When Zombie Chickens Come Home to Roost

 

Mary Shelley warned us in Frankenstein.  Ralph Ellison told us in the Invisible Man. So often we create our own monsters, but we do not always realize it at the time.

Even before the exploitation of the internet, the toxic rhetoric of the 2016 election, the alarming rally in Charlottesville or a president who spreads more poison than policy,  the mold was cast for all that grief,  and more to come by letting seemingly small bad things find a home, and a place to accumulate.

This road was not paved or monsters created  by any one person, company, organization, or government. Equally, once the problem became obvious, it was not possible for any single entity to address the problem. Deftly, those seeking to undermine the credibility of facts presented to the public, quickly coordinated domestically, internationally, and across agendas to share their own best practices. They exploited the competitive nature of business practices in the internet industry and that anti-hate groups were in their own similarly competitive mode for sponsorship. As a result, early in the internet age, extremist communities became more coordinated and strategic while civil society and industry entities prevaricated.  The mindless and all-consuming zombie chickens of hate had infected each other, flown the coop, were on the loose, contagious, and breeding.

Zombie chickens would seem a ridiculous choice of allusion to illustrate a serious problem.  Chickens are not terribly threatening. Zombie chickens are practically laughable, but not if you were counting on trying to eat one or get any eggs.

Conspiracy theories and the people who spread them were likewise not taken seriously.  Regardless of who decided conspiracy theories, or their advocates were harmless, that phenomenon began an erosion of our faith in information sources and fed our worse fears. The internet, until very recently, did not elevate the truth, it infected it with a virulent malady.

Now, those apparently harmless chickens we created have come home to roost. Those chickens, like our information channels, which were once a reliable source of enrichment, are now questionable and even dangerous.

The critical mass of stakeholders needed to develop industry wide hate management technology goals, standards, policies, and public education mechanisms did not begin to materialize for almost 20 years.  We can all see the damage that delay has caused. Once the choice was made to not get ahead of the problem of corrosive content, catching up became the only alternative.  Have you even tried catching a chicken? Like catching up with online hate, no simple matter.

Jonathan Vick

Schrödinger’s Internet

Cliffy died in 2010, but I did not know that until last week. Until then he was still alive to me.  I liked him, had not heard from him in many years and, as I have done so many times before, went looking for him online.  The adage holds true, be careful what you ask for. I want to add, be careful what you look for.

I am the North American representative for INACH (International Network Against Cyber Hate),  an accomplished internet investigator and researcher, and usually find what I am looking for - eventually.  We have all searched for people from our past who mean something to us. Helping others in this way, and with other online challenges, is extremely rewarding. When all the digging through endless piles of online manure is done, we sometimes find a pony, sometimes a rhinoceros, and sometimes tears.

People disappear for any number of reasons. There is no way to totally disappear, but with a little effort and time, you can get close. When someone does not want to be found, you should respect that. When they have disappeared, not by choice, you must respect that.  There are always exceptions, but they all come at a price.

Until last week, Cliffy was both alive and dead. Something called superposition.  That is the essence of the Schrödinger’s Cat thought experiment. When I found Cliffy, opened the reality of things on the internet, the reality of the two possibilities collapsed. Cliffy was indeed dead.

The internet acts like Schrödinger’s box, holding the truth of different realities but requiring an act of will to open it up and find the reality.

I do not think Schrödinger liked cats. I do not think he gave much thought to the cat. It was all about the box and the experiment.

I do not think the internet industry likes us. It historically has not given much thought to the people inside the internet. Internet users have, for far too long, been secondary to the internet itself and the experiment of all the stuff inside. The internet companies own the boxes on the internet and can decide to collapse the possibilities of information and help determine the reality, if they are brave enough.

This is the great conundrum of science and commerce. What comes first, the experiment or the cat; the totality of possibilities of information or the reality.  

Schrödinger’s cat is not a real cat. Schrödinger’s box is not a real box. It was never meant to be left closed. Superposition may be real, but it is not reality. You only get reality when you open the box and feed the cat or bury it.

I do not like that Cliffy is gone, but that is the reality. To change reality is to fictionalize it.