Problems with the internet

A few years ago, well forty or fifty years ago really, written communication was as formal as it had been since the days of the Roman Empire. One took a sheet of paper, got out the typewriter or fountain pen, wrote the letter and then put it into an envelope, bought a stamp and posted it. All this rigmarole made one think quite carefully about what was said and how it was expressed. One also, incidentally, invariably signed one's name to the communication!

Things have changed radically in the last decade or two as regards writing to other people. Many people though, seem not to have sufficiently grasped the implications of the new methods. Take one example; the number of people to see the letter that is written today. When I was young, photocopiers were hardly to be found, even in offices. This meant that a letter was unlikely to be seen by anybody other than the recipient or her friends and family. Today, an email may be copied and forwarded all over the world. This means that an email or comment made on a blog might last forever! You can't just burn the thing and have done with it. The casual way that we type emails and comments these days promotes a very informal style in written communication. This is reflected in the slovenly and slapdash form of English that we see so often on the internet. The fact that we are writing letters so often now makes the whole business more casual and relaxed. It promotes a spurious intimacy as well; we imagine that these people to whom we are writing are actually our friends, even if we have never met them. I'm sure that we have all heard teenagers boasting that they have six hundred friends on Facebook. Of course, these contacts are nothing of the sort. Here lies the danger for those who do not really understand the internet.

I am reminded of the passage from the Bible to the effect that what today you whisper in a locked room will tomorrow be shouted from the roof-tops. Because when we are alone in our room, typing on the computer to some forum or list, there is a feeling that we are among friends, that what we are saying is somehow a private conversation. It is not. Once you type anything on the internet and click send, you are usually creating a permanent record for anybody in the world to see for the next ten years or so. This is the case whether you are commenting on an open blog such as this or having a conversation on a supposedly private list or forum. When I type anything at all on the internet, I follow two inflexible rules. I sign my name and I also assume that what I am typing will ultimately be seen by everybody in the world, including my wife and children. I might be irritated to find what I have said in one place turning up somewhere quite different, but I am not surprised; it is the nature of the beast.

Teenagers understand this concept well enough and one will seldom hear them complain that something they sent to one place has cropped up elsewhere. It tends to be older people who moan about this; those who grew up in a world where there was no such thing as the internet. Such individuals sometimes feel shocked or betrayed when something they said on a forum about one thing is quotes on another site entirely. This is the how the internet works, everything is interconnected, as one might guess really from the very name of the system!

There is no such thing as a truly private list or group on the internet. Occasionally some body of people will devise an invitation only group and persuade themselves that it is secure, but even then there are leaks and the information exchanged has a way of ending up with third parties. Most groups or forums simply ask people who wish to join whether they subscribe to the principles of the group. Unfortunately, people lie. As a rule of thumb, do not disclose information on the internet which you would not wish your own family to see. Do not say anything on the internet that you would not wish a potential employer to read. If you want to have a private conversation , then meet the person and say it face to face. Some of the people on these groups remind me of teenagers on Facebook. They kid themselves that they have lots of friends on Home Ed Forums, HE-UK or whatever the list is, but this is really an illusion. These friends are not really real at all; it's like talking to the Sims! The idea of a private conversation on the internet is a chimera. Whatever you say is almsot certain to be read by others, many of whom will be quite unkown to you and some of whom will not be favourably disposed towards you.

The feeling which I gained yesterday was that some people felt that it was a little bit off for me to draw attention to what others had sent to open lists and forums on the internet, but I do not see this at all. If I type on a forum that I need therapy or that I weigh seventeen stone, then of course I am telling this to the whole world. If I were to type now what my weight is, then I could hardly complain if later I read on some site that that bastard Simon Webb, the enemy of autonomous education, is clinically obese! In fact, I am pretty sure that this would happen. Anybody remember after I wrote those two pieces for the Independent and the Times Educational Supplement, how people were googling like mad until they came up with the fact that somebody called Simon Webb had once worked with Graham Badman? That's the internet; that's how it works! I enjoy using the internet and regard it as a wondeful tool, but it is no substitute for friends and a social life. I am afraid that those who treat it like a private club are in for a shock, or more likely a whole series of shocks.