Social and Culural Implications of the internet: Benefits and harms of the internet and how they divide or bring communities together

Please note before reading:
This is not a summmary of the article “Evaluating the Social and Cultural Implications of the Internet” by Philip Brey. Instead what I have done is taken 10 points he gave in his paper (5 benefits, and 5 harms of the internet) and have applied them in my own thinking and research to how they connect or divide communities. Enjoy! :)

Philip Brey’s article: “Evaluating the Social and Cultural Implications of the Internet” talks about how the internet is affecting society in both a positive and negative way. In one section of his article he lists several benefits and harms that the internet gives us as a community. It is here where I am going to be directing my attention to discuss his claims and go deeper into how his claims about the internet divide or make communities come together. First I’ll start with some of the benefits of the internet and then move onto the harms.

Benefits

Access to Information: Information can easily and quickly be accessed from anywhere. No longer do you have to go to a library to do all your research, you can do it wherever is easiest for you, whenever it is best for you. Having this information easily available is great on society. People can post information that they have gathered and in turn can help other people find the same information easier. Having other people’s work and research available on the internet is a great way to bring communities together because you are helping others find information by posting the work you have done.

Communication: People are now able to communicate in various ways including one-to-one, one-to-many and many to-many through the internet. Meetings with major businesses can all get together in front of their computers in their offices and hold live video meetings in their separate buildings. No longer do you have to get on an air plane or take your private jet to go meet with clients. By using the internet to communicate, families can keep in touch overseas for free, and still get all the benefits, if not more (video) of a phone conversation without the expensive long distant fees. Having the ability to communicate with people all over the globe through your computer in a blink of an eye is a great way to bring communities together.

Developing and Maintaining Social Relations: This one is very similar to the point made above. Basically if a company, or even for private usage, is required to keep in contact with clients across the world, the internet is the fastest, cheapest, and easiest way to do so. In a matter of seconds a meeting can be called in the United States, and members from China, Russia, Europe, and anywhere else clients are located can get on their computers and the meeting can start. For private use, families and friends can keep in touch with home if they go out of state or country for school, work, business, or vacation. Being able to keep and maintain steady social relations with people is not only vital for most businesses, both big and small, but also a very practical way to keep communities together.


Community Formation and Social Organization: By using the internet to set up social organizations or movements you are broadening the amount of people who will receive this information. If you want to set up a protest, more people will be informed of it if you send your invitations over the internet instead of standing outside the grocery store to get people to sign a petition. Not only is your audience greatly increased, but you also have the ability to condense your audience’s size to specific people or groups of people that you want to hear your message. This is helpful because you can eliminate all the people who you don’t need to contact and this will save you time. Instead of asking everyone on the street to sign a petition about something, and only talking to a small percent of people who are interested in what you have to say, you are only asking those who would already be interested and you can be more successful in your results. The internet is a great way to bring communities together for social movements and formation.

Leisure and Entertainment: The internet is a great way to kill extra time. People can do various tasks on the internet that can bring communities together. One can join an online discussion about a problem in the community that people want to fix. You can read up on current events that are going on in your community or worldwide. If done correctly, your leisure or down time from your other activities can be put to great use instead of watching television or playing videogames. One can use the internet to educate themselves about the things they want to know or things that are important. Since the newspaper is on it’s last leg and won’t be long till it is no longer in print, the internet will become the best way to gain information about current events. By using your free time to gather information on the internet, you are helping to become a better member of society and ultimately bring communities together.

Harms

False Information: Brey argues that the internet is often filled with incorrect information. As a result, it’s often hard to find out if the information you are looking at is in fact false because it’s almost impossible to look at the sources where this information is coming from. He claims that in many cases, “the internet is thought to represent a step backwards compared to more traditional information media.” Having so much false information on the internet can severely divide a community. If someone is doing research and wants to look up information from a specific place only to find that their information is often incorrect, they will stop using that source. If people see this more often, they will stop branching out to look for more information and only look in the places that are most familiar to them isolating themselves from other communities, especially new ones, that might have valuable correct information. To stop dividing communities in this way, all places should provide correct information on the internet, and get rid of those who provide incorrect or false information.

Harmful Information: The internet is becoming a home for inappropriate and dangerous material. Brey states that the internet is containing such harmful information such as “extremist ideology, recipes for making bombs, extreme forms of pornography, libelous information, and so forth.” Having the internet be the home of these things, it’s obvious that people are going to object the internet as an important place to visit because it houses such terrible things. If a house hold bans the internet because they are worried that their child is looking at pornography or looking up how to make a bomb to blow up their school, they are protecting them, but also talking away their ability to quickly look up helpful information for school projects, libraries to check out books, or to interact with a friend who lives out of state. Just because the internet has a bad site on it doesn’t make the whole thing bad. This misconception that many people have about the internet being the breeding ground for vulgar and inappropriate/dangerous information which results in them not using the internet can divide communities, especially since so many communities thrive on the concept and usage of the internet. Communities will have a hard time surviving if they isolate themselves from the internet when the majority of communities are so involved with it.

Harmful Communication: The internet is often filled with vulgar terms, and inappropriate language. When people communicate on the internet, more often than not they will use vulgar language to get their point across. If people are not using appropriate language on the internet, communities who are offended by this language will turn away from the internet and not use it so they don’t have to hear this kind of language weather it is directed towards them or not. If people are using such inappropriate language that results in people not using the internet or cutting their time on the internet shorter, it’s a no brainer that those communities will miss out on relations with other internet active communities thus dividing them.

Harmful Effects on Social Relations: It’s been argued that interaction on the internet is harming face-to-face relationships because so many people would rather spend time on the internet talking and interacting with people rather than doing so in person. If this is the case, then communities will definitely suffer. If people choose to spend more time online talking with people and not doing so in person, valuable communications skill will be lost and people will have problems talking with others face-to-face when they have to (meetings, speeches, checking out at the grocery store). If a community becomes sucked in to online communication to the point where they cannot function face-to-face with others outside their computers, they will suffer as a community, and will have no chance talking with others in person from other communities. Time communicating on the internet should not be greater than actual face-to-face talking off their computers.

Loss of the Sense of Reality: Another claim about the internet is that it makes heavy users of the internet have a hard time distinguishing the difference between virtual reality, and reality off the computer. People who cannot tell the difference between online and offline worlds will develop “ insecurities, disagreements, and a loss of meaning” (Brey). If people really can’t tell or have a hard time distinguishing the difference of between what’s real and what’s not, they will have no chance to survive as a community off their computer. Despite what some people might think, communities will never go completely digital because there will always be a real physical world in which we live in. People need to spend time in this world too and not dedicate all their time on the internet in their virtual worlds to the point where they can’t tell the difference between the internet and reality.

Brey makes several more arguments about the harmfulness and benefits of the inter net in his article. Although it’s pretty obvious what he means by his arguments as he displays his meanings quite clearly, I have taken it in a different direction by noticing his arguments and focusing on how they can be applied to argue how the internet divides or brings communities together. It’s important to think about how the internet can be harmful or useful, but also how it effects society and our ever growing communities on and off of the internet.