h3h.net

I wrote a paper for a Philosophy of Technology class last year. I think it pretty relevant to college-level students who use the internet. I don’t expect everyone to read it, but it’s here for my own records and those that care to read it.

In Hubert Dreyfus’s “Anonymity versus Commitment: The Dangers of Education on the Internet,” he paints a grim picture of education in the growing technological atmosphere of the 21st century. He draws the term hyperlearning from Lewis Perelman to describe the new attempt at learning with the new technologies of the age, most notably the Internet. Dreyfus then draws a bold parallel and lays forth his plan for criticism of the Internet based on Søren Kierkegaard’s idea of “The Press and how it relates to “The Public.” Using Kierkegaard’s three-stage model, Dreyfus tries to juxtapose his Internet with Kierkegaard’s Press to show the direct relation between the aesthetic, ethical, and religious stages.

As a central pillar in the foundation of his so-called translation, Dreyfus sets forth the opposition between anonymity and unconditional commitment, trying desperately to show that the Internet somehow hinders or even actively discourages the latter, thus denying one from Kierkegaard’s only complete and true stage of living: the religious. The anonymity, as Dreyfus sees it, is a key factor in attracting one to the Internet, allowing for a world of risk-free carelessness and ultimately an utter lack of long-term commitment to any one thing. Unfortunately it is in his haste to connect his model with Kierkegaard’s that Dreyfus fails to evaluate and understand the true implications of anonymity on the Internet, and moreover what the Internet actually is.
Dreyfus then systematically traverses the three stages, injecting his own commentary into Kierkegaard’s framework and expecting to get parallel results. The aesthetic stage, in concept, involves the commitment to the enjoyment of sheer information. Surfing the web, as Dreyfus portrays it, is an experience devoid of content or continuity, always leaving the surfer thirsty for more empty information. The constant attempt at evading boredom eventually becomes boring in itself, thus indicating the end of the first stage as described by Kierkegaard. The very important distinction between the trivial and the important, as Dreyfus tells it, is undistinguishable, thus leading to despair and ultimate rejection of the aesthetic stage in favor of a more stable and balanced way of living.

In the ethical stage of living, one is more stable, making commitments to defined actions and seeking information for serious purposes, namely the creation of knowledge. It is this synthesis of information into knowledge that Dreyfus claims is the benefit of risk taking and committing in the ethical stage. Drawing again off of his portrayal of anonymity, he attempts to illustrate the incompatibility between information and knowledge from the Internet by describing a choice of perspectives. This choice, Dreyfus claims, is critical for the evaluation and commitment needed in the ethical sphere, but at the same time it is elusive because it is just as arbitrary as any other decision on the Internet. Thus by being arbitrary, the choice will lead to commitments that can be revoked and a risk-free environment where the choices no longer matter and eventually one is steeped in the despair of the ethical. This is what Kierkegaard saw as the breakdown of the ethical stage and the spark for entrance into the final stage, the religious, in which one will make an unconditional commitment to some entity.

This religious stage, for Kierkegaard, is the only true way of living and the unconditional commitment made for this stage defines one as a person, directing the course of one’s life and one’s goals. Also, Dreyfus states, the unconditional commitment impedes nihilism by allowing for the discerning of qualitative differences. It is by this defining commitment that one is able to separate the important and the trivial, the relevant and the irrelevant. Without this commitment and without risk, there is no possible way that one can lead a meaningful life, nor can one obtain the skills needed to be a good person, Dreyfus claims. It is in the transition between the Internet and the real world that Dreyfus says lays the inconsistency, stating that the threat of real risk and commitment goes against the original reasons for the Internet.

The main weaknesses of Dreyfus’s translation lay in his presumption and haste, where he is able to gloss over some very important characteristics of the Internet and at the same time never addresses the meaning of the Internet itself. The Internet, presumed by Dreyfus, is an entity that has evolved from technology and that requires certain interfaces to interact with it and to receive feedback from it. It is in this naïve conception that Dreyfus fails to see the complete scope of the Internet insofar as its utility and meaning are concerned. Also greatly hindering his understanding is the central pillar of anonymity that he bases his entire argument around. While it does indeed exist, anonymity portrayed as the only reason for and interface to the Internet as Dreyfus sees it, cannot be inflated to such a stature by any stretch of the imagination. In addition to these main oversights, Dreyfus has a sloppy bit of patchwork in his conclusion that only confuses his point, leaving the reader dissatisfied and skeptical.
Contrary to what Dreyfus would have one believe, the Internet is in no way simply an entity with which one can interact and receive results. In the technical sense, it is a theoretical network that is the confluence of data between several million computers, never obtaining an identity of self or a state of being akin to that of an autonomous entity. In the social sense as well, which is what Dreyfus has addressed it in, the Internet is not a social entity that contains its own fields of study, but rather it is a medium for socializing and communicating. Just as speech, authoring, and cave painting are mediums for communication, so is the Internet. Rather than being a whole new world brought forth by technology in which one must learn to deal with new fields and commitments, the Internet simply makes the current fields more readily accessible, thus enhancing the experience of interaction with any one of them. Even despite this very large misconception by Dreyfus, one can grant him leniency and continue to explore his argument’s other weaknesses.

As a philosopher trying to catch up with the leaps in technology, Dreyfus uses the cliché of anonymity and the Internet as the central foundation to his entire argument. This presumption of his proves to be a detrimental pitfall and it leads one to propose that his understanding of the Internet as a communications medium and a lifestyle is largely fettered by the relative age of the Internet. All too often people on the outside of a social sphere will critique it with misinformed views and unsupportable arguments that simply don’t hold up to scrutiny when assessed by those with experience in the social sphere itself. It is important to see that the main claim made by Dreyfus, that the Internet hinders unconditional commitments, cannot be true any more than speech or writing, as alternate mediums of communication. Just as one does not need to embrace anonymity in speech or writing, one does not need to embrace it on the Internet, making it far from the sole reason and interface to this alternate medium. Unfortunately after addressing these failures, it is difficult to examine much else in Dreyfus’s argument simply because he built his entire infrastructure of evidence around his naïveness. What is worth addressing, however, is his quirky patchwork conclusion in which several rather important issues are touched on with little detail and great haste.

As a self-proclaimed successor to Kierkegaard’s analysis, Dreyfus suggests a solution for what he sees as the problem with education and the Internet. He states that teachers will need to foster new unconditional commitments in their students with respect to the Internet. Again the problem is that the Internet is not a new entity for which one needs new commitments, but rather it is a tool with which one can continue one’s previous commitments with possibly greater ease. He goes on to call the Internet culture nihilistic, pulling impressionable kids into its grasp. When one takes the worst possible aspects of every situation and expects anything but negative results, there is a breech in logic. There is nothing inherently evil in the Internet any more than there is in speaking aloud. He then throws in Judeo-Christian tradition, saying Kierkegaard was trying to uphold it and therefore so should we. Never mind that the Judeo-Christian tradition is not a world philosophy that is embraced by the entire population (rather it is a minority group), there is no evidence given to support the claim that the same tradition cannot carry on in this new medium.

Falling completely out of any coherent string of conclusive remarks, Dreyfus then states that we need “culture heroes,”¹ like Martin Luther King, Jr., whose death allegedly made sense given his commitments. There lies extreme fault in the claim that Mr. King was a “culture hero” with the supposition that Dreyfus’s solution is intended to be a global one. Not only is this subject completely subjective, the death of Mr. King was by assassination, something that rarely makes sense for any of the parties involved. In short, this claim about Mr. King and the alleged sense that his death somehow made is entirely opinion, and has no place as supporting evidence for the solution to a proposed problem in an academic essay.

Lastly, Dreyfus does concede as his opinion the idea that learning and physical proximity are somehow related. He describes the limits of the Internet as tangible and claims that they will hinder the ability to gain skills and make unconditional commitments in particular domains, again relying completely on his presumption of the Internet as an entity that is set before us to be exploited. Physical proximity is suggested as the solution to avoid the Internet, yet no evidence is ever given in support of the effectiveness of this theory. There is no reason to believe that learning through the Internet, another communications medium, will be any less privileged than learning in a classroom or in an apprenticeship. Overall, we must understand that the Internet is a new and strange creature to many, but at the same time we must politely ask those outside the new culture to take into account actual aspects of the phenomenon, rather than pure assumption. Perhaps in twenty years this topic can be revisited with a perspective from a native of the Internet culture.

¹Dreyfus, Hubert L. “Anonymity versus Commitment: The Dangers of Education on the Internet.” Philosophy of Technology. Ed. Scharff, Dusek. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. P. 583.

Brad Fults - May 24, 2004