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What happens when connected as ‘like-minds’ six or seven such individuals ‘collaborate’ to perform some atrocity?
Fig.1. Dr. No.
Society online is a society on speed and at speed – it might reflect society but in the Alice in Wonderland World Wide Web everything is faster, connectable and so warped in a way that transcends human scales of time, distance and decency. One sick, warped, isolated individual seeking out the pollution of the web to feed their fantasy and make it real, like Anders Behring Breivik in Norway in 2011 was, if you profile the population, 1 in 10 million.
What happens when connected as ‘like-minds’ six or seven such individuals ‘collaborate’ to perform some atrocity?
What indeed does the web afford ‘networked’ terrorist idealists such as AL Qaeda? Attending a seminar on cyber crime at the Oxford Internet Institute last year it was revealing and shocking to learn of the ‘game of catch-up’ played between the criminals hacking bank accounts and the banks trying to keep them secure. The head of internet security from Barclays painted a picture that would make the scriptwriters of a James Bond movie go googled-eyed in amazement. Then, far from society creating the Web, the web world infects us ‘on the other side’ with paranoia and so CHANGES behaviour, gets AHEAD of society.
It has happened to me more than once – in the early days of blogging back in 2002 I was ‘flamed’ viciously (malicious hate in comments and a breach into my blog that had this person editing my content and filling it with bile). I had this stopped and attempts were made to trace the character but for a period I was convinced that any vehicle pulling up along our street outside our house was ‘him’ … and then this summer I put webcams around the house when we went away from a few weeks and only after the first week did I relax when I noticed that a brick hadn’t come through the window and we hadn’t been burgled or the house burned down.
(I write this while reflecting on the words of Professor Susan Halford in the Week 3 introductory video on cyber crime that forms part of the University of Southampton‘s Future Learn offering ‘Web Science‘).
‘The Web is part of society and is shaped by society. And until the web is a crime-free zone, the Web won’t be a crime-free zone’. (Halford, S 2013. Page 1 of the transcript. University of Southampton)
REFERENCE
Webber, C. and Yip, M. (2012), ‘Drifting on and off-line: Humanising the cyber criminal’, in S. Winlow and R. Atkinson (Eds.), New Directions in Deviancy: Proceedings from the York Deviancy Conference, London: Routledge, pp. 191-205
Factors that led to the creation of the Web
A neurobiologist would argue that all manifestations of human inventiveness stem from our ability to think in metaphors and therefore to be able to see beyond our current reality. The authors and thinkers who have imagined and tried to create a library of everything, an index of everything, a microfiche or computer of evrything are many: H G Wells and Douglas Adam, Vanevar Bush, Thomas Bodley …. Regarding the issue of the origins or history of the Web’s inception it is a complex and massive human story, indeed, like the roots of a growing tree as a mirror to what is going on above the ground, it has the potential to fill many volumes and to occupy many minds. Perspective is everything – education, culture, personal experience, personality and academic discipline – each would offer a different perspective. Pressing on with a biological metaphor perhaps like the origins of life on earth we can nonetheless start from a specific moment – the equivalent of those first cells that began to split and evolve?
How do you cater for every kind of user under the sun?
<a href=”https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/CQLF-879TZQ0lxwHDDReaNMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=embedwebsite”><img src=”https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-n1Z5KvOVFFs/UpHMkI6JKjI/AAAAAAAAv-s/oNy9Dcdjr3I/s640/Screen%2520Shot%25202013-11-24%2520at%252009.52.24.jpg” height=”209″ width=”640″ /></a>
From the expert to the novice, from the professors of computer science and information technology who are undoubtedly here, or the newcomer to the Web, let alone to learning online and all that entails. I have little doubt that this MOOC on Web Science will show the extraordinary diversity of people and ways we engage and understand, or misunderstand, and have to ask questions, or look for answers elsewhere, that will undoubtedly get shared and commented upon here.
I’m impressed with the platform – for someone who has been blogging since 1999 and did his first open and distance learning module in 2001 this has the look and feel of all the best things I’ve come across. How to cater for everyone? How to avoid being a broadcast aimed at everyone and reaching no one? Does the Soton team have one or more ‘personas’ in mind? Or do we acknowledge that how our individual brains process and engage with the information creates the opportunity to engage?
Mind Bursts 
