The New Cyber Intifada
Week of Monday, November 11, 2002
Not too long ago at my daughter's middle school in Palo Alto a committee recommended that every incoming sixth grader be required to purchase a laptop computer. Thankfully, common sense prevailed and the idea was scuttled. But the plan was only one of many barometers that one could read to gauge the techno-optimism that reigns here in the Silicon Valley. The events of 9-11 have tainted this rose-colored view of the world. Mohamed Atta, after all, made his plane reservation with a laptop and the use of the American Airlines web site. His suicide partners, we are told, logged on to Travelocity.
In his recent book Longitudes and Attitudes (2002), Thomas Friedman, the foreign affairs editor for the NY Times, reflects on life after the September 11 terrorist attacks. A significant subplot throughout his book is the supporting role that technology plays in all of this. Here are four insights that I gleaned from his book about the role of technology in the post 9-11 world.
It goes without saying that the internet has radically altered the worlds of business, communication and finance, but what we are increasingly realizing is that the internet is an agent of radical social and political revolution. Think for a moment about how rumors and innuendoes about a certain stock or initial public offering have caused wild swings in the stock market. Now imagine similar, radical swings in the political world due to similar cyber chatter.
Examples abound. As he traveled all across the Middle East Friedman was shocked to discover how firmly so many people, including well-educated, liberal Arabs, believed the outrageous rumor, spread on the internet, that four thousand Jews were warned not to go to work at the World Trade Center on September 11. This easily translated into a conspiracy theory that Jews and/or the CIA were responsible for the tragedy, and, in turn, created volcanic rage among all the millions of Arabs who believed this lie. Or again, Arab satellite TV bombards Arab homes twenty four hours a day with Israeli violence against Palestinians, with no effort at all to present a balanced view, thus fomenting rage and intolerance (the content of propaganda does not have to be false in order to be incredibly powerful and effective). This, in turn, makes it increasingly difficult for nation-states to control public opinion, or to generate intelligent dialogues about pressing social and political problems. Or third, the recent news has reported how China has cracked down on internet search engines (in particular Google), but that cannot and will not last. By 2007 Chinese will be the largest language on the internet. No matter how misguided their decision about Google, China is surely right about one thing—technology and globalization are not only financial tools but tools of radical social, political and cultural upheaval.
Friedman also comments upon how technology is a huge “force-multiplier” for good but also evil. Before the effects of radical globalization the past few decades, we normally thought of nation states relating to each other, or to global markets, and much of this is still true. But today we realize that now nation states must relate to fringe individual people like Timothy McVeigh or Osama bin Laden who, thanks to technology, have been super-empowered. “Being poor or uneducated no longer means being weak,” writes Friedman, “because this new system [of globalization] is an incredible force multiplier that can super-empower evil people so they can destabilize a superpower” (p. 80). Your country might be so poor and backward that it cannot build an airliner, but, thanks to the force-multiplying effect of technology, a super-angry and super-empowered individual can hijack an airliner and turn it into a guided missile, all from a cave in Afghanistan. So the super-power nation state of America now finds itself engaged in a war not so much with another nation-state but with a single individual, Osama bin Laden, who, thanks to the force-multiplying effect of technology, has destabilized the world.
Third, we have also begun to realize that with technology and globalization there is a big difference between communication and understanding. Granted, technology has made communicating easier, faster and cheaper than ever before. But in many cases this has resulted in less rather than more understanding between peoples and cultures. While globalization shrinks the world technologically, it has in many cases increased misunderstanding. “We are technologically closer,” says Friedman, “and culturally and politically as far apart as ever” (373). It is clear after September 11 that the internet can be a potent force that polarizes peoples.
Why and how is this so? Friedman makes three observations. First, with technology people tend to be very selective with their news sources, chat rooms, and so on. Perhaps you who are reading this can verify this from your own internet bookmarks? Related to this, with the internet you can connect yourself with other people who hold the same views as you. No matter how outrageous, how politically and culturally divisive, no matter what a fringe and tangential position you hold, you sense yourself to be part of a “community” of sorts. Third, like so many technologies, the internet has a “totally undeserved aura of instant credibility.” How many times have you heard, “I read it on the internet”—the largest, most powerful purveyor of uncensored, unedited, unverifiable news and rumor ever created (374)? So, according to Friedman, while we are technically closer to other people, these same tools have driven us farther apart, Jews against Palestinians, the Muslim middle east against the Christian west, the Chinese working hard in its futile attempt for insularity, and so forth. The internet, he suggests, “is not only the greatest tool we have for making people smarter quicker. It's also the greatest tool we have for making people dumber faster” (374). Elsewhere Friedman refers to this as “global idiocy.”
Finally, all the many new technologies that we are now required to master take their toll on us as individuals. One such cost is what Linda Stone of Microsoft calls “continuous partial attention.” Some people like to brag about “multi-tasking”, but that is really a euphemism for the nonstop flow of information we receive or engage, none of which we can fully master because you can only devote partial attention to any one of them. The cost here is the loss of sustained attention. “If being fulfilled is about committing yourself to someone else, or some experience,” says Stone, “that requires a level of sustained attention.” But this is precisely what the bombardment of technologies retards or prevents. Friedman provides an example from his own life:
I am struck by how many people call my office, ask if I'm in, and, if I'm not, immediately ask to be connected to my cell phone or pager. (I carry neither.) You're never out anymore. The assumption now is that you're always in. Out is over. Now you are always in. And when you are always in, you are always on. And when you're always on, what are you most like? A computer server.But people were never meant to be treated like computer servers, he observes, so in the end, of course, this is a recipe for what Friedman rightly calls “spiritual depletion” (22).
According to Friedman, the “super-story” of our day is the phenomenon of globalization. You can read his book-length treatment of this topic in his work called The Lexus and the Olive Tree. True, you still have one super power, the USA, and you have super financial markets that are now interconnected. But the newest and most radical element of this super-story is the extent to which a single individual, super-empowered by technology, can move financial markets, mold public opinion, spread a vicious rumor worldwide, hijack an airliner, and destabilize the world, all on his own, directly, unmediated by any government or state. Welcome to what Friedman calls the new cyber-intifada.1
The Journey with Jesus: Notes to Myself Copyright ©2002 by Dan Clendenin. All Rights Reserved.
