Everyday Internet

Discuss the effects of the Internet on everyday life. What is the effect on interpersonal relationships, family life, community involvement, democracy? In your opinion, are these effects overall negative or positive?

I think it's both positive and negative; it can't really be anything but both. Whether we see the effects of the Internet on everyday life as positive or negative, depends on how (and why) we react to the changes it brings and our personalities, experiences, personal and professional perspectives will color how we expereince that change.

It's all in the eye of the beholder.

Maybe that's why the PC-versus-Mac debate has raged unbated since the 1990s. There is no agreed upon benchmark for determining which is better, not when the users themselves are so different in every way. It's as if the debate has a built-in dialectic, forever poised to set Mac users against PC users (with Linux users occasionally being brought into the fray like some kind of technological hippies.) Discussions of which are better, like the several articles we read this week, focus almost entirely on the technology - which is faster, which is better built, which is more customizable, etc. In the end, however, it matters only whether the technology serves the needs and desires of the person who chooses to use it. Acknowledging that fact does little to stem the tide of the debate however; we seem to prefer the debate.

The chapter in Web Theory seems a bit ... thin I guess, with regards to this notion of perspective driving the value of usefulness of function and design. But then, I suppose this is something that could be the basis of whole book and probably has been. The brief mention the chapter makes of web interface design got me thinking of the personal computer again: Was the choice to use an office desk top metaphor, with manila files, documents and trash cans the right one? Having read Engelbart's essay and the subsequent development, we know the origin and reason for this metaphor. But given the way we use new media technology in our everyday lives, would a home/house/abode metaphor been a better choice?

The Internet has managed to become and extension of nearly everything about our lives. We have personal space on the Internet, places we deem "ours" and "private". We create, play, fight, communicate and engage in civic action on the Internet. I think it would be a fascinating art project to explore how all of this emerges from a classic desk.

Mark Poster, in his article, "Cyber Democracy: The Internet and the Public Sphere, hints at this when he writes, "Put differently the Internet is more like a social space than a thing so that its effects are more like those of Germany than those of hammers." From very early one, the Internet was referred to as "the new frontier". In understanding the effects of the Internet on everyday life and whether it is positive or negative, perhaps we should consider how we might have wondered about the effect of America's western expansion on everyday life and whether it was positive or negative. It certainly would have depended, then, on whether we were talking about the everyday life of the Dine (aka Navajo), mountain man, frontier settler, or builder of wagons. It makes sense then that one of the first organizations to look at the effects of this new space on democracy named itself the Electronic Fronter Foundation.

Speaking of democracy, I was not surprised by the findings of the Pew Internet report on The Internet and Democratic Debate. In fact, it seems almost improbable that the majority of users would shield themselves so effectively against other opinions. Without other opinions to debate, there'd would be little basis for the ubiquitous online flame-war. It's been my experience, unfortunately, that some people seek out communities of opposing political preferences in order to instigate debate.

Which brings me to the venerable Howard Rheingold, once of the first few to look closely at the daily life and the formation of community on this new frontier. One thing that becomes apparent to me, when looking back over the history we now have - is that the early users and "homesteaders" of the Internet are very much like those that flowed over landscapes throughout human history. The earliest were of a different kind of mindset and personality than those who would come later. Those that arrived first and became "natives" would be displaced later by masses encouraged by corporate visions of profits, and "civilized society" would look at all of them in askance, wondering why on earth would anybody live like that.

(P.S. Where do I sit on the PC versus Mac thing? Well, I use secure shell (SSH) to remotely connect to a Linux machine from an Intel-based Mac laptop that also runs Windows.)