IP: GILLMOR column: Let's not make technology our whipping boy

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

FYI:


GILLMOR column: Let's not make technology our whipping boy


 Published: March 31, 1997 


 BY DAN GILLMOR
 Mercury News Computing Editor 


 BY now, everyone has heard about the 39 members of the ``black-pants
cult'' who committed suicide in suburban San Diego. 


 Obviously, it's time to investigate black trousers and what they mean to
our world. What makes people wear black pants, anyway? Surely there's some
twisted connection here. Surely editors around the world are assigning
reporters to delve into the clear links between dark garb and society's
troubles. 


 No? So what explains the media orgy over the cult's Internet connection
-- a barrage of clueless reports about ``cyber-cults'' and ``Web cults''
and so on. 


 What garbage. As has happened again and again since the Net captured
public attention, people are using untoward events to reflect on
technology as some kind of ominous problem. 


 When a pedophile uses online chat rooms to troll for victims, for
instance, cyberspace gets blamed. Or when bombers destroy the federal
building in Oklahoma City and murder scores of innocent people, the Net is
suddenly a clear and present danger because bomb recipes can be found
online. 


 Here's some other, equally relevant news: Bank robbers use, gasp,
automobiles to get away from the scene of the crime. Clearly, we need to
do something about cars and streets. 


 And did you know that the ``Heaven's Gate'' group in Rancho Santa Fe died
inside a very big house? If only we had banned very big houses, perhaps
some of them would have had to do the deed on the lawn, and someone would
have stopped them. 


 We've been hearing, ad nauseam, that those sad people supported
themselves by creating Web sites. Suppose they had run a McDonald's store?
Would we be looking into the ties between cults and fast food? 


 Oh, but they also published their admittedly weird philosophy on the Web.
Well, there's clear evidence of derangement -- just like the hundreds of
thousands of other sites out there where people and groups are telling the
world what they think. 


 Technology is beginning to pervade everything we do, everything we are. 
People don't become good or bad -- or strange or pathetic -- because they
use technology. Character exists before technology. 


 Yes, the Internet can be used to attenuate character in some small way,
amplifying the positive or negative parts of our souls. So can the public
library.  So can television. So, in a much bigger way, can our parents and
peers. 


 I see and use the Net every day. And the overwhelming evidence tells me
that this technology is not only unstoppable but also a force for vastly
more good than harm. 


 I look forward to the day when our culture thinks for 10 seconds before
making knee-jerk connections, when we don't obsess on high technology's
connection, however tenuous, to unexpected events simply because it's
still fairly new in our minds. 


 The deaths in Rancho Santa Fe were pure tragedy, a grotesque and terribly
sad end to 39 lives -- human beings whose relatives deserve our sympathy.
A single suicide is a terrible event that leaves survivors bereft. Mass
self-destruction utterly defies rational explanation.


 Perhaps, someday, we'll better understand what goes through twisted
minds. I hope we'll have grown up enough by then to realize something:
Computers and the Net don't do the twisting. They are nothing more than
tools. Human beings, not machines, are the ones who wield the tools. Let's
give credit, and place blame, where it belongs. 



---


Dan Gillmor, Computing Editor    E-mail: dgillmor () sjmercury com 
San Jose Mercury News            Voice: 408-920-5016 
750 Ridder Park Drive            Fax: 408-920-5917 
San Jose, CA 95190               http://www.sjmercury.com/business/gillmor/