Lost on the information superhighway?

In 1996 ecumenical dialogue in Germany between Catholics and Protestants reached new heights. The event gained wide public attention and even the secular media reported on it. One headline of an article that appeared in the press read: ‘Ecumenism goes digital - Engelhardt and Lehmann chat online’.

The text stated: ‘It was a première in church history: representatives of the two major churches in Germany shook hands digitally. During an online chat at the Cebit Home computer fair in Hanover, Klaus Engelhardt, Chairman of the EKD Council, and Karl Lehmann, Chairman of the German Catholic Bishops’ Conference, talked to each other for the first time via the Internet. Bishop Lehmann was sitting in front of his computer screen in his official residence in Mainz while Bishop Engelhardt “logged” onto the forum at the church’s own stand at the fair in Hanover. “The Internet can promote ecumenism, though it is no substitute for personal encounter,” Bishop Engelhardt typed into the computer. “This is ecumenism live,” came the answer from his Catholic counterpart Bishop Lehmann.’

So much for the news story. While most papers welcomed the fact that for once church leaders appeared to be up to date with new technology, only one church paper in Germany dared to write a critical commentary on this ‘ecumenical chat’, asking whether there weren’t any more relevant ecumenical issues and whether ecumenical relevance and content had not been sacrificed.

For me this news story serves to illustrate current perceptions of the information society. Thus, according to an accepted definition of those active on the net, the information society is ‘a normative moral and social vision based on “flow” as a central moral value. It claims that it is a primary moral duty of humans to exchange information, that it is a primary moral duty of the state to facilitate this, that the culture should value the flow of information, and that an infrastructure for information flow should be provided, if necessary by the state’ (cf. http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/is.def.html). What constitutes the information society is, hence, the flow of information, but no reference is made to content.

Thus, according to this definition Bishop Lehmann and Bishop Engelhardt, followed their primary moral duty, by exchanging information and contributing to its flow. However, should we as Christians be satisfied with seeing our moral duty simply fulfilled by following the ethical standards of the information society?

Ethical challenges

We are already in the middle of ethical challenges posed not only to the churches, but to society and humankind world-wide. This is widely recognized. Thus the First International UNESCO Congress on Ethical, Legal and Societal Aspects held in Monaco in March 1998 called for the development of infoethics. In this respect it identified the following main ethical issues:

∑ Universal access to information highways
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∑ Copyright, intellectual property rights and fair use
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∑ Multilingualism and cultural diversity
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∑ Archiving of digital information
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∑ Security, privacy and freedom of information
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∑ Reliability and accountability of information through time
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∑ Legal requirements and practices for long-term preservation
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∑ Digital literacy (‘mediacy’)
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∑ ‘Mediacy’ partnership: cultural and academic, public and private sectors
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∑ Falsification and manipulation of images
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∑ Responsibilities in the Global Information Infrastructure
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However, as far as current public discussions on infoethics are concerned, as for example in the case of the online UNESCO-debate or in the case of the latest statements of the EU, critical input by the churches is lacking, reminding governments and organisations of the anthropological dimension of the information society. For this reason, this article focuses on the anthropological aspect: the individual inside and outside cyberspace.

At its Fourth Assembly in Uppsala in 1968, the World Council of Churches stressed the importance of communication as the fabric of life. It is by communication that we become what we are, both in our corporal and our spiritual life. Communication is also the way in which God makes himself known to humankind and humankind responds to God. ...We believe that the power to communicate is given with creation and therefore to be accepted as a gift and tool for humankind to use in relation to their neighbour. Even though communication can be used to dehumanize, dominate, and deprive, this is a debasing of a God-given means to create community by overcoming loneliness, isolation and ignorance. The Assembly therefore recommended that media should be evaluated primarily in terms of their social function (cf. The Uppsala Report 1968, Appendix XI).

According to Communio et Progressio, the Catholic pastoral letter on media, the very nature of social communication is the aim to give human beings a deeper sense of community. According to Christian faith the highest aim of any form of communication is to achieve solidarity and communion. Thus a Christian ethical approach to the information society needs to examine critically the effects of new information technologies on the quality of relationships and in particular: their potential for the bodily and spiritual development of human beings; their implications for relationships between human beings, as well as the relationship between humankind and nature, humankind and society, humankind and the world; and their potential to build solidarity and community.

The individual inside cyberspace

When we sit in front of the screen almost motionless, we surf, navigate and explore, we visit a web site, we walk through cyberspace and meet other users in chat forums. Microsoft for example advertises its software with the slogan ‘Where do you want to go today?’, implying that it is possible for anybody to be anywhere at any time.

This experience has been made possible by the convergence of traditional communication technology such as print, photography, radio, TV and cinema with the new computer and data based information technology.

Vilém Flusser, one of the philosophers of the information society uses the term ‘telematics’ - merging the two words telecommunication and informatics. The prefix ‘tele’ implies: bringing something, which is distant closer, as in telescope or telephone. Whereas ‘matics’ stands for automatic movement. Telematics, according to his definition, is the technology through which we are brought together without the need to make any exertion (cf. Flusser, 1991). We can reach somewhere virtually, without having in reality ever departed. While in reality the user becomes more and more immobile, he or she becomes virtually increasingly flexible.

The French communicator and pastor, Fritz Westphal, describes the effect of this paradoxical situation as follows:

Cyberworld leads us directly to a society of cultural nomadism, devoid of memory or roots, in which electronic zapping takes the place of education and culture. In cyberworld, communication between people is replaced by virtual communication which means that, secluded behind their screens, users pretty much keep themselves to themselves. Virtualization takes the flesh from the world - and people.

Users keep themselves to themselves, an experience we have as soon as we use the net not just for research or the exchange of data, but in search of human contacts.

As the Catholic theologian Thomas Luksch recently pointed out in his research, the apparently unlimited possibilities for virtual contact make people aware of their own loneliness in front of the screen. As a result users increase the frequency of their net activities to repress their feelings of loneliness, at the same time their search becomes increasingly random. A study in the US of elderly people who participate in online chat forums reaches a similar finding. There again one finds the same chain reaction of unlimited possibilities for online contact and online frustration which leads to a certain fixation on virtual contacts and ends up by minimizing time for real social contact.

Virtualization takes the flesh from the world - and people: We do not need a sophisticated simulation machine to get a glimpse of this experience. For example, I can participate in a news group by choosing multiple identities. I can choose another sex, another age, another profession, another look. Neither my handwriting nor my voice can give me away. This experience of bodylessness is increased as soon as I enter virtual reality via a data glove or a ‘head-mounted display’ - a kind of helmet. The result is, as the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard put it, the fading of the world and the metamorphosis of life into data processing. The once valid distinction between fiction and reality, between natural and artificial is abolished, the total dematerialization of our environment, the metamorphosis of atoms into bytes, of objects into non-objects has become reality - everything has become simulation.

In this context Marshall McLuhan’s well-known aphorism - the medium is the message - gains new relevance. As McLuhan pointed out the medium’s specific function as well as its structure change our perception as well as our consciousness. If we apply McLuhan’s thesis to the information society, we can conclude that the new information technologies will have an impact on our space-time perception as well as our understanding of reality or of what is real.

Christian ethics and cyberspace

With regard to internet users and cyberspace travellers, one of the challenges to the church is, in my opinion, the demystification of cyperspace. As Ignacio Ramonet, editor-in -chief of Le Monde Diplomatique, has pointed out, the information society already has all the attributes of a magic world: it is planetarian, permanent, immaterial and immediate (conquering time) - all these characteristics were previously attributed to God.

In this respect the creation narrative of P, Gen. 1,1-2,4a gains new relevance. Just as the cosmic deities were demystified by the people of Israel, today the virtual deities need to be demystified on a discursive level as much as on a practical level. Practically speaking, people need to be empowered to look behind the screen, to understand the dynamics of data exchange, the underlying linguistic text as well as its code. And just as we were taught to read and to write in our mother-tongue as well as in other languages, we need to prepare ourselves and others for the information society by learning its language. And just as we learn a foreign language step by step, its sounds lose their apparent secrets, its letters are no longer hidden codes. The binary system of the information society is as comprehensible as any other language used by humankind. It is about time that we stripped away its magic and brought it back to earth.

The individual outside cyberspace

So far we have only looked at individuals inside the information system. They become, according to Vilém Flusser’s cyberspace anthropology, nodes of relationships which come into existence only in relation to others. Proximity is, according to Flusser, no longer the function of spatial or temporal distance, but rather a function of the number and intensity of relationships, which link (interconnect) one with the other. The more I am linked to someone else, the closer they are to me and I to them, irrespective of the spatial and temporal distance that separates us.

Flusser concludes, that this new concept of proximity necessarily leads to a specific ethical approach. He writes: The closer that someone is to me, the greater the number of threads linking us together, and the greater the amount of information flowing between us... The closer that someone is to me, the greater our responsibility for each other; on the other hand, the further away they are, the more blurred and indistinct is the responsibility.

In other words, my neighbour whom I love is the one who is connected like myself. The one, who is not-connected is no longer my neighbour, although he or she might be living next door. The rather romantic image of the global village, which is frequently used by Software companies like Microsoft, in this context gains a rather cynical overtone.

But, who are these people who are not connected either by choice, for economic or other reasons? The average user is most probably male between 18 and 35 lives in the North and has a degree. But those parts of the population who are left out are those who are already severely marginalized: the poor; the elderly; the people in the South and in the East; women; and those, who do not have access to education.

It is striking how little reference official documents, for example of the European Union, make to these groups. As the information society from the government’s perspective serves mainly economic interests, the economic powerless groups have no lobby.

It is therefore not surprising that those who are ‘un-connected’ appear for example in the recently issued Green Paper of the European Commission on ‘The Convergence of the Telecommunications, Media and Information Technology Sectors, and the Implications for Regulation Towards an Information Society’ only as potential consumers who have to be courted rather aggressively to assure the economically successful implementation of the information society by the EU (cf. http://ispo.cec.be/convergencegp/97623.html). Under the sub-title ‘Changing home environment for consumption’ we read: A key factor in the take up of new services will be the penetration of PCs in the home and particularly multimedia and Internet capable PCs. The most promising consumers are according to the Green Paper the young under 16 as video games already represent 20 % of their total media consumption. In the near future they will be the ones who introduce the new information technology in their homes, whereas the generation of their parents, especially in Europe, has been amazingly resistant.

A voice for the voiceless

But my question is: What is happening to the others, to those who are not mentioned in the official government papers, who will not profit from the improved quality of life which the Green Paper promises to those who are the losers in the battle to conquer new global and national markets? In this context I think of Robert Geisendörfer, a pioneer in Christian communication in post-war Germany in the fifties and early sixties and one of the leading figures in implementing the Communication Department of the Lutheran World Federation. One of his arguments why the churches need to be involved in communication as well as in media development was that they had a Stellvertreterfunktion, a word which describes the role of the churches in giving a voice to the voiceless, a voice to those who are marginalized.

Last year the EKD, the Protestant Church in Germany, issued its new Comprehensive Communication Plan under the title Mandate and Market and here for the first time in more than thirty years the idea of the Stellvertreterfunktion of the churches was omitted. Does this already show that the dictate of the information market is already so strong that even the churches have forgotten the voiceless?

However, I want to argue strongly for Christians and churches to give a voice to the voiceless, regardless of whether we are talking about the media society or the information society. In Vancouver the Sixth Assembly of the WCC advocated credible communication and it gave criteria which are as relevant today as ever. Several points have specific relevance when we look for a critical Christian perspective on the information society. The questions which should be raised are:

∑ What is the motivation of the communication? Does it affirm or exploit people?
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∑ Does the communication make peace, build justice and promote wholeness?
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∑ Does the receiver have the opportunity to respond? Does it respect the reality of pluralism and provide for the voicing of diverse views?
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∑ Does the communication respect the Gospel’s reversal of the normal order of importance and value: i.e. last before first, foolish before wise, weak before powerful, poor before rich – and, let me add, un-connected before connected?
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Conclusion

These guidelines gain further relevance once churches themselves go online, once they establish their own virtual site, offer chat lines and pastoral care online. Are they really trying to meet their own understanding of communication or are they only copying what is already existing?

The present information revolution has not yet come to an end, it is an open process which can still be shaped by alternative forms of communication. As Christians we should not be satisfied with seeing our moral duty simply fulfilled by contributing to the flow of information. Whereas the information society is mainly identified with the globalization of the economy, Christians should work for the globalization of solidarity. Where is the prophetic voice of the churches?

References

Flusser, Vilém (1991). ‘Verbündelung oder Vernetzung?, manuscript for the Schweizer GDI-Forum ‘Wo bleibt die Informationsgesellschaft?’

Karin Achtelstetter is Media Relations Officer of the World Council of Churches (WCC), Geneva, Switzerland.