Are you ruled by Netocracy? Then this article is for you
Internet has gone beyond human control and became a new reality – virtual one which requires knowledge of rules and principles of safety.
According to IT experts, to become informed means to synchronize your head with the rest of the world. And, of course, we receive the greatest amount of information from the Internet, besides more jobs now require knowledge of computer technologies. According to Microsoft Ukraine, in 2013, 90 percent of jobs in Europe in all sectors will require knowledge of information technologies. Ukraine is not far behind: today 67 percent of all the jobs for young specialists require knowledge of computer operation. The world is changing and today philosophers, psychologists, and IT experts are using the word “netocrasy” – rule of network (the Internet) more and more often. It is believed that in the near future a new power of netocrats, when not money but information and social capital will play the most important role, will replace capitalism. There is a hypothesis that netocrats will become the new social and political elite. The rest will be consumers, who will be easy to manipulate and will serve their needs.
Psychologists, including specialists at the Hryhorii Kostiuk Institute of Psychology (Laboratory of New Informational Tools for Education) and at the Institute of Social and Political Psychology, part of NAPS of Ukraine, pay a great deal of attention to studying the role of the virtual world. The Day spoke with Yunona ILINA, fellow researcher at the Hryhorii Kostiuk Institute of Psychology, Candidate of Psychological Studies about positive sides of the new reality, its dangers, and possible ways to form “immunity” to virtual traps.
Mrs. Ilina, psychologists have already spent many years studying the virtual world. What is so interesting about it for them?
“The Internet has gone beyond human control and became a new reality – virtual one. And here we can treat it differently: we can either treat it as a natural phenomenon or we can turn a blind eye to the reality – to live as if there is no Internet and there is no difference between real and virtual worlds. Anyway, it requires knowledge of rules and safety principles. For example, our children live in real world and we teach them how to cross the street, how to behave in a store, in public places, etc. Now we also have a task to teach our children to live in the virtual world and it may cause some problems. For example, some adults know less about the virtual world than kids. Secondly, adults go out into the virtual world with already formed values, knowing what is good and what is bad, while children are shaping their values with the help of the virtual world and virtual community. It is also a big issue. It is not clear yet what it will lead to, but there is no doubt that the world has changed.
“In general, personality of an adult person was formed during at least 5,000 years, this means that psychological platform was formed where there was no place for neither globalization, nor Internet. That is why it was important for us to research how grown-up people can learn to live a new kind of life, as well as what are the risks and possibilities of this virtual life, and how we can protect both adults and children (because protection of adults is the case when they can not use the virtual world and reject its advantages). We cannot protect our children from real life by forbidding them to have any contacts with it saying: ‘don’t go outside because it’s dangerous out there.’ Instead, we teach them how to cross the street and not to talk to strangers. And we often treat the Internet the way medieval people treated astronomy.
“I would recommend reading the book by Alexander Bard and Jan Soderquist Netocracy, where the authors made predictions for the future development and changes in the society. They say that the future will be all about informatization and virtualization. Information technologies specialists predict that very soon – in 2025 – human population will divide into three ‘streams’: ‘fast stream’ who will live on the Internet and will have great power, resources, etc. Those will be the people of the virtual world, they will have quick access to all resources. ‘Slow stream’ is people who will live completely without the Internet and will not support the rules determined by the new reality. A good example of such people could be, so called, ‘downshifters’ – people who live in ecovillages and who completely abandoned all the delights and dangers of our time. The third ‘stream’ will be those serving – people who will do their business on serving the needs of ‘fast stream’ activities. They will be a link between the ‘fast’ and ‘slow’ streams.”
