Two recent columns, Anand Giridharadas in the New York Times and Stilgherrian on ABC Unleashed explored the idea that the digital world is different. But are things really different online?
Stilgherrian argued that Australia’s “digital elites” are politically naive in the way they are opposing their government’s proposed Internet filter. While it may well be true Australia’s tech communities are politically naive, but the real question is do these folk qualify as an “elite” or even as a separate group from the general community at all?
Are the digital elites the coolest, smartest kids in the room? Does being able to setup a Twitter account or use an iPhone make you superior to the bulk of the population?
Surely the whole notion of a “digital elite” is flawed when the bulk of jobs and households are now, to varying degrees, reliant on digital technologies — we’re all digital.
On a similar vein, Anand asks if we need a digital philosophy to deal with the unique issues of an online, connected world. This assumes the issues are unique and societies haven’t had to deal with worlds where privacy is difficult is difficult to find, think of a mediaeval village where no secret would be safe.
Does being able to tweet across the planet 24/7 mean you are excused from the general standards of behaviour? Or does it hold you to a higher level of accountability? Perhaps it’s the latter.
It could be we returning to older standards of behaviour where we were accountable to our immediate community. That immediate community could now as easily be on the other side of the world as much as across the street.
One feature of Post World War II Western life has been our ability to insulate ourselves from the outside world as we became more materially affluent and isolated in our suburban, car dependent, households. To make our isolation complete we relied on the distorted prism of the mass media for our information on what was happening in our society.
The digital media is changing that, suddenly we find we find we are accountable to our peers and the old rules of responsibility are reasserting themselves, just as they did in the pre suburban communities.
Could it be that being far from an elite, as we become more connected we also become more accountable? Does this mean older standards of responsibility and ethical rules will start to reassert themselves?
Perhaps we may learn much about the future from the experiences of our great grandparents.
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