“In God we trust. All others must bring data.”

Hello again, it is Christie and I am back this week to talk about how arguments on the internet affect our society as well as censorship issues we all may face in life.

Would you believe that the commercial printing press was used for erotic novels 150 years before the scientific journal? Well, according to Clay Shirky in his TED talk about the internet transforming government you better believe it. Inventions such as the printing press, the telephone, the television, and now the internet were all thought to bring world peace. It was theorized that if communication among the citizens of the world was easier, then why would war even exist? As we can see from current events and history events the dream for world peace through communication was never realized. In fact, if you are someone who follows President Donald Trump on twitter, you know exactly how much the internet can feed into conflict. With the emergence of new technology and new theories the internet should be playing the role of a medium for more intelligent arguments. Not "he said, she said" style arguments but ones that involve intellect and scientific proof. The scientific journal was a way for natural scientists to increase the speed of publication and the proof needed for their scientific argument. Have you ever had a fight with someone on Facebook where they make claims that have absolutely no facts supporting them? This situation is similar to how the scientific world operated before arguing evolved to a level where proof was a necessity and wild claims without the research to support those claims were no longer acceptable. Due to the internet we have been able to move past that point to where reason and hard facts are the norm and more ideas are created.

Along with these improvements in science it is important to remember that the more ideas there are about any given subject then the more arguments that will occur. The same principle is true for new media; the more media that is developed then the number of arguments increases alongside these new things being brought into our world. New media and new ideas are good, they can change society in positive ways (as well as negative) and the arguments stemming from these new ideas and media are productive and scholarly. They are not the kind of argument you see between two middle-aged women arguing about Chrissy Teigen and her parenting skills, or whether or not someone deserves the fame status that they have earned. Arguments about new revelations are based on facts and usually have proper spelling and punctuation. The internet has brought so many new things to our eyes and the ability to have an intelligent debate with someone across the world is even easier. Although, do not expect such an argument to go without some official trying to stifle or skew it. Censoring comes from not only government on all levels but also school administration, local law enforcement, or even the company you may be speaking out against. Clay Shirky begins his TED talk with a story about a nine-year-old girl living in Scotland and a blog she created. This blog by Martha Payne consisted of pictures she took each day of her school-provided meals and her own personal ratings. Then, the inevitable happened. Martha’s blog made news in a local newspaper and once it was seen by officials at her school they swiftly set forth with censoring this young girl. Of course, people who followed the girl’s blog saw a message saying that the girl had been told by a teacher it needed to be shut down and the “internet activists” set to work. Through the public outrage for the audacity of a school or town to censor a young girl they managed to overturn the decision that same day. This is true in so many other situations as well where censoring has either killed an idea completely or reduced it to a skeleton of what it used to be portraying. But not all the important censoring stories make it to the news. There are scientific discoveries and inventions being killed off every day and no one ever hears about them. Did you hear that in some places it is illegal to collect rainwater? Well, whether you did hear about the law or not it still exists. The rainwater law is just one more way for the government to censor the masses.

Something I think it is very important to mention when talking about censoring, particularly online, is WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks is a website dedicated to publishing the secret and classified information being kept from us as citizens. You would think that with censoring there is no way a website like this could exist – much less be an official non-profit organization. Ironically enough, the founder of WikiLeaks is currently in a heavy lawsuit where it is censorship laws may tighten even more. There are people on both sides of the argument arguing if censorship would help or harm society. People want transparency and with the growth of the internet have begun to expect it. But with laws some depend on another to stack against a person and with secrets come power. Posts of classified information on WikiLeaks takes that power away from the government in an attempt to educate citizens of the world on what is really happening in their country. Transparency is expected but it is clear how transparency can be one-way in many situations. While an organization is expecting their consumers to be transparent the organization themselves is not giving the same courtesy – both online and in everyday life.

But let’s bring this down to a more personal level. Once I worked for an organization with a very strict social media policy extending to the personal pages of all employees. I got into trouble with this issue after only being at the company a few months all because of one thing: misinterpretation. The reasoning behind the post or the intention of the post was irrelevant, all that mattered was that I worked for that company and I said something too ambiguous. I decided I did not want to deal with such censorship in my personal life and made some changes. I put my privacy settings as high as Facebook allowed, I took my last name off my profile, deleted literally hundreds of friends, and I hid all personal facts about me apart from my attendance here at Troy University. Have you ever experienced something similar? This is censoring from an official both digitally and in person. My social media was my personal business and I wanted it to remain that way – not something about me that an organization was determined to stifle. I learned my lesson and that situation has not followed me into subsequent jobs but not everyone is so lucky as to avoid any “real” ramifications such as fines, jail time, etc...

Censorship is important in some situations, but how much is too much? Should local officials be able to censor a nine-year-old girl? Should WikiLeaks even exist? That is something that we will see unfold on the internet with only time. The internet provides us with so much data which creates endless possibilities but the sheer amount of data on one subject can be overwhelming. In my opinion the internet is a true double-edged sword but the good it does can outshine the bad.