Two disparaging claims often made about the online world are that it is inhibited with nerds who don't have a life and that 30 years old woman you met and liked is actually a 13 year old boy. Both have a basis in fact. Some pioneering message-board addicts were in reality socially challenged hackers, and lot of 13 year old boys probably don't have the confidence to confess up to their true civil state online.
But the time for convenient generalizations about the population of the online world is past. It's in its Devonian era now, swarming with rapidly evolving forms that may or may not survive. Except for the only partly successful efforts of private services to ensure civility and proprietary, online intercourse is unregulated. This is the Golden Age.
The first thing that surprises a new visitor to the online world is its warmth. You find in people there is a reservoir of benevolence that in the 3D world would be ringed about by a fence of caution. The immateriality of the online experience removes caution; the kindness is there to be taken. A new voice in a forum is greeted by a chorus of welcome. Ask a question and a dozen voices answer.
If you know how to make your way around the Internet, astonishing vistas open up. You post a query: "Where can I find spy satellite images?" The next evening, the answer is there: 14 percent. As likely as not, the respondent is an Internet professor of medieval history, tapping at his keyboard with the enthusiasm of a kid at video game. Of course, it could be a kid pretending to be NSA's expert on Arial Intelligence.
I'm interested in Cybernetics, and I often visit a forum on Usenet, a veritable town hall of conversation and information on cybernetic engineering. There I regularly see postings from a man I will call Baker. Baker works deep in the bowels of the theoretical cybernetic establishments. He's busy. But there he is, again, and again answering questions, simple or sophisticated, from strangers. I posted him a message: "Where do you find the time?"
"I need the social contact," came his answer. "I don't get it at the office". This triggered an odd thought: Did all the socially inhibited Cybernetic wizards at the office, silent or stammering when they encounter one another at the coffee machine, perhaps have colorful online lives where they become social super-heroes, donning tights to wage war on ignorance and isolation? Maybe so
Removing the usual cues of appearance, dress, accent and manners uncovers people's natural gregariousness. We are, after all, social animals and the feeling of community arises spontaneously in us. The emotional content of message creates a sense of place where a human presence can be felt. The result of being surrounded by living souls without visible form is a wonderful sense of liberalization.
People bare themselves online as they rarely do in life. Far from resembling a series of dry telegrams or office memos, online communications drip with blood, sweat and tears. You encounter, now and again, touchingly eloquent messages, stripped of pretense; all human life - and death - is there. Community is a complex experience. It combines the sense of belonging with its all-too-frequent counterpart, the need to exclude. Acceptance and ostracism have the same strength online as off.
Anonymity is one of the hot issues in any discussion for the online world. There are profoundly bitter and angry people online, just as there are boundlessly generous and amiable ones. Certainly there are virtual vandals, mad bombers and serial killers online as off. The anonymity that protects the recipient of a message from physical harm protects its sender from detection. You won't participate in a cat lovers' forum for long without some nut posting a message about torturing cats.
For many people, the constructive value of open electronic communication is in networking; for them, anonymity is not useless but counter-productive. Indeed, even on a service that allows users to remain anonymous, many people make a point of establishing their serious intentions by identifying themselves at the outset. But, for the social adventures of the virtual, anonymity is the magical cloak of invisibility that makes anything possible. It's their ticket to live not just one life, but a hundred.
A huge amount of online traffic consists of anonymous, idle socializing - much of it in little more than monosyllabic grunts - and cruising in search of dates. In their primordial social ooze a woman might wish to travel as a man in order to avoid constantly being hit by the 75 percent or so online users who are male. On the other hand a lady whom I met online blazely remarks, "Here, no one can drag you into a dark alley". Consequently, woman can move around confidently online than they can in real life.
The same lady whom I met online got injured years ago and uses clutches to get around. She met her friend online. Disabled people - and to lesser degree the elderly, who are less likely to be computer-literate and have access to computers - from vigorous online communities use them for companionship and for gathering information that their impaired mobility might put out of reach. They find online conversation is possible with people who are uncomfortable with disabilities or who assume that an old person would have nothing relevant to say. Neither age nor physical impairment is detectable on the Internet.
I wonder how long these kindly impulses - the outburst of filial communicativeness, the dissemination of information to strangers, the warm welcomes and the help and comfort freely given will survive. Are they only passing effects of infatuations with a new toy? Or do they represent the manifestation in huge populations of human impulses hitherto confined to small groups?
And what should we expect the explosion of electronic communication to bring in coming years? Fecundation, a new renaissance, the exponential growth of understanding, invention and knowledge? Or a spreading morass of mediocrity, acres of idle chatter, oceans of intellectual corn flakes? Should we look forward to the extinction of boredom or the exhaustion of curiosity?
Take your pick. Electronic communication is the latest human invention to have the potential of completely remaking our world. But the essence of making the most of this wonderful opportunity will be to avoid tampering with it. We must accept it as it comes, because it is mirror, and its blemishes are our own. Well-meaning efforts to censor language or control content can act as disastrous to what may be the last place where genuine liberty thrives.
About the Author
Dr. Adnan Ahmed Qureshi holds a Ph.D. in IT with specialization in the induction of information technology in developing countries. He is the former Editor of Datalog, Computech, ISAsia and columnist for The News International. At present he is working as Senior Industry Analyst and IT Consultant.