Technology and Network - Essay Example

The circuits of electronic impulses is the material foundation of the information age just as the in the merchant society and the region in the industrial society...information is the key ingredient of our social organisation...it is the beginning of a new existence...marked by the autonomy of culture vis--vis the material basis... (Castells: The Rise of the Network Society, 1996: p 412, 477-78) Compelling is Manuel Castell's study on technology and the network age in that it provokes us to re-examine our beliefs and perceptions with regard to this particular communication form. As Castell's analysis unfolds, one is led to believe that the Internet as an infrastructure is a living, breathing organism shaped by the conflicting agendas of the state, the social movements (i.e., the activists) and big business. His statement ""our societies are increasingly structured around the bipolar opposition of the Net and the Self" (1996, p. 3) still finds relevance, if not more relevance, a decade after he made it, particularly considering his definition of the self as "the multiple practices through which people try to reaffirm identity and meaning in a landscape of rapid change." This paper will analyze how, in essence, technology can be socially constructed and can determine human action, and as an extension of this, how it is necessary to develop and formulate regulations to address the uniqueness and complexity of this medium. The epochal periods of the stone, bronze, iron and silicon ages represent the proclivity and accelerating capability of our species at tool making. We use some animals as tools: horses and camels for transportation, dogs for hunting, and oxen or carabaos for cultivation. A first great leap that set us apart from other primates was our ability to create and control fire. Fire disinfects food; fire molds metals and transforms other materials. Like the sun, fire is energy, fire by itself is a tool, and energy is required to make and run other tools. In the current century, we started tapping the celluloid, uranium, electromagnetism, and now the photon. To neutralize harmful germs, we even employ the services of the bacterium. Another great invention is mathematics, derived naturally from the Homo Sapiens' ability to conceive quantity. Spectacular tool making is not possible without the continuous development of mathematics. Our species has gone this far, equipped with only a few pounds of brain matter, a small and frail anatomy, and natural senses limited to a mere five (sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing). Given these leaps, it has been necessary to come up with a set of social codes to regulate behavior and ensure continuous order. The law, it is said, operates to regulate behavior and maintain the cohesiveness of a given society. In order to maintain its role as bulwark, it capitalizes on and gains credence from the idea that there is but one set of "correct" rules and that legal decisions are but logical outcomes of tested principles that are empirically-replicable. Perhaps there are very few modern developments that have posed a challenge to this notion of the law and the legal system than the advent of the Internet. Precisely because of the uniqueness of the medium and the vastness of its breadth, there has been great difficulty imposing regulatory mechanisms on its use - thereby leading, in many cases, to its abuse. There can be no denying that information technology plays an important role in the molding of social values and in the legitimization of personal perceptions. In the United States, 98% have at least one television, 70% have more than one television, 70% have cable, and 51% of households with children have a computer. (Paik, 1994) For example, on the issues surrounding Internet obscenity, Petrie (1997) found that "because the Internet is a unique communications technology, it does not fit squarely into the conceptual scheme of traditional obscenity law." (p. 638). In a nutshell, the Internet, also called the information superhighway, is a communications network wherein computers from all over the world may instantaneously communicate and exchange images with each other through the benefit of a modem and an Internet Service Provider. There is no one central source that can filter out images or regulate the flow of information. The internet cannot be shut down at will. The problem is not merely that the technology allows for unprecedented reach and scope. More significantly, the problem is that the law and all its traditional structures are ill-equipped to handle this revolutionary form of communication. On the one hand, the communication is so temporal and ephemeral. It is entirely possible to not to be able to track where it originated, or control where it will eventually go. The author may choose to remain undisclosed and stay forever undisclosed. It reaches a myriad of countries in a matter of seconds, with a simple press of the button - making issues of "venue" and "jurisdiction" (usually anchored on the question of where the offense took place), problematic. On the other hand, it is undeniable that the injury wrought by, for instance, internet hate speech on a particular minority group, or the debilitating effects of internet child pornography, are as real and as concrete as in other media. Stereotyping is likewise a problem. The website Media Awareness Network (Internet, 2006) states that "stereotypes act like codes that give audiences a quick, common understanding of a person or group of people-usually relating to their class, ethnicity or race, gender, sexual orientation, social role or occupation." Gender and ethnic stereotypes are reinforced. (Internet, 2004). This precisely is the problematique brought about by the interface between the law and Internet technology. Indeed, the swiftness with which technology has grown and develop is overwhelming and breathtaking. It used to be that children could only read books or play outside with other children. It was a simpler world and there was less reason to worry. Then television came and parents - particularly working parents - were alarmed at the barrage of information that could be absorbed by their curious mind of their young child. At the dawn of the internet age, we saw how technology can truly revolutionize not only the way we receive and provide information or the way we communicate, but also the way we live our lives, the way we define ourselves, the way we perceive the world. While children can do research for their science project over the internet, so too can they discover the recipe for making bombs. So too can they become involve with communities that promote anorexia or bulimia. So too can they be exposed to neo-nazi organizations that romanticize separatism and supremacy. So too can they learn about sexual fetishes and predilections, and watch shocking or titillating visual images. Of all the legal issues arising from the internet, the issue of obscenity law is perhaps the most difficult to resolve or even analyze. Even without the cyber component, it is a protracted discourse that involves a delicate balancing act between the right to free speech and the right of, for instance, parents to be secure that their children are not being accosted by images of sex and violence on their computer screen or that a 45-year-old child molester is not about to meet rape or molest their thirteen-year-old. While the right to free speech is a crystallized principle that has been place almost since the beginning of time, enjoying a cherished position in the bill of rights of virtually all civilized legal systems, the interpretation of what constitutes free and protected speech still has yet to be perfectly refined. This provision has been invoked many times over in the course of history, whether within the European Union or outside, successfully and unsuccessfully; and Courts have had many opportunities to set standards and devise guidelines to determine if the speech in question should be protected or not. As admitted by the United States Supreme Court through Justice Brennan: "As a result of our failure to define standards with predictable application to any given piece of material, there is no probability of regularity in obscenity decisions by state and lower federal courts." (Paris Adult Theater v. Slaton, 413 U.S. 49, 92 [1973]). That is perhaps what led to Justice Stewart's famous line: "I know it when I see it" in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio. (378 U.S. 184, 197 [1964]). In the case of Miller v. California, the Supreme Court crafted a new three-pronged standard of obscenity: "whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." The Miller doctrine, however often quoted, does little to clear the confusion. It is perhaps as vague as the 1868 case of R v. Hicklin in the United Kingdom, where Justice Cockburn set the tone for the legal formula of obscenity when he declared: "the test of an obscene article is if it has a tendency to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and into whose hands a publication of this sort might fall." In many states, suits have been filed against statutes prohibiting the dissemination of materials of a sexual nature that purportedly do not violate contemporary community standards. (Glassman, 1978, p. 161). Highly arbitrary in nature, the doctrine is susceptible to abuse and may result in the clamping down of free speech in the name of nebulous and oft-shifting concepts of decency. The difficulties grow exponentially when the medium in question is the Internet. On the other hand, there is the very real possibility that a lot of unhealthy, clearly pornographic material becomes available online and is considered privileged speech simply because it is not hard core enough. The doctrine requires that the text be "patently offensive", which would tell us that not all sexually explicit material are obscene. A troubling phenomenon, for example, is the eroticisation of young girls. For example, the fashion industry, a multi-billion dollar enterprise, has been portraying young girls not yet on the brink of womanhood in sexual ways. Smoky eyes on a child no more than fifteen distort notions of childhood and corrupt innocence - as do suggestive camera angles and the slightly gaping mouth. According to Conrad and Milburn (2001): Popular culture communicates a set of myths about sexuality that are so ubiquitous we hardly even notice them. These myths become so ingrained in people's thinking - in the form of unexamined assumptions about the function of sex, how we should behave sexually, what is "normal" or "abnormal" - that we often respond automatically within the framework of these assumptions. There can be no denying the proliferation of these unhealthy or unsavory materials in the internet. Accessible even to minors, the need to address and curb dangers of pornography becomes even more crucial. Says Simon (1998): In recent years, the Supreme Court has struggled to prevent access by minors to speech that may harm them, while safeguarding the First Amendment right of adults to engage in non-obscene speech. The Court has addressed the constitutionality of restricting the rights of minors to access constitutionally-protected speech in a variety of fora. Generally, the court measures the Government's interest in protecting minors from harmful speech relative to the ease with which minors can access that speech. (p. 1016) In 1996, the United States Congress passed the Community Decency Act (CDA). Senator James Exon, supported by a broad coalition of right-wing, religious and anti-pornography groups, was able to fight for the passage of the bill into law in its original form. However, in the case of Reno v. ACLU (117 S. Ct. 2329 [1997]), the Court struck down two provisions for violating the Constitution and for the chilling effect it would have on Internet communications. Many legal thinkers support the Reno decision. Said Bernstein (1996): No regulation of computer network indecency, however carefully tailored, should pass constitutional scrutiny. First, no legislator has been able to define indecency coherently. Such regulation is inherently unfair, especially as applied to spontaneous, casual speech of the sort that the Internet facilitates between unsophisticated and noncommercial speakers. Second, government cannot legitimately claim that it has any interest in content control, when civil society has solved the perceived problem on its own. Here, private sector solutions include both software filters that parents can use to screen out offensive material and Internet service providers who provide access only to child-safe materials. However, the continued proliferation of pornography in the internet would seem to belie Bernstein's claim that the problem may be solved - and is being solved - through private efforts in content control. Every adolescent boy with a computer and internet access in his bedroom will scoff at this pronouncement. That these efforts exist is not disputed. That these efforts are enough is the real question that must be asked. References Bernstein, Solveig. (1996). Beyond the Community Decency Act: Constitutional Lessons of the Internet. Policy Analysis No. 262. Cato Institute. Castells, Manuel. (2000). Rise of the Network Society. Blackwell Publishing Professional. Conrad, S. & Milburn, M. Sexual Intelligence. New York: Crown Publishers. 2001. Glassman, Marc B. (1978). Community Standards of Patent Offensiveness: Public Opinion Data and Obscenity Law. Public Opinion Quarterly, 42(2), pp. 161-170. Goldman, R. (1995). "Put Another Log on the Fire, There's a Chill on the Internet: The Effect of Applying Current Anti-Obscenity Laws to Online Communications," Georgia Law Review, volume 29, pp. 1075-1120. Petrie, S. (1997). Indecent Proposals: How Each Branch of the Federal Government Overstepped Its Institutional Authority in the Development of Internet Obscenity Law. Stanford Law Review, 49(3), pp. 637-665 Simon, G. (1998). Cyberporn and Censorship: Constitutional Barriers to Preventing Access to Internet Pornography by Minors. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. Vol. 88. Read More