David - you sure have seen Trust and Crime in Information Societies (Mansell, R. & Brian S. Collins), Edward Elgar Publishers, forthcoming January 2005. Also see http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/pdf/Synthesisofthesciencerevi ews.pdf This on the back of great old book edited by Bauer, M. (1995). Resistance to new technology : nuclear power, information technology, biotechnology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quite a few micro accounts I seem to remember. I wrote something time back but the dog ate it [well, the laptop was stolen]. Good look with the review Best Wainer

-----Original Message----- From: air-l-aoir.org-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-aoir.org-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of David Brake Sent: 20 June 2005 15:01 To: air-l-aoir.org@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] How is the Internet bad for us?

Sorry - yet another collective picking of brains... As part of a literature review for a report I mentioned earlier (led by Sonia Livingstone and Andrea Millwood Hargrave) I am trying to pull together an overview of academic literature on the harms associated with Internet use. I am looking primarily for effects-centred literature and individual-level effects - things regulators might be reasonably expected to tackle - so macro-level theories are not what I am after.

Here is a list of concerns I have come across in the literature so far. Can anyone suggest further areas where there has been research? Can anyone suggest concerns that haven't been researched but which need researching so we can recommend it? I would also be interested to receive further citations for any of the categories where I have indicated I haven't found much so far. I am aware this is a huge topic so I feel bound to have missed something...

Note: this review will be freely downloadable online when it is finished and we hope will be a useful aid to both academics and regulators so please help if you can!

Here are the categories of harm and offense I have found so far:

Reinforcement of undesirable attitudes: * Anorexia * Hate group membership * suicide clubs

Enabler of undesirable behavior: * Bullying (would like more lit) * Sexual harassment (would like more lit) * stalking (would like more lit) * Grooming of children by paedophiles (would like lit that provides quantitative evidence)

Providing access to unsuitable/undesirable content * Porn * gambling (would like more lit) * alcohol/smoking and other anti-social advertising (would like more lit)

To this I would add my personal favourite potential problem with the Information society:

* The surveillance society'for your convenience and safety' (increased government and commercial surveillance and data mining related to your "public face") * The slow death of the privacy of your "private face" through increased public self-documentation and the self-documentation of others you interact with. What happens when significant numbers of us are cyborgs like Steve Mann http://wearcam.org/ and we're under continuous 'sousveillance'?

My favourite book on the former issue is Garfinkel, S. (2000) Database Nation, O'Reilly, Cambridge but it is not an academic text. I would love to be able to say something in my lit review about either of these privacy issues but it is hard to measure the extent or the effects of such intrusion. Has anyone found any effects-based papers on either of these points?

Or failing that could you recommend what you consider the key academic texts about the online privacy issue in general so I can cite them and add, "clearly more research is needed"?

--- David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London School of Economics & Political Science <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm> Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/ (personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog) Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ dealingwithemail/> callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)

--- David Brake, Doctoral Student in Media and Communications, London School of Economics & Political Science <http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/media@lse/study/ mPhilPhDMediaAndCommunications.htm> Also see http://davidbrake.org/ (home page), http://blog.org/ (personal weblog) and http://get.to/lseblog (academic groupblog) Author of Dealing With E-Mail - <http://davidbrake.org/ dealingwithemail/> callto://DavidBrake (Skype.com's Instant Messenger and net phone)

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Hi David, One of the elements missing from your list, and not yet mentioned by others in their excellent and helpful responses, is - impact on conceptions of knowledge, wisdom, and how we acquire these. These topics - technically, of epistemology - for better and for worse may be of interest only to philosophers. If so, ignore the rest of this. There are two central books here - Albert Borgmann, Holding on to Reality: The Nature of Information at the Turn of the Millennium, University of Chicago Press, 2000. Hubert Dreyfus, _On the Internet_. Routledge Press, 2001. I've written an essay that reviews and comments on Borgmann's central claims here, along with some reference to Dreyfus: Borgmann and the Borg: Consumerism vs. Holding on to Reality, Techné: Journal of the Society for Philosophy and Technology 6(1), 2002. <http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/SPT/v6n1/ess.html> And,at the risk of violating all sorts of copyright laws - a sketchy document is available at http://www.drury.edu/ess/notesondreyfus.html Most of the document is devoted to clarifying for my students what Kierkegaard and Dreyfus mean vis-à-vis knowledge gained through the web and the Net. As I hope these notes help clarify - by all means, by drawing on Kierkegaard's taxonomy of knowledge (aesthetic / ethical / religious), Dreyfus' taxonomy indeed heads us in the direction of the metaphysical, though not necessarily religious. Briefly, the religious stage of human wisdom and existence for Kierkegaard involves a level of commitment and risk not found in the aesthetic and ethical stages. As Dreyfus puts it, our most important commitments Šare neither the ones that I arbitrarily choose nor the ones that I am obliged to keep because of my social role. Rather, these special commitments are experienced as grabbing my whole being. When I respond to such a summons by making an unconditional commitment, this commitment determines who I am and what will be the significant issue for me for the rest of my life. Political and religious movements can grab us in this way as can love relationships and, for certain people, such vocations as the law or music. (19) Of course, this sort of argumentation will drive social constructivists and postmodernists nuts - but from my perspective, the arguments are critical and I'm by no means convinced that the s.c. / p.m. schools have clearly won the day on this. So, to put it in a nutshell: with regard to your question - if Borgmann and Dreyfus are right, then, if we increasingly identify knowledge, information, wisdom, and learning with what is available via CMC to the exclusion of all other forms of knowledge, wisdom, and learning, we run the risk of losing not simply whole kinds of knowledge and wisdom that do _not_ fit through the pipelines of CMC (at least in their current forms), but further, we risk losing both the abilities and awareness of these abilities for gaining and refining such knowledge and wisdom - knowledge and wisdom that historically in both Western and Eastern traditions are characteristically presented as centrally important to becoming human and living humane lives. Before anyone gets too riled up - please note that having said this, I also make as much use as possible of distance learning techniques in my own teaching; it is clear that the Internet, the Web, and CMC more broadly have extraordinary capabilities for doing extraordinarily good things, etc. - these matters are not necessary either/or's, in my view. O.k. - hope that helps? Cheers, Charles Ess Distinguished Research Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies Drury University 900 N. Benton Ave. Voice: 417-873-7230 Springfield, MO 65802 USA FAX: 417-873-7435 Home page: http://www.drury.edu/ess/ess.html Co-chair, CATaC: http://www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/ Professor II, Globalization and Applied Ethics Programmes Norwegian University of Science and Technology NO-7491 Trondheim, Norway http://www.anvendtetikk.ntnu.no/pres/bridgingcultures.php Exemplary persons seek harmony, not sameness. -- Analects 13.23

David Brake wrote:

Here are the categories of harm and offense I have found so far:

Reinforcement of undesirable attitudes: * Anorexia * Hate group membership * suicide clubs

Enabler of undesirable behavior: * Bullying (would like more lit) * Sexual harassment (would like more lit) * stalking (would like more lit) * Grooming of children by paedophiles (would like lit that provides quantitative evidence)

You might consider adding 'adultery', if you consider adultery to be undesirable behaviour ;-). I'm thinking of people getting back together with old flames via sites like Friends Reunited, under the noses of current life partners. There's been a recent UK television documentary on this phenomenon, but perhaps too recent for research to have kicked off.. FR and similar sites also enable people to track down others who may not wish to be tracked down e.g. violent men tracking down ex-wives that they have abused; parents or children tracking down those children or parents who do not wish to have contact. Individuals may be literally ex-directory (re phone directories, to protect themselves), but may not realise they are not 'ex directory on the Internet' until it is too late. This is related to your stalking category, but maybe separate (the individuals are well known to each other, whereas stalking is perhaps more often associated with strangers).

Providing access to unsuitable/undesirable content * Porn * gambling (would like more lit) * alcohol/smoking and other anti-social advertising (would like more lit)

To this I would add my personal favourite potential problem with the Information society:

* The surveillance society'for your convenience and safety' (increased government and commercial surveillance and data mining related to your "public face") * The slow death of the privacy of your "private face" through increased public self-documentation and the self-documentation of others you interact with. What happens when significant numbers of us are cyborgs like Steve Mann http://wearcam.org/ and we're under continuous 'sousveillance'?

There have been cases documented of Friends Reunited etc. being used by the UK police to collar criminals e.g. a cocaine dealer, later convicted (he'd been telling his old school-mates about his activities). The UK police have said they monitor such websites for evidence of criminal behaviour, and have stated that the public should assume that this occurs. Again, this has been covered by TV documentary makers, though don't know whether any research is under way. Louise