©2000 David Schultz

I have been talking for some time about the Web's ability to break down barriers, namely interpersonal barriers. I mentioned this in the first part of this article series "The Mac Web as Therapy." And I have continued to think about it since then. I am just a soul looking for answers to the many questions I have. One question is, "Why does the Web seem to affect people like this?

Here is why I ask: It seems paradoxical to me that the Web appears to produce these states. The Web, by its nature, seems to consist in everything that is the opposite of trust, honesty, and intimacy. Yet it appears to produce just these states. I am confused about this frankly. I want to understand it.

I have said in previous articles that my data for this is my email. If you write on the Web, or at least write about the kinds of things I write about, then you know what I am talking about - - people open up to you. I will break no confidences here, but trust me it happens. It is a great responsibility that is thrust upon us as writers when people open up to us like they do. We guard it carefully. But it does happen.

In the first part of this series I said that the Web seems to produce a therapeutic environment. I said that defenses break down on the Web and people share their thoughts and lives. This is a therapeutic environment, and that is also what I mean about the Web producing trust, intimacy, and honesty. These are stuff therapy is made of, after all.

So why does this seem to happen?

Immediately I think of an answer: The trust, honesty and intimacy one sees on the Web is more appearance than reality. It looks like these states are produced, but looks can be deceiving. The trust, honesty and intimacy we see on the Web are really other states disguised as these, someone might argue. It doesn't really matter what these other states are; and in fact they would be hard to describe. The best way to describe them might be to call them "mock" states - - states that mimic other states.

However, there is a way to answer this. Trust, intimacy and honesty, by my lights anyway, come in degrees. What I could be misreading is the degree to which these are shown on the Web. And indeed, there is point to this: But a low degree of trust is still trust, and so the point still stands. The highest degrees of trust, honesty and intimacy cannot be produced on the Web. That is obvious. One would not ask for another's hand in marriage if the only contact he had with was in email, for example. (I do not doubt that someone has done this someplace though!) Thus the data is clear: Some degree of these states are produced on the Web.

I think the clue to our answer lies in the as it is told in Plato's Republic. Glaucon, Socrates' interlocutor in the dialogue, is trying to support the following proposition: The only reason people act morally is through fear of getting caught. When we ask, "Why be moral?" the answer, Glaucon says, is because of societal pressures. This is the only constraint we have. So the good itself, the moral itself, has no power over us. Morality is powerless against human nature, he argues.

He tries to support this with a thought experiment working off the myth of Gyges. Gyges found a ring which made him invisible. He used it to seduce the king's wife and kill the king. He couldn't get caught because he was invisible. So Glaucon says that if there were two such rings and one was given to the moral person and one to the immoral person, both would act immorally. The reason is because all social constraint would be absent. So it follows that people are moral only out of fear of being caught, and so morality itself is powerless.

While I do not agree with Glaucon's position I think the thought experiment itself is telling. That is, I think this kind of thought experiment explains much of what we find on the Web. Let me explain.

The first example Gyges' myth explains is "flaming" another in email. By this I mean sending an email in which you say something to someone you would never say to his face: You write insults, swears, threats, and various other kinds of put-downs. Some of these can be very mean indeed. I have been the victim of it once when a group of evil-natured Wintel users didn't exactly take well to something I wrote. And let me tell you this: They can be nasty, very nasty. But I am sure that if they could not hide behind the Gyges' ring of the Internet they would not act like this, or at least some would not. They won't be punched in the nose if they make a threat via email and so they feel safe in their threats. People, Wintel users or not, feel safe behind the Gyges' ring of the Internet to the point that their true natures show clearly. Is it not clear then that some such threats and insults issue from a cowardly nature?

This is what the Gyges' ring of the Internet creates - a buffer zone behind which one hides from the real consequences of his actions and words. We see it in all kinds of ways, and not just in emails. Opinion pieces and other kinds of attack articles on the Mac Web evidence this. Web writers are a strange breed (I am a writer so I can say this): Some (not all) writers take something that provides them with anonymity and invisibility and attempt to use it for fame and visibility. Yet they mistakenly think they can control the degree to which they reveal themselves through their writings. Writers often do not realize what all they reveal about themselves in their writings. I would argue that one cannot control what he reveals about himself in his writings no matter how hard he tries to disguise himself. In fact, his trying not to reveal too much will itself be revealed in his writings. It is the nature of the medium that one lays himself out for all to see, no matter how he tries to control this.

And herein lies the paradox of this state of affairs in my mind: The invisibility the Web offers actually makes one's nature and character more visible than it would be otherwise, just like a ring which makes one invisible. Flames and attack articles reveal cowardly and petty natures which might lie hidden otherwise. One uses the opportunity of being invisible which the Web offers and becomes more visible in the process, be it in an email or a column. And sending something anonymously does not help, for something is still revealed about someone, and the use of anonymous methods itself is revealing, is it not?

Let me get back to the original point though . . .

What I have just described is the darker side of the Gyges' ring of the Web. It has a brighter side too. For herein too lies the clue to the therapeutic environment the Web provides. Invisibility brings a degree of safety in which one can make himself more visible - - where he can "open up," as it were. If one is less afraid of being punched in the nose because of the Web's buffer zone, then one is likewise less afraid of being laughed at, poked fun at, and being rejected as well. These are necessary requirements for any successful therapy. True, one may still suffer from these reactions even on the Web. But they are most of the time outside of one's perceptual horizon and what lays outside of one's perceptual horizon might as well not exist.

The Gyges' ring of the Web also explains the trust, honesty and intimacy we see sometimes on the Web. And this reveals an even greater paradox. These states seem to require exactly what the web cannot provide: Closeness and sharing of selves. These, we think, cannot occur when space and time intervene. The Web places a wedge of space and time between egos. Even instant messaging is not as 'instant' as talking with another face-to-face. Moreover, closeness and sharing are the preconditions for trust, intimacy and honesty. It follows that the Web shouldn't produce them.

Yet if I am right about the Gygesian effects of the Web on egos then the complete opposite is the case: Barriers of space and time, the cloak of the Web, actually allow for spontaneous sharing and closeness thus producing occasions for trust, intimacy and honesty. Some people just feel safer on the Web. It does not hold for every token of Web communication or for every person, but it holds. Maybe then trust, and all the states I have talked about here are broader than we think.

[Note: Lovers have shared their hearts through words in mail for centuries. The Web is just a new way to do this, so maybe the Web is just an instance of this very old truth, an old truth which is not more pervasive than it ever has been.]

In other words, one effect of web technology may be that we need to rethink our ideas of closeness, intimacy, trust, honesty, and the conditions of the same. Perhaps these notions need to be expanded beyond the common sense notions we have. Perhaps communication on the Web is producing a culture of Platonists in which the physical is diminished and sharing occurs between souls which are not constrained by space, time, or spatial localization, anymore than the ideas they share are so constrained. Maybe as we relate through language alone over the Web people will be less Objects and more Subjects. But it remains to be seen. At least it could have this effect if we think about it . . .

Postscript: Let me quickly add this point: If people were not seeking trust, closeness, and the rest, the Web would not provide opportunities for them. Perhaps people seek these on the Web because they fail to find them in other places. That is, it seems there are a lot of lonely people out there. It appears that there are people out there who believe they feel disconnected from others and try to connect on the Web. This is not only sad but dangerous, especially if that person is a child who seeks closeness in chat rooms and email exchanges. So parents take note: If you don't do your job the Web is more than happy to do it for you, along with its predators and various cacophiles and cacodemons.

I am preparing another article on this topic which attempts to make clear the ways we try to make ourselves visible on the Web while at the same time trying to hide. Or, to put a finer point on it, the ways we try to make a projection of ourselves which is not identical to ourselves visible on the Web. : )

David Schultz