Media, Technology and Society

WMD Rebuttal and Some Interesting Anthropological/Ethical Issues

Never one to shy away from a provocation, the good author of WMD has published an interesting and well-formulated response to my earlier opinions about his blog and others.

The response is very true to form, and questions whether the Iraq war, and so forth are necessarily incompatible with my vauntedly superior sense of 'humanitarianism' etc. We could get into another re-hash of this vital foreign-policy debate, one with lots of lessons and dilemmas to be discussed, but that would take a lot of writing to do. In short, the counter-argument that there is a plausible humanitarian angle to the removal of Saddam is not in debate (although I made a valiant effort to ignore that).

Prior to the conflict, the CBC ran a story about a young female Iraqi student studying at cambridge/Oxford (I can't remember which one) who took a lonely public stand against the vast and historically unprecedented anti-war protest by asking people to consider the humanitarianism of the 'default' - do nothing and leave Saddam in power scenario. Is that fair?

This dilemma has significantly problematized the 'pristine' moral stance of the anti-war movement and those who objected to the war on humanitarian grounds.

ASIDE: I still see the 'democracy' claim for the Iraq war as plausible but extraordinary (meaning unlikely). When presented with two competing claims, I usually opt for what I see as the less extraordinary one in the absence of thoroughly justifying evidence for either. I see the democracy-claim as playing a relatively minor role in the justification for the conflict, while economic imperatives (long term) and geo-strategic imperatives play a more vital (but less glorious and less media-friendly role). I just couldn't resist putting my 2c in there could I?

The second issue raised by the WMD blog author has to do with research ethics. If one reads my post, it somewhat-unintentionally reads like an anthropological essay. I wanted to assume a (fraudulent admittedly) "objective" stance in writing about some of the argumentation and discourse I experienced over the course of the last month and a half or so. Its difficult for me to not write in an academic way (even though my post was far from being academic, i.e it lacked quantitative/qualitative rigour and a coherent methodology) , and what I wanted to write was really just a personal 'conclusion' of sorts, a review almost.

But take a look at the following excerpt of a comment left in response to the post,

"I am a bit disappointed that our discussions have been little more than a science experiment for you (at least that's the way it looks to me as I read this)"

What immediately comes to mind after reading this, is the problem of writing about an 'object' from a 'subjective' point of view, when that object-of-study/reflection is an individual.

Academically, the study of "other" people and culture is subsumed within the field of anthropology (and others). Anthropology has a dark history however, relating to the power relations embedded in the subject/object relationship.

Early anthropology involved western social scientists descending on 'primitive' indigenous tribes and cultures in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Australia with the intent of studying, and learning from these 'exotic' peoples. Often, early anthropologists failed to ask permission of the peoples they studied, and thus appropriated knowledge and understanding in a colonialist, predatory fashion. Often, they also interacted with the cultures they studied (violating 'objectivity') and introduced foreign ideas, beliefs and technology in some instances.

The problems of anthropology and ethnography became prominent during the post-colonialist struggles of the 50s and 60s, prompting many social scientists to radically re-think how social research should be conducted. Postcolonialists confronted the historical and continuing legacy of the horrors inflicted by the West upon the peoples of the South and argued that a redress of past practices should involve ethics, cooperation and permission-seeking as a standard working practice for human research.

But what should researchers do as human culture is gradually becoming digitalized? How can proper research be conducted on web subjects/identities and on online discourse? The WMD author's resentment about being the unwitting subject of an "experiment" - even a very loosely formulated one (more of a review/summary than a social-scientific experiment) raises this exact issue of failing to ask permission.

People too easily forget that what occurs in the online world is, and should be conducted in an ethical fashion. As research of all kinds gradually embraces the online world, the issue of ethics and permission will become ever more important.

Another contrasting concern involves the principle (and law) of free speech. Must authors ask permission before writing an unfavourable review of a book, film, website or blog?

To this question, I think the answer is probably no in most cases.

But what if a person interacts with online person(s) and then later publishes the results of data obtained under the auspices of normal interaction as valid research?

In this case, deceit is involved, the research is ethically invalid.

Where does my post fit in to these categories? Is it a review/opinion or a research summation using data obtained under false pretenses?

I think I can succesfully argue that although it resembles a research project in some senses, it is missing some important ingredients.

a. No significant data was systematically collected

b. No methodology was employed.

c. It is not being produced for a third party, or with any third party affiliation (a university, research group etc.

d. No false pretense was made. The interaction was conducted in good faith, I posed as a random blogger on the internet, and I am, a random blogger on the internet.

I am interested in the issues that this presents though, and in fact, one of my (favourite) professors from last term, Andrew Feenberg, focussed on the question of online research ethics in an interesting and online-accessible speech.

Check it out if interested! Endnote: I did enjoy the discussions I had on WMD, make no mistake about it!

Postmodernism and the Question of Online Identity

Postmodernism and the Question of Online Identity

By Peter Konefal

Sherry Turkle’s 'Identity in the Age of the Internet', (c. 1995) is an engaging article which argues that the internet and computers are suitable “test object[s] for postmodernism” (22). Turkle uses the postmodernist framework to pose interesting and relevant questions involving the subject and issues surrounding the online construction of identity that are still relevant today. However, she uses postmodernist theory liberally and without regard to its limitations. She proposes the world of hyperlinks and text communities as just as real and legitimate as our interpretation of the “real world” without regard to its severe inability to “simulate” reality through text.

In the tradition of Donna Harraway’s Cyborg Manifesto, Turkle mires her assertion that the “traditional distance between people and machines has become harder to maintain” in the postmodernist declaration of the simulation and hyperreal: in which the all important subject is trapped in a world of discourse, where no truth is more ‘truthful’ than another. Turkle grandiloquently takes Derrida’s assertions of the arbitrariness of meaning in a text and assigns them not only to the world of hypertext, but ponders their implications for real life:

“Like experiences in MUDs, the students story shows how technology is bringing a set of ideas associated with postmodernism – in this case, ideas about the instability of meanings and the lack of universal and knowable truths – into everyday life.”

For Turkle, the subject negotiates the “reality” of MUDs, MOOs and other online communities and becomes enmeshed in a simulated interplay of other identities real and artificial, where no truth or identity is more truthful or “real” than another.

While there is presumably no limit to how outlandish an individuals perceptions of their own self can be expanded “distributively” through the use of internet avatars, the skeptical reader of such accounts can nonetheless hold significant reservations. For example, after reading of the sixteen-year-old recounting his “netsex” episodes, one has to ask: how? why? Where is the body in all this, and why is it separable from the experiences of the mind and altogether insignificant. However, this is a moot point: to each his own when it comes to defining the quality of interaction between individuals, but using the term “virtual rape” to describe the violating actions of some users against unwilling online victims is just plain silly. Online identities and communities are divorced from so many aspects of “real life”, not just the body and most of its sensorial apparatus, but from social and other norms that pose limits to the “real-ness” one can and should invest in online experiences.

Another reservation arises regarding Turkles assumption of the self as a “multiple, distributed system” (14) which implies that the subject can escape the boundaries of class, race, gender and other markers of identity at the click of a button. But does this really happen? A sixteen year old performing the avatar-identity of a middle aged, female lawyer having a sexual affair with a younger man, is still just a sixteen-year old person, writing sixteen-year old thoughts using sixteen-year old vocabulary. One person can experiment perhaps, but they can only “perform” within their own subjectivity, despite any amount of text-induced fantasies they might partake in.

While we’re at it, we should question the exclusivity of online communities in offering member anonymity and the capacity for dialogue. Imagine a community of people who exchange arbitrary ‘avatar names’, invent personalities and mail text-based letters to other members in their community. Logistics aside, why can’t all willing participants in this game play at being different people by writing to different people as though they were an identity of their choosing? Why aren’t actors accused of adopting virtual selves when they take on characters and different genders? What monopoly do computer networks have on avatars, when people have been successfully taking aliases and adopting disguises for centuries? We have absented the computer from these “virtual communities”, and look -- the grand “meta-narratives” of modernism are still left intact!

Finally, although a certain amount of interpretive license is appropriate when theorizing the subject and his or her perceptions, this license abruptly ends when considering the computer in and of itself. A computer is at its core a logic machine that performs low-level arithmetic calculations, upon which are built layers of code language supporting the helpful and intuitive interfaces that are so problematic for Turkle. Strictly speaking, there is no possibility of a calculator obtaining biological life or in any way causing the “traditional distance between people and machines” to become “harder to maintain”. Modern computers are based on the logic of Turing machines, which according to some mathematicians’ interpretation of Kurt Godel’s Limits of Logic theorem, are incapable of exceeding the parameters of the logic by which they are bound, while humans are capable of this: thus artificial logic and intelligence is impossible.
Despite this distinction, Turkle identifies the interface as all-important: it is the fabric of the online world, and as its opacity increases our capacity and willingness to conceive of computers and networks as mere calculators and information-exchanges decreases. Turkle is accurate and correct in two main assumptions: that the individual subjectively constructs and interprets the world through discourse and that the opacity of the interface and its use of representational models (windows, file cabinets, avatars) can induce users to interpret computer-simulated life as a valid alternative to real life. Turkle and other postmodern-futurists are on to something when they contemplate the possibilities for identity and subjectivity in an online universe where our real life experience can be simulated with immersive ‘matrix-like’ environments. And yet, we are a long way away from that level of sophistication, and even then, there will be distinct and insurmountable aspects of the real that cannot ever be simulated (i.e. the atomical detail of real life, the unpredictable chaos of lived experience, the sheer impossibility of “programming” a reality that defies mathematical quantification, just to name a few issues)

In conclusion, Turkle’s arguments fail to address the fact that postmodernism has fallen out of favour in all but the most sequestered arts faculties due to serious questions about its relevancy and validity. For example, why are the “meta-narratives” of modernism proclaimed irrelevant? Or discourse elevated to the level of absurdity? The assertion that symbolic and linguistic discourse is the only way of apprehending reality, while simultaneously asserting the arbitrariness of ‘truth’ gives us a world where we are a prisoner within language, beyond which we know nothing. It is a world where historians of the Holocaust and National Inquire writers compete on a level “truth-telling” playing field: it is a philosophical tradition so “allusive” it risks irresponsible lunacy when taken to its conclusion.