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Any new medium attracts all kinds of speculation, experiments, creative innovation and systematic abuse while early adopters attempt to push it as far as it can go. When the printing press was invented, I am sure people saw it as the work of the devil, that it was corrupting society, that it threatened the power of the theocracy. The same expressions of outrage and helpless rage must have followed the introduction of the telephone and the television. But perhaps less so. Each new medium makes the adoption of the next one easier to accept.
According to McLuhan, new media first reflects the old, so whatever good and bad that are associated with the old are simply carried over to it. There is no such thing as a good or bad medium. Maybe efficient vs. non-efficient, eg. digital vs. analogue. The medium is amoral. What we make it do for us - that's where the debate starts.
So my answer to the above is: so what? It makes no difference. People may rave, people may rant. But the tidal wave is already sweeping us. Society will find a way to handle the Internet, and life will go on.
In fact, life WILL go on, abetted by the Internet, or despite the Internet, and if you can spend a day outside, enjoying the return of Spring (as it must be, in the UK or US), then perhaps cyberspace won't seem like such a big deal after all.
... at what price do we value the freedom of expression and the empowerment of individuals to reach out to other individuals across continents?
Absolutely priceless. As Orwell said, what we can truly call our own is the thoughts in those precious few cubic centimeters in our heads. To have the ability to reach out and share those thoughts with people across the world, instantaneously, must be very empowering and ennobling. If we can look back to today, several centuries in the future, then what we are experiencing today, with the colonisation and expansion of cyberspace, must surely be as important as the invention of the printing press, or the opening of the New World.
...how do you see the internet 'work' for Singapore and what place has it in the every day life of Singaporeans?
We are seeing the adoption of the Net as a global information infrastructure. It is the basic medium for worldwide communication. I see it becoming more and more part of our life. As more industrial strength applications and services migrate onto the Net, I foresee these coming to Singaporeans. What NCB dreamt of in the 'IT2000' plan can become reality thru the Internet as the medium.
This is a radical position: How do we become the 'Intelligent Island' ? Give everybody a Net account; IP number assigned just as we assign IC numbers at birth. Everybody has the right to this number, and a PC to access the Net. Cyberspace education starts at Primary One.
Every HDB block to have a hub and server. Multiple switching hubs, localised with one in each housing estate. T3 to the US, T1 to Europe and Japan.
So really, you see, I don't think it is such a bad thing after all :-)
Science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon said once that 99% of anything is crap, and that's true. There's a lot of garbage out there, and some of it may actually be dangerous. However, I think it's also dangerous to blame the medium for the message, McLuhan aside. Internet is a tool, and like any tool, it can be used for various means. To select the safe option, ignoring the potential for good and admitting that the evil is overwhelming, is untenable, as I have mentioned before. Singaporeans are adaptable, and have an almost ridiculous stubborness in surviving all sorts of environments.
People will be confused, and lost at first, but that's the same with any new technology. The amount of noise that is going to heaped upon them will make them dizzy. But eventually, they will learn to sift away the good from the bad, and make judgements on what to listen to, what to ignore, and what to take note of. Suddenly, pockets of independent thought and analysis arise. The blind acceptance of information as truth is diluted, and the realisation that messages can have manipulative effect occurs. Mental defenses, the ability to reason will increase. If this is what will come, the garbage is okay, because we'll learn to deal with it.
That being said, let's go on to slightly larger concerns.
Anything that allows people to talk to each other is a Good Thing(tm). It holds people together, it lets people see the differences in each other, and more importantly, it shows them the similarities. People aren't that much different around the world, which is what I've discovered on my travels through cyberspace. They have the same concerns - some may voice that concern louder than others - but in the end, we all want a better place to live in.
Singaporeans will see Internet for its purely practical uses, for the most part. They'll use it to meet people, to chat. Some will use it to complain. But people will absorb it into their daily lives. It'll be like the telephone - just another piece of equipment. Parents will complain about their teenagers spending too much time on the computer instead of the telephone. They'll threaten to use their allowances to pay for the SingNet bill. It'll be fun. :)
I would like to redirect the focus of this round from trade-offs, since I suspect we are all in general agreement about the benefits of Internet out-weighing its possible threats, and bring up the question of how we could practically define defamation and when should the government sue for defamation regarding postings on the Internet. I trust Terrence will correct all my lay man's mistakes in the following.
Ministers and the relevant personnel in each government institution would generally know much more about a particular policy issue than the electorate. Without complete information, the electorate's perception of certain policies and their effects could well be skewed. This might lead some posters to feelings of indignation and eventually angry outbursts on the net. If the government finds such outbursts serious enough, it should respond by releasing the relevant information and engaging readers in a dialogue. This will not only silence the critic but also reassure others who might be wondering in silence.
The government should sue only on the ground of malice. We know it is malice when despite all the generally available and accurate information, one persists in spreading baseless accusation with the intent of undermining our national interest or image. The acid test should be: would a reasonable person, given what he or she knows in general about the situation, find such accusations plausible? If the answer is yes, the accused should be acquitted.
Adopting such a criterion will encourage government institutions to release more information and actively engaging in dialogues. This will make politics more comprehensible and rewarding for the electorate, who would then be less apathetic. The younger generation might even become more interested in choosing politics as a career and this would go a log way in solving our perpetual succession problem. Two birds with one stone.
On the other hand, the current criterion in the courts, if I understand it correctly, is: would a reasonable person think that the words in questions imply governmental impropriety which can be shown in court to be false. This runs the danger of causing potential critics to self-censor because they cannot prove beyond reasonable doubt what they see as possible problems. There is no real incentive for the release of information and the silence and apathy that might result will make us all the poorer in the long run.
No doubt having to defend oneself against doubting Thomases can be trying, but the benefits of a more cohesive society and less apatheitc younger generation would surely out-weigh any administrative inconvenience.
Most of these questions have been answered in my first looong essay where I advocated education for responsibility, a more democratic decision-making process and in this context, welcomed the information-sharing which will have to take place with the advent of the Internet - if we are smart.
Perhaps the only question left to answer is how do I value the freedom of expression and empowerment of individuals to reach out to others across continents. The answer is obvious - as Kian Jin says, it is priceless. The only problem is that as it stands, only those who can afford to maintain a computer and the link will be able to afford the Internet. True global connectivity is presently then, still a dream. Singapore too hasn't quite caught onto the wonder of the Internet either, but the ripples are growing and perhaps it will be the Internet itself which will push people into getting computers. I myself became a convert to using the computer through the Internet. The convenience and most importantly the ability to communicate cheaply overseas, tap into information and participate in discussions has been literally a godsend (if you know what I mean, I don't quite believe in the man myself.) I see it becoming an integral part of the everyday as it becomes possible to do transactions, shop and communicate electronically.
The winds of change are blowing this way, and the future does look very bright for the Internet here; which is hardly the same thing we said about satellite 8).
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