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IP: GILLMOR column: Let's not make technology our whipping boy
From: David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Mon, 01 Jan 1990 03:07:05 -0500
FYI: GILLMOR column: Let's not make technology our whipping boy Published: March 31, 1997 BY DAN GILLMOR Mercury News Computing Editor BY now, everyone has heard about the 39 members of the ``black-pants cult'' who committed suicide in suburban San Diego. Obviously, it's time to investigate black trousers and what they mean to our world. What makes people wear black pants, anyway? Surely there's some twisted connection here. Surely editors around the world are assigning reporters to delve into the clear links between dark garb and society's troubles. No? So what explains the media orgy over the cult's Internet connection -- a barrage of clueless reports about ``cyber-cults'' and ``Web cults'' and so on. What garbage. As has happened again and again since the Net captured public attention, people are using untoward events to reflect on technology as some kind of ominous problem. When a pedophile uses online chat rooms to troll for victims, for instance, cyberspace gets blamed. Or when bombers destroy the federal building in Oklahoma City and murder scores of innocent people, the Net is suddenly a clear and present danger because bomb recipes can be found online. Here's some other, equally relevant news: Bank robbers use, gasp, automobiles to get away from the scene of the crime. Clearly, we need to do something about cars and streets. And did you know that the ``Heaven's Gate'' group in Rancho Santa Fe died inside a very big house? If only we had banned very big houses, perhaps some of them would have had to do the deed on the lawn, and someone would have stopped them. We've been hearing, ad nauseam, that those sad people supported themselves by creating Web sites. Suppose they had run a McDonald's store? Would we be looking into the ties between cults and fast food? Oh, but they also published their admittedly weird philosophy on the Web. Well, there's clear evidence of derangement -- just like the hundreds of thousands of other sites out there where people and groups are telling the world what they think. Technology is beginning to pervade everything we do, everything we are. People don't become good or bad -- or strange or pathetic -- because they use technology. Character exists before technology. Yes, the Internet can be used to attenuate character in some small way, amplifying the positive or negative parts of our souls. So can the public library. So can television. So, in a much bigger way, can our parents and peers. I see and use the Net every day. And the overwhelming evidence tells me that this technology is not only unstoppable but also a force for vastly more good than harm. I look forward to the day when our culture thinks for 10 seconds before making knee-jerk connections, when we don't obsess on high technology's connection, however tenuous, to unexpected events simply because it's still fairly new in our minds. The deaths in Rancho Santa Fe were pure tragedy, a grotesque and terribly sad end to 39 lives -- human beings whose relatives deserve our sympathy. A single suicide is a terrible event that leaves survivors bereft. Mass self-destruction utterly defies rational explanation. Perhaps, someday, we'll better understand what goes through twisted minds. I hope we'll have grown up enough by then to realize something: Computers and the Net don't do the twisting. They are nothing more than tools. Human beings, not machines, are the ones who wield the tools. Let's give credit, and place blame, where it belongs. --- Dan Gillmor, Computing Editor E-mail: dgillmor () sjmercury com San Jose Mercury News Voice: 408-920-5016 750 Ridder Park Drive Fax: 408-920-5917 San Jose, CA 95190 http://www.sjmercury.com/business/gillmor/
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- IP: GILLMOR column: Let's not make technology our whipping boy David Farber (Jan 01)