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Home >> United States & Canada >> Economics & Trade Internet - A Medium or a Message? (Part XX) Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 10/27/2005 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: 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.
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