I ran across this Financial Times column that blames the internet for the author’s (and presumably society’s) increasing anxiety about the economy. Another anecdote points out that some people are finding solace in social networking sites instead of falling into despair. So, is the internet a net positive or a net negative when it comes to the economic crisis?
I believe that like all advances in communication it allows us to better exercise both our worst and best qualities. The printing press, photography, radio, movies, television, comic books, CDs…all of those advancements led to hand wringing about whether their good qualities outweighed the bad, or even whether they were responsible for the degradation of society. I’m not going to pretend like the worries about the danger to social order were always unfounded: the printing press helped bring down the Church and led to hundreds of years of religious warfare; pamphlets have been used to rile up the masses into lynch mobs; photographs have started and ended wars; radio shows choreographed the Rwandan genocide; and less extreme, television has a scientifically demonstratable effect on cognition and creativity that may lead to the creation of a hyperactive, impatient generation.
Yet all of the tools have led to undeniable progress and human advancement. They have enabled visionaries to spread ideas that affected the course of human civilization and given dreams and passion to individuals in the quest for self actualization. They have been used to focus arguments and connect societies in a way that no government can control. After all, without free communication, there is no democracy.
And for me, it has helped me from panicking. I am very fearful about our future, but I think it is a logical fear based on the numbers that show where we are, and a understanding of where we are most likely to go. Ms. Kellaway complains that reading about people that aren’t even in her country have made her anxious, but for me reading about events no matter how awful has kept me from becoming complacent and feeling lost. She has an emotional reaction to people she identifies with (a “well-dressed woman on Madison Avenue”, “classes of MBA students [that] were graduating with not a job between them”, “wives of unemployed bankers”) that make her paralyzed with fear about losing her status. I have an intellectual reaction to reading about millions of Chinese that are about to lose their jobs, the poor state of America’s middle class over the last few decades, the insane level of US/UK over-indebtedness and the state of German domestic politics that help me try to get a grip on what’s happening, see if I’m crazy and decide what I want to do with my life to help people get through this and pick up and rebuild afterwards. At Christmas we had a family discussion and everyone was anxious and talking about the snippets they had heard about…when I said my piece about how I basically thought we were doomed for another Depression and explained all the options they felt more at ease. We started talking about how we were going to make sure that we could stay close, care for my grandparents and volunteer to help society.
For all I know I’m overreacting and things will change and get better. I really hope they do at least. And if so, then the Internet will be the source of the information that convinces me. But if it doesn’t, it’ll also be the place that helps me be connected to society despite my own troubles. Hopefully things won’t get so bad that the internet stops functioning, that’d just be tragic.