all – the decline of art. (This is related to your 3, of course)
How many films of the quality of Casablanca or The Godfather have been made since the advent of the Internet? How much music of the originality of the Beatles or even Little Richard? (Let’s leave aside Beethoven and Mozart).
The Internet and technology have helped usher in an era where gadgets and tech supersede art. Apple is greater than the sum of its parts. Art takes time and concentration. (Your 3.)
That is one of the most inane cultural comments I have ever read by someone on the right. The internet is responsible for the decline in art? Really?
I think the gist of what Roger is saying is, to whit: to take an idea or feeling and follow it where ever it leads and produce images and/or words civilized viewers and readers can be moved by is very difficult. This takes some time and concentration (and guts). A culture favoring images and words consumed and discarded in an easy and free fashion is not conducive to such effort.
Since the advent of film, how many epic poems have we seen comparable to the Iliad and Odyssey? How many verse dramas to set beside Shakespeare and Racine? How many classic OPERAS have there been since the advent of talking pictures? Obviously, it’s the cinema that has destroyed or degraded all these genres.
And don’t even get me started on what the printing press did to allegorical mystery plays…
I agree and I as well as everyone here could come up with 200 reasons why it’s helping to disintegrate our society and others. The bad at this point is far outweighing the good in this 46 year old web designer’s opinion. And so like I migrated from printing into this business, I’m already planning my exit do to the lack of civility in this world at this juncture.
I’ve had enough for this lifetime thank you. Like society, the bad and ugly have overcome the good. Hopefully there’s still time to turn it around in this lifetime.
Mr. Hawkins;
Have you discussed this theory with Belladonna Rogers?
She claims it is “ear buds” creating a catastrophe in American society.
She’s so convinced, she won’t even let me post a comment.
I’m always amused by complaints about technology and its dark side. I’m sure the priests felt the same way about the printing press and the new bible in the vernacular and their loss of feudal monopoly on revealed truth. For instance, Al Gore diatribes come to mind. On balance, I would rather be living today than as some Roman slave at the height of pagan human technological development in the ancient world, but that’s just my bias. Indeed, until the Industrial Revolution, there was only the great stagnation as Europe lived off Roman technology. Come to think of it, the individual health care mandate has a definite feudal corporate flavor.
There have always been barbarians in society. Civilized people used to identify them by their clothing and behavior on the streets. Now the barbarians may dress nicely and own a computer, but we still can identify them by their behavior–their behavior on the internet.
I’m a lawyer and believe that I have some idea about the real limits of the law as an organizing force in organizing society. The Internet is a great thing and one of the most important advances in technology since the invention of the printing press. It also has it’s downside as Mr. Hawkins capably explains. It just reminds me of what one of my profs used to say….”The only law that universally applies is the Law of Unintended Consequences.”
The article rather reminds me of my childhood.
When I was a kid in 1950s England, the newspspers were full of articles and readers letters predicting the ruin of society by the advent of television. We seem to have survived it though.
Ah, but have we? I actually think television is a far better target for a rant like this (still) than the Internet.
I am immediately reporting the inventor of the internet, Al Gore, to Attack Watch!
So the internet increases porn, guns kill people, etc, etc?
Blame everyone and everything but ourselves. We have free will. We can choose to see or not see whatever we wish. Oh wait, maybe we need protection from our evil selves. We’re not fit to rule ourselves. We need an overlord, a protector, someone who will keep us safe and not let us make bad choices.
Another 5 minutes of wasted time I won’t get back.
The problem is that computer science is incomplete at it’s core. Computer science at present has no way to store real information. It is just like the situation 3000 years ago. We had letters and numbers but no zero. Without a zero we could not do serious mathematics and therefore very little serious science and engineering. Today we have no way of representing real information. So the internet is built on this incomplete foundation. I have no idea what we can not do but we can not do it and so the limited and weak capabilities we can build into the internet just won’t cut it to support a strong society. The problem lies not with the internet, but with computer science itself.
Our “culture” has lost it’s REAL Christian roots. Most CINO’S are so lukewarm they have NO CLUE about the REAL teachings of Jesus NOR do they realize that REAL Christians KNOW where they will spend eternity.
When “science” is their GOD, ANYTHING GOES and a REPUBLIC is only viable when undergirded by an electorate that reveres HONESTY, TRUTH, FORGIVENESS, CARE FOR OTHERS, FAMILY, you add the rest! Every one is tempted BUT “ANAYTHING GOES” WILL TAKE US WITH IT!
“…the average length of time that a web page was viewed was 57 seconds.” Please learn math; this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Would it be a bad thing if you averaged 57 seconds reading various newspaper articles? I’ve already spent more than 57 seconds on this story and it feels like a lifetime. Bye
“…the ways that it negatively impacts us seem to be slipping under everyone’s radar…”
I’m thinking that the negative aspects of the internet are obvious, expected, and consistent with human nature – for better and for worse.
As previous posters note, basically, what are you gonna do ?
The issue of desensitization to violence, sex, aberrant behavior, etc. is as inevitable as new car models and fashion shifts. We have a need for things to be new, different, and attention-grabbing because what used to be exciting yesterday is today mundane.
I think this applies as much to sitcoms and crime dramas on TV as it does to porn and stupidity on the internet. Some things in life won’t change — it’s how we respond to it that matters most. Which certainly beats the alternative — elites protecting us from ourselves with a tar pit of regulations.
Dunno ’bout that #5 … the Media were pretty much insular left *before* the internet sprung full fromed from Al Gore’s brow. What seems to have changed is that the reporters generatimng the left-spun stories can now be lazy and just copy from lefty blogs.
Frankly, I had to check the byline on this. It reads like Kirkpatrick Sales’ work, mostly impotent rage that the world is changing in a way Mr. Hawkins hates. And even if you accept his arguments (and I don’t – the JFK conspiracy theories flourished pretty darn well without the web, just to raise one point), it’s just useless griping without any attempt at a solution.
I take it back, this reads more like John Derbyshire.
As much as I love rock ‘n roll music, long hair, and marijuana, there’s no question that our parent’s and grandparent’s generation of “squares” were more polite and discreet. My parents never used four letter words around their kids, other than “damn” or “hell”. Once we all grew up, they were a little looser with their language. I think the baby boomers and GenXr’s grew up in a more casual and permissive atmosphere, and as a result, since they’ve become adults, chivalry and decorum are not what they used to be. But let’s keep in mind that all this stuff is cyclical.
Do you think Prophesy and the fulfillment of, inherently conspiratorial? I do not? Why, because it’s the Bible and it is Truth! Christ is the only truth we have really to hang on to, and Prophesy is being fulfilled right before our eyes, if you have eyes to see then you will see. But if you think that being a conservative and vote republican makes you “good” then you’re just falling into the age old hegelian principal set up by men smarter than you.
Their is a spiritual side to this world and if you don’t have the Bible to show you exactly what is going to happen you’re lost.
If that’s conspiracy, throw me in with the Wingnuts!
This post by John Hawkings is more anti-technology nonsense that you keep hearing from both the left and the right, as Ayn Rand wrote, these people are usually hidden mystics and collectivists.
Notice that Hawkings doesnt give any solutions, so what does he want to happen?
What is Hawkings solution to this supposed problem of the internet destroying the world? Should the government come in and regulate the internet for the sake of the community? Should we be forced to find Jesus and get in touch with the bible? Both BS answers.
The real problem is not technology, but how people CHOOSE to use it. Our focus should not be on the internet but on the people who use it.
I was going to attempt a few wise cracks about this, but then I read #3 by Alex, and # 11 by Arch, and realized they said it better than I could. So everybody! Please read # 3 & 11!!! I give them both two thumbs up!! That makes for four thumbs total!!!! Of course, those are the only ones I read all the way through, but still. I hope to finish Mr. Hawkins column sometime tomorrow, if I have time. Or even remember. Where are my post-it notes? Where?? Oh s—! Ouch!
Rape, teen pregnancy and divorce rates are all FALLING. Pornography allows for mental release of unhelpful sexual urges that would otherwise have physical consequences. It is simply effective, whether or not it contradicts primitive superstitions.
“….and get off my lawn you whippersnappers!”
Every generation has at least one old idiot who keeps talking about how good things USED to be and how this newfangled NEWness going around is destroying the world. Do you really want to BE that idiot?
This piece is pretty much the equivalent of the TV wasteland argument. If you don’t like the coarse, the drab, the idiotic — punch in a different URL. (in the old days they called that changing the channel.) There has been porn since the Egyptians, bad plays since Shakespeare, bad manners since man crawled out of the ooze. Its not a matter of whether these less than noble traits exist. What matters is whether YOU desire to partake of them or not.
In fact, some of those bad plays are Shakespeare’s doing!
When he writes a bad one, it’s a humdinger of bad!
And may we furthermore take a moment to hoot at the one using THAT VERY SAME INTERNET to spout his jeremiads against it?
The internet is a communication venue. It creates nothing that isn’t there to be transmitted in the first place. Look to the heart of man for your sins, not his tools without which he would be MORE degraded and debased than he is now.
The only problem with the internet is there are too many unintelligent people who interact with others, and are incapable of forming an argument. So they toss out insults.
o yea, it all started with the invention of written language.
Things are going faster and faster, Mr. Hawkins, and people’s dreams becmoe real so much faster, for better or for worse.
And too much skin in media, well, the printing press hasn’t helped that at all…
The Internet is like the gods of Greek myths. It only pushes you the direction you are already going.
Old movie called the “Front Page” also remade as “His Girl Friday” based on a play that was intended to satirize what the author saw as the foibles of a free press. By the time the play and the movies got made and remade and reremade people missed the free press so much that the productions are often referred to as love letters to the press. A free press is what this complaint is about.
The point is that high culture discussions have no place in a free country’s press. The degree that they exist is the degree to which the country is unfree. The United States has been ill served for most of the last hundred years by its media. Three cheers that you are pissed off. The poor defenseless liberal reporter who’s Grandfather wouldn’t report that FDR was a weak crippled old man who chased skirts is resenting that when he spikes important stories Matt Drudge is going to announce it to the world.
Arch did a very nice job of covering each point but where are you from that you think that there are MORE conspiracy theories today?
The wonderful thing about the internet is the velocity of communication has gone up proportionally as much since the first web page as it did in the whole century after the invention of the printing press. That always drives change in a culture. Add in the change that was driven by the Internet before the World Wide Web and a life time now has more change in it than the period from Columbus to the Wright brothers.
The internet has been great for me for exchanging ideas with real people in real time.
Living in the mountains where there isn’t a variety of stores, eBay and shopping online have been a boon.
And Google (despite what you read as to ulterior motives and data capturing) is great for learning about whatever it is in the moment you’d like to know about. It would feel slightly sacrilegious to give up the printed page for Kindle etc. though.
My favorite pastime, Bridge, can be easily indulged, sometimes too easily. Kibitzing the best players in the world in real time is a big boon.
I can stand up and turn the darn machine off, though, where it stays for hours.
Yep, it’s an election year. Time for the GOP rank and file to abandon issues of substance and carp amorphous notions of ‘culture.’
This post makes me wonder if it was just intended to be a lightning rod.
I’m sorry. I hate to disagre vehemently, but I do.
1- You’re telling me in the SEVENTIES one could find a man who had never seen porn? Oh please. I grew up in the seventies, in a protected, less technologically affluent country and I’d run into porn by the age of 12. If you read biographies where people are candid — even in Victorian England — por was always easy to find, even without trying. What my boys seem to have gotten is a sort of disinterest in it, as opposed to boys of another era with playboys under their mattresses.
2-Trolls. I grew up in a village. I also used to read letters to the editor. In the global village, the nuts are still with us. Big hairy deal. No, we are not ruder than we were. I have a memory.
3- I don’t know when you grew up. I came of age in the late seventies. I came to the states in 1980 as an exchange student. It seemed to me most kids my age spent the entire day channel surfing in ten-second intervals — when they were home. I somehow don’t think that is any better than internet-surfing. The simple fact kids have to read to function on the internet puts us miles above that.
4- conspiracy theories, really. Snort. Look, there were more and better conspiracy theories spun by the corner grocer in the village I grew up in than you can find on the internet. With the difference that on the internet anyone with half a brain can check the reality of it very fast. The conspiracy theorists, too, shall always be with us, but let’s not blame them on the poor internet, shall we? Yeah, my grocer had less reach, but his listeners also had fewer debunking opportunities.
6- Increased press bias? No. Competing bias. Before the press could pretend to be unbiased by all echoing the same ideas and thoughts, most of them instilled from a hard left prespective. This gave the impression of a world that made sense, and a dramatically wrong picture. For instance, if we didn’t have the internet now, we’d all be convinced that all the economic difficulties were the inheritance of Bush’s work, because the media would all tell us so 24/7. To disagree, even in social events, would be considered “crackpot.” And that, the fact that we CAN get information from many sources, the fact that I can check economic history online and find books that go against the reigning Keynesian beliefs (by looking for titles online) would cancel the other five “issues” (if they were issues, which they aren’t.) I realized recently that to write a dystopia set in the future, I need to get the internet knocked out first, otherwise history can never be completely rewritten. And I don’t know about you but that’s worth it to me, even should my kids — oh, deary me — occasionally use the abreviations WTF (Winning the Future)and OMG (Obama Must go.) Bias is human, but again, the internet provides the remedy as well as the poison. Those interested can check both sides, or even the source statistics or facts.
So, very sorry to disagree, but I do. And I can tell you so. And that’s one of the beauties of the internet.
Cultures are always coarsening, except when they’re not. The Internet has simply given the hoi poloi (who have ALWAYS been coarse and horrible) greater access to mainstream culture. It hasn’t inflicted anything new, different, or worse on us. It’s just made the sick side of our culture more generally visible.
The Internet is nothing more than a reflecting pool, and like poor Narcissus, most of us have fallen in love with the reflection and it has become our reality.
Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones are a necessary evil (if you could really call it evil). Everything SHOULD be questioned from every angle possible. Alex Jones’ polar opposite approach to information interpretation to the establishment allows the truth to fall somewhere in the middle. If it weren’t for people questioning every single thing — even with the most absurd interpretations — then we would just be the victims of spoon-fed propaganda.
If a conspiracy theorist is wrong about 9 out of 10 things, it’s worth it to expose that single issue. The other 9 being wrong hurt nobody in particular as this article might suggest, as I’ve seen no historical evidence to the contrary.
“And in fact they were right, the Marquis de Sade out sold the Bible for many years.”
How can that be? The raunchy multi-volume version wasn’t translated into English until some time in the 20th century. If you look at the on-line search engines you won’t find more than a handful of copies printed in any language before 1900. Two copies of an 1884 French edition are cited on Abebooks.com, from a limited edition of 500 copies, and one other from an 1889 French? Latin? edition limited to 250 copies.
If de Sade outsold the Bible, where are all the books?