Alienation on the Net: A Comparison of BBS and Web Culture
Within the past five years a vast phenomena has drastically reshaped the on-line community. The advent of the World Wide Web in 1993 brought with it a new set of jargon. Almost overnight hypertext became the medium of choice for on-line communication. American society was bombarded with television advertisements from on-line services and Internet service providers that promised communities without the constructs that ruled physical reality. Sex, race, age, and nationality did not exist in the progressive frontier of cyberspace. No longer would the Internet and on-line communities
be the guarded possession of a select group of academics and hobbyists. It was to become a liberating tool for the masses. If the service providers were to be believed the Web opened up a whole new world of information and experience to the masses. It is my assertion, however that the growth of the on-line community as made possible by the Web, in fact, does exactly the opposite. The advent of the World Wide Web (WWW) has grossly enlarged the on-line community. Along with this growth has come a vast diversifying of interests and alienation within the on-line community.
On the surface such an argument seems almost ludicrous. How can a technology which connects such a large and seemingly diverse group of people serve to bring alienation to a community? Definitions of information, communication, isolated bulletin board systems, and the Internet as it is defined by the WWW are needed to make a cohesive argument. The rhetoric of the isolated BBS community and the WWW community will all prove useful in debunking the myth of the world community.
My definition of information and communication is taken from George Lakoff. Lakoff is a linguist involved with developing new directions in the study of language and mind. (Boal and Brook, p.276) Lakoff is quite critical of the conventional metaphor of communication, a concept called the conduit metaphor, a basic metaphor discovered by Michael Reddy. The conduit metaphor asserts that people's major metaphor for communication comes out of a "general metaphor for the mind in which ideas are taken as objects and thoughts are taken as the manipulation of objects".(Boal and Brook, p.116) Storage and retrieval are important to such a metaphor. People must have a way of storing and recalling the objects they have experienced. Applied to communication the metaphor works in the following way. Ideas are objects that can be put into words. Language is the container for the ideas. Ideas are sent over a conduit or channel of communication to another person by way of words. The other person then extracts the ideas from the words. Such a metaphor entails that ideas "can be extracted and can exist independently of people". The conduit metaphor suggests that meaning is independent of beings who understand words. Lakoff finds fault in this system. He asserts that in order for the hearer to understand the speaker they both must be speaking the same language and, more importantly, have the same conceptual system. The idea of conceptual systems makes subcultures important to information exchange. Putting ideas in the correct words is not enough to get ideas across to another person. Experiences and prior knowledge are essential to the communication to knowledge. What Lakoff is presenting is the problem of incommensurability. People from different research traditions cannot communicate effectively. Thomas Kuhn clearly defines the problem of incommensurability in Structures of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn writes" Can anything more than profound confusion be indicated by this admixture of diverse fields and concerns?" (p.9) In this quote, Kuhn is referring to different scientific paradigms communicating. I propose that all communication is susceptible to incommensurability. Such a definition of information exchange is paramount to the argument that the Web is an alienating technology.
The Bulletin Board System is the simplest and cheapest means of computer- mediated communication. Special software run on a home personal computer with a modem and a dedicated phone line is all that is needed for a person to setup a BBS. The person running the BBS, the SysOp, then has complete control of what his/her system became. Sub-boards, the BBS equivalent of Usenet Newsgroups, Upload/Download areas and on-line games are all controlled by the SysOp. This control caused BBSs to develop themes. These themes were usually determined by the computer the BBS was run on, although BBSs based on social and academic themes were also common. This control also allowed the SysOp to decide who could and could not be on his system. The single line of isolated systems necessitated small, local audiences. The combination of these two factors allowed for small rather homogeneous populations. Small groups of people of the same paradigm have an easier time of communicating. All information posted to the sub-boards is easily accessible to the community it reaches. Alienation does not occur in a community of like minded individuals. Much as Rheingold suggest in The Virtual Community the computer-mediated communication of a BBS or small network of BBSs facilitates the identification of common interests, the sharing of information and the means of mobilization. A BBS is in many ways a virtual community.
In the Atlanta BBS scene of the late eighties systems were largely divided up by computer type. There were Commodore 64/128, Amiga, IBM, Apple II and Texas Instrument 99/4a systems. Since I owned a Commodore 64 and a 128D, I was largely involved in the local Commodore 64/128 BBS scene. Such computer affiliations mediated what subjects were discussed and dictated what prior knowledge was necessary to gleam information from the sub-boards. People on the Commodore boards shared the common feeling of loyalty to their 8-bit hardware. There was also a very communal feeling among C64/128 boards. The hacker ethic that says "information wants to be free" was adhered to. Software, copy-righted and public domain, was circulated freely. Hackers, crackers and their distributors formed a major portion of the C64/128 community. The utilities and knowledge needed to access this software was widely possessed by the community. The limitation of one user on-line at a time necessitated regular real world meetings of BBS members. The point of this example is that the on-line communities of BBSs in the eighties was one of specialized communities. The problem of incommensurability was not a problem within the specific communities and mixing among communities. Harold Rheingold states that the pre-commercialized Internet was also composed of specialized groups. It is fair to say, then, that the Internet was also free of the problem of incommensurability.
Defining the Internet is not possible. Of course the physical equipment and software can be isolated and described, but the nature of the Internet and more specifically the Web is a dynamic one. The content changes as quick as the individual pages change. The nature of the Web is change. A demographic study of the Internet can provide some idea of the current on-line population. According to the CyberAtlas site the average Internet user is a 32 year old male.64% have at least a college degree. 41% of Internet users are married. 87% of Internet users are white. (CyberAtlas:Demographics) These statistics tell use that very little beyond the fact that the average Internet user is a thirty year old, educated white male. In terms of geographic location of users, the US dominates with 73% of Web users followed by 11% from Europe and 8% from Canada and Mexico. Usage patterns put entertainment in front at 51%, news at 49%, and computer products at The Web is used primarily for the one way gathering of information. This information is generally in the form of entertainment. From this description of the WWW it does not seem that we would run into the problem of incommensurability. It appears that a bunch of middle-aged, white American men are logging on to the Web for the purpose of collecting entertainment and information. Once we insert the number of US Web users, 35.0 million according to a study done by Louis Harris & Associates (Cyber Atlas:Market Size), it is easy to see where the problem of incommensurability is reintroduced. Where there is inability to understand there is surely a feeling of isolation and alienation. Lakoff theory of information exchange is applicable to this situation. Surely these Internet users come from very diverse sets of experiences and knowledge. It is not irrational to assume incommensurability is a big problem on the Web.
The rhetoric of the Web presents, perhaps, the strongest argument for the alienation exerted by the Web. Michael Skube, an editor for the Atlanta Journal/Constitution, Sees the rhetoric of the Web as being akin to the rhetoric of religion or Marxism. Skube humorously refers to Bill Gates as "the supreme deity of the digital age".(Skube) Skube claims that for many people the Internet "isn't merely a means of communication but the institutional structure of their very world".(Skube) The Marxist and religious strain occurs in the eschatological strain of Internet ideology. According to much Web rhetoric everything in history has pointed toward the classless, godless, bossless utopia of the Internet. (Think for a moment of the latest television advertisement put out by MCI or Microsoft.) The gospel of the Internet speaks of breaking down barriers and building bridge, of bringing people together and abolishing hierarchy. The Internet is not a mere means of communication, it is a tool of liberation. Assuming such rhetoric is true, and I believe it is not, does a system which strips identity and physically isolate people really liberate? It does not seem that people which have evolved in a physical, natural world can be truly liberated . From the most progressive view of man's relationship to the Web, people's experiences are still limited by the capability of the technology. If we assume that physical experience is essential for the illusion of liberation and reality, then current technology falls far short of liberating people and breaking down barriers. It instead sets up technological ones. What technology a person has access to directly effects what extent of liberation he can experience. The Internet has the same problem of the haves versus the have nots that the physical world encounters. Criteria for deficiency change, but new ones are introduced. It is my belief that this is why the social empowered of US society make up the largest group of Internet users. Schiller makes a similar point in The New Information Enclosures. In his critique of Al Gores National Information Infrastructure he asks "will the creation of privately financed and privately owned, high speed, multicapacity circuits carrying broad streams of messages and images reduce the gaps in living conditions across the globe?".(Schiller, p.24) Schiller's answer is no. He reasons that the focus of the major private companies will be revenue. Profits can only come from those people who already have the income to purchase the services that the companies are selling. Without major governmental intervention income gaps would widen both in the US and abroad. As quick access to information became more and more important for business, the people with the access would increase in income and those without it would experience diminished income. All of this is to say that the rhetoric of a divine, natural movement of society to a digital classless, sexless, raceless free society is flawed. There is nothing liberating about the Web as it currently stands. Technology becomes the judge of a person instead of other arbitrary measures. The person who can afford the necessary technology gains an economic advantage over those who cannot.
Another important aspect of Internet rhetoric is the idea of the Internet as a frontier. In Western mythos the frontier is a "realm of limitless possibilities and few social controls".(Miller p.50) Such a metaphor makes the Net a place of liberation. It is important to remember that the word "frontier" has usually been ascribed to a physical place. The Web, however, is a completely bodiless, symbolic thing with no discernible boundaries or location. Unlike a physical frontier, the Net was created by its pioneers. The central idea of a frontier is that it provides liberation from the demands of society. This is an odd metaphor for the Net since the Net has nothing to offer but society. Without other people the Net would be useless. Unlike a physical frontier the Net must be shared to be useful. The choice of the word frontier also suggest an area beyond the edge of that which is owned. It does not belong to anyone, but it is capable on being owned. This virtual frontier is also susceptible to the psychosexual undercurrents of Western society. (Miller, p.51) "The frontier is a lawless society of men, a milieu in which physical strength, courage, and personal charisma supplant institutional authority and violent conflict is the accepted means of settling disputes".(Miller, p.52) It is easy to see why a group made up predominantly of males would adopt such a mythology. Under this metaphor the frontier remains uncivilized as long as it is populated only by men. As soon as women and children move on to the frontier laws must be put into effect to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Such a mythos believes that a woman cannot function in a world ruled by brute force. In the Western mythos, civilization is necessary to protect women and children from being victimized in a completely free society. There are problems of alienation with this metaphor. It makes the assumption that even in cyberspace sex and age are defining factors. This runs in direct conflict with the rhetoric of a liberating Internet. Thus, people are still judged by the factors of age and sex.
The Internet's vast size and diversity serves to increase feelings of alienation and confusion. As Lakoff's theory of information exchange establishes, increased size and diversity severely complicates the communication of ideas. The problem of incommensurability arises as groups diversify in, for lack of a better word, paradigms. This explains why single phone line BBSs and small, specialized networks serve as better mediums of information exchange. A selective island community allows for a connectiveness that the cold, vast world of the Web cannot.
A text copy of the paper is also available as are references.