Why is your online life not virtual in the information society?

“The online and offline world are not separate”. For those who know the work of IRIS and other civil society organizations that study the internet and society, this phrase must sound very repetitive. In one way or another, we always end up talking about it in events, academic seminars, interviews for newspapers or while writing a new study. As much as this agenda is far from being a novelty and sounds repetitive, it always comes to light precisely because of the need to remember that our on and offline lives are not disconnected.

This text seeks to directly explain the reasons for this observation so repeated and necessary to understand any phenomenon involving social participation on the internet.

Examples abound

If, on the one hand, during the months of 2020 marked by the pandemic of the new coronavirus the real character of the relationships that we establish and nurture through technologies became more evident in practice, it is still necessary to expand the horizon of how to live online affects not only our personal lives – with video calls with friends and family, online courses and new forms of work – but also our interaction in society.

The recent (until the launch of this text) documentary “The Social Dilemma”, by Netflix, highlights the most negative aspects, mainly related to the manipulation that results from the great power that the big technology companies (the Big Techs) have conquered in the last years. The violation of privacy and the way it affects both network life and the mental health of the population is also an issue that is widely reflected in society and is addressed in the film. Although there are many discussions about problematic points in the documentary itself, these issues are real and experienced both on and offline on a global scale.

But, while there are many difficult challenges when the Internet expands the dimensions of society so much, there are other factors – and there are many of them – that are important for a positive social development. The use of open source platforms by scientists, engineers, and programmers around the world, for instance, demonstrates the social dynamics provided by the internet and how these efforts have resulted in the creation of inexpensive respirators to treat people hospitalized with covid-19. Those respirators created remotely helped to save many lives. Real lives.

In the information society the medium is still the message

The human being lives in society and establishes connections that result in networks for a long time. As the anthropologist Jair Ramos points out, this story is old, but, even before the rise of the world wide web, “analogue networks” had as their main point (closely related to colonization processes) materiality: the territory, being present. With the possibilities that arise with the internet, this logic ends up being changed – since what we establish online are connections that are not necessarily linked to a time and materiality that until then would be “prerequisites” for living together in society.

“Therefore, what is somewhat mistakenly called virtual – and the mistake – lies in the opposition between real and virtual – is this experience of existing and acting in a space whose matter is information.” – Jair Ramos (translated by this post author)

In this way, it is possible to consider that what exists on the internet is an extension of all our social relationships: the people with whom we live, the activities we carry out and the movements in which we get involved, only happening in another dynamics of the world wide web, both with regard to its infrastructure and its potential as media. Taking one of the most cited jargon in the media studies that “the medium is the message”, it is possible to say based on this quote by Marshall McLuhan that on the internet we live in the same society in which we are also physically, therefore we relate online according to the possibilities that the internet brings us.

The time on the Internet seems to dissolve into an endless feed of posts and information gain and lose quickly its relevance – such as Twitter, social network where a question first appears and already gives rise to another question just as quickly as the previous one. The absence of physical presence, on the other hand, often can allow us to be in two or more “places” simultaneously, and at the same time that it let us fulfill our social responsibility of staying at home, it also allows us to participate in spaces of discussion and learning, such as R Design Contornos, an event that I participated recently and showed that social movements – like students’ – are still real and alive online. On the other hand, this “non-materiality” also makes us wonder if we are really experiencing something over the network or just accumulating tabs in the browser and in our heads – which were not designed exactly to be so “multitasking”.

Another important point that, many times, ends up collaborating with the vision of a world “inside” and “outside” the internet is the false sensation of anonymity. Believing that the creation of a profile – whether real or fake – legitimizes the propagation of hate speech in comments or allows the dissemination of content without possible identification is an issue that still requires greater awareness. It sounds basic, but it is still fundamental to understand: just as we think of our words and attitudes towards people around us (known or not), on the internet all those profiles still represent people.

“This sense of anonymity gives rise to the growth of intolerance and hate speech, whose main targets are women, LGBT people, black people and minorities. ‘On the internet all laws are valid. It’s too bad there still are people who think it’s the land of absolute impunity ‘, says [Rodrigo] Nejm. ” – Estadão (translated by this post author)

The social rights developed until then are still valid. After all, the internet is a (not so) new environment for the exercise of citizenship built by people and mediated by technologies. What is observed is the need to adapt some rights, duties and attitudes to the new social dynamics that the world wide web allows us. The Brazilian Constitution, Child and Adolescent Statute and many other regulations that concern our fundamental rights are the basis for laws such as the Internet Bill of Rights, for example.

Your life is real and it is only one

Finally, I repeat here for the last time in this text: it is necessary to think of the internet as an extension, and not as another place. Thinking about the internet separately from our social life that until decades ago was limited to materiality is to reinforce an idea that the online environment is “no man’s land” (which is far from true), and that hate speech practices are legitimate. We must be responsible for our actions in society. Since society also happens on the internet, there is no reason not to be responsible online either. Whether on the internet or off it, your life is real and it’s still only one.