[Dean's World] Ron Coleman: Asymmetric cultural warfare

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Posted by Ron Coleman:
Asymmetric cultural warfare 
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1159970512.shtml


   Sit back and take a look. Stop clicking away and think for a second.

   This whole new mode -- of communication, of thinking, frankly for
   millions of us, of being -- requires more thought if we are to avoid
   what could otherwise be the coming shocks. It is changing everything,
   but we may not really be properly anticipating how culturally
   destabilizing it can be, and probably already is.

   "It" isn't just blogs -- mercy, how self-centered bloggers are! -- but
   the blogs are the manifestation of the end of barriers to entry into
   the marketplace of expression. The marketplace of expression, of
   course, is larger than the marketplace of ideas; you don't even have
   to have an idea to enter it. You merely have to have a platform, a
   soap box, and yes, the Internet provides this. But that does not mean
   "the medium is the message" -- we are past that, [1]Mr. McLuhan. The
   medium is by now, passé; it is so unbearably light -- indeed it
   dances in the ether -- that the medium is besides the point. Put
   differently, if the medium is the message, then the utter lack of real
   message, real content, pulsating across the vast majority of channels
   renders the matter itself moot. Or does it?

   During the entire previous history of humanity until just a few
   minutes ago, elites -- who usually had the stability of society, for
   good or for bad, as a central goal, as elites will -- controlled the
   medium and the message. And the result was indeed a high degree of
   stability. You could not easily ruin a man's life by communicating
   something false or scurrilous, though if you did it could hardly be
   undone. And little saw the light of day in print -- be it by the hand
   of a scribe painstaking scratching out sacred writ, as the product of
   the crudest printing presses or over the air of the oligopoly
   broadcasters -- without being weighed and vetted -- no, not always,
   maybe not even mostly, for truth or neutrality, but at least for cost
   and usually for effect.

   This sense of accountability flowed from the fact of accountability,
   often in its literal sense. Your quills could be blunted, your press
   smashed, and in a more enlightened era and place, your assets and good
   name put at risk through legal process. There was a high cost of entry
   to the market of expression, and that cost was, especially in unfree
   societies (as is still the case), often far greater than any true
   economic assessment; but once borne, this cost provided a
   counterweight -- not a perfect one, but a real one -- to the
   inclination to take no consideration of what costs others might bear
   as a result of your expression.

   ([2]show)

   That world is largely gone. Libertarians rejoice. But are we quite
   sure we are as satisfied with the result as we constantly claim?

   I am not overly sentimental about the old order. The vesting of the
   power of public or mass expression in the hands of a view, whether by
   genuine market forces or otherwise, led to corruption and changed
   history, sometimes for the worst. [3]Walter Duranty's excercises on
   behalf of mass murder are only useful examples in the context that
   their harm is mitigated by the fact that the truth eventually came
   out, and by our appreciation of the fact that there were once other
   broadsheets in New York besides the Times. Who knows what accepted
   "facts" in our own mental worlds are pure inventions?

   But today the world of expression is cracking up into an infinitely
   divisible collection of thought-worlds, a cultural Balkanization that
   may not foster the search for truth as effectively as we think. Yes,
   it is immensely easier, and a blessed thing, too, for bloggers to
   double-check the spin of the landed media, and to show half-, quarter-
   and non-truths for what they are. I have argued that this is what
   blogs do best and what makes them, really, indispensable. And of
   course it is damning that the media do not do this to each others'
   work, but rather act as a pack, and with a clear political agenda.

   But I am not talking about journalism, so much, as I am about entire
   communities of mentality that I see emerging. Of course, they've
   always been there. Let's think of cranks: There were always, for
   example, people who bought Noam Chomsky books, and the sphere of
   influence of their like has probably not really changed. Their facts
   are as false as ever, and perhaps more easily disproved; their
   analysis is as faulty, too; and they couldn't care less. Call it a
   wash to a plus.

   But what troubles me, and motivated this long essay, is how easily it
   is to destroy lives, families and institutions today with no
   accountability. This is something the Internet has wrought, and back
   into the bottle that genie will not go.

   Last night I was Googling the name of a person I do some business
   with, who is actually a friend. It led me to a link about an
   institution he supports, and positively scurrilous accusations against
   another supporter... and, in the same -- anonymous -- blog, of its
   leader... and its members... beyond innuendo; outright unsupported
   statements of purported fact about entire communities and their ways
   of life. The bloggers and most of those commenting, and heaping scorn
   on respected figures and leaders, were mostly anonymous -- the true
   refuge of an Internet scoundrel, in most cases. But once pumped out
   there, the bilge does not retreat. The blog is on Blogspot, like many
   others, and will presumably be reachable, readable, linkable
   "forever."

   In the old days, cranks and complainers and scandalmongers of this ilk
   used to peddle such wares via stolen reams of photocopy paper or
   purple mimeograph printouts. Mailed anonymously or pinned up on
   storefronts they were easily enough recognized as the rantings of
   marginal people; once pulled down and crumpled up, they were gone
   forever, and usually rightfully so.

   Now we know not to believe everything we read in a blog, of course. No
   one thinks any more that if it's on the Internet, "there must be
   something to it." But slander has a way of sticking, especially when
   it is directed to those whose stations or dignity do not make response
   appropriate or practical. And the virtual eternity of anonymous
   defamation makes it more insidious than anything that preceded it.
   Potential employers, spouses or in-laws, business partners -- anyone
   who can work Google can forever gain access to and read the rankest
   falsehood on the Internet.

   The cost to the anonymous hit-blogger, or commenter: Free. The effect
   on people, institutions, communities: Unfathomable.

   They say that a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and
   the value of nothing. I have argued that this is true of
   libertarianism, as well, which I consider the animating political
   spirit of the Internet. Traditional economists argue for government or
   collectivist intervention in economies where "externalities" -- costs
   borne by others not a direct party to economic decision-making -- are
   not "properly" incorporated into cost decisions made by the market.
   Libertarians reject this by insisting on a proper allocation of
   property rights and responsibilities.

   How do you do this in the new world of asymmetrical cultural or
   information warfare? How can property rights and penalties for their
   violation be properly allocated and enforced in a world of anonymity
   and where there are zero costs to instantly uttering thoughts,
   accusations and claims that can be consumed by millions, capable of
   destroying lives? And is there no value to the virtues of civilized
   discourse, of accountability for what one says in all the senses of
   the word?

   I propose no elite, no star chamber, no board of wise men to put atop
   the whole thing and answer these questions. But all I asked at the
   beginning was that we realize some of the implications of the trip
   we're on, a trip I am enjoying and which benefits me. This is one of
   those implications, and while I am not a worrier, what I saw last
   night on the Internet -- and what it portends, I think, beyond the
   narrow communal interests it implicated -- is very troubling. This is
   the world we are making for ourselves. Will we be able to live in it?

   ([4]hide)

References

   1. http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/main.html
   2. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/deanesmay/posts/1159970512.html
   3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty#Criticisms
   4. file://localhost/var/www/powerblogs/deanesmay/posts/1159970512.html