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Reflections on Internet , scientific culture, and social-health environment.
Dr Luis Carlos Silva Aycaguer
E-mail: lcsilva@infomed.sld.cu
Introduction
We live in a scientifically uncultured society. By saying this, I not only refer to the euphemistically called “developing” countries, some of which seem to be “in danger of extinction” due to their extremely high prevalence rates of HIV-AIDS seropositivity, but also to those societies with high healthcare, wellbeing and educational standards and populations that frequently consume all sorts of goods, particularly state-of-the-art products.
Obviously, the scientific activity as such, particularly research, is the task of an elite made up of a select minority of people who have the desire, the talent and the required formation for doing this as is the case of cellists or cardiovascular surgeons. Today`s society requires and expects that all citizens reach not only a high level of knowledge and dexterity – level of proficiency in writing, language and computing, etc – but also appropiate cultural level. However, such desideratum is in conflict with the market as a ruling element of life from which cultural trivialization derives. For example, it is evident that mediocre cultural products are produced more easily at lower cost; consequently, the most profitable path is to arouse the greatest interest of consumers for them. Pseudoscientific pieces of information are much more sealable than those of true science, so they are also intensively publicized in spite of the fact that they should arouse the smallest interest.
If there is a sphere where we face significant cultural shortages is the scientific sphere. And if that were not enough, many people do not believe that science constitutes an essential part of culture; however, on my opinion, the cultural role of science could rescue culture from its disturbing tendency to banality.
It is within this impoverishing process where Internet emerges. What is the real potential role of Internet as energizer of the scientific culture? What are the pitfalls that must be overcome to attain this goal?
Of course, I do not intend to fully characterize the very complex social, cultural and technological phenomenon of Internet. In turn, I intend to make some modest reflections on its relationship with the scientific and health culture of the society that is just one of the social edges upon which Internet has a direct tangible impact. The fact that Internet is a formidable informative building, which has been self-shaping in an essentially chaotic way, turns it into a forefront cultural event, mainly because of the intellectual exercise of abstraction, conceptualization and structuring that it demands from millions of persons in addition to the technical and operational knowledge requirements that it represents.
The extraordinary facility with which we can now identify texts, sounds and images, preserve them in our own desktop computer and even change or share them with other colleagues, opens up new possibilities that were unthinkable some time ago for scientific culture, fundamentally in the southern zone of the planet. In the case of researchers, these possibilities are potentiated by the delivery lists through e-mail, access to many journals from different disciplines, connection to databases and registers (for example, population and epidemiological), access to academic institutions, health institutions, research centers and individual webpages of scientific figures.
Cervera (2001) pointed out one of the most encouraging traits that, despite many problems, makes us praise Internet:
Internet is here; it can not be uninvented. Computers and networks are tools that allow the Third World to be on equal footing with the
Perhaps, we will have to wait for this remarkable event to take place. However, as an academician living in a developing country and in need of updated information that until very recently could only be looked at a distance, I can say right now that the possibilities ofered by the information revolution have placed us in a situation qualitatively better than the existing one prior to Internet. Never before had we so much felt that we are on a par with our European and American colleagues in this regard; at least those who do not depend on huge technological resources for research, we feel there is some level of equity in terms of social, intellectual and cultural creation.
Frequently, we hear some references to the so-called “information avenues” through which the above-mentioned resources circulate. However, an avenue is something very different from Internet pathways. An avenue is a main traffic artery where other secondary streets converge and it serves as a reference to guide us in a city. There is no such a thing in Internet. There exist starting points that are perhaps more noticeable than others, but the entangled mishmash of pathways is difficult to schematize.
Not only the structural reasons but also the labile components of this structure make the drawing of a “map” impossible. We are talking about a stormy informational framework that has dizzily grown without proper guiding rules for its construction and preservation. This indiscipline means that information located in certain address until very recently is not longer there today for whatever reason whereas a site that has lost its validity might still be active because nobody has removed it from access circuits.
An approach to this controversy, with a view to shaping an orderly cultural advancement, immediately discloses a long list of conflicts that , if analyzed, they may be useful to anticipate the challenges, the perils and the opportunities of Internet. I will organize my presentation by using the poles making up a short series of “contradictions”. As it will be seen, these ones may not be true contradictions but rather alternatives that function in perpendicular axes, which are possible (and advisable) to be combined in order to design new operational drawings in the polyhedral Internet world.
1. Vertical and horizontal communication
In my opinion, although Internet keeps vertical structure elements inherent to any other known information system, the most novel feature from the sociocultural viewpoint is that it creates and promotes significant possibilities for participation in horizontal data exchange flows. Here is the first couple of contradictory and supplementary categories.
While the user is inexorably involved in an electronic hierarchy (due to its invisibility, it may lead him ⁄ her to be under the illusion of full freedom), the truth is that Internet has undoubtedly proved to be the most powerful vigorous horizontal means of exchange and communication among individuals ever seen in the history of mankind.
The users are more than ever potentially subjected to the control of their activities, viewpoints, interests and actions. This does not mean that “the elder brother” is constantly watching us when, once connected, we convey our social profile through the things we buy, read, comment upon, etc; it means that spying is possible. As Catalan sociologist Manuel Castells, who has actively worked on the topic with remarkable lucidity and anticipation capacity, states: “a political, legal, police or commercial power (property right supporters) that wants to act against a particular Internet user can intercept his ⁄ her messages, detect his ⁄ her movements and if there is some infringement of set standards, then it can proceed to repress the Internet user, the service deliver or both” (Castells, 2001). Technically speaking, Internet is an architecture of freedom but socially, its users may be repressed and watched through the network.
Internet is rightly acussed of allowing and promoting a sort of social autism in which the image of a citizen browsing on the network of networks is less true than the realities of a subject trapped in the webs of the network. This is a false dichotomy; although it is true that some people hide behind the small physical space of their computers, the range of interactive inter-personal communicative possibilities, which just begin to be displayed, is extensive. E-mailing, blogs, personal Webpages, wiki methodology (please see next section), chatting, exchanges among participants in e-courses and debate groups are some examples.
The Cuban experience through the telematic network for health provided by INFOMED already takes its first promising steps in order to place these potentialities within a daily practical perspective where the vertical use of the system combines with increasing communication and interaction among the various actors of the National Healthcare System.
2. Browsing and contribution
In fact, browsing-contribution dichotomy is another somewhat controversial node; the call “to browse” that publicity makes is deceiveful since it tends to carve into the minds of users that Internet is exclusively a space of data search and retrieval. However, though it obviously constitutes an invaluable source of information that provides us with singular opportunities for interaction and gravitation. Of the pillars supporting the so called “digital revolution”, Internet is the one that best represents the converging, participatory and interactive character that distinguishes this setting, even though only a minority of users takes advantages of the possibility of contributing to Internet.
Nevertheless, we are witnessing a spectacular and even unimaginable process of collective construction through the deployment of numerous and fruitful contribution to the same artefact, which often find coherence pathways difficult to believe if we did not have tangible proofs of this. The origins of this process take us to Richard Stallman, researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and pioneer of the movement around Free Software Foundation. This institution was created in 1984 to disseminate and generalize the liberalization of computer operating systems by means of the free use of open codes. Free access operational system known as Linux (in fact GNV/ Linux) emerged from the alliance of Stallman with Finn expert Linus Torvald from Helsinki university and is the result of the work of thousands of software developers all the world over, who joined their efforts through Internet, and is the system with which millions of computers and servers operate in today`s world.
Linux`s core uses neither a single line from AT & T code nor a line from other commercial proprietary services, but its development depends on complex technical aspects whose details can only be mastered by an elite. The most relevant aspect of this system regarding the scientific culture of the society is the potentialitis to manage products of great social impact. In this field, the Cuban experience can also be considered paradigmatic since the first steps for the configuration of our telematic health network were taken, they use Linux operational system(Silva and Urra, 2004).
It is worthwhile to look at some real expression of this “open code” philosophy. Perhaps Wikipedia is the most eloquent expression. This is a multilingual enciclopedia that emerged with the support of non-profitable corporation Wikimedia created by Jimmy Wales in order to develop free content projects. The idea stems from the so-called “Wiki technology” emanated in 1995, and according to its creator Ward Cunninghan, it is a collection of freely extensible web pages, a hypertextual system to save and change information, a database in which each page is easily changeable by any user having access to a browser.”
Since its inception in 2001, Wikipedia covers almost four millions of articles in tens of languages. Frequently, a new entry is introduced by a non-specialist cooperqtor; afterwards experts intervene to improve it as much as possible in a very short period of time. The English version have tens of thousands of registered users. In October, 2005 it held the 37th place among the most visited sites worldwide. In an interview with “El Paìs” from
How can this system work? How does the enciclopedia manage to keep high quality levels? It is difficult to explain but, apart from some minimal precautionary measures, the key seems to be in the work of cooperators who are in charge of refining it in faster and more extensive way than the predators that could damage it. In the above-mentioned interview, the creator of Wikipedia quoted: “At the bottom, adding negative or vandalic contents to it is not gratifying for some people, simply because others eliminate it very quckly. He also commented in that interview:
The way of managing Wikipedia is a mixture of consensus, in which a final agreement mus be reached, democracy through an informal voting; aristocracy by which the decisions of the most respected have greater influence; monarchy, that`s my place, and a benevolant dictatoship where decisions must be made. The idea is to use less this dictatorial manners in favor towards more consensus forms. If someone breaks confidence or respect, then it`s my turn, for example when neonazi groups attempted to impose its ideology.
At the time of publishing a biographical sketch of John Seigenthaler, a journalist and assistant to murdered Robert Kennedy, in which he was falsely linked to the murder of his brother president John Kenedy, the controversy came to light. The article that had been anonimously writen – something still possible at the very beginning but under control now – stayed four months with this error unnoticed.
Of course, as time goes by, new forms determined by facts of life will be adopted. At the closing of 2005, two versions of Wikipedia- one stable and controlled and the other constantly updated. There are many potential problems (from articles with insults or mispellings incorporated by an editor to coping with the above-referred vandalic actions going through photo copyright, ambiguities, duplications, etc, etc, etc) Regulations have been enforced to strengten editorial standards, even though the original spirit has been in essence respected. Since June 2006, Wikipedia has decided to protect those entreis that can objectively be the target of ill-intentioned adulterations or disputes. Some articles will be totally closed until present problems are eradicated, whereas others will remain semi-protected and could only be edited by registered users later than 4 days.(Reventós 2006). It is very difficult to imagine how this great collective effort will be and how it will operate. But it is certain that it will not be as today.
Right now the fact is that a comparative analysis between Wikipedia and British Enciclopedia published in Nature (Giles 2005) yielded amazing results. A set of 42 different terms was selected. On one hand, the content of each of them included in Wikipedia was sent to respective international experts and on the other, the contents of these entries in the British Enciclopedia were sent to other international experts. Neither of the 84 consulted experts knew the source of the received information. Only eight serious mistakes were detected, four per each. Minor mistakes included in these 50 entries such as omissions and confusions amounted to 291; 168 corresponded to Wikipedia and 123 to British enciclopedia.
This outcome is highly relevant since it came to disavow the controversial opinion that , for the delight of information merchants, famous Italian semiologist Umberto Eco had given to German newspaper Die Welt a year before when he said that “ there is a threat that 6 000 million persons have 6 000 million enciclopedias of different origin” and they can not longer understand edach other; so Internet could generate lack of communication globally if it makes common cultural references impossible.
In spite of Microsoft´s desperation, which has its own code for products the use of which requires payment of royalties, Linux platform continues to develop at present and Wiki technology extends to cover projects like Wikictionary, a dictionary with definitions, synonyms and antonyms; Wikiquote, a famous phrase repertoire, Wikibooks, textbooks of all sorts and levels or Wikinews with today´s news. Without intending that the model of this current should be assumed mutatis mutandis, it is beyond doubt that the anti-hegemonic participatory methodology that it represents must constitute a source of inspiration for the building of knowledge at various contexts like medicine and public health.
No wonder Microsoft is the main “enemy” of Stallman and his free software movement. Among other reasons, this is because the free software does not depende on periodic updating as in the case of the paid one – updating usually does not provide anything new except for some flashes that may appear with mistakes and vulnerabilities- since the essence of the open-coded movement is permanent updating.
3. Quantity and quality of information
Having more information offers in principle a substantial potential profit but also it may imply more confusion. Javier bustamante, professor at Universidad Complutense de Madrid said that perhaps here is “the paradox that a data avalanche is not the solution to overcome ignorance, just the opposite of other human needs that are just met by means of a bigger influx of what one is in need of” (Bustamante, 1999)
Information pollution is overwhelming and the great time savers that are personal computers and Internet represent traps that may lead to a waste of time and to false pieces of information that could naively be considered as valid. The warning that there are plenty of reasons to distrust either data veracity or the honesty of those who disseminate them is a cliché. Historically, the more efficient way of fighting spurious or untrue information has been to providing right genuine information; however the big challenge is to separate one from the other. As it has been said, Internet is not a source of information but a means of information whose reliability is based on the sources from which it comes. The resources to be created to solve this dilemma will be decisive in order to fully insert Internet into the scientific culture of the society.
It is necessary to point out that, though slow and hard, peer review-based conventional scientific journal system offers in principle a strict guarantee that is a far from negligible benefit we miss insofar as the information flood develops faster than our own capacity to assimilate it in a rational way. Nevertheless, the network has been gradually outlining its own organizational paths, its own timid ordering and some other resources, so that we can be guided as far as reliability is concerned, although generally well behind the developments. For example, electronic journals and publications emerged a long time before the norms about citing them, but the true thing is that they are already here. The credibility of a source may be more or less anticipated but not always. Suffice it to remember Brandom Williams` dirty trick. He was a student from State University of North Carolina who, at the closing of 2003, invented a study which supposedly demonstrated that fellatio was a breast cancer risk-reducing practice. After being placed in the university webpage as a joke, the news in detail of the so-called research aroused so much interest that it was reproduced and kept as truthful news by CNN until the true story was disclosed. (see Wolf et col. 2003).
These realities set a methodological principle for those who are determined to extend and democratize health knowledge and information, in particular for the Cuban project in this field. The support to the provided information by scientifically authorized institutions and bodies has ben a leading principle of INFOMED work to which the premise of total transparency required in each text, each contribution, explicit responsable person that can be contacted at any time may be added
4. Informatic literacy and unculture of the society.
The number of Internet users is increasing by leaps and bounds. Informatic illiteracy rapidly decreases; you just take a look at daily published statistics (see http://www.argo.es/noticias/estadìsticas.htlm). Nonetheless, the assimilation process of true digital culture is something else; it has been poorly studied and paradoxically it might be partially going back. I believe that the massive incorporation of “digitally uncultured” users on a daily basis contributes to chaos. Viruses, for example, have much more fertile land to spread upon as more recently literate users join Internet.
If something seems to characterize the world where we are living at the beginning of this century is the speed of tecnological replacement and the increasing amount of information that, either distorted or trivialized very frequently, may confuse rather than clarify the citizens` ideas. The temptation of tapping a key without giving a second thought is really great. Everybody has faced this situation in one way or another.
In an easy-to-read though controversial book for many reasons, Cebrián (2000) wrote that we receive even against our will an overwhelming amount of information; we are bombed with facts and data that distort our ideal of knowledge, which is the result of abstraction and of an organized sketch allowing us to relate things, ideas, and to set them to a particular context, situation or reality. All this requires time to make reflection and space to express doubt.
Bustamante (1999) recalls British writer Arthur C. Clarke when he stated that having scientific technical knowledge assures neither deeper human dimension nor ethics that tells us the direction and speed for this knowledge to be used. In this setting, he underlines the “deep asynchrony between rhytm of technological innovation with an exponential growth rate and the human capacity of assimilating, making reflection, understanding new situations and adapting to them through the creation of new values, norms and lifestyles that increase arithmetically.
It should be added that there is a high number of people who should be seriously involved in the debate on these topics (particularly political and social leaders) but they are real digital indigents. The members of this sector, whose main blame would be to have been born pre-term, (besides the lack of formation and poor intellectual curiosity) are frequently unable to use information technology or to undertand its social and cultural impact, but they make decisions on this issue without being duly advised (Terceiro, 2003).
Some years ago, I enjoyed watching the movie “Blade Runner”. It seemed to me that the plot was a mere dispensable excuse. The real main character is not the policeman featured by
5. Superficiality and high technology
I deem appropriate to analyze a topic that directly illustrates the lack of intellectual training for criticism of a sizeable part of high level technology users.
Internet has turned out to be a favorable space and means to spread apocryphal texts and falsities. The general access to this powerful technological tool and its informative possibilities opens the door to all sort of lies that are naively consumed and re-disseminated. Perhaps one of the most worrying realities is that many persons devoted to scientific and particularly healthcare activities seem to lack resources to understand it.
Undoutedly, one of the most used ways to disseminate such tall stories is electronic mail by which, in one way or another, the receiver is urged to re-send a message to other persons. So, a very long chain is generated. All of us have received these messages and their number is directly proportional to the lenght of time we have been working with electronic mail since this practice is quite old.
Frequently, it is about warnings on supposed informatic viruses contained in electronic messages with certain text in their subject; these viruses would destroy information (or cause serious alterations) in our computers or networks. These warnings are false and their dissemination is the result, to a large extent, of the great ignorance of users when it comes to informatic viruses as well as the insecurity experienced when one moves in barely known settings.
Many of the most flimsy messages, which seem to be designed by and for mentally-retarded people, announce great misfortunes for people who do not resend them and a lot of advantages for those who do so (it may also mention that some people lost their job because they broke the chain or some others won the lottery after following the instructions). Through the primitive technique of using stick and carrot alternately, they exploit the astonihing tendency of a lot of people to believe that there are dark forces ruling their destiniy and drawing their future.
Other people reproduce apocryphal documents that are attributed to famous writers or personalities, as it happened with “
Although this list is not finished, I will finally mention the messages that comment on the situation of a person suffering some misfortune or fatality, whose destiny can change if the receiver follows a particular instruction (almost always you should re-send the message to others).
Recently, I read a cynical statement in novel that said: “people are divided into two groups, those who want money and those who do not know what they want”. I do not agree with it, but I think that , although there are more groups apart from these two, the authors of these monstruosities belong to one of the two mentioned subsets.
It appears that there are individuals determined to construct chains of this type, due to an unknown akward psyquiatric entity (maybe they only aspire to have the orgamisc pleasure of receiving one day from Singapur the same message that they had generated from some isolated office in
The interpretation that the chain generators do not know very well what they really wish is one of the two posible alternatives. However, the other is that the author belongs to the group of those looking for money at the expense of our energy, our naivety, our good intentions and our time (the length of time devoted to these chains).
Unfortunately, not only this kind of chains find receivers and disseminators. The exchange of all sorts of banalities and surprising commercial pieces of information or offers (the so-called spam that is a real headache for network administrators), the dissemination of pseudoscientific and pseudocultural materials are some examples in which impoverhing superficiality and the power of information technologies are today at the disposal of everybody.
To defend ourselves from this mediocrity, we must be very watchful because the attack is permanent, sustained and takes advantage of both our good will and the fascination (legitimate in certain way) of the new technologies, which is damaging the habit of deliberately making reflections on the texts before us.
The efforts to be made in terms of scientific education and raising of the health culture of the population and the specialized staff as well should take into account these perils in all their dimension. Once again, Cuba has exceptional opportunities to overcome them, but it is essential that we bear in mind that , as it happens in other educational processes, avoiding mistakes and negative habits is much more effective than eliminating them once they have come out. Thus, here is another line of action for our network.
References
- Bustamante J (1999) Dilemas éticos en la sociedad de la información: apuntes para una discusión. Revista española de ciencia, tecnología y sociedad, y filosofía de la tecnología 2:169-183.
- Castells (2001) Internet: ¿una arquitectura de libertad? Libre comunicación y control del poder. Conferencia inaugural del curso académico 2001-2002 de
- Cebrián JL (2000) La red. Barcelona: Suma de Letras.
- Cervera J (2001) Una botella medio llena. Accesible en http://www.ucm.es/otros/especulo/numero8/lared.html en agosto de 2006.
- Fernández A (2005) Entrevista a Jimmy Wales. Periódico El País del 14 de julio de 2005.
- Giles J (2005) Internet encyclopaedias go head to head. Nature 438: 900-901.
- Reventós L (2006) Wikipedia se defiende de los vándalos. Periódico El País del 20 de junio de 2006.
- Terceiro JB (2003) Internet: luces y sombras. Periódico El País del 31 de mayo de 2003.
- Wolfe A y col (2003) CNN Blows! En el periódico The New Yorker Observer del 27 de diciembre de 2003.
On Line Closing Notes for the Virtual Event