The Offensive Internet: Speech, Privacy, and Reputation

beth — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Edited by Saul Levmore, Martha C. Nussbaum

The Offensive Internet is a collection of essays that focus on abuses made possible by the freedoms provided by the Internet. The essays deal with the issues of privacy, free speech, cyber-bullying, misogyny, and anonymity. Each essay focuses on one issue to discuss and concludes with what can and cannot be done legally at this time to solve a particular Internet issue.

The book is broken into four parts and each of these parts is comprised of multiple essays on a specific topic. The first is titled “The Internet and Its Problems” and features essays that explore how anonymity on the Internet has lead to widespread cyber-bullying and civil rights abuse. These essays focus on the objectification and abuse women suffer due to these issues (according to one study cited, between the years 2000 and 2007, 72.5% of cyber-harassment victims were women) and what effect this has not only on the victims of these abuses but on society as well. While the authors of these essays are mainly concerned with women's rights, they do also acknowledge that other minority groups (homosexuals, racial minorities, religious minorities) are often targeted by cyber-mobs, signaling a violation of civil rights all around. The real life examples of harassment and slander that these authors reference are disturbing and appalling, and as a reader, one begins to wonder why there are not more laws to regulate and punish cyber-harassment.

The second section of the book is “Reputation.” As the title suggests, these essays deal with how people's reputations can be damaged by the Internet through social networks, Googling, and rumor spreading. These essays address not only the issues we are having currently (for example, people getting fired for things they post on a Facebook page), but also how these issues will shape our society in the future.

The third section, “Speech,” is probably the one topic that is the most controversial. It deals with free speech, a topic that is as debated in the real world as it is in the cyber one. How much free speech should there be on the Internet? What constitutes as free speech and what is slander? Should people be allowed to use foul language or should some censoring be done? And if there is censoring done, who should be responsible for it? These questions and more are posed and discussed throughout the three well thought out essays on speech.

The last section, “Privacy,” concentrated on what information should be considered private, how that privacy should be protected, and what effect the Internet is having on our social norms in terms of privacy. I found the essay on social networks to be the most interesting. The fact that many people consider the information they post onto a social network page to be private, despite being displayed on the very public Internet, is an intriguing phenomenon in our society and this section explores the reasoning and consequences of this train of thought.

While I found many of the topics and issues discussed in this collection to be fascinating and intellectually stimulating, my favorite thing about it was that it didn't so much offer answers as questions that society needs to be asking. Whether you agree with the opinions expressed in it or not, this a book that makes you think, making it a worthwhile read for anyone.

Written by: Victoria Granado, March 28th 2011

Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963

admin — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

By David Rieff, Susan Sontag

Picador

When reading fictionalized journals, one never experiences the sense of the guilt that results from a real intrusion into someone’s private thoughts and personal life. The fictive writer simply does not exist. When the journal being read belongs to someone who has had a very real public persona, the reader will always experience a few uncomfortable moments. In reading Susan Sontag’s journals, this feeling is amplified tenfold. Firstly, these are the journals of a young woman who eventually became a famous writer and intellectual—the journals start when Sontag is only fourteen years of age. Secondly, the fact that her son, editor and author David Rieff, edited the journals for publication and glimpsed his mother’s private garden is a bit daunting.

From the outset, the thorny question of the dual son-editor role that David Rieff plays should be addressed. Any editor would have chosen to trim down the journals, which span sixteen years of Sontag’s life. This period, and the resulting length of the journals, would be excessive for any publication, and Rieff plans to issue two other tomes covering the rest of her personal writing. In choosing to publish the journals in the first place, the decision to “censure” some of its parts seems questionable. Censure is a term Rieff clearly rejects, citing “the literary dangers and moral hazards of such an enterprise.” But, how could he not let his own emotions act as filters to his mother’s journals’ contents? Rieff sometimes selects “a few representative entries,” while other times he omits complete sections intentionally (as with Sontag’s notes about her trip to Italy) and includes thoughts that had been redacted in the original journals by Sontag herself. Inexplicably for someone so prolific in her journal-keeping, there is a notable absence of notebooks for the years 1951-1952, the years Sontag was first married.

Sontag’s journals were clearly not meant for an audience, contrary to some journals of other famous authors. In his (often moving) introduction, Rieff recognizes that his “decision [to publish] certainly violates [his mother’s] privacy.” The notebooks consist of Sontag’s private thoughts and experiences, and also of random lists, facts, and information. They were most certainly kept by the author to remind herself of some of these pieces of information: films seen, books read, or to be read. It could be argued that the fact that she abbreviates some of her lovers’ names meant she was concerned about possible readers (or snoops) and she also codes some words/ideas with an “X” which Reiff does not (cannot?) interpret.

Sontag’s journals provide some fascinating insight into the author’s development from late adolescence into adulthood, and provide rare glimpses into very private aspects of her life: her homosexuality, her divorce, and various other life experiences. Her “feelings” and personal insights, which we normally associate with a personal journal, are only a minor element in the journals, but probably what most readers will seek the most in her private writings. Although much of the material starts off with a date and the editor provides some guidance in deciphering the entries (possible locations, for example), one only gets the sense, but for brief moments, that we are “along for the ride” with Sontag. As all who have attempted to write journals know, the writing is often sporadic, linked to decisive moments in life and/or strong emotions. For Sontag, as they are for most people, these notable periods were the beginnings of her studies in university and of her writing, her homosexual adventures, the birth and raising of her son, and some of her travels. These snapshots show a different side of Sontag, one that does not always match her public persona. She questions her reactions to love and carnal pleasures, motherhood, marriage, and filial relationships, among other things.

Usually, the publication of journals or correspondence takes place many years after a person’s passing. Sontag passed on in 2004 and this publication allows us to discover another side of her, since the journals were the vehicle for, as she called it, her “sense of selfhood.”

Written by: Sophie M. Lavoie, February 3rd 2010