What happens when an old philosophy professor one goes on-line? The result could be precious, but it is also quite probable that he (or she) misses the mark. This is the case with professor Hubert L. Dreyfus' study On the Internet, which are built upon the unfortunate misunderstanding that the Net soon will induce us to leave our phycical bodies behind.
For Dreyfus, the Internet is Hans Moravec plus Max More multiplied by John Perry Barlow plus Ray Kurzweil. However, he does not make clear exactly why this rather mariginal group of characters does legitimately define the Internet. He then goes on to explore this allegedly prevailing Platonic desire to overcome the body, never pausing to ponder what sort of specific political, economic and/or cultural agendas that buys into this type of new media discourse.
Dreyfus confuses the very specific Cyber dream of the Extropians of "a Entkoerperlichung" with the Internet as such. There are no Internet representatives, who would promise "that everyone of us soon able will be to exceed those borders which were imposed us by our bodies". There there may be many competitive ideologies, which fight for a hegemony of the Internet discourse, like Pragmatismus, Kommunitarismus, and liberalism, but none of them promises that the Cyberspace will bring the over-human or the Posthumane. It is discussed much rather the globalization and disappearing the national state, but Dreyfus goes around carefully such economic and political topics.
According to Dreyfus: "could the life with that and in the Web in the long run nevertheless be so attractive". He is not alone in thinking this. After a initial phase of the curiosity and the excitedness Dreyfus' new estimate of the Internet collapses with the Katerstimmung after the time of blast. In this cultural climate a conservative setback can win easily at popularity. It may be for some a liberating easement that there are more in the life than the Internet, but this Binsenwahrheit can probably hardly justify a philosophical investigation.
It is probably seductive to mix popular cultural motives of the virtual reality with the rather dull/musty material politics of network architecture. But why philosophers cannot make a difference between substance and feature? The advertisement is not the product, so much also the PR managers those new Age Mantra "virtual" - becoming to repeat like. Body politics were perhaps important up to any point, can cover the variety of the all too material interests, which the Internet raises as a global medium however under no circumstances.
The Internet do not need back meditation of sweetness, but strives for an actualization and a defense of central values such as openness and access. One could need philosophers for example quite well, in order to define the foundations for such important concepts as Open Sourceand Free Software regarding categories " such as "liberty" and "property". The simplifizierende speech of " liberty " in the sense of "free beer" cannot many no more hear. Or was it " liberty of opinion "? Has geek culture already halted, or does it add significance to the Richard Stallman-Eric Raymond controversy? So which would be an ideal case for Techno philosophy, if it liked to make a tidy investigation over on-line mankind.
Dreyfus develops his version "Internet criticism" in four different fields:
In principle these could be relevant topics, but they do not address current interests. As conscious outsiders sticks itself Dreyfus to the surface of mythologies before-of yesterday. Topics do not even receive mention like free against proprietary software, the policy of the Domain designations, the danger of business collection, cryptography and censorship, the digital divide, or mental property. Control of network architecture was probably too usual for Dreyfus.
In addition, the same can be said about Dreyfus' main prepossession: the body. Internet critics planned the mythologischen Entkoerperlichungs dreams of the 90er-Cyberkultur. For that time this specifically futuristic conception was used of popularizing and for " it " of inspiring the still unknown Cyberspace. There was a quantity speculation over " virtual bodies ". But in the year 2001, when the booklet of Dreyfus appear, the excitement and the curiosity for the Entkoerperlichung had long faded. There was a serious (feminisitische) criticism at this concept of a male dream from beginning to overcome " " the dirty physicalness - nothing of it finds with Dreyfus mention. Meanwhile a whole set of artist practices developed, which leave extropianische tendencies far behind itself, while they develop " critical " body politics in the virtual arena.
It is now little surprising Hubert Dreyfus outet itself as a culture pessimist. In order to remain exact, he is a medium ecologist of the impact of a Neil Postman, George Steiner or Peter Handke. Which anwidert in such a way the medium ecologists, that is the tide at insignificant information. This nonsense should be forbidden (not filtered). So the role should be entitled to the hehren intellectual ones to decide on it what comes into mediale archives and which not. The medium ecologists dream about an authoritarian clearing-up regime, under which Plaudereien and bare twaddle heavy offences would be. Completely in this sense Dreyfus the World Wide Web denunziert as a nihilistic medium, if he weights as follows:
"Owing to hyperlinks of all meaningful distinctions were gradened. Relevance and importantness disappeared. And that is an important part of the attractiveness of the Webs. Nothing is too trivial, in order to be taken up. Nothing is so important that it required for a special place."
Users and groups, who create their own importantnesses and contexts at the net, receive here no mention. Obviously Dreyfus did not hear also ever of Mail and Web filters. How a small child, who touches by a library and which affects shelves, is Dreyfus overwhelmed from the almost quantity of accessible information, which does not make any sense for it:
"One can look at a coffee machine in Cambridge, or study the last supernew facts, Kyoto minutes, or steer a robot, which plants and waters in Austria a seed."
Dreyfus fears, like John Stuart Mill and Alexis de Tocqueville before him, the tyranny of the (digital) people. The origins of digital media are retraced to Søren Kierkegaard's essay "The Present Age " from 1846. (see also Dreyfus' lecture: "Kierkegaard on the information Highway")
Kierkegaard, a Christian philosopher 19. Century, the debt (" everything " is alike in it " itself that it for nothing more itself is worth to die) gives the social " gleichmacherei. Which he is afraid, and with him Dreyfus really, is democratized the nothing. The public and the press, nowadays renamed in " the media " and " the Internet ", should not be permitted to zelebrieren their radical uselessness. Instead the elite should limit the public sphere and lead the mass to progress, to the war, to socialism, to the globalization, or which always lines up.
Kierkegaard would surely have seen the Internet, with its Websites full of anonymous information from all over the world and its interest groups that anyone in the world can join without qualifications and where one can discuss any topic endlessly without consequences, the hi-tech synthesis of the worst features of the newspaper and the coffeehouse. [...] In news groups, anyone, anywhere, any time can have an opinion on anything. All are only too eager to respond to the equally deracined opinions of other anonymous amateurs who post their opinions from nowhere. (p. 78f, 120) [...] [N]o experience or skill required to enter the converstion. (p. 120fn22)
Who will decide what is sense and what is nonsense? Internet enthusiasts refer to the crucial difference between the old media, being based on a scarceness of channels, resources and organization areas, as well as the net with its unrestricted possibilities of parallel running Konversationen. For the first time in medium history the decision over sense and nonsense of the medium and its publishers shifted to the individual user. Dreyfus mentions the possibilities and the problems, which accompany with this important techno cultural change, not even. Finally the debate turns around liberty of opinion and talking. But Dreyfus would like the sensitive topic, who judges contents, not openly to respond. Censorship is to probably come from the inside the even, as a freiwillige self-restraint over the daily information admission and production.
Release can to be come, for Kierkegaard as also for Dreyfus, only from "a religious sphere" of the existence, which will experience in the real world. Whether a pure not mediatisierte and world ever existed (or to exist was, in the form of " reality parks ") may probably is doubted. Material and virtual become empty categories. A call back to " the reality " can be only more nostalgic and makes themselves irrelevant, represents it nevertheless an escape before actual
Es gibt keine Wirklichkeit hinter dem Virtuellen, keine K ö rper au ß erhalb der Maschine. Das Internet wurde inzwischen zu einem unsichtbaren Teil des Alltagslebens, vergleichbar mit dem Staubsauger. Wie Manuel Castells in seinem neuen Buch The Internet Galaxy sagt - es gibt keinen Weg zur ü ck in einen Zustand vor der Netzwerk-Gesellschaft. Das Netzwerk ist die Botschaft.
Aus dem Englischen ü bersetzt von Frank Hartmann
Hubert L. Dreyfus, On the Internet, London/New York: Routledge, 2001. 136 Seiten, Euro 15,91