Philosophy 101 Unit 1

This is an update on the prosecution of the mother who helped her daughter make a fake myspace to torment another girl.  The fictional boy wound up saying some pretty mean things causing Megan, the tormented girl, to hang herself.

Watch it

I don’t agree with those of you who feel meaningful conversations over the internet are equivelent to those had in person, but I find it impossible to deny that criticism, no matter how disembodied, does have a strong effect.  For example, has anyone else heard about the woman married via second life (who had never met her ‘husband’ in person) who tried to kill him in real life after catching him snuggling on a couch in second life with another woman?  As a society, we’ve developed thin skin when it comes to enduring criticism and jealousy, in my opinion.  Even through the medium of a screen, which desesitizes us to gory CSI’s and brutal war films, can our fragile self esteems be crushed with flippant words exchanged via myspace.

Something else interesting to consider is the punshment.  The newcaster mentions that the mother faces 3 years in prison and a fine of $300,000 if convicted with the full sentence.  Nothing is said about the daughter.  Should she be punsihed for her role too?  Is the court’s punishment of the mother satisfactory?  Should it be more or less severe?  To what extent can we police the internet — it’s a task that seems even more overwhelming than the way our country has been trying to play policeman of the world.  How can we possibly have justice online?  If Megan’s case is pursued, shouldn’t they all be?

As I was thinking of what to write my post on I decided that I would write it on what has influenced my opinions.  Then I recall Dan’s lecture concerning the net neutrality issue as well as the telecommunications industry.  According to Wikipedia net neutrality is defined as:  a principle that is applied to residential broadband networks, and potentially to all networks. A neutral broadband network is one that is free of restrictions on the kinds of equipment that may be attached, on the modes of communication allowed, which does not restrict content, sites or platforms, and where communication is not unreasonably degraded by other communication streams.  This definition basically states that all content on the internet should be regarded as equal.  Your YouTube video is read by the servers the same as an important e-mail from work.  The current way that this is done is being challenged by telecommunications companies because they feel that they are being “robbed” and that we (being the general public) is placing “unnecessary wear on their tubes”.

Personally I have to take a bold stance against the telecommunication companies.  They are trying to manipulate the policies on the internet to allow them to charge premiums for their services.  This system is upsetting to me as Dan continued to explain how other foreign countries, including South Korea and Japan have much faster and way more public of internet.  In South Korea one is even able to access the internet on the subway.  Telecom companies want to make the false claim that the internet belongs solely to them, while in fact it is more of a public good because it was created with our taxpayer money.

Net neutrality is still a large issue that is widely debated today.  In fact, as I opened up Mozilla Firefox to write this post, a new update had been added to my RSS feed on my yahoo homepage.  The post said that Obama has appointed a pair of net neutrality advocates and MMOG (massive multiplayer online game) fans to head his FCC transition team.  To quote the news source of the Escapist where I saw this information, “The pair are described by GigaOM as “seasoned Net Neutrality advocates,” and Werbach is also a World of Warcraft player.” It’s definitely too early to predict how having these unique type of gamer experience could have on policies recommended by Werbach and Crawford, but the fact that they have the actual experience to draw upon shows a significant change from previous administrations.  Videogames are the “new normal,” so it’s good to see that Obama is surrounding himself with people in relevant positions who have the background.  Lastly there is one random fact that I wanted to bring up is that Obama himself admits that the last videogame he played was Pong.  Hopefully by placing these knowledgeable people in his administration, Obama will be able to maintain net neutrality and maybe even help advance our internet access to that of the advanced countries like South Korea and Japan.

Please post a comment by Tuesday’s class for participation credit for this week.

Prompts and Questions:

• “Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither.” - Ben Franklin. Is Franklin right?
• Dreyfus is attempting to combat the inflated hype surrounding the Internet. In what ways has the Internet been hyped? Does it live up to the hype, or does it fall flat?
• Dreyfus makes a big deal out of the failure of search. What similarities do you see between his arguments and Searle’s arguments against strong AI? Is search really a failure? If not, what does this imply about artificial intelligence?
• Dreyfus thinks the body is the source of meaning, relevance, and significance. Why are Dreyfus’ arguments for this view? What implications does this hold for our engagement with the Internet? Is Dreyfus right to be skeptical of the Internet?
• Dreyfus thinks that distance learning is necessarily deficient. Are his criticisms reasonable? If you have had any experience with distance learning, do his criticisms ring true?
• Dreyfus focuses much of his criticisms at the very notion of ‘telepresence’. He says “Whatever hugs do for people, I’m quite sure telehugs won’t do it.” Are interpersonal relationships over the Internet necessarily deficient? What might Clark say in response?
• Dreyfus thinks that the Internet is symptomatic of the nihilism of the contemporary age, and he sides with Kierkegaard in seeing this nihilism reflected in the press, the media, and the way people behave on the Internet. Is the modern age really nihilistic? If so, is this nihilism a product of the technology or does it reflect something deeper about contemporary culture, or perhaps about human nature?
• Does the internet represent an overload of information? Is this dangerous to our democracy, or to our individual freedoms? Is this something we are prepared to handle, or does the technology move too quickly for us to keep up?
• In the conclusion of the book, Dreyfus distinguishes his criticisms of the Internet from Plato’s criticisms of written language. What is Plato’s view, and why does Dreyfus think his criticisms are different?
• Should the network be neutral? Do the telecommunications companies responsible for building the infrastructure of the network have a legitimate claim to those pipes? Should the internet be a public utility like water and electricity, or is it a luxury item that is rightfully under the control of private interests?

Also, for those interested in the security issues we discussed in class, I strongly recommend watching the Frontline documentary Spying on the Home Front (which you can stream online). It is extremely well done, and goes in depth to both sides of the argument. 

Also, check the following resources on the NSA Wiretapping scandal:

NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls (USA Today, who originally broke the story)
NSA Warrantless Surveillance Controversy [Wikipedia]
AT&T Whistle blower’s Evidence [Wired]
Discussion of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) [Wikipedia]

Net Neutrality:

Vint Cerf (Father of the Internet and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google) on Net Neutrality.
Net Neutrality is about freedom of speech
Lessig on the Law

This post will focus on some of the ways the technology has affcted man in his interpersonal behavioral and his personal psychological health, which I have given aribtrary, funny names.

The Constant Accountability Effect: Dan got me thinking about this when he pointed out texting during class.  Cell phones are one piece of technology that has completely changed all interpersonal relationships by creating constant accountability.  Whether you are in class, on the toilet, asleep, volunteering, or eating, there is no excuse for not flipping open a buzzing phone to return a text.  Failure to do so results in the inevitable conversation the next time you see the person (or worse, the facebook wall post version): “I sent you a text last night, but I guess you didn’t get it…?”  Cell phones have allowed children to hold onto their mother’s apron stings from hundreds of miles away, allow suspicious girlfriends to act as paroll officers by keeping constant “what’s up?” texting-tabs on their boyfriends, the list goes on.

One-bud-out Friends: A new way to classify friends has been established with the advent of the iPod.  Personally I don’t wear my iPod when I’m walking around campus between classes, but it seems like everyone else does.  My buds-out friends will remove both ear buds to have a brief conversation with me when I run into them on the quad (the are the kids who make your Top Friends list).  My one-bud-out friends do the quick pull-it-out-say-”hey”-and-stick-it-back-in, but that’s better than nothing.  The last group of head-nodders feels no need to join me in the auditory world.  They do however grace me with a quick nod, an affirmation that they did, in fact, see me, and did not think I was a random creeper waving and smiling at them.

The Dunce Cap Effect: There’s always one kid in class who gets 100% on the test that everyone else fails, then looks around confused when the papers are handed back, and says “Really?  But it was so easy!”  You know, the kid who got beat up on the playground?  I’m talking about that kid.  Well, he’s finally been one-upped.  Computers can do things that no human can do, sometimes making people feel stupid or unimportant.  (As a side note, this also caused a new compliment to be formed: given to an outstanding human by a lesser human in awe:  “He’s a machine!”)  People don’t generally like to feel stupid or unimportant, we much prefer defense mechanisms to protect our fragile self-esteem.  This is why I believe people grow increasingly hostile towards machines that look human.  Our good looks and charm are one of the only things that humans still have a monopoly on, and we hate to see machines that have the potential to steal that property out from under us.  Most people are afraid of AI (ex - 2001 A Space Oddessy), even if they don’t like to admit it, but the possibility of housing AI in a human-looking vessel gives us the visual imagery that’s too intense for us to handle.  Humans looking their possible replacements in the face is far more difficult than looking it in the screen, so to speak.  The screen, at least, is a barrior to protect us from the possibility that we’ve been completely outdone.  I know that I’ve written about this point to a lesser extent before, but I can’t help but feel that this is logically where humans will psychologically end up when AI becomes mroe prominant in daily life.

The Computerized Shrink: Technology has even permiated the feild of clinical psychology.  Essentially the client has a session per week for ten weeks with a computer program as opposted to a therapist.    Check out the computer shrink here. Do you think that a computer program could be as effective as a therapist?  According to the UCLA research posted on their official website, the answer is yes.  I think that those human qualities, like the need for empathy, would be addressed much better with a human therapist, but a computer program has some perks too.  A patient might have an easier time telling his embarassing problems to a machine as opposed to an actual person, in the same way that it’s easier to write an angry email than it is to shout at someone’s face.

These are just some of the ways that technology has changed our interpersonal relationships and behaviors.  Now, I don’t mean to be hard on technology, I’m certainly greatful for all the ways it can help us.  I recognize that the flip side of the Constant Accountability Effect is that anyone can be reached immediately in cases of emergency.  The One-bud-out observations can serve as an indicator for who is too busy for me and who cares enough to chat.

There are certainly other ways in which technology permiates our relationships.  Feel free to list, discuss, and debate them in the comments.