Sunday, March 07, 2004
"About the Internet"
In this day and age as I have constantly remarked is that we are living in what we call a post-instituional society. That is a society in which its basic institutions are fast eroding and that to replace it is advance thinking, ingenuity and perhaps a dose of supertechnology. One of the factors that plays a strong role in this called post-instituional effect is the recent sniper shootings in Northern Virginia. The sniper shootings has more or less exacrabated this post-institutional effect by the ability of the snipers to shut down society in one of our stronger and vibrant metropolitan areas, especially in the South. Their targets were out of the ordinary. They weren't famous politicians, wealthy tycoons or even celebrities but ordinary people. What adds more to the recent sniper shooting was that it was depending how you look at it it was an offshoot of the September 11th attack. If we can make an esoteric arguement that the World Trade Center attack represented some release of built up energy ready to be released or implode(depending how you look at it) with the development of faster and faster computers, then the so call social make up that enabled the terrorist to hijack two airliners and crash them into two tall building is the same social make up that led both Malvo and Mahammed to get together to fuel terror on society. What makes this case very interesting is the precision the way they did it. This might be a pun. I am not talking about the accuracy in which they were able to hit physically their targets and were able to elude the authorities for some time but the fact that they were able to hit at the heart of society, and in this case American society. In Judith N.Shklar Redeeming American Political Thought ( Edited by Stanley Hoffmann and Dennis F. Thompson. With a Foreword by Dennis F. Thompson. xviii, 210 p. 1998 ), the author here in the eigth chapter titled 'Positive Liberty, Negative Liberty in the United States' discusses the uniqueness of American society from the perspective that America was a heavily democratic society despite its persistent social inequalites.
How to best start off to make a comparison of Shklar's writing with what is going on today in the US is to take a look at the movie 'Gangs of New York.' Two elements served as a strong motif that carried the movie alive and well. The movie start out in the mid 1850s but takes up most of the time during the civil war at which time 1) the US had its very beginnings of the early waves of immigration and 2) the civil war itself being one of the bloodiest wars in world history. The early waves of immigration took place primarily in the North because like the thinking of the time most newcomers wanted in Shklar's expression be like the aristocrat, free and powerful as them. They didn't find much hope and relief in living in the South because the antebellum South provided too much disillusionment and contradictions for any worthwile pursuit of that dream. As Shklar stated the 'slavemaster' freedom was very limited, they had to be careful what they read or say and maintain a militia also to prevent 'slave rebellion.' As for the slaves themselves, Shklar states brought reproach among the newcomers of the very freedom they even lacked. It sounds odd and perverse but that was how the thinking was reflected at that time. The disdainment and the thinking among the main characters in the movies reflected the attitudes back then .
Shklar also talks about the courts, if you know your rights, you take it to the court and get it relieved and asserted. If anything, America not only is a democratic society but a democratic culture as well. It is from here that the damage if not lately the most damage the snipers has committed. In a sense it has fashioned coup against this cultural structure. If there is anything to say that with a post-instutional society would be a foregone of the 9 to 5 workday*, going to church every Sunday, mass education as we know it or even serving in the military. Government in the future will have to look elsewhere.
A post-institutional society doesn't mean the that society will slip into chaos and civil war**. It means that there will be remaking of society radically that will have to re align itself with the events of the world which is not on the other hand that pretty. What will come of and how it will look like will be a society that although underway, one in the Age of Supertechnologies. If there is a start or the pebble that creates the avalanche that will fall upon us all it is the internet itself.
A noted scholar describes the internet as this:
"The internet started as a conscious project. It was a Cold War project of the United States government. After that it moved into universities and now it has become a universal, more as a universal phenomenon. You couldn't go back to a world without the internet. So the fact, that things sometimes start of as matter of conscious policy does not mean, you can simply go back outside of that world, you cannot any longer. The debate about globalisation is therefore shifted but is no longer a debate between those who are sceptical about it and those who see it as real phenomenon. It is now a debate about the consequences of globalisation and the meetings in Seattle (Washington), where the protesters gathered show that the debate has moved to discuss the consequences of globalisation.Second technological innovation : when you think technological innovation, of course you think of information technology and you see an internet mania in Europe. Europe is kind of caught up so rapidly with the United States, it's a positive mania of the internet. What actually happens is something more profound than just the internet. The application of information technology to production is now already a quarter of a century old. It has already transformed manufacturing industry and the core impact of the internet will be on the so-called old economy, not the new economy. 80 % of new internet business is business-to-business transactions. Some people, and I believe this myself to be true, argue that manufacture in 10 to 15 years time will be a bit like agriculture. Agriculture used to involve some 40 % of the population, now it involves 2 % of the population. It is quite realistic to suppose, that maybe only 5 % of the population, will work in manufacture, some 15 or so years from now on, that 5 % will produce more than the current proportion working in manufacture now. In Germany you have a country with well over 22 % of the working population still involved in manufacture. You compare that with the other EU-countries, where the proportion is about 15, 16, 17 %, than it is easy to appreciate the significance of the new knowledge economy for Germany.Not to be underestimated - changes in everyday life. And it's very easy to underestimate the significance of this. Basically as my fellow sociologist, Ulrich Beck has shown us, we no longer live our lives as fate, tradition, custom. We have to structure our lives much more openly."
Note how here how the author looks at the internet as having 'become a universal, more as a universal phenomenon.' To add to this that why we can't go back is as simple as the next statement he makes that we "You couldn't go back to a world without the internet. So the fact, that things sometimes start of as matter of conscious policy does not mean, you can simply go back outside of that world, you cannot any longer" becasue likewise our concept from the times we even take a look at history will always be clouded and that with or without the internet new ways of thinking no matter how flawed or sophisticated cannot but help cloud our judgement for whatever reason we look at the past. The internet afterall is a form of 'conscious' or 'consciousness' that has been added to the mix. This goes furthermore to another root and that is how we view historical societies as such. Some philosophers would view society as a fixation point to universal human morality; others sees it as a decline and so on. If anything the role the internet plays with shaping our visions of the past and the future does damage when it comes to basic human needs. Some scholars would argue that humans borrowing from another philosopher has 'pre-rational' needs or that takes this even further that such needs are intertwined with nature that their exist 'natural rights.' I would on the other hand would assert that the internet will have a deterministic effect on human nature. Remember as author states above the internet is nothing new. How is that so is that the main element of the internet itself that has existed during the Cold War--p2p or peer to peer--file sharing is the strong arm of the internet that is fast changing society. What makes p2p when one download files like Kazaa pretty soon is the speed in which they are able to download them. Right now large files like movies as I read in the recent People's magazines are still hard to be eluded(in part of copyright laws that can get one in trouble with the Feds but that they can be detected due to large file loads). Some sites and webmasters can get around this and create whay you call 'warez' sites. Warez sites are pirated sites due to the large files that the user who visited their site can download and sometimes upload files. The variatrions of Kazaa such as Kazaa Lite, kazaa.tk, Kazaa Gold are nothing more than the most common pirated site because in the recent retaliaton of Kazaa or more appropriately speaking Sharman Networks countersuits of the RIAA and these 'mirror' sites is the use of its 'fast track' technology. If there were a way to download these files quicker and compressed them the very bare nature of what is exchanged will itself be revolutionized. This is how the internet comes in. There is no borders about the internet and will be frivolous to assert that there should be. The internet relies on technology that for it to be called itself such will soon be old and replaced with newer technologies. The principle of the newer technologies such as nannochips work the same way. If there is ever a way to remake the world from sratch like a new Genesis what will evolve from the internet will be such. ***
One of the changes with the internet we see right now is the use of wireless technology and pretty soon paying for the internet with dial up, DSL or cable modem will be another thing of the past as WI-FI wireless access will take over. If there is such changes in this fashion, imagine the changes as the money being made and the ideas and propaganda being promoted, it will mean again altering the way we live and perhaps accept that freely. Like anything, the world that the internet society promise will always have its very own exclusions..this phenomenon is known as the 'digital divide.' In the global scheme of things it can reshape the fashion of wars as I will describe later the future of warfare in the 21st century, among them the 'internet wars' is one of them, the other as stated in this book by John Aiquilla and David Ronfelt Networks and Netwars pretty soon the internet will evolve where as you have prolific cyberterrorism. If the information becomes so valuable creating not only a cultural and political rift as described in this book but an economic rift as I see it, wars can be easily started over such hording or dissarraying such information. The changes of the internet shouldn't be looked conceptually off the mark. It doesn't as some would assert deny the existence of 'inheritable institutions' but can create cloned instittutions that are unreal in its place.
If anthing the internet is an area that might in the long run that will have at its pleasure the making of virtual states and in cases virtual armies or what I like to term anti-armies. It can create not only barren slave societiey but also have the effect of creating what is called Super-societies as well. Yet the internet is a mere phase, like anything else such as Al Queda that embodies the ephemeral antagonist of Western values incarnate and the war on terrorism are all phases in and of themselves. To put it more clearer, solving social problems would require not only the use of imagination but see things as phase or in part seperate parts that goes through phases as such. This age we live in , the so called Post-modern age is just a phase already passing away. This does not deny the need for law or for the state but the implementation of the forgotten would itself be looked as farfetch but perhaps appropriate--think of the judge in Germany allowing the '20th hijacker' appeal and perhaps even walk free.
*see The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era by Jeremy Rifkin
**this does not mean that the US is already heading that way, civil wars doesn't have to be so decisive, it just have to have one or two factors that gives it a romantic edge such as the fight to end slavey in the US during the American Civil War or converting the animated Christians in the South in Sudan. There are many factors effecting just about every civil war that there has ever been.
***See Anthony Giddens Beyond the Left and Right:The Future of Radical Politics(Stanford University Press, Stanford,CA 1994). Look more specifically in Chapter 8 'Modernity under a Negative Sign:Ecological Issues and Life Politics'. "The ecological crisis is a crisis brought by the dissolution of nature--where 'nature' is defined in its most obvious sense,as any objects or process given independent of human intervention."p. 206. A profound statement that give clarity on what is the big playing field or scene that we live in and more importantly have to deal with.
In this day and age as I have constantly remarked is that we are living in what we call a post-instituional society. That is a society in which its basic institutions are fast eroding and that to replace it is advance thinking, ingenuity and perhaps a dose of supertechnology. One of the factors that plays a strong role in this called post-instituional effect is the recent sniper shootings in Northern Virginia. The sniper shootings has more or less exacrabated this post-institutional effect by the ability of the snipers to shut down society in one of our stronger and vibrant metropolitan areas, especially in the South. Their targets were out of the ordinary. They weren't famous politicians, wealthy tycoons or even celebrities but ordinary people. What adds more to the recent sniper shooting was that it was depending how you look at it it was an offshoot of the September 11th attack. If we can make an esoteric arguement that the World Trade Center attack represented some release of built up energy ready to be released or implode(depending how you look at it) with the development of faster and faster computers, then the so call social make up that enabled the terrorist to hijack two airliners and crash them into two tall building is the same social make up that led both Malvo and Mahammed to get together to fuel terror on society. What makes this case very interesting is the precision the way they did it. This might be a pun. I am not talking about the accuracy in which they were able to hit physically their targets and were able to elude the authorities for some time but the fact that they were able to hit at the heart of society, and in this case American society. In Judith N.Shklar Redeeming American Political Thought ( Edited by Stanley Hoffmann and Dennis F. Thompson. With a Foreword by Dennis F. Thompson. xviii, 210 p. 1998 ), the author here in the eigth chapter titled 'Positive Liberty, Negative Liberty in the United States' discusses the uniqueness of American society from the perspective that America was a heavily democratic society despite its persistent social inequalites.
How to best start off to make a comparison of Shklar's writing with what is going on today in the US is to take a look at the movie 'Gangs of New York.' Two elements served as a strong motif that carried the movie alive and well. The movie start out in the mid 1850s but takes up most of the time during the civil war at which time 1) the US had its very beginnings of the early waves of immigration and 2) the civil war itself being one of the bloodiest wars in world history. The early waves of immigration took place primarily in the North because like the thinking of the time most newcomers wanted in Shklar's expression be like the aristocrat, free and powerful as them. They didn't find much hope and relief in living in the South because the antebellum South provided too much disillusionment and contradictions for any worthwile pursuit of that dream. As Shklar stated the 'slavemaster' freedom was very limited, they had to be careful what they read or say and maintain a militia also to prevent 'slave rebellion.' As for the slaves themselves, Shklar states brought reproach among the newcomers of the very freedom they even lacked. It sounds odd and perverse but that was how the thinking was reflected at that time. The disdainment and the thinking among the main characters in the movies reflected the attitudes back then .
Shklar also talks about the courts, if you know your rights, you take it to the court and get it relieved and asserted. If anything, America not only is a democratic society but a democratic culture as well. It is from here that the damage if not lately the most damage the snipers has committed. In a sense it has fashioned coup against this cultural structure. If there is anything to say that with a post-instutional society would be a foregone of the 9 to 5 workday*, going to church every Sunday, mass education as we know it or even serving in the military. Government in the future will have to look elsewhere.
A post-institutional society doesn't mean the that society will slip into chaos and civil war**. It means that there will be remaking of society radically that will have to re align itself with the events of the world which is not on the other hand that pretty. What will come of and how it will look like will be a society that although underway, one in the Age of Supertechnologies. If there is a start or the pebble that creates the avalanche that will fall upon us all it is the internet itself.
A noted scholar describes the internet as this:
"The internet started as a conscious project. It was a Cold War project of the United States government. After that it moved into universities and now it has become a universal, more as a universal phenomenon. You couldn't go back to a world without the internet. So the fact, that things sometimes start of as matter of conscious policy does not mean, you can simply go back outside of that world, you cannot any longer. The debate about globalisation is therefore shifted but is no longer a debate between those who are sceptical about it and those who see it as real phenomenon. It is now a debate about the consequences of globalisation and the meetings in Seattle (Washington), where the protesters gathered show that the debate has moved to discuss the consequences of globalisation.Second technological innovation : when you think technological innovation, of course you think of information technology and you see an internet mania in Europe. Europe is kind of caught up so rapidly with the United States, it's a positive mania of the internet. What actually happens is something more profound than just the internet. The application of information technology to production is now already a quarter of a century old. It has already transformed manufacturing industry and the core impact of the internet will be on the so-called old economy, not the new economy. 80 % of new internet business is business-to-business transactions. Some people, and I believe this myself to be true, argue that manufacture in 10 to 15 years time will be a bit like agriculture. Agriculture used to involve some 40 % of the population, now it involves 2 % of the population. It is quite realistic to suppose, that maybe only 5 % of the population, will work in manufacture, some 15 or so years from now on, that 5 % will produce more than the current proportion working in manufacture now. In Germany you have a country with well over 22 % of the working population still involved in manufacture. You compare that with the other EU-countries, where the proportion is about 15, 16, 17 %, than it is easy to appreciate the significance of the new knowledge economy for Germany.Not to be underestimated - changes in everyday life. And it's very easy to underestimate the significance of this. Basically as my fellow sociologist, Ulrich Beck has shown us, we no longer live our lives as fate, tradition, custom. We have to structure our lives much more openly."
Note how here how the author looks at the internet as having 'become a universal, more as a universal phenomenon.' To add to this that why we can't go back is as simple as the next statement he makes that we "You couldn't go back to a world without the internet. So the fact, that things sometimes start of as matter of conscious policy does not mean, you can simply go back outside of that world, you cannot any longer" becasue likewise our concept from the times we even take a look at history will always be clouded and that with or without the internet new ways of thinking no matter how flawed or sophisticated cannot but help cloud our judgement for whatever reason we look at the past. The internet afterall is a form of 'conscious' or 'consciousness' that has been added to the mix. This goes furthermore to another root and that is how we view historical societies as such. Some philosophers would view society as a fixation point to universal human morality; others sees it as a decline and so on. If anything the role the internet plays with shaping our visions of the past and the future does damage when it comes to basic human needs. Some scholars would argue that humans borrowing from another philosopher has 'pre-rational' needs or that takes this even further that such needs are intertwined with nature that their exist 'natural rights.' I would on the other hand would assert that the internet will have a deterministic effect on human nature. Remember as author states above the internet is nothing new. How is that so is that the main element of the internet itself that has existed during the Cold War--p2p or peer to peer--file sharing is the strong arm of the internet that is fast changing society. What makes p2p when one download files like Kazaa pretty soon is the speed in which they are able to download them. Right now large files like movies as I read in the recent People's magazines are still hard to be eluded(in part of copyright laws that can get one in trouble with the Feds but that they can be detected due to large file loads). Some sites and webmasters can get around this and create whay you call 'warez' sites. Warez sites are pirated sites due to the large files that the user who visited their site can download and sometimes upload files. The variatrions of Kazaa such as Kazaa Lite, kazaa.tk, Kazaa Gold are nothing more than the most common pirated site because in the recent retaliaton of Kazaa or more appropriately speaking Sharman Networks countersuits of the RIAA and these 'mirror' sites is the use of its 'fast track' technology. If there were a way to download these files quicker and compressed them the very bare nature of what is exchanged will itself be revolutionized. This is how the internet comes in. There is no borders about the internet and will be frivolous to assert that there should be. The internet relies on technology that for it to be called itself such will soon be old and replaced with newer technologies. The principle of the newer technologies such as nannochips work the same way. If there is ever a way to remake the world from sratch like a new Genesis what will evolve from the internet will be such. ***
One of the changes with the internet we see right now is the use of wireless technology and pretty soon paying for the internet with dial up, DSL or cable modem will be another thing of the past as WI-FI wireless access will take over. If there is such changes in this fashion, imagine the changes as the money being made and the ideas and propaganda being promoted, it will mean again altering the way we live and perhaps accept that freely. Like anything, the world that the internet society promise will always have its very own exclusions..this phenomenon is known as the 'digital divide.' In the global scheme of things it can reshape the fashion of wars as I will describe later the future of warfare in the 21st century, among them the 'internet wars' is one of them, the other as stated in this book by John Aiquilla and David Ronfelt Networks and Netwars pretty soon the internet will evolve where as you have prolific cyberterrorism. If the information becomes so valuable creating not only a cultural and political rift as described in this book but an economic rift as I see it, wars can be easily started over such hording or dissarraying such information. The changes of the internet shouldn't be looked conceptually off the mark. It doesn't as some would assert deny the existence of 'inheritable institutions' but can create cloned instittutions that are unreal in its place.
If anthing the internet is an area that might in the long run that will have at its pleasure the making of virtual states and in cases virtual armies or what I like to term anti-armies. It can create not only barren slave societiey but also have the effect of creating what is called Super-societies as well. Yet the internet is a mere phase, like anything else such as Al Queda that embodies the ephemeral antagonist of Western values incarnate and the war on terrorism are all phases in and of themselves. To put it more clearer, solving social problems would require not only the use of imagination but see things as phase or in part seperate parts that goes through phases as such. This age we live in , the so called Post-modern age is just a phase already passing away. This does not deny the need for law or for the state but the implementation of the forgotten would itself be looked as farfetch but perhaps appropriate--think of the judge in Germany allowing the '20th hijacker' appeal and perhaps even walk free.
*see The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era by Jeremy Rifkin
**this does not mean that the US is already heading that way, civil wars doesn't have to be so decisive, it just have to have one or two factors that gives it a romantic edge such as the fight to end slavey in the US during the American Civil War or converting the animated Christians in the South in Sudan. There are many factors effecting just about every civil war that there has ever been.
***See Anthony Giddens Beyond the Left and Right:The Future of Radical Politics(Stanford University Press, Stanford,CA 1994). Look more specifically in Chapter 8 'Modernity under a Negative Sign:Ecological Issues and Life Politics'. "The ecological crisis is a crisis brought by the dissolution of nature--where 'nature' is defined in its most obvious sense,as any objects or process given independent of human intervention."p. 206. A profound statement that give clarity on what is the big playing field or scene that we live in and more importantly have to deal with.
# posted by Jamie @ 5:38 PM 
