Internet Ethics: Blame The Machine?

In 2005 I came across a blogging event whose unfolding I followed with some interest. (see here and here). I was relatively new to the world of blogging then and Leiter Reports was one of the few sites I read regularly and carefully. I followed the controversy there and at other sites that Professor Leiter had linked to in his article. Posting under the pseudonym Juan Non-Volokh (JNV), a law professor criticized one of Leiter's opinion pieces on Volokh Conspiracy, a legal academic blog. The blogger justified his anonymity by stating that he didn't wish to jeopardize his upcoming tenure by making his poltical opinions public.  (Please read the two linked posts at Leiter Reports if you want to understand exactly what happened.)

If you got behind the wheel while drunk and had a wreck, would you blame your own lack of judgement, your car or the alcoholic beverage you consumed?  The answer is pretty straightforward but I am confident that there are quite a few people out there who would lay the blame on their automobile, the booze, the bartender ... anything and anyone but themselves.

Our surroundings influence our behavior and some of the most profound changes in our day to day lives are brought about by technology. Technology doesn't just affect our physical world. Our cultural and ethical standards too must adapt to its unexpected and rapid advances. Instances of changes in our habits at home and work brought about by innovations in science and technology are as numerous as the ethical and cultural debates surrounding the constant re-evaluation of our long held values, mores and norms necessitated by those changes.

I wish to focus on just one small and somewhat trivial aspect of the technology driven world - the conventions and courtesy of anonymous or pseudonymous publishing on the World Wide Web.  For better or worse, when I jumped headlong into the blogosphere, I decided to use my real name. I took the risk despite the fact that given my unfamiliarity with the medium at the time, the likelihood of making mistakes and embarrassing gaffes was real. However, sticking to common sense rules of old fashioned public discourse and avoiding unnecessary personal commentary have helped keep things neat and clean for the most part. All A.B. authors who subsequently joined me also chose to use their full real life names (except Joe, who uses only his first name) to post their opinions here. Using our real names and knowing that strangers as well as our friends and family may be reading (some of my friends, younger and older relatives, ex-students and many of their friends read this blog), we consider it prudent to avoid discussing intimate details of our own lives. Personal anecdotes are utilized only to shed light on the topic at hand. For the same reason even when we address provocative topics, the language employed on A.B. is PG-13.

Anonymous or pseudonymous blogging allows a blogger to feel fewer restraints. Not that anonymous blogging always amounts to maniacal rants but it is far easier to be reckless under the cover of anonymity than it is when publishing under one's true identity.  Blogging or any other public pronouncement has an element of performative posturing. We don't just express our opinions, we also try to convince and impress our readers.  Even that theatricality can be exaggerated by anonymity.

Some time back I had written about the interesting and somewhat bizarre case of Frank Pasquale, the anonymous blogger from Paris, Texas who was taken to court by a party who wished to know his "real" identity. The court ruled that Frank Pasquale has the right to remain anonymous. There are no hard and fast ethics governing anonymous blogging - the author must let his / her own barometer of common sense and comfort dictate publishing guidelines. I judge anonymous and pseudonymous blogging according to the declared motives of the blogger and whether they sound convincing. For example, it seems okay to me if:

• The aim is to keep one's political opinions "private" from one's employer. Example: The liberal blogger Billmon of the excellent and now defunct Billmon's Whiskey Bar.
• Students and faculty members in educational institutions wishing to protect their identities from peers. Example: Bitch Ph.D.
• A whistle blower who feels that the community benefits from the dissemination of certain type of information but doesn't want to get into legal trouble while doing so. In this category I would include Frank Pasquale / fac_p whose blog targets a local medical facility in Paris Texas. (My interest in this blogger was not because he is "anonymous," rather that his pseudonym is identical to the real name of a non-anonymous academic blogger who too blogs about medical ethics)

Anonymous / pseudonymous blogging becomes problematic when it is used to settle personal scores or arguments with colleagues and critics. In the case of Juan Non-Volokh (whose identity has since been revealed), I came to know later that although JNV engaged with Leiter anonymously citing professional concerns, he had published other opinions under his real name around the same time. So, was JNV afraid of publishing his opinions or of public disagreements with others? (Suspicions of denial of tenure and even senior appointments caused by the political opinions of professors expressed on their blogs are not entirely unheard of. See here , here and here)

While the fear of exposure among young academics is understandable, it is more troublesome if an established author or public figure indulges in self praise while taking down critics under the cover of pseudonymity. The case in point is a recent book written by cultural / media maven Lee Siegel whose new book Against the Machine blames the Internet for “the way the [it] is reshaping our thoughts about ourselves, other people and the world around us.”  Siegel doesn't dismiss the Internet as a minor annoyance; he considers it a dangerously harmful phenomenon.

There is a variety of Luddite cultural pessimist who sees the Internet as inherently trivial, a gigantic nonevent in the history of man. Most Net naysayers are in that camp, but Siegel isn’t one of them. Siegel’s mission is to make his readers think about the negative effects of the Internet — its destructive impact on our culture, on our polity and, perhaps most important, on our sense of ourselves.

The indictment comes with a number of counts. Siegel argues that the Internet invites people to “carefully craft their privacy into a marketable, public style.” In doing so it creates an environment in which everything is on display all the time, whether on YouTube, on Internet dating sites or in the blogosphere. This turns the culture into a giant popularity contest, an expanded and never-ending version of high school. ... Siegel is blistering on the “surreal world of Web 2.0, where the rhetoric of democracy, freedom and access is often a fig leaf for antidemocratic and coercive rhetoric; where commercial ambitions dress up in the sheep’s clothing of humanistic values; and where, ironically, technology has turned back the clock from disinterested enjoyment of high and popular art to a primitive culture of crude, grasping self-interest.”

Most good cultural critics are instinctive moralists, and Siegel is a fine example of the type. But criticism of this type often leaves the reader wondering, as James Joyce wondered apropos Wyndham Lewis’s attacks on “Ulysses”: Even if all of this argument is granted as true, how much of the truth is it? How much does it leave out, and how much could be said on the other side of the story?

It also doesn’t help Siegel’s case that he is so angry all the time. “Against the Machine” is an intemperate book. Siegel is too quick to attribute mercantile or otherwise venal motives to people with whom he disagrees, and the range of interesting thinkers at whom he takes potshots is pretty wide.

So why is Siegel so angry?  Well, he had an unpleasant encounter on the Internet and it had to do with anonymity.

One of the oldest and soundest rules in intellectual life is “never get in a parsing contest with a skunk.” It is a principle that the lively, intelligent, combative cultural critic Lee Siegel forgot in autumn 2006, when he gave in to the temptation to respond to comments about him posted on his blog at The New Republic’s Web site. Some of the comments were anonymous and abusive — featuring allegations of chromosomal deficiencies and pedophilia — and Siegel replied under the pseudonym “sprezzatura,” praising his own work and denouncing his critics (“You couldn’t tie Siegel’s shoelaces”). When it emerged that Siegel was sprezzatura, he was pilloried in the blogosphere, suspended by The New Republic and, “in good American fashion,” he writes, rewarded with the opportunity “to write the book on Web culture that I’d long wanted to write.”

Anonymous poison pen attacks are nothing new.  The Internet has facilitated the give and take of ideas in the public arena - both good and bad.  Hasty, careless and angry exchanges can fly back and forth instantaneously without a prudent interval for mulling things over - you don't need a "pen" any more.  But the instincts that guide our anger at our critics and our tendencies toward self aggrandizement are all too human.  No "machine" should take the blame.

Two other reviews of Siegel's book here and here. [thanks to Narayan Acharya for the link to the NYT book review ]

Note: It is not very often that writers or bloggers whose words or deeds we link to in our posts, visit here to either refute or support our assertions. But on a few occasions we have heard from the authors of pieces highlighted here. In all such cases, the comments have appeared under their real names. You will note that the pseudonymous Frank Pasquale had also left a comment on my original post about him, defending his right to anonymity.  To his credit, he used his "real" anonymous handle while commenting. Sujatha suspects (and I tend to agree) that recently we may have witnessed  the first case of an author leaving comments in a post  on A.B. under a pseudonym.  He did defend his work against what he perceived as unfair criticism. But unlike Siegel, he did so without resorting to unnecessary anger or abuse. In fact he mostly used good humor in challenging the assessment of his work posted here. We can't prove anything in a court of law but we think it happened :-)

Comments

[Sujatha]

There's an old Tamil movie song which translates to "Sitting on Shiva's head, the serpent taunts (the eagle) Garuda - How are things faring with you? Garuda (sworn enemy of snakes) replies "If everyone remains in their appointed place, they will be fine..."-the implication being that the serpent would not address Garuda so casually if he weren't twined about the head of Shiva.
The Juan Non-Volokh persona used to mask the blogger, who came clean only once he had obtained tenure reminds me of that song. How courageous a critic can be, when hiding in the cloak of internet anonymity!

[Dean C. Rowan]

I love Sujatha's Tamil song! Is the song that closes your comment an update of Gilbert and Sullivan? Sounds like one.

JNV knew that courage is not a criterion for tenure, and although prudence isn't likely an explicit one, its exercise should weigh in one's favor. I'm struck not so much by the evident pragmatic cowardice, though, as by the disdain for freedom of expression in the face of retributive employers. I grant that it makes sense not to voice one's true opinions when it risks threatening one's career plans, but what does that say about one's future employers? For that matter, what does the fact that we all pretty much understand why somebody would take the cautionary step of assuming anonymity say about our own norms as a society? We don't really value freedom of expression. (Stanley Fish has been saying this for years.)