home     moi | debate | powwow | funnies | contact | outbound

ARGUMENTUM - THE INTERNET AS A TOOL

Prejudice, a word that stinks because of its definition. The first time you encountered prejudice was perhaps just a few months after you were conceived! Someone may have said something mean behind your mom's back about her pregnancy. If only it had ended there things in our world would be much better, but as we grow older someone says "...what an ugly baby..." because somewhere in their past a prejudice was created concerning babies.

So you grow up to be a nice little kid. At the age of seven you've started school. Someone in your class dislikes you because of some obscure reason that has to do with hair color. Things aren't going too well, he calls you carrot. But hey, what does he know? Right?

Well, he's just one guy, but when you start in junior high, suddenly "he" has turned into "they", just because you have a slightly unusual hair color.

Your life continues and you grow up. You start working, get a gold watch and retire. Things are pretty okay now. People don't call you carrot anymore. They call you geezer. So what do they know, you're older than they are, and besides you can always look back at the good old days when people called you carrot. Right? You die.

Fortunately life isn't that simple. Odds are you've enjoyed a lot of good times, met pleasant people and had a romance or two, but that doesn't change the fact that society is cursed by a little word called prejudice. Prejudice is the irrational dislike to a person or thing because of a certain behavior pattern or physical appearance, and it is present in far too many avenues of society. So how do you fight it?

The important thing to remember is that a prejudice is not the same thing as an opinion, although the two are easy to mix up. But the question is still, how do you fight it? Well one way is actually the Internet.

For the last couple of years a new society has begun to evolve. New technology is opening up a new frontier, a man made frontier. Maybe not the final frontier but right now it seems that way. It is the Internet. Originally made for military applications it is now a highly active, public and commercial place where you can find all sorts of people and all sorts of services being provided. Nowadays you can even buy merchandise directly from the Internet with the use of a credit card. At the same pace that the Internet has been expanding, views of what it is, should be and shouldn't be are becoming hot topics. So what does this have to do with prejudice?

One of the many criticisms against the Internet is that "unwanted" people now have unlimited access to untraceable information. Information concerning e.g. pedophilic activities, terrorism and racial hatred. What many people don't realize is that there is a countermeasure that works against these, to some extent quasi-legal and to most extents illegal activities, 24 hours a day seven days a week. Specifically racism, discrimination, prejudice and bigotry.

When was the last time you had an open conversation, devoid of most or all prejudices, with more than one person? Was it a long time ago? Would you like to have another conversation like that? Then you do not have to go far. It is just beyond the proverbial fingertips. All you need is a computer that is hooked up to the Internet and has the right programs, because on the Internet there is something called CHAT. It is the "virtual" conversation between two or more people on the Internet (or an Intranet for that matter). It's quite simple, all you need is adeptness in typing.

The environment provided in chat programs is a free environment. It is based to a large extent on what each user wants others to know about him. You can use an alias. You can have a picture at hand ready for easy viewing by other users or a link showing where they can find a picture. It doesn't necessarily have to be you in the picture; it could just as well be a picture of Donald Duck. There is a lot of room for improvisation and fantasizing.

On the Internet you are who you are yet you can be whomever you like. Physical traits that in a "normal" world might stimulate prejudice thoughts that are unwanted, unwarranted, irrelevant, disgusting etc. become obsolete on the Internet. The person/persons on the other side do not necessarily know what you look like and therefor aren't judging you because of what you look like, but because of what you say. Your actions, your thoughts and your viewpoints may be the first impression a person on the other end gets of you.

Being a frequent visitor to the chat worlds of Powwow, ICQ, IRC etc. I have met a lot of people, and in my experience, there is only one barrier, and that is the one between two people who believe themselves to exist on different levels of maturity, which usually has nothing to do with physical age.

This isn't some dream fantasy I'm trying to paint for you. There are a lot of "chat communities" on the Internet that are harsh. Places where style and knowledge play a central role. There are however others where bigotry and prejudice are minimal.

Speaking from personal experience, once you've entered a chat community that "fits" you, you forget about so-called "racial differences", even the ones that are "subconscious". You get to know the people in the community and you get a feel for who they are and how they are. You even make up your own "minds-eye" picture of them. As time goes on trust becomes mutual, and finally the day comes that you get to see a picture of them or hear a voice sample they've recorded. This is the big test. Will your perception of the person change. If it does it's a safe bet that you have a prejudice lurking somewhere. Using this knowledge in an analytical way you can try to overcome that prejudice.

The big drawback of the theory is that we humans have a tendency to relate to each other using the physical world. During my travels on the Internet I have come across many people who start by asking questions such as "How old are you?" and "Where do you come from?" In other words basic questions about the physical being behind the computer, most probably to have something to relate to. Since insights in another persons "reality" usually play a fundamental part in communication, questions about another persons "reality", be it that of starving Somalian (sarcasm) or of English upper-class brat (please excuse my sarcasm, its function is to prove some of the prejudices I/we harbor) are fairly common. This means that fairly simple and ordinary questions that are intended to start up a conversation, can unknowingly serve the dual purpose of establishing prejudice or the lack of prejudice (I prefer the latter). And in some cases these questions may inhibit further conversation, conversation that might otherwise have been highly stimulating.

Another drawback is actually the advent of new technology. In years to come "chat" may very well become totally sight and sound oriented much like today's videoconferences. Once again we may be back at square one, trying to come to grips with bigotry concerning skin color, bad pronunciation, red hair etc.

An interesting fact is that sometimes (both humorous and not so humorous instances) even the most basic (in my opinion) of all prejudices, the gender prejudice, plays no role in chat. This is especially interesting in lieu of the fact that since the beginning of mankind we have always relied on this little bit of information in our relationship with others. And we identify ourselves very often with the aid of our gender. In today's world of bisexuality, homosexuality, sex changes, androgynous-personalities and even dual-sexuality the two-gender perspective is rapidly fading. Here chat programs may play a vital role since these "new" groups of people are very often the target of discriminations (by this I do not mean that homosexuality etc. didn't exist 2000 years ago, the world of today simply has a more "open" attitude towards the subject). For the sake of curiosity it would be interesting to experiment with a chat community where all users have to use a non-gender-specific alias (such as a letter and a number), and where disclosure of personal gender and preference inside the community be forbidden.

The Internet exists without color, except the color on your screen.

The Internet exists without concept of age beyond that of "maturity differences".

All are equal in the eye of information.

In the years to come "chat" may play an important role in dissolving prejudice, bigotry and discrimination. It may very well be the key to peaceful cooperation in the 21st Century.