Freedom, expression and education I am proud of my parents. Since very little is obsessed by getting their four children have the best education possible. That meant fighting with us for us to study, for us to read, so we had a critical consciousness. My own father refused for a long time to enter a video at home as he felt that would mean an end to the long conversations about anything and at any time. There never was in my house a single topic or taboo banned. And the maximum you have always raised me is to enjoy the discussion, to defend my ideas and respect for opposing ideas, but not shared.
I was fortunate to discover and start using the Internet very early. That magical window that opened for me in my desires multiplied 95'me allow communication. Byzantine form could discuss dozens of people around the world and my addiction to News Groups, Mailing Lists and Forums grew to the point that the day the site moved to a new version, even without being aware of it, with the appearance blogs and other forms of participation, I was happy.
I returned to college after years out of it. After engaging in consulting, I realized that the only thing that makes me feel good is the ongoing conversation, the pleasure to share views, discuss. The University has always been that to me. I joined my speech
Internet off line, could not be otherwise. Pushing, encouraging, asking my students to not stop to investigate and participate in any online debate
they saw interest. Vehemently, passionately.
And today, in the midst of a doctoral thesis advocating the business conversation with customers and the environment, I begin to feel the downside of digital currency. Not in the case of corporations, not yet, anyway. But in these forums, forums for discussion and that more and more blogs are filled quickly insults, shouts, threats, disrespect to those who think differently.
Of course the growing number of Internet users has much to do with it. The Netiquette
, that concept as obsolete as the mantra of "it is a lack of education" so often heard, seems to have disappeared, replaced by "I am free to say what I want and how I want, and you, fascist not you who to tell me otherwise. "Fascist
. Word simply terrified to hear. Used simply to silence the contrary, as a virtual punch or dialectic, as a legitimizing mantra. E insults. Reds, Fascists, mixed in an absurd debate, without respect and no other basis than show "I am free and I say what I please."
At the University of politicians are silenced. Politicians, in turn, stifle journalists pitching their message and not take criticism. On the street the dichotomy between them is settled with insults aimed at the more egregious mamporrerismo. And in the forums and blogs ... those who think the beauty of the word red to the vulgarity of speech.
No matter concerned a discussion of
if some bikers not perform well on the road or on the brainless who decide to take to the streets
to denigrate the opposite. Is unimportant if the discussion takes place in
Meneame in a forum of a television
. The aim is to shout, vex, be the pimp, the class bully, virtualized today but no less real.
We've got a good part of our society uses the Internet to communicate. And we have to open new ways to exchange views, fast and ubiquitous, though I can not stop thinking that we have missed something. Training to prevent a new kind of badass bartender takes control of speech, paste kicked in the mouth of others and become the stereotype to follow.
