Information Operating Environment & Popular culture

[marct]

The Internet is a vehicle, but the engine is human interaction.

Absolutely! And that is one f the reasons why anyone who wants to study the Internet as a social scientist had better know something about programming and vice versa.

There are a few things when you talk about the social and dependent societal change that most see of the Internet. There is also a darker and more formidable side in the areas of dark net. Where the pedophiles, more agrressive hackers, and true criminals reside.

From a law enforcement perspective consider a world where the criminals have no location, no pseudonym, may cross international boundaries every few minutes, and simply disapear when you get to close. This is dark net territory.

I've had some experience with the dark net. As far as social action is concerned, it is all quite familiar, although "refined" in its ability to draw geographically disparate groups of like minded people together. The technology, however, has freed the social interaction from any of the geographic restrictions that used to be imposed.

In many ways, the research I did on magical systems and magical thinking was of the ost benefit to me in understanding the socio-environmental effects of 'net technologies. In effect, the 'net is the Astral Plane - what a magician (programmer) wills to be, will be, at least in one part of it.

From a military and societal view point the Internet is a television channel with nothing on... As the Internet expands the realities will be found in the development of applications and where those applications are targeted.

Exactly! In effect, a sufficiently "powerful" programmer ("magician") can create a reality that "lives" in cyberspace, along with any entities they have the will or skill to populate it with. This "reality", and the creatures spawned within it, will inevitably impact some part of the "real world".

Marc