Internet (Written 2011)

What is the internet?

Technically the internet could be described as a global system of interconnected computers that uses standard protocols so that people anywhere in the world may use the system. The term gained much currency when the internet was first named but what it stands for today is much more than was imagined in the last part of the twentieth century. Some have tried to capture this in fresh ways, like “the internet of things” or “web 2.0” but naming this entity is a slippery business.

The internet certainly is a network, but it is more; a network of networks, using electronic, wireless and optical technologies. Since the World Wide Web was developed in the early 1990s, using hypertext, all sorts of information and communication opportunities have been available on the internet. It is both a source of information and a means of communication, unprecedented in human history. The changes associated with it are indeed profound but we must be very careful here!

It is worth recalling that the internet has become commonplace, unremarkable, for billions around the world, in half a generation. In the mid-1990s people still discovered what they knew from day to day from books, newspapers, radio, television and communicated with others at a distance by letter and telephone. Fifteen years later words like Google, blog and Wikipedia were known, loved-and/or-feared and/or hated around the world and email, hugely popular by 2000, was in some places confronting competition from Facebook and other social media.

So how should we situate the internet as a technical and as a social phenomenon? Clearly, it is not neutral. For some, it is simply a marvelous resource for multiple reasons while for others it is the potential for harm that looms large. The internet is as ambiguous as any socio-technical system before or since. It is developed with certain purposes and goals in mind and is shaped by political and economic forces. So this is the first question to be tackled.

And, secondly, what might guide practices consistent with Christian living, practices that could contribute positively to the development of the internet? For Christians, as with many things, the ambiguity of the internet calls for cautious embrace. This is the position taken in what follows. Using the capacities of the internet requires critical involvement and support in order to be a force for good from within the system.

Situating the internet

To discuss software and hardware immediately gives a technical cast to thinking about the internet. Of course the internet can be thought of technologically, but this begs the question, what is technology? Technology may be thought of as artifacts (such as computers) or know-how (such as programming) but more illuminatingly technology may be considered as social practices, things that we do. Think of the word “train.” While a few enthusiasts might see locomotives or tracks most would think of how we “do travel” using trains. The internet is a way of doing things, of working, learning, shopping, travelling, checking, gambling, even counseling or worshipping. More on this below.

The internet was built on the information and communications media of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The telegraph, radio, television and the computer each had separate functions and users but the internet successfully integrated these into one system. One can as it were broadcast, disseminate information, collaborate and interact with machines and people remotely, all using one system. The internet has research, operational, social and economic dimensions.

In the early 1960s the US military computer research program ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) started experimenting with packet switching and connecting remote computers by telephone dial-up, leading to the original “ARPANET” system. This grew into the internet as multiple networked systems were created in the 1970s, working together in an open architecture, with, eventually, its own protocols. This offered new opportunities for collaboration, as seen in early email. Thus the internet emerged as a general infrastructure, on which many possible applications could operate.

By the mid 1980s, the internet was in use (the name was adopted in 1982), especially among academic researchers and the military, and in each participating country or region, new networks were set up. The present author, then working in Britain, participated in teaching the first ever course (with the Open University) on the social aspects of these new technologies, using connections that involved an “acoustic coupler,” a modem that worked by thrusting the telephone handset into a rubber cradle! Students and teachers alike had to know some programming language, a situation that altered radically for everyone in 1989 with Tim Berners-Lee’s invention of the World Wide Web.

That invention, along with Berners-Lee’s development of HTTP and HTML and the eventual commercialization of the internet during the 1990s, opened the system up for far more widespread use. The world’s first commercially available browser was introduced by Netscape in 1994 and four years later the search engine Google was launched. The so-called dot.com bubble rapidly inflated and burst but by the middle of the twenty-first century’s first decade the big names were appearing: English Wikipedia, 2001; iTunes and MySpace 2003; Amazon.com started turning a profit in 2003; Firefox and Facebook 2004; YouTube 2005. By the end of 2010 there were almost 2 billion internet users worldwide.

And also, by that time, many more were saying that the internet was morphing into something different. If “Web 1.0” was a glorified mega-encyclopedia from which one could extract information, Web 2.0 is about customization and collaboration. You now participate, create your own content, play, innovate on the internet. Facebook users now number more than half a billion and there are over 200 million Tweeters.

Involvement in the internet

How does one decide on the nature and level of one’s involvement with the internet? In many cases it is simply too late to ask this question. We are already involved (I have been checking some facts and figures online while preparing this chapter and the invitation to write it in the first place came by email from Singapore to Canada). But as with our involvement in any aspect of life it is worth stopping to ask questions from time to time. Socrates’ adage that the unexamined life is not worth living is helpfully completed by Mark Twain who quipped that the life too closely examined may not be lived at all.

But where to begin? Enthusiasm about the potential of the internet for global networking of the Christian relief, development and advocacy organization, World Vision, might be countered by equally Christian criticism that since its commercialization so much internet development has been enabled by pornography. Equally, the opening up of digital channels to help people know their rights or to aid protests against cruel and corrupt governments – as occurred in the Arab world in 2011 – must be placed alongside the facts that organized crime is growing fast on the internet and that cyberwar is now a distinct threat. Specific internet uses and functions does not offering a very promising starting point for evaluation.

Lucas Introna[1] helpfully observes that how we evaluate information and communications technologies new media depends on our background assumptions about the relationship between technology and society. Indeed, this extends to how we try to regulate and form policy regarding the internet; those basic assumptions are crucial. This is even more important if one considers that during the twentieth century, following the lead of the US, belief in the capacity of technology to solve social and political problems reached its zenith – or its nadir. This approach lies directly counter to biblical practice, in which there are constant warnings against relying on human ingenuity or technique to do that which requires wisdom (Ps 33:16, 44:6). So what else might be assumed about technology?

Most commonly, people assume that things like the internet are tools that human beings use to perform certain tasks, but they acknowledge that how those tasks are done might change the ways we organize or relate to each other. Futurist Alvin Toffler used to take this line, and today Don Tapscott or Neil Postman have similar stances. Tapscott, for example, sees what happened in Arab states in 2011 as “wiki revolutions” in which democratic involvement becomes widespread, paralleling the use of participatory technologies. Postman’s vision is darker; he sees a threat of technological colonizing of society.

Others, however, say that the tool-and-impact view leaves too much out of the picture. In the case of the internet, for example, it clearly came from somewhere and was developed for specific (military, academic, commercial) purposes that are now built into it but that might also be modified or changed. In other words, technology is already socially-shaped as it develops and can also be reshaped for more appropriate ends (one day, declares Isaiah the prophet, swords will be “retooled” as ploughshares, spears into pruning hooks).

Also, this second group claims, technologies are interpreted in a variety of sometimes unexpected ways and thus have unintended consequences. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, probably never guessed that his system would be used by the US Department of Homeland Security. In this case the task is to disclose what values lie behind new technologies, what might be hidden in the software or the system. Introna himself has shown how some Google searches are skewed by the algorithms used so that some sites are privileged over others in the search process.

What this does not necessarily tell us is how Christians, specifically, might approach the analysis and evaluation of new technologies such as the internet. Certainly, one also finds a range of views among Christian communities. Curiously, Christians may be found in the world of invention and innovation and at the same time, new technologies have often garnered condemnation from some Christians.[2] Even the humble telephone was seen by some as the devil’s instrument when it first appeared.

Christians concerned to craft a biblical approach will usually start with the Genesis account, in which God gives a basic task to humans of opening up creation’s potential and of caring for the earth. This certainly yields a positive outlook on the human-technology relationship, seeing it as active, and engaging in stewardship. If technological practice is seen as a good gift of the Creator then like any other practice it is subject to ethical guidance. It cannot be good, bad, or neutral. It may be developed in ways that acknowledge God’s standards of justice and care, and intended to lead to shalom, so then the challenge is to engage appropriately with such development.

But the same book of Genesis that finds Tubal Cain forging bronze also finds Lamech developing weapons technology and boasting of the violence they are made to inflict. It also both lauds and laments the construction technology used for YHWH-worship on the one hand and for building the Tower of Babel. The themes of creation and rebellion are thus woven into the biblical account of technology, as of all else. The hope for technological practice grounded in the Creator’s mandate may under some circumstances be inflated to trusting in technology as the provider of solutions, an idea that came to cultural prominence especially in the twentieth century. The internet is frequently treated as if it were the solution to certain social or political problems.

If technology is a human practice, however, mandated and enabled by God, then it should never be treated as evil in some kind of generalized way. God’s plan for the earth is to renew it along with the people who are loyal to God and who have placed their hopes in the prophetic promises that are fulfilled in Jesus. Technology, including electronic communications and information devices, has a place in that renewal. The promises include the idea that the “wealth of nations” and even the “ships of Tarshish” – the technology of ocean-going vessels – will be included in the renewed earth, albeit in purified form. The story of Jesus’ life and death shows how there is forgiveness for technological (as all other) waywardness and hope of direction from the same Spirit that inspired the primal craft technologies engaged in the worship of YHWH (Ex 31, 35).

Let us assume, then, that there is constant interaction between “technology” and “society” such that people are indeed shaped by using their devices or engaging with the internet but also that people are deeply involved in shaping those technologies. Especially with Web 2.0 this becomes rather obvious. Let us also assume that technological practices may be faithful or otherwise to the ways of the God whose project is to restore and renew the earth. They may promote shalom or may be treated as the sole “solution” to human problems. But of course the day-to-day realities are much messier. One way to consider this is to look at specific examples, and here we look at the uses of personal information on the internet. (A second example, concerning prospects of developing positive social relationships on the internet may be found under social media.)

Personal information

Information itself became a most important category during the twentieth century (and, interestingly, Christians such as Donald MacKay were vitally involved in the mid-century debates on meaning and the communication of information) and was inscribed in the idea of “information technology” and “information society.” Of course, information is as old as human beings and could once be gleaned from the clouds, from almanacs or from experienced people (such as midwives). But information is now important for control within in organizations and access to information is an increasingly political matter.

Within this, as networked computers connect with remote databases, and as administrative and commercial activities are increasingly digitized, personal data circulates in previously unimaginable volume. While this may sound abstract, its consequences are extremely concrete. One of the key contexts within which personal information circulates is the internet. Although this seems a million miles from Orwellian fears about the growth of a surveillance state, the personal details circulating on the internet are of great interest, not only to policing and security agencies but also to corporations of all sizes, including those data-brokers that specialize in buying and selling personal data.

This raises questions about privacy, but also about how personal information is used to track and monitor our behaviour and to place us in categories so that people in different groups can be treated differently. This is called “social sorting.” It happens every time we go online, and interestingly, the data revealed in one setting (say, social media sites) may easily be used in another, courtesy of those data-brokers. In a sense it is not even “us” whose details are collected and clustered. Another entity, a “data-image” exists as a sort of digital shadow. But its effects are felt when we are sent unsolicited messages, or when information revealed for friends is picked up by our employers or the police, or when it puts us on a suspect group like a no-fly list.

In this world, concerns with privacy seem rather dated, especially as so much “private” data is freely disclosed in “public” online spaces, although it must be said that there are good Christian reasons for thinking that some notions of privacy are worth retaining. More broadly, however, if our concern is for the other person, not merely for ourselves, as Jesus taught, then questions of accountability of the organizations that process personal information come to the fore. In the twenty-first century, questions about the ethics and politics of information are vital to human well-being. How will Christians contribute to these debates in constructive ways?

Living with the internet

The question of personal information is just one of many crucial questions raised by the internet and along with others, it demands faithful responses. As for the others, one would need a whole book to deal with them, even in brief. The best such book that I know of is Quentin Schultze’s Habits of the High-Tech Heart[3] in which he emphasizes the need for wisdom (and for knowing the difference between information and wisdom), humility (and the capacity to laugh at ourselves for imagining that the internet might solve more problems than it creates), authenticity (rather than just buffing our online personas), diversity (to include people on the margins, not forgetting those who are cyber-sceptics), and organic community life (as opposed to interest groups, demographic colonies or consumption communities).

Schultze encourages internet users not merely to be pragmatists or moralists but sojourners who “humbly seek goodness” in an ongoing adventure. People who, as I noted above, cautiously embrace the internet. People prepared to be the salt of the earth, online. Salt for contrast, salt for contact. Salt to preserve the good and improve the taste.

— David Lyon

References and Resources

Heidi Campbell, When Religion Meets New Media, London and New York: Routledge, 2010

Lucas Introna, “Making sense of ICT, new media, and ethics” in Robin Mansell et al eds., The Oxford Handbook of information and Communication Technologies, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Quentin Schultze, Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002.