Two, not one, but tending toward the first

Blogs, wikis and social networking are, indeed, assaulting our economy, our culture and our values. Web 2.0 is pushing us back into the Dark Ages.

—Andrew Keen1

Andrew Keen summed up a major critique of the Internet when he called it the "cult of the amateur," articulating the fear of many people that easy access to publishing and the speed of the medium contributes to what Heidegger would designate our "falling." Shorter blog posts (as opposed to the ouvré, the book), user-generated (as opposed to authoritarian/authority-generated) and telepresencing (among other Internet phenomena) would seem, at the outset, to be an obvious tendency towards a population that engages in idle talk and curiosity, falling into inauthenticity. Keen’s position, though not coming directly out of phenomenology, echoes the concerns brought up by scholars such as Albert Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Charles Spinoza, and others. Some, such as Borgmann, would agree with Keen and see the rise of the Internet as a dangerous path that will lead towards the destruction of both objects and “subjects who have long-term identities and commitments.”2 Others, such as Dreyfus, believe that there is a way we can use technology without an entirely negative effect.3

These arguments, though extremely well developed, require a constant re-examination because of the speed at which the Internet changes and because it is still in its infancy. In 2005, Tim O’Reilly published an essay entitled “What is Web 2.0?” that outlined particular trends in the progression of the Internet including the rise of Internet-based applications, the more fluid ways of organizing and manipulating data, and the importance of “collective intelligence.”4 O’Reilly’s essay became a defining influence in how web developers thought about their projects and now, three years later, the Internet is a much different place than it was. Analyzing these new trends according to Heidegger’s notions of idle talk, curiosity, and authenticity shows that the direction of the Internet is largely a positive one (or at least not entirely a negative one) that does not contribute as much to Dasein’s falling or inauthenticity as would be immediately assumed.

Before speaking in depth about the Internet as a force contributing to or taking away from authentic existence, it is necessary to define the sense in which the Internet is to be taken. Dreyfus posits that it “is the perfect technological device,” though he admits, “the Net is too gigantic and protean for us to think of it as a device for satisfying any specific need.”5 However, Heidegger’s elucidation of what technology is would seem to disagree. He says:

Everyone knows the two statements that answer [what technology is]. One says: Technology is a means to an end. The other say: Technology is a human activity. The two definitions of technology belong together. For to posit ends and procure and utilize the means to them is a human activity. The manufacture and utilization of equipment, tools, and machines, the manufacture and used things themselves, and the needs and ends that they serve, all belong to what technology is. 6

Heidegger then lists examples of technology such as jet aircrafts, radar stations, and a sawmill. All of Heidegger’s examples are specific means to specific ends—something “the Internet” as a singular entity cannot offer. In actuality, “the Internet” is not singular at all. Though the word Internet is singular, it actually designates a plural; it comes from “inter” (among) and “net” (for network, which must be constituted by multiple points). “The Internet,” then, is a singular term for the totality of many different networks, all with differing functions and presenting differing means to ends. It is less “technology” than something made up entirely of technological elements.

As a collection of means, the Internet then begins to resemble an ontical-categorial, technologically-dominated world rather than technology. Heidegger claims that “’World is used as an ontical concept, and signifies the totality of those entities which can be present-at-hand within the world”7 and Dreyfus takes this to mean “a totality of objects of a certain kind” like “the physical universe as the set of all physical objects, or a universe of discourse, such as mathematics, as the realm of all objects studied by mathematicians.”8 The Internet, then, could be the name for a world that includes all of the webpages, emails, web applications, and general bits of informational flotsam and jetsam.

This particular definition of “world” is not, however, what Heidegger means when he talks about the world. Rather, the world is what Dreyfus calls the “ontical-existentiell” sense of world, which Heidegger defines as:

not, however, those entities which Dasein essentially is not and which can be encountered with-the-world, but rather as that ‘wherein’ a factical Dasein as such can be said to ‘live’, “World” has here a pre-ontological existentiell signification. Here again there are different possibilities: “world” may stand for the ‘public’ we-world, or one’s ‘own’ closest (domestic) environment.9

Dreyfus presents several examples of what this means:

It helps here to contrast the physical world (sense number 1 [the ontical-categorial sense])—as a set of objects—with the world of physics—a constellation of equipment, practices, and concerns in which physicists dwell. ... Such worlds as the business world, the child’s world, and the world of mathematics, are “modes” of the total system of equipment and practices that Heidegger calls the world. Their way of being given, Heidegger calls the “phenomenon of the world” (119) [86].10

The Internet more closely resembles the ontical-categorial definition because it is a collection of many different objects (webpages, emails, etc.) that can be called up as present-at-hand when necessary11; it is a totality of objects similar only by the fact that they are digital or virtual, not an object in itself. For example, the purpose and function (the means and corresponding end) to Wikipedia12 (facilitating encyclopedic research) is much different than something like Cashboard13 (online software that allows freelancers to keep track of time and bill clients) and even more different than an application like iChat (instant messaging with friends or—at least according to the promotional video—teleconferencing for businesses), but they both are technology and exist within the ontical-categorial world of the Internet. 

The distinction of the Internet as ontical-categorial world is important for several reasons. It allows for the divide between physical world and virtual world that is normally implied in criticism of the Internet, but maintains that they are not wholly different. As Heidegger points out with his assertion of the ontological-existential sense of the world, the “worldhood of the world”:

Worldhood itself may have as its modes whatever structural wholes any special ‘worlds’ may have to the time; but it embraces in itself the a priori character of worldhood in general.14

There is, then, a set of features that are “common to our most general system of equipment and practices and to any of its subregion” and “[w]hen we try to imagine another reality...we can only imagine our world changed in certain details.”15 In terms of the Internet, this means that the virtual world and the physical world (both worlds in the ontical-categorial sense) must have some similar characteristics; a divide may exist between the two, but they are really only changed “in certain details.” In the organizational sense, this is evident in the structure of many of the first webpages which were organized linearly: a splash page similar to the cover of a book would first appear, followed by an introduction and table of contents-style navigation. The terminology of the Internet also reflects the fact that it is different then, but not dissimilar from, the physical world: “search engine,” “bookmarks,” “bulletin board,” etc. Many terms are even simply the offline counterpart with a Internet modified placed in front: “electronic mail/email,” “online directories,” “webpages,” etc.

Secondly, the distinction eliminates confusion of the Internet as an ontical-existentiell world. One  is “on the Internet” ontico-categorially, but this does not mean that one’s ontical-existentiell world is the Internet. This second distinction is important because when one operates online, one is also operating within an ontical-existentiell world that includes more than just the Internet. This backs up Dreyfus and Spinoza’s assertion that “a positive relationship to technology is possible because the technological understanding of Being is not and could never be fully monolithic in the first place, since there is no univocal ‘history of Being’ shaping Western history.”16 I.e., the world in which one lives (the ontical-existentiell world) does not have a single driving force, but is a multiplicity of forces.

Though the Internet and its parts could not overtake the world (it is one ontical-categorial world among many and cannot become the ontical-existentiell world), it can, as a part of the world, contribute to (or take away from) Dasein’s fallenness. Fallenness, for Heidegger, is “an absorption in Being-with-one-another, in so far as the latter is guided by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity.”17 Though his tone while discussing falling shows that he holds a great disdain for falling and the forces that guide it, Heidegger posits that falling is “an ‘ontological-existential’ structure of being-in-the-world as such,”18 an unavoidable “constant temptation.”19 Heidegger’s explanation for falling comes from two “incompatible...wholesale explanations,” one motivational and one structural.20 In the first instance, found in Division II of Being in Time, fallenness results from “the motivated result of Dasein’s temptation to ‘flee’ from its own nullity in the face of anxiety.”21 In the second, “falling and fallenness constitute a permanent structural feature of being-in-the-world that constantly inclines us toward an inauthentic mode of existence.”22 Dreyfus points out the contradiction:

Heidegger’s attempted secularization [of Kierkegaard’s dogmatic Christian interpretation of The Fall] runs into a double contradiction; inauthenticity becomes both inevitable an incomprehensible. On the one hand, if one holds that falling as absorption is motivated by fleeing, i.e., that absorption is a way of covering up Dasein’s nullity, then, since absorption is essential to Dasein as being-in-the-world, Dasein becomes essentially inauthentic. On the other hand, if facing the truth about itself leads Dasein to equanimity, appropriate action, and unshakable joy, resoluteness is so rewarding that, once one is authentic, falling back into inauthenticity becomes incomprehensible.23

Following Dreyfus’ exposition of the different explanations, falling is incomprehensible and inevitable—two ideas that can’t exist together. Modifying Dreyfus’ argument, Taylor Carman gives hope to the possibility of authenticity by making a distinction between “falling” and “fleeing.” He argues that “Heidegger clearly does not regard inauthenticity as an inescapable fact of existence, so fallenness cannot just be the result of a motivated flight” and takes fleeing as “a kind of limit case, an aggravated mode of falling, not an inevitable ongoing syndrome.”24 Falling, then, is an ongoing process that occurs “[s]imply by being socialized” whereby “Dasein takes over the fallenness of the one.”25 This interpretation of falling is most applicable to analysis of the current situation of the Internet, as it is increasingly used as a means of social communication: a world one enters, socializes in, and encounters the guiding forces of idle talk and curiosity that affect Dasein’s authenticity.

Heidegger’s notion of idle talk is best expressed by Taylor Carman:

Idle talk is, in a word, the discourse of the one, appropriate for anyone and everyone, consequently distinctive of no one in particular. What is said in idle talk is what one says, what is sensible and proper to say. Idle talk thus consists not just in talking normally, but in repeating what one hears, or as Heidegger puts it, “gossiping and passing the word along.26

This tendency is no doubt as prevalent online as it is in physical interactions. A recent example is the spread of a story claiming that the artist Guillermo Vargas Habacuc allegedly starved a dog to death in an art exhibit.27 An email circulated that encouraged recipients to sign a petition to keep the artist out of an upcoming Biennial and soon afterwards a Facebook group was formed. At the time of this writing, the petition has 2.3 million signatures.28 The online passing the word along of this story resulted in legitimate sources such as the Guardian29 and the World Society for the Protection of Animals investigating the incident. A Google search for “Guillermo Vargas Habacuc” illustrates the extent to which reports of this incident were merely “repeating what one hears,” as nearly all of the results have the same quotes and are essentially copied versions of the email. Though the email was heavily forwarded, most forwarders only added comments that were at most a sentence or two long and essentially just reiterated the “terrible” or “heartbreaking” nature of the artwork. No one dared question the morality or deeper purpose of the artwork, or even the legitimacy of the email. This example is on one hand an extreme case of idle talk on the Internet, but it also holds within it the inability to label the Internet as consisting only of idle talk. Not only did the Guardian and the WSPA investigate this incident offline, the online rumor-dispelling site Snopes.com examined the legitimacy of the email. Each investigation yielded a number of facts that were not included in the email, including the gallery’s claim that the dog was only tied up for three hours, fed regularly, and escaped.30

The actual reasons for idle talk, beyond just the mere fact of being socialized, are normally posited in one of two places: the tendency of language itself or what Carman calls the “generic drift of discourse.” The former view is championed by Dreyfus, who states, “Language by its structure leads Dasein away from a primordiality to groundlessness.”31 Carman puts forth the second view:

 Precisely because it is rooted in discourse, interpretation is constantly subject to a kind of generic drift, since articulations and elaborations of meaning essentially move in the direction of common intelligibility. What is intelligible is precisely what “one” understands. It is constitutive of making sense that one do so according to the standards of das Man.32

In arguing against Dreyfus’ take, Carman points out that authentic discourse necessarily implies an articulation of some variety. Authentic discourse, he points out, does not mean refraining from speaking, but just not imposing an already-present framework on speech, the “repeating what one hears” and “passing the word along” that Heidegger writes about. Through this repetition—idle talk, not language itself—discourse (even authentic discourse) moves towards inauthenticity.33

While the Internet has many elements that encourage idle talk and the generic drift of discourse (chat rooms, instant message conversations, much of the email volume), these elements seem to exist most prominently in the structures that rely on instantaneous communications that are not archived with the possibility of future modification, including instant message conversations, services such as Twitter34, and chat rooms. Though these communications are written, the use more closely resembles speech. In instant message conversations, for example, the main reason for many of the conversations is not to discuss something in particular but to converse with a friend that happens to be online, similar to running into a compatriot on the street or in a coffee shop. As there is no original topic of conversation per se, the temptation to drift “away from concrete context and fine detail” is high.35 More important, the goal is simply to be with the other person (even if it is through an instant messaging program) and the conversation, the idle talk, is the only linking element in the absence of a physical body. Thus, the conversation (the being-with-another) must drift into disparate topics and themes to continue. Similar occurrences happen throughout the Internet, but are not indicative of a blanket claim to only idle talk occurring.

In contrast to the “fast” communicatory mediums of instant messaging and chatting, there are slower mediums such as bulletin boards and wikis that allow for more authentic modes of discourse. Bulletin boards allow for more authentic discourse by centering the discussions around a topic and not around presence. The object of a thread on a board, generally, is to answer a question or get a variety of opinions on a subject.36 Posts continue only so long as there is a need for further discussion and must build upon what has already been said, otherwise the poster will be referred back to previous posts. Even starting a topic that has already been discussed at length will result in a more seasoned user referring the originator of the thread to the previous discussion. On most boards, there is protocol that discourages users from off-topic posts, which are ignored. Discussion occurs less like a conversation full of idle talk and more like arguments and written responses found in books and articles. This is not to say that idle talk does not exist on bulletin boards, but that the generic drift of discourse is drastically slowed and discouraged.

In addition to idle talk, fallenness is characterized by a tendency towards curiosity, which Heidegger characterizes as “a specific way of not tarrying amidst what is closest” and not “grasping something and being knowingly in the truth” but in Dasein’s lying in “its possibilities of abandoning itself to the world.”37 Dreyfus notes that this is a “tendency not a temptation and thus not a psychological state.”38 On the Internet, this tendency is apparently reinforced by the general organizational structure that centers around what tagging—what Clay Shirky defines as “free-form labeling.”39 This method of organization eschews the traditional hierarchical organizational system where everything is placed in specific categories for a more fluid system where categories are called up as they are needed. This is not dissimilar to Dreyfus’ notion of the hyperlink, where “everything can be linked to everything else without regard for purpose or meaning.” This system is problematic according to Dreyfus because “the size of the Web and the arbitrariness of the links make it extremely difficult for people desiring specific information to find the information they seek.”40 Without hierarchical ordering, all information is equal and “the user is encouraged to traverse a vast network of information, all of which is equally accessible and none of which is priviledged.”41 Thus, the lack of categorization plays into Dasein’s tendency towards curiosity.

While Dreyfus’ concerns are not unfounded, they rest upon the functionality of old iterations of the Internet where search algorithms and indexing practices were less advanced.42 Shirky provides three points that bring to light the fact that the Internet is moving away from a structure that encourages curiosity. The first point is that the original organization system on the Internet was actually a hierarchical one.43 Yahoo!, one of the largest search engines, began by attempting to categorize websites in a directory structure. The problem was that no one used it, opting for the search function instead. Likewise, Google constructed a directory structure, but eventually moved it from its main list of services because of disuse. Thus arbitrary and unpriviledged links Dreyfus mentioned were actually originally organized hierarchically, but it proved to be more difficult to find relevant information under this structure than through the more fluid search-base structure. The second point that Shirky makes is that hierarchical systems are not necessarily the best way of ordering information in any sense. Books, for example, can contain more than one topic, but can only be placed under one category. He says that “any concept is supposed to fit in one category and in no other categories.”44 The hierarchical system, then, limits the potential for curiosity, but also limits information and, as a result, the extent to which Dasein can be “knowingly in the truth.”45 The third point that Shirky makes is that hierarchical classification systems are not necessarily made with the proper hierarchies in mind. He points to two examples of the Dewey decimal system: the “Religions of the world” section and the “History (general)” section. The “religions of the world” list consists of nine categories: “Natural theology,” “Bible,” “Christian theology,” “Christian moral & devotional theology,” “Christian orders & local church,” “Christian social theology,” “Christian church history,” “Christian sects & denominations,” and “Other religions.” This list gives an obvious bias towards Christianity and presents a level of the hierarchy that contains categories that are not equivalent. Likewise, the “History (general)” section puts Great Britain and Austria on the same level as Asia, Africa, and the Balkan Peninsula. He points out that concepts are not being optimized, but the “number of books on the shelf.”46 This hierarchical system, then, is not created around definite concepts, but “designed to minimize seek time on shelves.”47 The categories, then, may be either too specific or too general, rarely being exactly what the searcher wants.

The internet’s organizational system, based around a combination of tagging and search algorithms, is actually moving away from a mass of disorganized hyperlinks encouraging curiosity and towards a more fluid relevance-based structure that eliminates linked information with only tenuous connections. The system of tagging, pioneered by sites such as del.icio.us encourage users to bookmark sites and label them with terms that make sense to the user. For example, the New York Times website could be labeled with terms like “news,” “yellow journalism,” and “liberal” that make sense to a particular user but would not be picked up by a search engine spider. These tags are added with the tags of other users, as well as compared with click-through rates on particular search queries to check the legitimacy of the tags. Dreyfus’ claim that “there aren’t enough cataloguers to index the Web” isn’t true anymore.48 While on the surface, the complex structure of the Web may appear to add to curiosity, once the structure is understood, it actually contributes to the curious impulse less than traditional, offline categorizational systems.49

The question that this discussion has been leading towards is the question of being authentic in the world that contains a virtual component in the form of the Internet. This is a central concern for Dreyfus, Spinoza, Carman and a number of other philosophers writing about the effects of the Internet. Authentic existence, independent of the existence of the Internet, in Heideggerian terms, is not an optimal end point, but a constant struggle for Dasein. Carman outlines the process of authenticity:

Similarly, authenticity consists in nothing over and beyond our ongoing resistance to the banalizing, leveling pressures that pull us away from any explicit recognition of the “mineness” at the center of our existence.50

Dasein is always in the midst of forces attempting to pull it away from its authentic self and contributing to its fallenness, including the tendencies towards idle talk and curiosity. These forces come as a result of Dasein’s being-in-the-world because “even when Dasein acts authentically, it must do what makes sense according to public norms and use public equipment, so there is a constant pull away from primordiality in everything it does. Resisting falling requires constant effort.”51 Authenticity, then rests in Dasein’s ability to stand against falling through recognizing its freedom and making choices; it is “by avoiding choices one becomes snared in inauthenticity.”52

These choices, however, are not arbitrary and changing choices, but a response “to one’s factical particularity as calling for a decision of some kind.”53 Authenticity comes out of Dasein’s ability to understand how it is different from das Man and to interpret itself “as an egoic personality to be distinguished sharply from others, precisely because there is so little difference among individuals.”54

The main criticism of the Internet as a force acting contrary to an authentic self rests on the ability choose too quickly and too often without consequence, a tendency called “morphing.” This goes against early Heidegger’s concept of authenticity, which rests on “owning one’s finitude so as to choose one possibility,” i.e. to have a unique sense of constancy.55 Zimmermann outlines the issue:

As opposed to what Gergen calls the moderns’ quest for sincerity and integrity, and the romantic’s quest for depth and commitment, the Net-surfers society will be governed by a style that “would be one of intense, but short, involvements, and everything would be done to maintain and develop the flexible disaggregation and reaggregation of various skills and faculties. Desires and their satisfactions would give way to having the thrill of movement.56

This assumption comes from Zimmerman quoting Dreyfus and Spinoza quoting Sherry Turkle’s analysis of online role-playing games.57 The games in question, MUDs or “Multi-User Dungeons,” were text-based games prominent in the early days of the Internet, but have since been replaced by more graphical online role-playing games such as Everquest and World of Warcraft. While MUDs and online role-playing games represent one area in which authenticity is called into question, it also downplays the vast majority of areas on the Internet where authenticity is required.

As the Internet is used more for continuation of off-line communication, constancy is becoming more important. The “intense, but short, involvements” are giving way towards actual authentic personality-building. The multiplicity of involvements that Dreyfus, Spinoza, Turkle, and Zimmerman are (rightfully) concerned about is, partially, a byproduct of the early iteration of the web where data wasn’t portable. Years ago, Internet users had to form multiple identities because their identity could not be transported from site to site. In recent years, portability of data has become a focus of developers, so that users can now construct a constant identity that moves with them from site to site, much as their personality moves with them as they navigate the offline world. The most prevalent form of this technology is OpenID, a project that allows individuals to “use a single digital identity across the Internet” and comes out of the realization that “people are already creating identities for themselves whether it be at their blog, photostream, profile page, etc.”58 

Services such as OpenID are pointing towards the future of Internet users not as entities with constantly shifting identities, but as entities that are constantly making choices that “distinguish it sharply from others” and contribute to an “egoic personality.” The saving power is not so much the ability to free ourselves from a “total fixed identity so that we may experience ourselves as multiple identities disclosing multiple worlds,” but realizing that a constant, authentic identity may be composed of categories that are not defined explicitly in the traditional hierarchical sense, but exist only for ourselves.59 As Dasein being in the world that contains the Internet, the possibilities we choose authentically are not those of choosing one pre-defined category over another, but choosing to create the categories only for ourselves.

This paper has not been an attempt to argue that the Internet as a whole decreases idle talk and curiosity or prevents falling into inauthenticity, but to show that “the Internet” is not as unified as one would first imagine and such broad claims should be re-examined. The Internet may be there in one place, on a screen on a desktop (even though this is rapidly changing), but a physical world (hardly a unified place) is also there in one place, before our eyes. It is remiss to see “the Internet” (as a singular entity) as only technology without realizing that, as mentioned earlier, it is more of a technological world and in this world there is structure assistance to falling and inauthenticity as structures put in place to deter inauthenticity as much as possible. We may be in the second (and last) stage of the Internet, but we are tending towards a first person, a more unified user.

Works Cited

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——. “Highway Bridges and Feasts: Heidegger and Borgmann on How to Affirm Technology.”

Carman, Taylor. Heidegger's Analytic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

——. “Must We Be Inauthentic.” Heidegger, Authenticity, and Modernity: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Volume 1. Ed. Mark A. Wrathall and Jeff Malpas. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000. 13-28.

Couzens, Gerard. "Outrage At 'Starvation' of a Stray Dog for Art." Guardian Unlimited Online. 30 Mar. 2008. 6 May 2008 <http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/news/story/0,,2269320,00.html>.

Gelven, Michael and Martin Heidegger. A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time. Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1989.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Oxford: Blackwell, 1962.

——. “The Question Concerning Technology. Basic Writings. Ed. David Krell. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993. 307-342.

Keen, Andrew. "The Great Seduction, Cult of the Amateur." Andrew Keen on Media, Future, and Technology. 15 Oct. 2006. 6 May 2008 <http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/the_great_seduction/2006/10/my_book_now_not.html>.

O'reilly, Tim. "What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software." O'Reilly. 30 Sept. 2005. 6 May 2008 <http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html>.

Sancho, Jaime. "Boicot a La Presencia De Guillermo Habacuc Vargas En La Bienal Centroamericana Honduras 2008." PetitionOnline.Com. 6 May 2008 <http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?13031953>.

Shirky, Clay. "Ontology is Overrated." Clay Shirky's Writings About the Internet. Spring 2005. 6 May 2008 <http://www.shirky.com/writings/ontology_overrated.html>.

"Starving Dog Art." Snopes. 14 Apr. 2008. 6 May 2008 <http://www.snopes.com/critters/crusader/vargas.asp>.

Michael Zimmerman “The End of Authentic Selfhood in the Postmodern Age.” Heidegger, Authenticity, and Modernity: Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Volume 1. Ed. Mark A. Wrathall and Jeff Malpas. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000. 123-148.

Notes