At the very least, Time is seen lamenting that politics has become such a lively part of the World Wide Web. In a recent article titled "Facebook Users Go to War over Gaza," Time seems to say that social networking sites on the Internet were free of vitriol until politics and the war in Gaza came around.
Social-networking websites may have started out as online cliques where friends could swap opinions on music, pop culture and other bits of innocuous personal trivia. But as the conflict in Gaza has unfolded, it's becoming evident that sites like Facebook are increasingly being used to express political views, adding an acrimonious, even menacing undertone to what were once lighthearted online forums.
What? Is Time saying that politics isn't really a subject that average people are ever interested in? Only "music, pop culture and other bits of innocuous personal trivia" belong on social-newtworking sites? And, does Time imagine that there was no vitriol on the Internet but for the existence of political opinions?
Does Time not have any philosophical grasp on the salient fact that man is a political creature? That politics is not somehow outside of man's normal existence but an integral part of it?
From reading this lament, it would seem that the folks at Time are truly that simple minded.
And, naturally they found another so-called "expert" to claim that this is all so "troubling" and "new."
Rita King, who studies online communities as a senior fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, says the heightened level of hostility since Israel began its military operation is troubling. "Learning how to navigate this potentially dangerous new twist in human interaction is complicated, particularly with regard to issues of security," King says. According to Lea Bishop Shaver, a lecturer at Yale Law School, threatening to kill someone through an online forum "can land you in jail for assault, even if you never touch the person." But she added that making empty threats over the Internet rarely results in prosecution. "To trigger criminal prosecution, the threat has to be a serious one," Shaver says.
Sorry, Rita, but there isn't a THING "new" in this "human interaction." It is perhaps more immediate, but these sort of passions and interactions are as old as man himself.
In any case, this Time "report" is at the same time filled with the obvious and blindly stupid of the nature of humanity. There are no insights here.
