A chance to think

It seemed like a good place to start the day, it is actually how i start most days- reading emails and checking out the world. Sometimes 9more often than not of late) from the comfort and warmth of my bed. I do love wi-fi or wiffy (as our sublet landlord in Paris pronounced it)! I was going great guns with getting photos sorted to get printed ready for Friday night crop at Cheryl's but lost heart when I forgot to keep my finger on the control/apple key when randonly selecting and lost the selection of a whole heap of photos. That forced me into the situation of mind over mattress. I flung back the doona and kinda leapt out of bed.
I decided it was really time for breakfast and I should act as though it was a working day at least- cos it is!
While I ate my breakfast I did another quick flick/scroll through of the emails and the follwoing article in the NY Timjes caught my eye.

Anonymity and the dark side of the internet.
Written by Stanley Fish- what a great name!
Both the article and the writer.
He wrote- I summarize/ try to shorten and do justice to his work...
The Supreme Court overturned a statute requiring any person who prints a notice or flyer promoting a candidate or an issue to identify the communication’s author by name. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for the majority, grounded his opinion in an account of meaning he takes from an earlier case (First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti): “The inherent worth of . . . speech in terms of its capacity for informing the public does not depend upon the identity of its source, whether corporation, association, union, or individual.” Or, in other words, a writing or utterance says what it says independently of who happens to say it; the information conveyed does not vary with the identification of the speaker.



There are at least two problems with this reasoning. First, it is not true that a text’s meaning is the same whether or not its source is known. Suppose I receive an anonymous note asserting that I have been betrayed by a friend. I will not know what to make of it — is it a cruel joke, a slander, a warning, a test? But if I manage to identify the note’s author — it’s a friend or an enemy or a known gossip — I will be able to reason about its meaning because I will know what kind of person composed it and what motives that person might have had.
In the same way, if I am the recipient of a campaign message supporting a candidate or a policy, my assessment of what I am reading or hearing will depend on my knowledge of the sender. The identity of the speaker is part of the information and is therefore part — a large part — of the meaning. (“Consider the source” is not only commonplace advice; it is a theory of interpretation.)
The practice of withholding the identity of the speaker is strategic, and one purpose of the strategy (this is the second problem with anonymity) is to avoid responsibility and accountability for what one is saying. Anonymity, Martha Nussbaum, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Chicago observes, allows Internet bloggers “to create for themselves a shame-free zone in which they can inflict shame on others.” The power of the bloggers, she continues, “depends on their ability to insulate their Internet selves from responsibility in the real world, while ensuring real-world consequences” for those they injure.
...“what can be done about irresponsible information” spread by the Internet, a medium that allows slander to “be done with a few keystrokes, with complete anonymity, and . . . with no fear that the Internet provider on whose website the slur is found will somehow be held responsible for incorrect . . . or defamatory statements”? The Internet is characterized as a cesspool, a porn store, a form of pinkeye, a raunchy fraternity, a graffiti–filled bathroom wall, a haven for sociopaths, and the breeder of online mobs who are no better than “masked Klan members” in their determination to “interfere with victims’ basic rights.”
The authors make these charges against the background of the standard honorific description of the Internet: it is the ultimate realization of “the marketplace of ideas,” that non-physical space dedicated “to the emergence of truth.” Rumors cascade, Sunstein explains, when someone relies on what someone else has said and then spreads a falsehood as truth. The Internet multiplies the effect exponentially: an “initial blunder . . . can start a process by which a number of people participate in creating serious mistakes.” Rather than producing truth, the free and open marketplace of the Internet “will lead many people to accept damaging and destructive falsehoods,” and unless there is “some kind of chilling effect on false statements,” the “proper functioning of democracy itself” may be endangered.
But, as Geoffrey Stone reminds us that the Supreme Court holds that, at least as regards public officials, debate should be uninhibited and wide open even if it is “vehement” and “caustic” and contains both “factual error” and “defamatory content.” In subsequent decisions, the category of “public officials” was widened first to include “public persons” and then to include persons who wander into the ambit of a public event, in short, almost everyone.
Faced with the problems posed by the Internet, they start talking about “low value” speech (a concept strong first-amendment doctrine rejects) and saying things like “autonomy resides not in free choice per se but in choosing wisely” and “society needs not an absence of ‘chill,’ but an optimal level.”(In short, let’s figure out which forms of speech we should discourage.)
Perhaps the most amazing statement is made by Daniel J. Solove when he declares that “the law is hampered because it overprotects free speech.” The conventional first-amendment wisdom is that free speech cannot be overprotected, but that wisdom is put on trial by these thinkers.

I know it's another long piece but it had me thinking about a whole range of things not the least of which being how much I rely on googling something to find out about things. Which then reminds me of what our friend Carolynn said years ago ..."Remember that most of the stuff put up on the internet is put there by college students" This possibly is not quite so much the case now but then one can find some very dodgy looking material. I found a classic video clip to use with teachers that a woman had posted of herself doing what she said was "guided Reading'. It was so far from what guided reading is supposed to be and do that I found it quite hysterical- unfortunately many of the teachers I shared it with couldn't see what was wrong with it.

The article above also had me thinking aboout those ads for medicines etc that one sees on TV that have so many disclaimers with them that one marvels at why or how anyone would buy the items.
And then the sad case of the young woman in Australia who posted inappropriate photos of a footballer and in now in the courts. The fact that she felt it was the place to wreak vengeance on others for wrongs done to her was fascinating but it would seem that it is not an isolated way in which the internet is used.

Thanks for persisting this far!