COMP6044   Just another ECS Blogs weblog

On an evening two weeks ago, a power-cut in Southampton plunged the city into darkness. As much of the city’s buildings lost power, people started wandering out onto the streets. Despite the power cut lasting no longer than 30 minutes, there was a faint air of panic as everyone was reminded of how much they have come to be dependent on electricity. I was one of them – living in a modern flat, no electricity means no lighting, no cooking facilities and no running water – the basic amenities of modern life.

But I was also reminded that the Web is just as vulnerable. Much like electricity, the web has become something we are dependent on. And like electricity, the complex infrastructure that delivers Internet to our homes is prone to disruption through countless ways. The Southampton power-cut was caused the failure of a single substation. Likewise, the failure of a single point on the Internet infrastructure can cause huge disruption. The reasons may be accidental or malicious.

Above: People walk the streets of New York during the 2003 blackout. It was caused by a software bug and affected 55 million people, lasting almost a day for some and over two for others.

So over the next few weeks, I am going to consider what might happen if the web were to disappear. Given that there is still over half the world’s population to start using the Web, it seems an appropriate time to why this is and whether this impacts their lives. For example, the widespread political issues surrounding web availability, such as restrictive firewalls and censorship, could provide insight into how loss of access to the Web affects us already.

Literature in Social Anthropology can tell us how humans have historically dealt with loss of perceived necessities, whether it be wartime rationing or survival during and after natural disasters. Perhaps this can help us prepare for a disaster that leads to the loss of the web. And if we did lose the Web, what would the impact be? Modern civilisation is governed through Economics, which, considering how the Web has become a platform for economic prosperity, could be one of the most affected areas.

The uptake of the web is not stopping any time soon, and the loss of the web could be detrimental to a future society. Now is an important time to get a better understanding of what the consequences of loosing the web would be.

Whether it be from property developers, civil war and conflict, treasure hunters and local enthusiasts, or just “bad archaeology”, archaeologists and heritage professionals have long struggled with the question of how to ensure the protection of sites, monuments and antiquities for future generations. Archaeological method and “preservation by record” were historically born out of situations where archaeology can not be conserved and within a desire to uphold one of the main principles of stewardship: to create a lasting archive. As archaeology is (very generally speaking) a destructive process that can not be repeated, an archive of information regarding the context and provenance of archaeological sites and finds is created to allow future generations to ask questions about past peoples.

Recent years have presented numerous ethical challenges to archaeologists and and other stewards of the past, particularly where crime and illicit antiquities are concerned. Social media and web technologies in general have provided, in some cases, real-time windows into the rate of the destruction of heritage sites within areas of war and conflict. Evidence from platforms such as Google Earth, Twitter, and YouTube have all been used by world heritage stewards to plead for the protection of both archaeological sites and “moveable heritage”. Ever-evolving networks of stakeholders in the illegal antiquity trade have also been identified and linked to looted sites in areas where some have hypothesized that the sale of antiquities is actually funding an on-going arms trade in regions consumed by civil war.

Although a case could be made for investigating the nature of archaeology and crime from the angle of many different disciplines (philosophy, ethics, economics, law, psychology, to name a few), criminology and journalism were specifically chosen to offer insight into the role of the Web as a facilitator in the flow of information. Both disciplines are concerned with information flow and resource discovery – for example, in journalism the flow of information between (verifiable) sources of information through to dissemination to the public, and in cybercrime the important information exchange that drives networks of crime (both physical and virtual).

Focusing on the nature of information exchange, what would criminology and journalism contribute to the following topics?

• Social media and the dissemination of heritage destruction. What are the ethical issues surrounding the use of social media sources in documenting heritage destruction? Can/should social media sources (sometimes created for other purposes) be used as documentation to further research or conservation aims within archaeology?
• The international business of selling illicit antiquities – from looters to dealers – what role does the Web play in facilitating these networks of crime? What methods for investigating cybercrime could be applied to the illicit antiquities trade to better understand the issues surrounding provenance?
• Does the “open agenda” and the open data movement specifically (e.g. online gazetteers of archaeological sites, open grey literature reports with site locations, etc.), create a virtual treasure map and subsequently increase the likelihood of looting at archaeological sites?

Some aspects of each discipline which I believe to be relevant to the study of each (as well as the chosen topic):

Criminology and Cybercrime

• What is crime? (“The problem of where.“/”The problem of who.“)
• Policy and law
• Positivism and the origins of criminal activity.
• Digital Forensics

Journalism

• What is Journalism?
• Who are Journalists?
• Ethics and Digital Media Ethics
• Anonymity, Privacy and Source
• Bias and Conflicts of Interest

Some Potential Sources

Criminology:

Burke, R.H., 2005. An Introduction to Criminological Theory: Second Edition. Willan Publishing.

Walklate, S., 2007. Criminology: The Basics. 1st ed, The Basics. New York: Taylor & Francis.

Yar, M., 2013. Cybercrime and Society. 2nd ed., London: SAGE.

Journalism:

Ess, C., 2009. Digital Media Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Frost, C., 2011. Journalism Ethics and Regulation. 3rd ed., Longman.

Harcup, T., 2009. Journalism: Principles and Practice. 2nd ed., SAGE.

The Web provides a unique set of contexts and questions to study a variety of topics. One area where this is particularly evident is our online presence. It is well documented that people’s behaviours are different in an online situation, for instance trolling and hactivism. Whilst these differences are often attributed to the anonymity that the web offers, there are many examples of them manifesting in identifiable circumstances, such as on social networking sites. As a means to focus my research, I will likely concentrate on the activities of people on social networking sites with a view to understanding the behaviour behind them.

This issue of a difference between our online selves and ‘real’ selves can be examined through many different lenses. There are legal aspects to this such as if and how laws are applied on the Web. Economically we can look at the differences between shopping on- and offline. Broadly speaking, these deal with practical concerns relating to online personas. From a more abstract perspective, and underpinning the practical approach, we can question the way we think.

Considering how much of it I purportedly do for a living, until recently I had never given much consideration to understanding the processes behind. A fascinating idea I have come across is the difference between how we think and how we think we think. This is something where psychology and philosophy intertwine.

Psychology

Psychology has always been associated with analysing social issues and behaviours. The psychology of online behaviour is a very broad subject with a great deal of conflicting conclusions. In recent months, an area that has unfortunately come to the fore is the phenomenon of depression and bullying that exists on and via social networking sites, and one of the areas I will look at is the ethics of online behaviour. In particular I am keen on looking into how our morals, or perception of morals, are formed. The reasons behind any disparity between offline and online ethics will provide an insight into this.

Philosophy

Morality is an issue that has been extensively studied from a philosophical perspective. Whilst psychology is useful in examining the reasoning behind a code of conduct, philosophy concerns itself more with the actual code. Various philosophers have attempted to explain what morality is and this provides a more direct approach to understanding its formation. The vast majority of these theories have been developed in the absence of the Web which hence provides a rigorous testing ground for them.

Naively speaking, psychology is the study of how we think whilst philosophy is the study of what we think. Of course, each of these fields can claim to subsume the other ipso facto. Rather than trying to combine these two fields in a hierarchical relation, I will attempt to unite them in a more balanced manner.

The topic of ethics can be viewed as a part of a larger debate into our attitude to socialising on the Web. Depending on the scope of the topic, this is something I will hope to extend to.

In the 1987 revision of his book Computer Lib [1], Ted Nelson wrote:

EVERYTHING IS DEEPLY INTERTWINGLED. In an important sense there are no “subjects” at all; there is only all knowledge, since the cross-connections among the myriad topics of this world simply cannot be divided up neatly. Hierarchical and sequential structures, especially popular since Gutenberg, are usually forced and artificial. Intertwingularity is not generally acknowledged—people keep pretending they can make things hierarchical, categorizable and sequential when they can’t.

I’m not sure the Web has yet caught up with Nelson’s vision of  Project Xanadu, or the degree to which it is practical to do so. But, he makes a good point about the weakness of relying too much on hierarchy. Hypertext makes possible a wonderfully interconnected Web which has been a daily source of improvement and enjoyment. However, much of it feels like moving around a big box-and-line diagram, merely mapping nodes and links. Frequently, web usage is continuous a loop in and out of search tools (like Google) between individual or small clusters of pages, rather than following richly linked data strands.

Richer linking is less common. Although many links may be present in a document many are simply in-page/site navigation links or SEO-aiding faux page breaks. Also, the paucity and sterility of links may reflect the economic approach of finding and trapping eyeballs – why send people to your competitors, by linking to them? Links to, or through, paywalls are also of suspect value. Meanwhile, given the node-and-link model, we tend to envision the web as hierarchy – or a directed graph at least. A less intertwingled reality, it seems.

My experience from writing documentation and software community support has shown it surprisingly hard to achieve sticky knowledge transfer except when working at or close to one-to-one scope; not  very efficient. The lazy reaction is to blame the learners, but I’m open to the thought that as authors of hypertext, maybe we’re not doing this right. Perhaps we need to use a different tack and be less shallow in our weaving of the Web, offering the reader more routes to their goal of knowledge. More intertwingularity, applied with some thought, might move us forward. Approaches like spatial hypertext and techniques from hypertext fiction may help, even if currently egregious compared to standard practice.

Figure: Early stage planning in Tinderbox

Serendipity strikes, as now I’m being asked to look at a Web issue through the eyes of two different disciplines. Those I’ve selected as showing promise in providing a useful alternative view to the above, are:

• Psychology. This studies the human mind and behaviour, seeking to explain how we feel, act and reason. The intuited relevance to my topic is that a better understanding of our reasoning – and motivation for behaviour – might allow us to make smarter choices about how we author hypertext, to meet and reward those motivations.
• Literary Theory. This discipline seeks to describe the methods and ideas we use in the – reading and understanding of literature. A set of tools, if you will, by which we may understand literature. It will be interesting to see how the non-linearity of Hypertext fiction fits current theory.

I’m unsure as yet how narrow we may set our disciplinary scope here as, within the above, Cognitive Psychology and Narrative seem sensible sub-topics. Within the Literary Theory and indeed Narrative, culturally-based sub-sets with doubtless exist: does one size fit all? However, my plan is to start wide and winnow to find an appropriate breadth of coverage.

Starting Texts

Thus far my research has been a reconnaissance, more browsing than structural study, to help me pick some starting research references. So, these are my selections for initial study at least in terms of published books. Disclosure – I’ve not yet read these, rather they are what I plan to start reading:

• Psychology / G. Neil Martin, Neil R. Carlson, William Buskist.
• Cognitive psychology : a student’s handbook / Michael W. Eysenck, Mark T. Keane.
• Literary theory : a very short introduction / Jonathan Culler
• Literary theory : an introduction / Terry Eagleton

Footnotes:

• [1] Nelson, Theodor (1987), Computer Lib/Dream Machines (Rev. ed.), Redmond, WA: Tempus Books of Microsoft Press, ISBN 0-914845-49-7

This isn’t as some might think just an excuse to attack the male gender and point out the sites used to discriminate against females; rather looking at how the web has (in places) facilitated gender divides. There are websites, Facebook groups, forums, etc, set up in the name of promoting one gender over the other. The web (as in many areas such as cyber bullying) given people a safe impersonal place to display their prejudices and explore them with like minded people. Unfortunately it’s much easier to sit there and argue that your gender is superior than fight with both factions to say that everyone is the same. I support this topic and the arguments for it are essentially the same as cyber bullying, racism, ageism or any such discrimination on the web, although I would say that this was more of a grey area, and since it is one of personal interest I have chosen this specific section for my review.

The disciplines I have chosen are psychology and philosophy as I know absolutely nothing about them, and they have some relevance to this issue.

Psychology:
The areas that will be studied here are the basic principles of psychology particularly emphasising on behavioural psychology and why people behave the way they do in relation to gender inequality. Reading will focus on both feminist psychology values (and whether they are actually a set of values geared towards equality or if they are more geared towards female bias), in addition to finding out more about the male psyche. Both of these areas are relevant to the topic as they explore both sides of the coin, and on top of this I will be studying why people find the web an easier medium for their prejudices than face to face; and whether the web has brought out a ‘freer’ element for people to express their opinions, or actually negatively enhanced people’s ability to impersonalise discrimination.

Philosophy:
Philosophy wise, the areas that seem most relevant and interesting to this topic are: firstly, the ultimate question of ‘what is equality’ gender or otherwise, from a philosophical standpoint; secondly an ethical investigation of how equality should be promoted, and what actually counts as discrimination. Philosophy leaves a lot of room for personal interpretation, and so does a lot of the material on the web, where should the line be drawn between a joke and something that is actually a discriminatory comment?

Philosophical Psychological View:
Finally these two disciplines will be looked at together in relation to this issue; hopefully to combine the ethical definitions of equality from a philosophical point of view, with the behavioural psychology points of view to better understand how the web has actually affected gender equality.

Blog Post Plan:
Week 1 (14th Oct) – Intro
Week 2 (21st Oct) – Philosophy 1 – Defining Equality & Arguments against Equality
Week 3 (28th Oct) – Psychology 1 – Methodology of Psychology
Week 4 (4th Nov) – Philosophy 2 – Methodology of Philosophy
Week 5 (11 Nov) – Psychology 2 – Defining Gender & A Gender View of the Web
Week 6 (18 Nov) – Philosophy 3 – Key Question: What defines an gender equal web in terms of philosophy?
Week 7 (25 Nov) – Psychology 3 –  Key Question: What defines an gender equal web in terms of psychology?
Week 8 (2nd Dec) – Philosophy 4 – Philosophical Conclusions
Week 9 (9th Dec) – Psychology 4 – Psychological Conclusions
Week 10 (16th Dec) – Philosophy of Psychology

How many people carry matches these days?/Susan Sermoneta ©2012/CC BY 2.0

Question
How can corporations be encouraged to open their data (so that we know it’s safe to drink the water)?

Background
The benefits to corporations of opening their data is well documented, but they are not necessarily appreciated in all sectors of industry.

Prospecting for oil and gas with the aim of engaging in hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’) operations causes some popular concern which could be alleviated by the more open availability of real-time monitoring data.

In the UK, all industrial activities are subject to health and safety audits and some involve continuous, around the clock monitoring. For example Cuadrilla Resources employ Ground Gas Solutions to provide 24 hour monitoring of their explorations in the UK. Ground Gas Solutions monitoring aim to:

provide confidence to regulators, local communities and interested third parties that no environmental damage has occurred. (GGS, 2013)

Currently the data collected through this monitoring is made public via reports to regulation authorities, which can be subject to significant delay, are often written in technical language, and are not easily accessed by the general public.

My argument is that real time (or close to real time) monitoring data could be made open without any damage to the commercial advantage of the companies involved, and, if clearly and unambiguously presented (e.g. via a mobile app), could go some way to alleviating public concerns, particularly regarding the possible contamination of drinking water. Exploring what motivates some corporations to make their data open and the challenges they have overcome to do this, may suggest successful strategies for encouraging proactive, open behaviour within industry.

Disciplines
Anthropology – Considers key aspects of social life – identity, culture, rationality, ethnicity and belief systems.

Anthropologists aim to achieve a richness in the description of encounters they have with people and places, and have a strong tradition of creating narratives and developing theories that describe and  attempt to explain human behaviour. In the context of the exploration industry, how might an anthropologist explore the underlying cultural values and prevalent beliefs of people working within corporations?

I believe that exploring this issue through the lens of anthropology would provide some insight into the workings of the energy exploration business and uncover useful data that may indicate strategies for encouraging corporations to share real time monitoring data.

Economics – Analyses the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services.

The widespread use of empirical data related to economic exchange together with emerging theories of human behaviour appear to underpin this discipline, which I believe have significant value to the study of my question. Exploring the commercial incentives for opening real time monitoring data from the perspective of differing economic theories combined with the data collection methodologies prevalent within this discipline can provide useful understandings of the question, which may point to practical solutions.

Anthropological Economics: an interdisciplinary approach
The question: “How can corporations be encouraged to open their data?” appears to call for solutions that tackle not simply the “bottom line” of economic necessity, but also the culture that requires individuals within corporations to maintain secrecy in order to maintain or improve their employers market position. From my current naive standpoint, a combination of the anthropologists qualitative, narrative-driven approach to studying human behaviour with the economists quantitative, theory-dominated view of commercial interaction looks like a worthwhile approach to gaining a better understanding of the key issues.

Proposed reading list
Anthropology:
Eriksen, T. H., 2004. What is Anthropology? London: Pluto Press.
Eriksen, T. H., 2001. Small Places, Large Issues: An Introduction to Social and Cultural Anthropology. London: Pluto Press.
Fife, W., 2005. Doing Fieldwork. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Miller, D. ed., 1995. Acknowledging Consumption. London: Routledge.

Economics:
Fogel, R. W., Fogel, E. M., Guglielmo, M. and Grotte, N., 2013. Political Arithmetic : Simon Kuznets and the Empirical Tradition in Economics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Giudici, P. and Figini, S., 2009. Applied Data Mining for Business and Industry. London: Wiley.
Isaac, R. M. and Norton, D. A., 2011. Research in Experimental Economics: Experiments on Energy, The Environment, and Sustainability Governance in the Business Environment. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group Publishing.
Quiggin, J., 2011. Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us. Woodstock: Princeton University Press.

Twitter states that it is a tool for social good, helping charities to promote their cause, helping businesses to work more effectively and giving the public fast, up to date access about whatever they find interesting [1]. While twitter has undoubtedly been used for good, for instance in education [2], and for fundraising activities [3], it has also been seriously abused [4], leading to implications for society on whether the site can be controlled effectively in the future, or whether things will only get worse.

The two disciplines I have chosen to look at are Philosophy and Politics.

Philosophy:

In this area I have been looking at the three main distinctions of philosophy; metaphysics, epistemology and moral/political philosophy. Whilst the first two areas are perhaps more abstract, containing huge fundamental questions beyond the scope of this project,  it is the third area that I am particularly interested in and that I believe ties in well with the question. For instance the area can be well applied to how people, including the general public and those with power, use twitter on a daily basis. Should companies be allowed to use celebrities to casually endorse their products? Why do hundreds of people take to ‘bullying’ one another on a daily basis? Does a lack of norms allow for this? Can we justify this behaviour? Is it the duty of the government to do something about this?

Politics:

This is an area which I have not yet looked into as fully, but from my first readings it appears that politics studies anything and everything to do with those who have been allocated a position of power, and what policies they decide to uphold. In the area of political philosophy, I am particularly interested in what makes governmental decisions legitimate and does the government have power over online space?

Resources:

[1] https://twitter.com/about

[2] http://www.fp.ucalgary.ca/maclachlan/EDER_679.06_Fall_2009/tweeting_the_night_away.pdf

[3] http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/217772

[4] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23485610

Philosophy

Craig, E. ‘Philosophy: A very short introduction’

Honderich, T. ‘The Oxford companion to Philosophy’

Nutall, J. ‘An introduction to Philosophy’

Warburton, N. ‘Philosophy the basics’

Sellers, R. ‘The principles, perspectives and problems of Philosophy’

Politics

Lanne, J. and Ersson, S. ‘Comparative Politics’

Kelly, P. ‘The Politics book’

Political Philosophy

Wolff, J. ‘An introduction to Political Philosophy’

Swift, A. ‘Political Philosophy’

The Digital Divide has become a popular term, commonly understood as the gap between those that have access to the internet and those that do not. Initially it is assumed this gap is simply between the developed and developing countries, also known as the Global Divide. However, there are other distinct aspects of the divide; Social divide – the gap within each nation, and the Democratic Divide – those who use/do not use digital resources in their pubic life.

Although there are several efforts and schemes in place with the hope of bridging the gap, it is a great issue that is highly unlikely to be solved in the near future. In fact it is most probable that the gap will carry on growing, increasing the difficulty of bridging it.

This topic has always intrigued me. I believe this is a great opportunity to research the matter through the perspectives of Geography and Criminology.

> Geography

Geography, the study of “the world around us”, already draws upon a range of disciplines including sociology, anthropology, geology, politics, and oceanography.

It is divided into two parts; Human and Physical Geography. Although I will hope to cover both parts, I believe my research will heavily focus within the Human side of Geography, as it emphasises on the changes of the world effected by human interventions.

I anticipate to discover research amongst one of the main topics of Geography; Globalisation – a defined term used since the 1990s describing the characteristics of the world we live in.

> Criminology

With absolutely zero previous experience in the field of Criminology, I hope this will give a different insight to the Digital Divide in comparison to Geography, and with a closer focus on the topic, such as social inequality.

Light research has already demonstrated there is a vast interest in crime and criminals, and that crime varies throughout different societies. There are several explanations criminologists have composed from Biological explanations to Social and Psychological explanations. There are also several different theories created to explain reasons for crime including the Economic and Strain theory.

> Resources

To date, the following books appear to be of great use and help towards this research study:

Daniels, P., Bradshaw, M., Shaw, D., Sidaway., (2012)  An Introduction to Human Geography, 4th ed, Essex: Pearson

Moseley, W., Lanegran, D., Pandit, K., (2007) Introductory Reader in Human Geography Contemporary Debates and Classic Writings, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing

Hale, C., Hayward, K., Wahidin, A., Wincup, E., (2009) Criminology, 2nd ed, New York: Oxford University Press

Norris, P., (2001) Digital Divide, Civic Engagement, Information Poverty and the Internet Worldwide, New York: Cambridge University Press

Back in Amsterdam, I wrote my bachelor thesis on the usage of social media during the so-called ‘new media revolutions’ during the Arab Spring. One of my main conclusions was that social media are not just of use for the oppressed populations to liberate themselves, but are also being used by (authoritarian) governments to track, and often arrest, opponents. While writing my thesis I herewith developed an interest for the ways in which governments all over the world detect, track and eliminate potential ‘enemies’ of the state through the Web.

Online surveillance is for me one of the most interesting subjects when studying the Web. On the one hand it could be used to protect the state by finding criminals, terrorists and other dissidents. At the same time, omnipresent surveillance can affect ‘regular’ citizens. When governments misuse their power in this field, they can become a ‘Big Brother’ that closely tracks everyone in a nation. This may change the way people browse the Web.

Because of this fact, I think that an interesting way of looking at the topic can be through the disciplines of Psychology and Computer Science.

Psychology

Users of the Web might alter their (online) behavior if they have the feeling that they are being constantly ‘watched’. Looking at online surveillance from a psychological perspective may give an explanation why users act differently. Psychology is the study of mind and behavior, and therefore will most likely offer many different theories to analyze web users that have the feeling (or are actually) being watched. I loaned the book Psychology by Peter Gray from the library to start learning about the epistemologies and ontologies in Psychology.

Computer Science

Besides a psychological perspective, it could also be interesting to look at online surveillance from a Computer Science perspective. Through this field it can be analyzed how governments can watch citizens, while at the same time it can look at how the citizens can avoid being watched. I loaned the book Computer Science. An Overview by J. Glenn Brookshear to get some insights in how computers work and how they have been used over the years.

By combining Psychology and Computer Science I hope to get a human perspective with a technological perspective and learn more about how to combine these disciplines.

Sources

Brookshear, J. Glenn. Computer Science. An Overview. Eleventh Edition. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2012.

Gray, Peter. Psychology. Fifth Edition. New York: Worth Publishers, 2007.

I am very interested in the issues of identity within the Semantic Web and Linked Data. Moving from a web of documents to a web of data with URIs (unique resource identifiers) for every referenced object/thing/person, aims to create new links between related content. However what happens when you want to refer to a person or thing which isn’t already referenced? This new object will be assigned a URI and others will then be able to link to it. However, who will manage this data and ensure it is correct? This issue is especially significant when referring to an individual. If someone has no intention of creating an online presence or doesn’t have access to the World Wide Web, what impact will this URI about them have on their life? They might not even be aware that a whole series of connected data about them is being collated on the web for everyone else to access. I am going to look at this area from the point of view of philosophy and either sociology or anthropology.

I have started my research by looking into the recognised strands of each of these disciplines.

Philosophy contains a number of interesting areas which could be applied to this problem. Philosophy of language could look at how the use of language could affect the formation of an online network and linked data, (http://www.philosophy-index.com/philosophy/language/). The political angle of philosophy would be interested in government, law and social justice, (http://www.philosophy-index.com/philosophy/political/). But possibly the most interesting angle would be to look at the philosophy of the mind, specifically the mind body problem (http://www.philosophy-index.com/philosophy/mind/mind-body.php). This train of thought would look at the idea of mind and body being separate and a philosopher could argue that each should have their own URI?

Secondly I want to look at the idea of URIs and identity in relation to cultures and at the societal impact that online identity could have. Sociology could include the social organisation or social change (http://savior.hubpages.com/hub/Areas-of-Sociology).

Similarly to Philosophy, Anthropology could include the study of language, and how this could impact the online community. Linguistic Anthropology looks at the cultural impact on nonverbal communication (http://anthro.palomar.edu/intro/fields.htm). Cultural Anthropology:

“All of the completely isolated societies of the past have long since been drawn into the global economy and heavily influenced by the dominant cultures of the large nations.  As a consequence, it is likely that 3/4 of the languages in the world today will become extinct as spoken languages by the end of the 21st century.  Many other cultural traditions will be lost as well.  Cultural and linguistic anthropologists have worked diligently to study and understand this diversity that is being lost.” (http://anthro.palomar.edu/intro/fields.htm).

This field might look more negatively upon the web, as a tool which is potentially destroying the traditions and cultural diversity, which makes the world so varied.

This is a very brief introduction to the problem and fields which I wish to investigate.