The Cyber Effect (42 page)

I believe it is time we stop, put down our devices, close our laptops, take a long, deep, and reflective breath, and do something that we as humans are uniquely good at.

We need to think.

We need to think a lot.

And we need to start talking more—and looking for answers and solutions.

The best approach is transdisciplinary. We don't have time to wait for more new fields to arise and create their own longitudinal studies. We need to hear from experts and research in a wide array of existing fields to help illuminate problems and devise the best solutions. We need to stop expecting individuals to manage all things cyber for themselves or their families. Science, industry, governments, communities, and families need to come together to create a road map for society going forward.

Until now, most academics have been looking at the cyber environment through the limited and myopic lens of singular disciplines. This book has tried to take a holistic, gestalt-like overview, using a broad lens to help understanding. As the network scientists say, it's all about sense-making.
We need to make sense of what's happening
.

Critics will argue that this is “technological determinism”—that I am blaming all contemporary psychological and sociological problems on technology. They will cry out that the beautiful thing about cyberspace is the exhilarating freedom. But with great freedom comes great responsibility.

Who is responsible now? And who is in control?

If we think about cyberspace as a continuum, on the far left we have the idealists, the keyboard warriors, the early adopters, philosophers who feel passionately about the freedom of the Internet and don't want that marred or weighed down with regulation and governance. On the other end of the continuum, you have the tech industry with its own pragmatic vision of freedom of the Net—one that is driven by a desire for profit, and worries that governance costs money and that restrictions impact the bottom line. These two groups, with their opposing motives, are somehow strategically aligned in cyberspace, and holding firm.

The rest of us, and our children—the 99.9 percent—get to live somewhere in the middle, between these vested interests. As a society, when did we get a chance to voice our opinion? Billions of us now use technology
almost the way we breathe air and drink water. It is an integral part of our social, professional, and personal lives. We depend on it for our livelihoods and lifestyle, for our utilities, our networking, our educations. But at the same time, we have little or no say about this new frontier, where we are all living and spending so much of our lives. Most of our energy and focus has been to simply keep up—as the cyber learning curve gets steeper every year. As we know from environmental psychology, when an individual moves to a new location, it takes time to adapt and settle in.

Before we settle in, let's make sure this is where we want to be. The promise is so vast—and within reach—let's not allow problems to get in the way. As a cyberpsychologist and a forensic expert, I am deeply concerned. Every human stage of life is now affected by technology. Yes, of course, there are positives. But cyber effects have the capacity to tap into our developmental or psychological Achilles' heel, whether it is visual perception in infants, self-regulation in toddlers, socialization in kids, relationships in young adults, or work, family, and health issues for the mature population.

Let's debate more, and demand more. Where should we start? Our biggest problems with technology usually come down to design. The cyber frontier is a designed universe. And if we don't like certain aspects of it, those aspects can be redesigned.

I believe that the architecture of the Internet is a fundamental problem. The Internet spread like a virus and was not structured to be what it is now. The EU considers it an infrastructure, like a railway or highway. The Internet is many things, but it is not simply an infrastructure.

There are two analogies that I like to use to describe this. One is that the Internet is like a cow path in the mountains that became a village road for horses and carriages, then was widened into a street for cars, then widened again into a highway that could accommodate more traffic. Like a lot of things that start small and grow large, what we've wound up with is a convoluted, overly complicated architecture that is not fit for its current purpose.

As John Suler has said: “The Internet has been and will probably always be a
wild, wild west
in the minds of many people—a place where a badge is used for target practice. I believe it has something to do with the intrinsic design of the Internet.”

Or as John Perry Barlow, cyber-libertarian advocate, says: “The Internet treats censorship as a malfunction and routes around it.”

I am in favor of freedom of the Internet, but not at any cost. We haven't held out for machines that really serve us and make us better parents, more effective teachers, and deeper thinkers, as well as more human. As the nineteenth-century physician and social reformer Havelock Ellis said, “The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men.” I can't help but wonder how different the Internet would be if women had participated in greater numbers in its design—and considered the work of Sherry Turkle as they did. I find it intriguing that, one hundred years after the suffragette struggle and the hard fight for women's rights, we have migrated and are populating a space that is almost exclusively designed and developed by men, many of whom have trouble making eye contact.

Our humanity is our most precious and fragile asset. We need to pay attention to how it is impacted by technological change. Are we asking enough of our devices, and their manufacturers and developers? The more we know about being human, the more we know what to ask for. We could ask for smartphones that don't keep us from looking at our babies, games that aren't so addictive that thousands of adolescent boys in Asia must be sent to recovery. We could demand a cyber environment where predators don't have the easy advantage, just because they can hack or charm.

We could regain some societal control and make it harder for organized cybercrime that has left us all in a state of ubiquitous victimology. (As I write this, I am dealing with my own case of cyber fraud, in which a cloned credit card of mine was used at 3:00 a.m. last night at a Best Buy store in California.) There is no reason to put up with a cyberspace that leaves us all vulnerable, dependent, and on edge.

If we make no requests or demands—and don't bother to ask—we will just leave it to the tech community to decide what we want. These
designers, developers, programmers, and entrepreneurs are brilliant and amazingly talented, and have created new ways for us to pay bills, play games, make dinner reservations, make new friends, do research, and date. Their achievements are spectacular. But we can ask for more.

Sheer convenience is not enough. Fun is not enough.

To begin with, the architects of the Internet and its devices know enough about human psychology to create products that are irresistible—a little too irresistible—but they don't always bring out the best in ourselves. I call this the
techno-behavioral effect
. The developers and their products engage our vulnerabilities and impulses. They target our weaknesses rather than engage our strengths. While making us feel invincible, they can diminish us—and distract us from things in life that are much more important, more vital to happiness, and more crucial to our survival. And what about our society? Have we had a moment to stop and consider social impact or, as I call it, the
techno-social effect
?

The second analogy that I use to describe the design of the Internet is a mountain stream. Water runs downhill in a trickle, and over time that trickle can create twisting gullies and valleys. A lot of things that start small and grow large are twisting. I was explaining this at a conference last year when Brian Honan, an international cyber-security expert, cried out, “A stream is a compliment! The Internet is more like a swamp!”

If structure is a fundamental problem, we should bring together a large, diverse team of people to discuss and brainstorm about how best to redesign it. Rather than “user” friendly, let's make it “human” friendly. We could address many of the problems we have now.

To regulate or not to regulate? That is the central question. Perhaps our real-world lives are so safety regulated—in the U.K. it is called the Nanny State—that we feel overprotected and safe no matter where we are. Everything is regulated, from the rise of sidewalk curbs to the size of puzzle pieces to the speed limits of all roads to the thickness of plastic used in water containers. And perhaps the fact that cyberspace is not a physical space with tangible dangers creates a further illusion of safety. We access cyberspace from the comfort of our own homes and offices, from our cars and commuter trains, places that are all regulated carefully. But cyberspace offers countless risks. Even the basic laws that
the government applies to gambling, drugs, pornography, and breast implants are not in place. I've discussed a number of safety concerns and risks, but my passion is the protection of the young. They are our future—and will soon describe what it means to be human. We have a shallow end of the swimming pool for children. Where is the shallow end of the pool on the Internet?

Looking into the near future, the next decade, say, there's a great opportunity before us—truly a golden decade of enlightenment during which we could learn so much about human nature and human behavior, and how best to design technology that is not just compatible with us, even in the most subtle and sophisticated ways, but that truly helps our better selves create a better world. The cyber future can look utopian, if we can create this balance.

Hope lies in the many great evolving aspects of tech—particularly smart solutions to technology-facilitated problem behavior. Of all the innovative advances in fund-raising over the past decade, the rise of crowdfunding websites has been the most fascinating. Digital altruism is a beautiful thing, and an example of what I am talking about. The Crowdfunding Industry Report stated that billions of dollars have been raised across more than one million individual global campaigns. Online anonymity is a profound driver of many cyber effects, including positive ones such as online donations. I don't think we have begun to scratch the surface of its power.

Looking ahead at the future of virtual reality, rather than consisting of games that isolate or addict us, I see its potential to engage challenged children or train frontline responders in law enforcement and the military—and treat PTSD. My colleague Jackie Ford Morie, an artist and scientist who develops new ideas for VR, is doing a research project for NASA that involves building environments and experiences to counter the social monotony and isolation of space travel. This is in preparation for NASA's mission to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, a journey in space that is estimated to take six to eighteen months.

I have long been fascinated by the prospect of finding solutions to problems through advances made in seemingly unrelated fields. For instance, could fifty years of space exploration—and all the experiences
and knowledge accumulated by NASA—be valuable in cyber contexts? What are the parallels between human behavior in outer space and human behavior in cyberspace? This may sound very theoretical, but I actually had the chance to share my thoughts on this subject in a presentation to Major General Charles Frank Bolden, Jr., the twelfth administrator of NASA, in 2015.

The potential of technology is almost limitless. We've just got to look for solutions in the right places.

The father of the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, has become increasingly ambivalent in recent years about his creation, and has recently outlined his plans for a cyber “Magna Carta.” That sounds good to me. How do we start?

Before we can find solutions, we must clearly identify the problems. As much as we've come to like—and depend on—cyberspace, most of us feel pretty lost there. As John Naughton of Cambridge University has said:

Stephen Hawking, the world's foremost physicist,
claims that it is a “near certainty” that technology will threaten humanity within ten thousand years. He joins many other visionaries and trailblazers. Let's listen to them. Let's ask them to come together at a summit to discuss
our digital future. Let's ask them to appear at a congressional hearing before a newly formed congressional committee for the study of cyber society.

Let's demand that technology serve the greater good. We need a global initiative. The United Nations could lead in this area, countries worldwide could contribute, and the U.S. could deploy some of its magnificent can-do attitude. We've seen what it has been capable of in the past. The American West was wild until it was regulated by a series of federal treaties and ordinances. And if we are talking about structural innovation, there is no greater example than Eisenhower's Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, which transformed the infrastructure of the U.S. road system, making it safer and more efficient. It's time to talk about a Federal Internet Act.

Essentially, we want control. But we have concerns about privacy, data, encryption, and surveillance. We do not want to be over-controlled. There are ways to have this debate and move forward with solutions. I am happy to help in any way I can—and offer myself as a resource to any political party, any political candidate, any government, and any action plan that will make a difference. I encourage any experts in any field to help in any way, even just by having a conversation, proposing a study, writing an article, creating an online resource, teaching a class.