Truth, Magic, and the Internet

Readers of this column understand the inner workings of their computer and the Internet. But many people don’t understand these and most other modern technologies. The general public considers these technologies magic, although nobody would admit that publicly. Let’s look at it from the perspective of someone with no cultural clues— say, an alien or a hermit. You have a screen, a keyboard, and a mouse. You move the mouse, and a cursor magically moves around the screen. You have a keyboard on which you push buttons in various sequences, commanding something somewhere to produce a visual image on screen. This image may contain information you seek. It may show you a movie. People from other parts of the world can talk to you. By any traditional definition, this is magic. Real magic, not trickery or stage magic. Subconscious magic, too. Is it possible that even though you and I know how this all works more or less), our brains are actually interpreting it as magic? This means that on some deeper level, we also perceive it as magic. In other words, you know this isn’t magic, but still react to it as if it were. I only bring this up since it may explain certain phenomena that seem to be exaggerated in an online “magical” environment. I have always been fascinated by the ease with which people believe bogus information when it comes over the computer, especially over the Internet.

Mysterious reaction to e-mail. Add to this the strange phenomenon of e-mail. E-mail should be exactly like something written on paper, only written on the screen and delivered over the magical network. After
years of using e-mail, it’s obvious that e-mail is different. Unlike regular mail, it requires all sorts of etiquette. You can misinterpret it more easily. It encourages the use of emoticons, because no matter
how hard you try, you cannot make clear your level of seriousness. Emoticons are used to transmit this information. Over the years people have tried to rid e-mail of emoticons. The English professors were the
first to grouse, saying that there is no reason to use them since a well-structured sentence could do the trick. This reasoning made sense until you tried to build that well-structured sentence. There are hidden
attributes in the structure and delivery of e-mail that make the use of emoticons imperative in many instances. I’m convinced that this is part of the magic. If you took the exact wording of the e-mail and handwrote it on a piece of paper, an emoticon would be out of place. If you used one, you’d seem like a silly high-school girl. Try it.

E-mail causing IQ to fall. Even more interesting was some largely ignored research out of King’s College, London, into the effects of e-mail. The study claimed that e-mail use has addictive aspects and that it causes a temporary IQ drop of up to 10 points —a bigger drop than that caused by inveterate potsmoking. Have you noticed that your addicted boss who is forever hammering away on his BlackBerry is
acting a little flakier than usual? The BlackBerry incorporates both e-mail and an addictive mechanism. That mechanism is the click-reward system that works with slot machines and pigeon feeders. It’s highly
addictive to humans. This is exacerbated by its ritualistic nature—and ritualism is often found with addictions. I have never known a BlackBerry user who has not pulled out the device numerous times in
my presence, almost like a cigarette smoker fiddling with a pack. When combined with the apparently IQsapping e-mail delivery, it begins to sound like something from a creepy science fiction story where an alien device enslaves a population. The magical aspect of this little device cannot be ignored either. IQ is bound to drop when we turn ourselves over to magic. Gullibility up. The other important aspect is the gullibility factor. People believe what they read on the Internet more easily than what they see in print. People talk a big game about Internet skepticism, but still fall for bunkum. There are more hoaxes than ever. The Nigerian scam letter is now distributed like mad, with incredible variations. A number of issues concerns me. The first is that the IQ of the general public may spiral downward. The second is the potential for targeted abuse by an insidious government or entity that could take full advantage of the weaknesses inherent in the system and exploit the public at large. It’s possible that we’ve created some sort of monster here with our technology, and we don’t even know it.