Noelle Forbes
Writing 205
Madeline Yonker
April 2, 2007
The Internet: What does it mean for politicians today?
In the book Small Pieces Loosely Joined: a unified theory of the web, by David Weinberger, he talks about the major impact the internet is having on the world and our society. The internet in its present state is growing and expanding by the minute. As the internet continues to expand, more people, different people, are beginning to become more acquainted with the world wide web. The internet has created new ways for these people to communicate, interact, congregate, and share ideas and is taking more of a prominent role in society. The problem with the internet, as with any thing new and foreign, is that people have not yet learned how to coordinate and manage it. Because this problem exists, there is no set of rules to govern people’s actions while on the net and so while on the net people literally have the freedom to do whatever they want.
The freedom of the net has fostered many changes in many discourse communities, especially among politicians. The job of a politician is to represent the masses in government and therefore politicians have almost always readily spoken out and taken advantage of the freedom of speech given to American citizens by the U.S. Constitution. Many people have chosen to voice their opinions publicly along side of politicians, however many more have chosen not to for fear that their opinions may not be in accordance with the majority opinion. However, because of the internet, more of the people who were once scared to voice their opinions in public, are now voicing their opinions on the internet; whether their opinions are controversial or not. No longer are politicians the only ones who have the courage to speak publicly for or against society, but people who may have been scared to publicize their opinions are now voicing their opinion as well.
The discussion of voice is a reoccurring theme when we discuss the problems of the internet. Voice is a person’s right to be heard. For many different reasons people choose not to use their voice, they choose not to be heard. The internet, however, is changing people’s reluctance to voice their opinions. One of the reasons why people voice their opinions on the internet without any fear is because, unlike the real world, although their audience is public, they are not immediate. People still feel as though they have some type privacy because they do not get an immediate response from their audience. Also, as Weinberger discuses in his book, on the internet there is no rule that says people have to be exactly who they are. The fact of the matter is that on the internet people have the options to take on any personality that they desire or portray themselves in any manner that they desire. People can voice their opinions while pretending to be someone else as an attempt to protect themselves from the responses of society as an attempt to protect their privacy.
Michael Crichton, for example, is not a politician. It is uncertain if he has a law degree, a degree in political science, or experience in writing for the matter. It is not even certain if Michael Crichton is Michael Crichton or someone else who chooses to identify himself on the internet with that name. On Myspace.com, Crichton, in the fashion of the internet, posted a blog on his somewhat controversial beliefs on environmentalism as religion. Crichton says that he had been asked to consider the most important challenge facing mankind. Crichton writes, “Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it’s a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.” There is reason to believe that Crichton would not have answered this question or voiced his opinion or may not have voiced it in such a tone if he did not have a tool, such as the Internet to do so. Crichton may have felt this particular way about environmentalism being a religion for a long time, but in the physical society he may have kept those beliefs private because he did not have the courage to say how he felt because how he feels goes against some of the major beliefs of his society. He felt comfortable enough, however, to voice his opinion on the internet, which definitely has a broader audience, because the audience on the internet is not immediate.
The audience on the internet is not immediate. Crinhton, like millions of other people, probably feels some of form of privacy on the internet knowing that people really do not know who he is. He feels like his identity and privacy are being protected. Privacy is very important to people. As Weinberger writes, “Much of our sociality depends upon drawing the line between our private and our public lives”; you share your deepest darkest secrets with your close friends. With your close friends you are able to voice your opinions without fear because you trust that they will not judge you or ridicule you for how you feel. We find that in blogs such as Crichton, that people are voicing the opinions that they may normally count as private with a public audience. What about the world of the internet says that it is okay to do this, when clearly society teaches not to?
When dealing with the internet it is important to keep in mind that it is unlike any thing we have ever known, it is a world of its own. When people use the internet, whether it is to find articles for a paper, talk to friends, or shop, they are entering into another world. Because it is a world of its own, it has its own rules and definitions; even if all of them are not yet to be defined. It has already been established that voice means something different for people on the net. Where in the physical voice usually involves an immediate audience it does not require one on the net and because the element of an immediate audience is missing people are more willing to voice their opinion on the net. They generally feel like their privacy is being protected. The rules and definition of public and private are different on the internet; the same rules and definitions that apply for the physical realm can not be applied in the virtual ream. People often try to apply the rules of public and private of the physical realm to the virtual. In many cases this has not yielded a good outcome. The fact of the matter is that people have not yet learned how to separate the two worlds from each other; natural and virtual that is. It is not even certain if this can actually be done.
This can be seen, for example, in a blog called government Secrets, where a group of people who identify themselves as a right winged organization jeopardized with the freedom act. The sole purpose of this group and through their blog is to publish sensitive information about political situations around the world because according to them, “the truth is most powerful weapon against freedom’s threat. It is almost for certain that this group of bloggers would not publish such information surrounded by their own opinions in a regular newspaper. Some of the s tuff that they post are very controversial in the sense that they are contrary to the information that the government is providing to it’s citizens. This group of bloggers, however, is able to voice their opinions freely on the web because what is counted private information in the physical realm clearly is not counted in the same light in the virtual realm.
Society’s struggle with managing these two different worlds reflects itself in the constant overlapping of one world with the other. In his book, Weinberger gives the example of tom Alciere who was elected to the
New Hampshire legislature in 2000. Weinberger writes, “the barrier was low; it costs two dollars to register as a candidate, and the position pays a lordly hundred dollars a year….plus a free passage through state highway tolls,” (14). Alciere, who was a circuit-board inspector for a local electronics company, ran as a republican. The race got no coverage and Alciere won with a fifty-five vote margin, possibly because his name was first on the ballot. A couple of weeks after he was sworn in people noticed that he had a home page on the internet that called for eliminating mandatory school attendance and removing the age restrictions on drinking. He also had a site devoted to the topic of suicide where he suggested that the way to get sweet revenge against the government for making everyone’s life miserable is to waste as many cops as possible before you die. He also gave examples of how a person can go about doing this. Alciere appeared to be a honorable respectable man in person, and he was able to disclose his private feelings about some of the laws of society and how he really feels about the government. He knew that how he felt was not in accordance with the majority opinion and that he probably would have to deal with judgment of his fellow American citizens if he let his true opinion be known. His two worlds, both physical and virtual, collided when he decided to make a website where he expressed his controversial ideas. Oddly enough he felt more comfort table with publicizing/voicing his private opinions on the internet. Alciere made the decision to voice his true opinions on the internet. That is probably because he did not know that the worlds had to be separated from each other, or have different rules, or he had to treat them differently even though most of the time they feel the same. Whether any of the previous is true is uncertain, but what is certain is that that uncertainty has caused many problems for tom Alciere and it is causing problems for many more world wide.
As mentioned previously, most of people’s problems with the internet lay in the fact that they do not know the rules of this new world because they have yet to be defined. They often try to apply the do’s and do not’s of the physical society to the virtual society and try to create and define their own rules for the new world as they go along. The story of
Campbell is an example of what can happen when people try to apply the rules of the physical world to the new world. A reoccurring issue with people creating and defining their own rules for the internet is the defining of public and private; according to Weinberger. People usually create and define things in light of a similar image that they already know and have been exposed too.
To further the argument of private and public, Weinberger offers the example of the use of email. Email is a tricky feature of the internet with some uncertainties. On one hand email is like mail, you can type a letter, you can type an important reminder or what have you, and send it to someone. On the other hand email is like a conversation where people can talk about whatever they want. People may make jokes, send it, do not bother to re-read it and forget about it ten minutes later. Weinberger writes, “So which is it? A formal letter or an informal conversation?”(13). getting it wrong, drawing the line between public and private inaccurately can lead to serious consequences.
According to ABC News in an article named “Attorney general Repsonese to Questions over Firing of U.S. Attorneys, authors Cook, Ryan, and Thomas, discuss how Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez drew the line between public and private wrong when his emails of a plan that discussed firing 93 U.S. attorneys surfaced. In his emails, Gonzalez was having an informal conversation with the former chief of staff, D. Klye Sampson, about the possibility of asking resignations from all 93 federal district chief prosecutors at the beginning of the 2004 term. In this instance, Gonzalez was not using e-mail as a formal letter; he was using email to have a conversation. His conversation was very controversial and it was meant to be private. Gonzalez drew the lines between public and private on the internet wrong and it turned out that the private conversation between coworkers was not so private after all and Gonzalez got into a lot of trouble for it.
People draw lines between public and private with their voice; in the way that they communicate, share information with one another. Politicians are generally known to take a more professional tone with their constituents and with people who they would like to be there constituents. Because the general rules of society do not apply to the internet, the internet allows for politicians to no take a professional tone when voicing their agenda’s and opinions all the time. This has proven to be good for political campaigning. In an article from the New York Times called “Internet Injects Sweeping Change Into U.S. Politics,” author Adam Nargourney discusses how the internet is changing the face of political campaigns. One of the interesting ideas about campaigning on the internet is that politicians take a less formal tone when talking to their constituents or when reaching out to potential constituents in other demographics. Politicians take an informal tone because the internet has a way of making the political more personal for people. Nargouney writes, “Analysts say the campaign television advertisements, already diminishing in influence with the proliferation of cable stations, faces new challenges as campaigns experiment with technology that allows direct messaging to more specific audiences through unconventional means,” (1). Political campaigning on the television is very distant and usually very formal. People do not feel personally connected with the candidates running for office. Different features on the internet like direct messaging, however, allows for politicians to speak to a specific community in an informal tone that makes the people of that community feel connected with the politician. Ultimately this is good for the politicians because he gains more support and constituents that way.
The internet clearly has become a means for people to voice their opinions or ideas without people having to feel that they have to hold back or feel they cannot say every thing that they really wan t to say. The feelings and thoughts that people have kept private because they were scared of what friends, family, and society as whole might think of them are able to voice their ideas on the internet publicly. The technology Source Archive at the
University of
North Carolina discusses the impact of the internet on society in an article called, “The Impact of the Internet on Management Education.” In the article Charles Morrissey, the author, discusses how the internet which influences the rapid growth of end-user computing, low cost communications, and network software now have a powerful influence on how businesses organize and communicate. This not only holds true for businesses alone, but for politics, politicians and other discourse communities as well. It is evident that the internet is changing how people communicate with each other, especially when one factors in the difference in the meaning of voice, privacy, and tone on the internet. The internet is a new world and calls for new definitions and new rules. This new world with its new definitions and new rules are changing what it means for people to be social with each other; it is changing our life. . This new world can very much be used to politicians advantage, it allows them to grow from the opinions of people who are not necessarily experts, but most certainly may be their constituents and it also allows for them to reach and help a broader audience. Politicians must avoid the pitfalls of the internet, which lay in the uncertainties of the web. If they for lack of better word, master the uncertainties of the net, which have to do with the issues of public, private, tone, and voice, it can only benefit them as politicians and make them furthermore experts in their field.
