February 2000 Print

Dr. Peter Chojnowski

What has been the fate of the word in the past seven years since the Internet has transformed human communication, finance, commerce, learning, and correspondence? Has the Internet led to the beginnings of a transformation of man himself? Has it changed our psychology, the way we know and, ultimately, has it changed the object of human knowledge? If, as St. Thomas Aquinas insists, man can know God as Creator and Sustainer of all of Nature through his natural reason, could it be that man will be irremediably cut off from a knowledge of his Creator on account of the Internet and the computer's de facto alteration of the proper object of human knowing? Moreover, can the Word which became flesh mean anything to those who will grow up not making any objective connection at all between words and flesh-and-blood reality? When we consider that the task of postmodernist philosophy is to detach the word from real and concrete things—the nature of which the word is meant to convey—we can see how the Internet is an expression of this modern attempt to dislocate the intelligible word. When considering the Internet, we realize that the word, as conveyed at the speed of light through computer chips and fiber optics made of silicon and glass, has lost its very character by being "dislocated" from its normal circumstances. This "dislocation" from its natural ground and conditions has resulted in an essential change in the character of the word. If the word is the most perfect "sign" by which man communicates his inner most life and thought to his fellow man and to God, we must wonder if man himself and the relationships which depend upon the word conveyed will change fundamentally also. [Read "Construct Your Reality" on pp. 6-14 in this issue.]

If we consider the ways in which the Internet has changed the nature of the human word and the nature of the human act of understanding which is the fountain of the human word, we can indicate the following:

1 There is a clear relationship between the order of human knowing and the order of nature. According to St. Thomas, the human mind, having itself the potential [i.e., potency] to act [i.e., to be actualized] becomes actual when it "takes on the form" in an intellectual and "intentional" way of the thing which it knows. St. Thomas goes so far as to say that, in a way, the mind becomes the thing it knows. The very character of the mind is established and specified by the realities and actualities which are experienced by the body and known by the intellect. The actuality which the mind possesses is the actuality of the external world. This very fact that the human mind is in potential to what is real and external to itself indicates the objective and purpose of the mind as a faculty. The purpose and objective is to be actualized through engagement with the natural order. Only the natural order can provide the forms and essences which will make real the mind's potential of knowing. The mind is meant to mirror the very structure of the created order. In fact, it is the human mind alone in the natural order which has been created to take on the "image and likeness" of the whole. Now, if a human mind is more engaged with cyber-"reality" rather than natural reality, does man forfeit his natural calling? Does he cease to be "everything" and instead become "nothing?" TheInternet itself more conforms with

This has been my pattern with technology all along: mindless hatred followed by odd rituals designed to re-establish control, followed by total submission.  —Jon Carroll

 

non-Thomistic and even anti-substantialist metaphysics and epistemologies. It really is the technological expression of John Dewey's view that the human mind is not a substance which takes on "form" by knowing things, rather, it is a nexus of intersecting lines of material causality. [John Dewey (1859-1952), American philosopher and educator; father of modern American education. —Ed.] The intersection of these lines creates an "event" which is the human mind. The Internet takes for granted that this is the true character of the human mind. The human mind engaged to the Internet is always changing its composition according to the acts of the will which it performs. It "creates" itself and its nature through its "choices" of sites and links. It is this kind of composite individual which is known by the marketers who purchase cyber-profiles of users. For example, "Give me someone who likes blue, checks the weather at lunchtime, has less than three children, a working wife, a dual income of $80-­$100,000, is a known gambler, who will visit the Sports Illustrated site once a day, and who clicks to the NASDAQ more than four times a week." But, is this a man?!

2 Information is provided on the Internet, but not true knowledge. The Internet is only of use to those who already know. It is no true teacher of men. The Internet cannot be a true teacher of men because its "interactivity" involves an inversion of the proper teacher-student relationship. In the proper teacher-student relationship, the teacher is the initiating principle and the student is the passive principle. The student begins to become "actual" [as an intellect which knows] through the initial activity of the teacher. In the oral tradition, the human teacher decides what "links" the student is to "click on" next. To have the student "learning" from the computer is to have the student "lead" the cyber-"teacher" rather than have the teacher lead the student. The reason the true teacher can lead the student to truth is because he knows where the student should go to attain truth. If the student is the "teacher," how does he know where to click? If he "knows where to click," then he is no longer a student.

The main benefit of being a second-generation computer scientist is that you grow up at ease with technology. On the other hand, doctors make the worst patients, and in some ways, people who design computers understand too much. I don't do online banking, for instance, because I sit there and think about everything that could go wrong. —Judy Estrin, CTO and Senior VP, Cisco

3 Why is what we receive on the Internet not an example of true knowledge, but rather, of mere information? On account of the fact that facing a computer does not provide us with access to the essences of real things which exist in nature. We cannot be sure that we gain knowledge of the two most important things which man gains a knowledge of: a) what something is and b) that something is. Even though the essence and nature of something can be known by sight, St. Thomas indicates that the way we have infallible cognitive surety that something is is through the sense of touch. Touch is man's primary existential sense. Touch is not available in cyberspace. [Cyberspaceniks are trying to deliver it, but whatever they deliver will be artificial. —Ed.] In fact, one of the "attractions" is that you cannot touch what you see. Cyberspace evades the hands of man. The contact we have with the "being" presented to us via the screen is necessarily superficial. What is presented does not have any fixed "form" nor any given nature. Vision is meant to identify to us the "outlines" of a finite being so that by knowing the boundaries of the being we may understand its meaning. We understand the meaning of a being only when we understand the ways in which it is different from another being. But, what do the "outlines" projected via the Internet screen mean when those very outlines of the "being" which we see can be changed and manipulated at the very moment we are looking at them? Hence, Internet users know the need for the "refresh" button. How different organic beings are from cyber "beings." The cyber "being" is flat, lifeless, and constantly needing to be "refreshed."

The world moves fast— and it's getting faster. E-mail. E-commerce. E-everything. The world moves so fast, in fact, it's enough to make you fall fast asleep from exhaustion. But don't! You don't have time, according to Kelsey Biggers, executive vice president of Micro Modeling Associates, a technological consulting firm in New York City. "Industries are changing so quickly," he says, that—at least in terms of keeping up with technology—companies "need to accomplish in 90 days what traditionally took a year. The landscape is changing so quickly that if you tried to stick to your five-year plan, you'd be obsolete in six months." —Geoff Williams, "Speed Freaks," Entrepreneur, Sept. 1999

4 Internet use causes the human mind to lose the limits which time places on knowing and being. This has an effect on the psychology of man. Man understands the nature of time, and by implication, the nature of mortality and the promise of immortality, by constantly encountering real beings which are enduring a continual process of natural change. There is no real being which does not exude change and duration. We are aware that we ourselves experience a process of continual change. The purpose of our life is to order that process of change so that we develop in such a way that we become nearer to the ideal which the Divine Mind has for each one of us. The only manifestation of time on the Internet [and it is optional to the user to display it or not —Ed.] is a clock which is in the corner of the monitor. But if man were to lose the very "idea" of time on account of his progressive alienation from natural organic beings, what would the little clock mean to him? Other than the complementary clock, Internet sites in themselves do not give any sense of the passage of real time. In one sense, the success of the Internet is to overcome time and the boredom which the human mind and heart naturally experience when they are faced with that which is created. Will man gradually lose his boredom? Boredom is an intrinsically Christian emotion. It is an indication that man cannot be eternally satisfied with any one finite real being. Man is drawn to God; he yearns for Him, because, ultimately, the one thing which cannot bore us is God. As of now, the speed and widespread development of the Internet is outstripping any possible dullness attributable to it. We are seeing children and adults spending hours on the Internet who appear incapable of boredom.

5 The Internet is a new form of "Angelism." This is what Jacques Maritain spoke of when characterizing René Descartes' heretical view of man. [Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), French philosopher; convert to Catholicism; a sound Thomist into the mid-1920's, then regressed to become a leading advocate of humanism. René Descartes (1596-1650), French Catholic philosopher, mathematician, and physician. —Ed.] The Internet can be called the supreme triumph of angelism. When using the Internet, man is not in a place as his human nature requires, but he "is" wherever he chooses to act. God made the angels spirits, that is, pure intellectual creatures, who are where they act (according to God's will). Angels simply do not need to "click."

Five Ways to be Faster, Rule #4: Be willing to make quick decisions at the risk of being ineffective. Implementing the second-best idea now is a better strategy than doing the best idea a week from now. —Geoff Williams

 

6 One of the natural conditions of knowledge for the human mind is to know something as in a particular place. On the contrary, an Internet "site" is in no one real place at any one time. A "site" is, ironically enough, precisely something which is not in one place. "Surfing the Net" is a very good choice of terms. Contemporary man, because of ubiquitous technology, is disengaged from his "place" to such an extent that he experiences himself as an autonomous being who does not take on the character of a particular place nor is he "rooted" in any particular place. The human personality, especially the American personality, has ceased to be parochial and historic and, instead, has become generic and commercial. The Internet moves that generic personality to the state of being a global personality.

7In its structure and mode of procedure, the Internet is a technical expression of the principles of the French Revolution (1789). One of the most obvious aspects of the Internet is the egalitarian presentation of sites. All sites are equally accessible, therefore, the information on each site appears as equal to the information on another site. Anyone, for only a small sum, can set up a website for any reason whatsoever. Anyone can gain access to the site no matter if the site presents material which is totally alien to the Catholic Faith, heritage, morality, or ideological positions. It takes as its basis the principle of liberalism which says that each individual should be able to freely fashion for themselves their ideas and beliefs. Now the web-surfer can access any information, images, sounds, movies, music, or opinions which happen to attract his fancy at the moment. All the crusades, ecumenical councils, missionary efforts, prudential and doctrinal decisions of popes, warnings of saints, the battles to safeguard Christendom, the literary and journalistic struggles with liberalism and leftism, will matter nothing for the web-surfer who can ignore it all and expose himself to the dangers so many have fought to make inaccessible. For the Catholic teenager on the web, the faithfulness of his ancestors, which may have endured for a millennium or more, will be undermined and washed away [or, at least, put into doubt —Ed.] with only a few sessions on the Internet. The protections which parents have correctly sought to defend the souls of their children from destructive elements will be rendered null by what can be seen and heard by a youth surfing the Web.

...What I am saying, of course, is not that I don't trust machines, but that I don't trust myself with them; that I'm not convinced of my own ability to make the highest use of my toys. The very fact that I can tabulate references and calculate sums so quickly on machines makes me less patient with questions that don't have answers; the very fact I can access so much knowledge makes me less interested in mystery. After all, it was Marshall McLuhan who said that video-related technologies "will invade our inner peace, occupying our every waking moment. We will need a place to hide." —Pico Iyer

 

The Internet is often most appealing to users alone, in private. There is a grave risk that the normal social strictures which govern our conduct in most all circumstances will be lifted. Even the "tone" of life in the Catholic home or workplace is neutralized and rendered ineffective by the intrusiveness and fetching character of Internet access.

8 The manner of operation of the Internet distorts the process of human thinking itself. Man's rational process involves moving from principles to conclusions, but the Internet has nothing to do with self-evident principles. Moreover, reasoning involves a sequential movement from understanding one truth to understanding another truth. Each moment of understanding involves a "resting" of the mind in the essence of the thing itself. All this is moved by the grace of God and leads to true wisdom. All this is opposed, however, by the very idea and mode of operation of the Internet. The dead give-away of the inner "reasoning" of the Internet is the fact that each "page" possesses hyperlinks to other "pages," otherwise the Internet ceases to be what it is. The mind is not allowed or even encouraged to rest. One must keep moving, moving, incessantly moving to "appreciate" and "utilize" the interconnectedness of the Web.

Insidiously, hyperlinks are an admission that what is before you now is of no long-term interest, better said, of no eternal value. One click makes it all vanish—even Catholic truth if it be there; on to something else, on to something more appealing; a too-easy rejection of what might actually be good for me because I am free to click and make it disappear. How many men will attain eternal salvation through a mouse?

9 The opinion some hold that there is no difference between Internet access and library access is dubious on account of the obvious difference in our experience of reading the screen during a web-session and reading a book during a study session. The book, by its very nature as a fixed and permanent entity, carries with it the understanding that the ideas present in the work are permanently worthwhile. They have a weight and a definitive character which is radically unlike the information that you find on the web. You cannot "go anywhere" from the text of a book, but you can "leave" a thought or image behind as you surf the Net. Consequently, the imagination does not have to pick up where the text leaves off, whereas for a book it does. Normally, the very monotony of the black letters on a white page forces the imagination into action. There are no changing advertising banners or any seemingly endless down-loading of images. Once the imagination of man is engaged with the written text, meditation on the images and the meanings contained within the images immediately begins. If any one wishes to challenge this assertion, we would pose to them a question based upon ordinary experience: who appears the more meditative individual—the avid reader or the Internet surfer? Can truth really be assimilated in the course of a three-­minute session on any one Internet site? We think of St. Augustine's response to, "Take up and read," but can hardly imagine him responding the same way to, "Click here." Moreover, when the imagination is engaged while reading a text, the images provoked by the text itself are subtly integrated into a man's own personal life. He begins to apply the narrative or the instruction to himself and to his own situation. The images provoked by the text merge and relate themselves to those of a man's own past and together they help to shape his future actions. Normally, the images and text presented on the Internet are so factual or garish that no one assimilates them at any level of significant personal depth.

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Dr. Peter E. Chojnowski has an undergraduate degree in Political Science and another in Philosophy from Christendom College. He also received his Master's degree and doctorate in Philosophy from Fordham University. After spending six years teaching at various universities of the Jesuits and the Christian Brothers, he currently teaches for the Society of St. Pius X in St. Marys, Kansas where he lives with his wife and three children.