While his statements show much more clarity than mine, I’ll shortly describe his argument concerning the schizophrenic society. In Verbrugge’s view the strive for individual freedom has coincided with technological innovation. That development now has created the possibility for individuals to become disconnected from their physical reality.
By going online and having the possibility of easily finding like minded people in a virtual space without boundaries, the individual has increasingly become alienated to his environment. It is like we know what happens on the other side of the globe, but we don’t know who our neighbors are anymore, because we hardly ever find the time to talk to them.
So, by that analogy, the internet is not so much a place for discussion at all. We can easily block out any opposing views. And in a world where we lack enough gestures to communicate clearly it is easy for specific online communities (be they: online gaming environments, virtual worlds, porn portals or extreme fundamentalist forums) to polarize to such an extent that the opposing view turns very hostile towards its physical environment. And it is that physical environment that has created the possibility of the virtual environment (through infrastructure for instance) in the first place. In a sense that is a schizophrenic situation.
Now, the question remains whether the technology is the cause of that behavior? I for one have always held the believe that it is not the technology itself that is to blame. But I have to admit that I also hold the view that the world wide web and some of its applications in particular are true tools for empowerment for instance. Somehow it seems, that if I adhere the positive effects, I should also do so with the negative aspects.
So…yes. The internet, and some of its online communities in particular do increase the polarization of the spectrum. But each free individual still carries the responsibility toward the group or society that he is part of. I wonder whether that society will stay a physical reality forever (Verbrugge thinks it will be). What will happen to our sense of security and community when our world becomes even more virtual than it is already and our societies will no longer be defined by our physical space but by our virtual?
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i think the polarisation i read in your reading of ad verbrugge is a self fulfilling prophesy. if you completely divide (separate) between offline and online (we have talked about this before) and interpret the resulting changes you have to choose, you have to pick sides.
if we call this schizophrenic it is like saying: ‘if we could we should go back to exclusively offline’. because with the help of medication and therapy the desired cure of this illness to have one reality.
how do we deal with the symptoms of a sickness we don’t know yet? because i think that is what is wrong here. we are diagnosing instead of researching. diagnosing gives you a well defined sickness with possible therapy. researching might find a new ’sickness’ with a different therapy.
Schizophrenia is characterized by “emotional blunting, intellectual deterioration, social isolation, disorganized speech and behavior, delusions, and hallucinations”. There is a risk in online environments in which individuals isolate themselves from reality for that to occur. I didn’t say that it happens by definition (or didn’t mean to say that). That can lead to extreme behavior in the real world, where it seems allowed to use violence for instance, because all the like minded people in your environment seem to approve such behavior.
I believe the internet is a factor in that polarization, at least a factor that you can not deny. I agree that much more is at play there, but there are numerous examples of extremist behavior that were rooted in online environments. I don’t think that is diagnosing. I think that is ‘researching’ what the causes of some symptoms might be. It believe it to be a way to use an extreme possibility to investigate what might happen: what does it mean to the way we behave in our local societies if we lock ourselves in virtual worlds? Do you doubt there’s a relationship at all between the two?
there is no ‘the two’ for me.
there is one world, with virtual and physical, more and more overlapping. i think it is dangerous to say ‘the online world causes extreme behaviour’. i think it is more appropriate to say that ‘with modern communication tools the extreme behaviour is much more likely to crystallize, to emerge’. it is a form of empowerment.
if we keep separating these realities (virtual, physical) we don’t see the opportunities for improvement. on one hand we see that online tools might help strengthen the local community but the weakness was caused by the same online tools but used differently. do you see what i mean? it is no use to keep separating the two.
i agree with everything you say, but the way we research this clouds our judgement and especially our problem solving, i think. one of the things herman wijfels said is that with freedom comes responsibility. for me that line of reasoning is more likely to lead to solutions than understanding this polarisation.
I don’t agree entirely. You’re right: the two are more and more overlapping and should be considered as one. However, the dynamics in the one differ very much from the other. The simple fact that most of our life in reality is still constituted very much by spaces that have boundaries (the nation state, the laws, etc.) is often times very much in conflict with the boundless space of the virtual in which a ‘connection’ doesn’t exist in reality.
Yes, we do have to understand how the two correlate and interact. But abolishing the two surpasses much of the characteristics that make it different. Not so much for us maybe, but a lot from its users. Their behavior is (still) dictated by the fact that these ‘two’ worlds are very separate. And when their actions are based on those beliefs we can’t simply say that the distinction doesn’t exist anymore.
about the boundaries i have a couple of thoughts.
first i think virtual realities are very much bounded by something. perhaps it is more explicit. if you enter an environment of extremism and you oppose you will feel the boundaries immediately. but the boundaries are more part of the system itself. they faded but are not gone.
on the other hand you see the boundaries in the physical realities shifting as well. globalization dictates changing and shifting boundaries. when they shift the parties that stand to ‘loose’ do everything in their power to stop (wto trade agreements, for example.) another example in which the european union explicitly seeks to remove more and more boundaries.
you use the example of violence in of your previous comments. how can you behave ‘normally’ in the physical reality if you just killed a couple of people in a virtual reality?
but this phenomenon is just the more vivid manifestation of something we already had. we all watch movies where killing is more norm than exception. we read books where murder is vividly practised. in these examples we identify and imagine and dream. a virtual reality where you can kill is just the logical consequence.
what i am trying to say is that it is not so much the virtual vs. the physical that poses question. but why (and how) certain human traits surface in certain situations. what keeps us from killing in the real world? why is violence in gaming worse than watching tour of duty? how is paintball different from world of warcraft?
Very true.
What I’m also thinking of is the ‘unity’ that participants or members in online environments seem to share. That shared identity(?) surpasses real boundaries. Meaning: I share a physical space with my neighbors, and I share a virtual space with my online friends. But whereas in the former that physical space is bound by the ‘rules’ and ‘laws’ of the society I am part of, there are no such boundaries online? Are such governing laws essential for civilization?
I don’t know is such surpassing of boundaries similar to the way a religion can surpass boundaries?
What I was referring to is when people that have developed very extremist views in online fora for instance ‘loose’ their sense of reality and go out to blow themselves up or kill others…
The difference with movies and books, is that these ‘talk back’ and more radical views/perspectives/opinions can be formed when all are like minded (called group polarization in social psychology).
I think the point you raised whether governing laws essential are for civilization is very interesting. Governing laws create a safe space for its peers. These laws don’t tell you what to do, but are an agreement of what we as a collective don’t want to happen. I think they are for the creation of a social cohesion, with room for individuality, with room for multiple perspectives. The social cohesion is not for creating a monopoly on truth, but a space in which multiple perspectives can live amongst each other.
I don’t think there is any difference between paint ball and World of Warcraft; both are a games and you don’t use actual violence. We don’t say ‘no’ to games or fantasy, but we do say ‘no’ to actual physical violence. That is the social cohesion.
…and to add to my previous point, in the physical world you encounter different perspectives. There is some form of social control just by being and interacting in the psychical space. The physical space in that sense is more open, people are more identifiable. If the opposing views you encounter start to resonate (disagree) hard enough, you have the option to alarm a higher power like governing laws.
True individuality can only exist in social cohesion. Social cohesion creates the protection you need to be a individual. If there is no safety, you’ll have to turn to a group which can give you this safety. Maybe the greater the social cohesion extends, the more individual one can be…
Interestingly, those governing laws are based on the physical spaces we inhabit not the virtual…
To your second remark: exactly, in physical spaces the chance on an ‘accident’ is still higher than in an online environment, where you can just ‘choose’ not to be confronted by other views. And those accidents give you a sense of social cohesion.
Do you think social cohesion is impossible to achieve in online environments? Is ‘opposing views’ part of what you see as social cohesion?
Jorgen, I assume that by accidents you mean something like the collision of perspectives or opposing views? But yes, I think the collision of opposing views are part of a large social cohesion as they are inherent to a space in which multiple perspectives co-exist. The difference between a physical and virtual space is, like you said, the opposing view in virtual space can be filtered far more easily. When exposed only to the filtered reality, might lead to schizophrenic society, the collision of the physical space with the virtual space.
Maybe social cohesion is like a newsbroadcast. You can agree or disagree with the broadcast, but you’ll know what the consensus is. The newsbroadcast in itself is also far more adresseble for matters like moral or ethics than a individual is. We changed from a one-to-many model of perceiving the world (governing, central news broadcast etc.) to a many-to-many model. With the change of this model the responsibility for the whole is to some extend in the hands of the individual.
Some form of social cohesion exists in every online community, but I guess the problem of schizophrenia arises when the cohesion within the virtual community prevails over the physical environment.
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean: a collision of perspectives occurs offline rather than online. Interestingly, nobody in this discussion seems to disagree with that. Although most often it is said that the World Wide Web is the place where every voice can be heard and is one of the most democratic media out there…it’s not?
you really think offline we see more ‘collision of perspectives’? take two of the most interesting clashes of the last years. take the value of wikipedia compared to encyclopaedia britannica, that battle is being fought mainly online i think. another very interesting collision of perspectives is related to privacy. offline we equip the world with monitoring devices. while google, potentially the wet dream of surveillance, is actively removing information that can be (mis)used for identification of individuals.
both these examples are a bit mixed, but they show us something interesting. because the power is shifting to the individual it is easier to ‘harvest’ this power into some representative body (perhaps acting out of its own interest, as in the case of google.) this is something that is new, compared to pre-internet times, i think. and both wikipedia and google are very much colliding with powerful interests already present.
what strikes me is that we are afraid extremism rising because of virtual realities. aren’t we afraid of that because their perspective collides with ours?
can you give me a clear example where the offline shows a clear collision of perspectives while offline you don’t see these opposing views?
First of all, I don’t think extremism is rising because of virtual realities (the causes are much more difficult and are strongly rooted in our world). I do think that online environments can (and is) increase the polarization.
Here’s my take on it: because of the increased individualism and the use of tools, that make a further individualization possible (such as the web) we’ve entered an age in which potentially every perspective is out there. But the overload of information has created a necessity to ‘filter’ the content. So, in a world where I can connect globally it is very easy to see only the things I want to see and to meet only the people that are like minded. In a group of like minded people, something happens. Everybody evaluates what all the positions in the group are, and aligns themselves with the shared view. But, on an individual basis people tend to become a bit more extreme, because they are then viewed in a positive light and can be seen as ‘impressive’ leaders. One thing leads to another and the entire group polarizes.
With opposing views that is less likely to happen, because it will balance out. In contrast to the online world it is much more difficult to filter other ideas and perspectives out, because they happen all around you. The discussions on the street after Theo van Gogh was murdered for instance happened on the street, less online, because online the like minded found themselves in their own environments.
I’m not sure if I understand your examples correctly…I was under the assumption that Google is one of the biggest that are not at all keen on privacy. They seem to collect ever more and more data about me. What do you exactly mean by ‘the individual is easier to harvest into a representative body’?
see “A new competitive marketplace for privacy”? for googles new quest for privacy.
a power like google is a representative body of individuals (harvested, in a way.) in the case of privacy they go directly against societies (politics) wish for control. we are more and more being watched, monitored, controlled. and mostly because we can, with new technology. this development accelerated dramatically with 9/11 and threat perception due to extremism.
the search engine now try to use technology against technology. they will just not store the information that makes it possible to track users any more. and who is going to force them to store this kind of information?
with new tools the action of an individual is much more directly related to the company itself. in google we search, in youtube we watch, in myspace we express ourselves. these companies become so powerful but because they are directly related to identifiable individuals they are forced to take each individual seriously. before we bought products, rather anonymously. and if we bought services we were not connected to our fellow customers. much easier to ignore the best interest of ‘the individual’.
where we see that ‘the individual’ has not so much individual power and influence, the collected individual is shaping society. before it was collected largely in political bodies, while politics is more and more dominated by media. perception is often more important than reality. if google was looking for the a perception of privacy it would be very easily discredited.
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