Writelife

I’ve been scooting across the Web trying to parse the recent kerfuffle regarding conduct on blogs (which, as one comment on one blog mentioned, is not restricted to blogs but the Web generally).

It has led to a proposed Blogger’s Code of Conduct, suggested by Tim O’Reilly. From what I’ve seen of comments and posts scattered all over the Web, the response is not particularly promising. Many of the responses I’ve seen have pretty much boiled down to, “Nice thought, well-intended, won’t fly.”

I have to agree. The people such a code would hope to control, or manage (to be more polite) would ignore such a code. The people who would get behind and support it already behave with civility (for the most part) and don’t need their behavior codified. On the other hand, a code such as this might be a nice point of reference even if it’s an impractical thing.

I don’t get the traffic or comments that make any of this an immediate concern to me but I have, in my years on the Internet, seen some of this and my response to it has always been, and continues to be, to ignore it. I simply don’t have the time or patience for the people who feel the practice of spite and malice is a fun way to pass the time. I just think you must have a pretty sad life if this is the best use of time and energy that you can dream up.

As for the code, part of the reason I think it’s impractical is because this whole business of civility is not restricted to the Web. It is a cultural, societal problem, the result of many factors combining to produce a disagreeable result. We see incidents of people behaving badly online because we are online. But get in your car and you see another manifestation of the same thing – road rage. People in their cars cursing one another, giving the finger and the more extreme examples that lead to crashes, guns firing and so on.

It’s partly the result of feeling anonymous. Feeling anonymous might not be a problem, and might not be such a bad thing to feel, were we not living in urban environments where there are so many of us crammed into a relatively small geographic space and each urged to bust his or her rump to generate revenue, increase productivity etc.

There is a fascinating documentary included on the DVD of the movie Children of Men. It is called The Possibility of Hope. (Both films directed by Alfonso Cuaron.) The text on the DVD cover refers to it as, “Alfonso Cuaron’s documentary on how the revolutionary themes of Children of Men relate to modern day society.” These themes are several and are such things as globalization, population, immigration, capitalism and so on. All of which I think are stresses we all feel, in one way or another, and lead, even if obliquely, to some of the behavior we see online that prompts us to consider such things as a code of conduct.

It’s also why I don’t think a code would be terribly practical. It addresses an effect and not a cause.

The cause, I think, is how we see the world. This is changing, of course, though not willingly and not always in good ways. (For example, as mentioned in Cuaron’s documentary, much of the way we see things now is defined by fear.) But the various stresses acting on us are forcing us to become one thing and that thing may not be what any of us would wish for.

What we need, I think, is something much more fundamental than a code of conduct. Though perhaps a code articulates, at least in part, and certainly a bit obscurely, what we really need, which is a new way of thinking about and seeing the world.

Alternatively we can, as Neil Young puts it, “Keep on rockin’ in the free world.” Until it totally blows up in our face.

(Also related to all this is the book The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization by Thomas Homer-Dixon.)

Links:

• Blogger’s Code of Conduct
• Draft Blogger’s Code of Conduct (Tim O’Reilly)
• Alternate Code of Conduct

Bookmark to:

Listen to this podcast