Internet - A Medium or a Message? (Part  XX)

By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"

These essays were published by the Israeli (Hebrew) edition of PC
Magazine back in 1996, when the Internet was in its formative epoch.
I have left them essentially unchanged, except for a few minor
errata I corrected. I find time travel fascinating. It is
interesting to recall the mainstream view, ten years ago, about the
Internet, its goals, its role, and its future. So, here goes:

Money, Again

We have already mentioned SET, the safety standard. This will
facilitate credit card transactions over the Net. These are safe
transactions even today - but there an ingrained interest to say
otherwise. Newspapers are afraid that advertising budgets will
migrate to the Web. Television harbours the same fears. More
commerce on the Net - means more advertising dollars diverted from
established media. Too many feel unhappy when confronted with this
inevitability. They spread lies which feed off the ignorance about
how safe paying with credit cards on the Net is. Safety standards
will terminate this propaganda and transform the Internet into a
commercial medium.

Users will be able to buy and sell goods and services on the Net and
get them by post. Certain things will be directly downloaded
(software, e-books). Many banking transactions and EDI operations
will be conducted through bank-clients intranets. All stock and
commodity exchanges will be accessible and the role of brokers will
be minimized. Foreign exchange will be easily tradable and
transferable. Initial Public Offerings of shares, day trading of
stocks and other activities traditionally connected with physical
("pit") capital markets will become a predominant feature of the
internet. The day is not far that the likes of Merill Lynch will be
offering full services (including advisory services) through the
internet. The first steps towards electronic trading of shares (with
discounted fees) have already been taken in mid 1999. Home banking,
private newspapers, subscriptions to cultural events, tourism
packages and airline tickets - are all candidates for Net-Trading.

The Internet is here to stay.

Commercially, it would be an extreme strategic error to ignore it. A
lot of money will flow through it. A lot more people will be
connected to it. A lot of information will be stored on it.

It is worth being there.

Tel-Aviv, 4/96

Appendix - Ethics and the Internet


The "Internet" is a very misleading term. It's like saying "print".
Professional articles are "print" - and so are the sleaziest porno
brochures.

So, first, I think it would be useful to make a distinction between
two broad categories:

Content-related
or
Content-driven and Interaction-driven

Most content driven sites maintain reasonable ethical standards,
roughly comparable to the "real" or "non-virtual" media. This is
because many of these sites were established by businesses with
a "real" dimension to start with (Walt Disney, The Economist, etc.).
These sites (at least the institutional ones) maintain standards of
privacy, veracity, cross-checking of information, etc.

Personal home pages would be a sub-category of content-driven sites.
These cannot be seriously considered "media". They are
representatives of the new phenomenon of extreme narrowcasting. They
do not adhere to any ethical standards, with the exception of those
upheld by their owners'.

The interaction orientated sites and activities can, in turn, be
divided to E-commerce sites (such as Amazon) which adhere to
commercial law and to commercial ethics and to interactive sites.

The latter - discussion lists, mailing lists and so on - are a
hotbed of unethical, verbally aggressive, hostile behaviour. A
special vocabulary developed to discuss these phenomena
("flaming", "mail bombing" etc.).

To summarize:

Where the aim is to provide consumers with another venue for the
dissemination of information or to sell products or services to them
the standards of ethics maintained reflect those upheld outside the
realm of the internet. Additionally, codified morals, the commercial
law is adhered to.

Where the aim is interaction or the dissemination of the personal
opinions and views of site-owners - ethical standards are in the
process of becoming. A rough set of guidelines coalesced into
the "netiquette". It is a set of rules of peaceful co-existence
intended to prevent flame wars and the eruption of interpersonal
verbal abuse. Since it lacks effective means of enforcement - it is
very often violated and constitutes an expression of goodwill,
rather than an obliging code.


Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) is the author of Malignant
Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West
Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician,
Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a
United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and
the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in
The Open Directory and Suite101.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com