Goebbels-a-Million

When the World Wide Web emerged in the 1990's, it had the impressive promise of becoming a tool that mankind had never really known before -- a truly mass international and instantaneous communications forum. A kind of realized 1950's-style prediction of the technological future, potentially billions of people could use the web to engage in earnest discussion and vastly improve inter-cultural communication and understanding.

Sadly, this is not the direction the web has gone, and at the rate at which communication on the web has socially developed, there is no "going back" and starting over.

The web is not the first technology that has allowed people all over the world to communicate with each other over an open channel that many others can monitor. Ham radio, for example, has been around for decades. But technologies like ham radio were specialized, and in general, ham radio was not a mass phenomenon as there were only a few ham operators per good-sized town. Being a form of radio communications, ham operators were familiar with radio procedure and tended to be geeks in the sense that they understood a lot about radios and wave propagation.

Pre-web computer bulletin boards were looser than ham radio, but also tended to be those who were technologically literate. Again, while the boards were more common than ham radio, they were still not something the masses took part in.

The web, though, is a mass phenomenon. By the time the web arrived, personal computers had graphics-based operating systems that made their operation considerably simpler than their command-line operated predecessors. And so, the masses jumped on the bandwagon and began interacting. Interest groups formed on the premise that information could be exchanged and those who genuinely knew a lot about a topic could pass it onto those who desired to learn.

Unfortunately, it didn't work out that way. While there are certainly many people presenting themselves legitimately on the web, casual use of the web will indicate many "hot zones" where information is -not- exchanged, but which are battlegrounds of ideological confrontation. Because, you see, the web allows us to hide behind a persona if we wish to do so. And it seems that many do, ceaselessly striving to one-up that other voice they find so irritating, or to discredit ideas they find dangerous or which make them feel insecure.

In point of fact, the web has become a vehicle for all sorts of propaganda -- political, religious, commercial -- if a particular theme deserves the propaganda moniker, then the web is carrying it, and very often with no substantive dissenting opinion. Equally as dangerous, the propagandistic bombast and its accompanying attacks have become a form of spectacle for many web users. The masses see the attacks on well-meaning (and other) users, and sit back to watch the fireworks. They casually observe behavior that wouldn't be tolerated for even an instant in face-to-face communication. Even in cases where the attacks are completely outrageous, it is quite rare to actually see the masses join in and call the attacker to account. For it is simply more fun to watch others be slandered, and to see them slip on the slimy filth of the attacker's propaganda. It is the web as mud-wrestling match rather than the web as a medium for information exchange. It is the web as distraction.

A particularly infuriating aspect of any propaganda is that it presents a simple idea that can be communicated in minutes, but which may take hours, days, or even weeks of research to substantially refute. Thus, most of the web propaganda is allowed to be presented to an audience of hundreds of millions without even the barest of dissenting thoughts. This situation would have been a dream come true for a Goebbels or a Molotov. And radical elements are well aware of this situation. One unfortunate consequence of mass networked computing is that nutcases the world over can now commune with each other very easily. It is no longer the single screwball in a town who everybody else thinks is a misguided fool, no, now the screwball knows there are plenty of others who think just like him. For them, the web is an ideal medium for the propagation of party platforms and recruitment of new members. Not pleasant to think about, but in the wake of attacks like that in Oklahoma City, it is something to bear in mind.

And, of course, the entire concept of the web has to an extent been propagandized. It is always sold as a fun, "get to know others like you!" technology. Rarely is it presented as a means of learning, although schools now stress its use as a research tool. Why would we want to meet others like ourselves? Don't we already know who we think we are? Or is that the point -- most of us would rather view the web the way we gaze into a mirror, seeing comfortably familiar images, and reading words that echo our own thoughts. But, then, there is the propaganda that one can easily find on the web. As the critical thinking skills of western civilization atrophy, we can always hop on the web and let our thinking be done by the deeply dishonest and hypocritical political and religious operatives whose poison pens suffocate enlightened discussion.