Internet—The Deterministic Technology of Today’s Era
Summary
“The best way to predict future is to invent it” is a common but highly influential saying, taken too seriously by human beings from the past few centuries. This assignment is planned to document personal opinion regarding internet’s deterministic power with reference to society as a whole. After developing arguments regarding concerned subject matter, handful of literature will be selected. After deliberate painstaking analysis of preexisting literature, arguments will be retained and supported. In the end, the takeaway session will encapsulate the inferential activity based on the textual information presented throughout the assignment.
Thesis Statement
Internet use is highly deterministic for society with reference to biopsychosocial perspective.
Preface
Either constructively or destructively, internet is potent enough to develop gradual alterations in the lifestyles and way of thinking of individuals. As biopsychosocial model propounds the most intriguing notion that human being is the product is biological, psychological and social factors that alter his personality and behavioral manifestations in the most unidentified manner. Biological factors include our age, gender, genetics, education and physiological processes; psychological factors encompass our thinking patterns, sensations, intuitions, feelings, perceptions, emotions, preferences, outlooks, orientations, decision-making, problem-solving, learning, memory, intelligence, organizing, planning and behaviors; social forces include our socioeconomic status, culture, religion, ethnicity, language and the nature of interactions with parents, siblings, relatives, peers, teachers, colleagues and other individuals of community,. Internet—the most advanced form of communication technology is directly controlling our biopsychosocial aspects. This is how it is supposed to be deterministic technology in social contexts.
Next sections will present more formalize introduction of technology, internet, determinism power and society. Let’s proceed.
Technology—Internet
Definition of technology is purely person-and-context-specific. Generally, technology is the study of using scientific facts and knowledge in a way to create something productive, meaningful, efficient and profitable in making man’s life more appealing, befitted, well-organized, economical and satisfactory in all the aspects ranging from health and fitness, education, communication, defense, business, construction, manufacturing to agriculture.
Our topic of concern is “communication” here so internet will be selected as a deterministic technology along with its effects on the bio-psycho-social aspects of human. Internet is mainly used as a strong and fastest communication tool due to which world has become global village now. In other words, it can be referred as a virtual technical medium for transmitting data and information from one device to another or from one person to another within seconds. For that matter, hardware (computers, mobile phones), software (applications, internet browser) and transmission protocols are collaboratively used to connect computers together, due to which sharing of data takes place within seconds even from considerable distances.
Internet technology encapsulates World Wide Web (www) and various social media platforms used both for socializing and business purpose. For example, educational websites, online shopping, transactional and trading websites, government’s official websites and so on. Social media platforms are quite well-known and well-acknowledged by us—Email, Skype, Quora, Yahoo.com, Whats App, Google Mail, Instragram, Viber, MSN and many more. Through these platforms, individuals are now able enough to build connections all over the world just for single click; hence internet technology has made communication faster and universal than before.
Society/social groups
Individuals are the building blocks of society. A society is called so because of a larger proportion of individuals staying together and interacting frequently. The nature of interactions with other individuals of society and other environmental circumstances are highly influential in shaping individual personality inevitably. One of the psychological school of thought known as “behaviorism” emphasizes the significance of society and environment in shaping individual’s personality—in turn whole society. According to this perspective, humans are born with an empty mind (blank slate—tabula rasa) and they do not possess particular personality at that time. With the passing time, they develop gradual social interactions with parents, siblings, relative, peers, teachers and other individuals of society. As a result, a product of social interactions and environment comes to being known as personality—what we are and how we behave. In a nutshell, social experiences keep on accumulating into the blank slate over time, giving rise to a full fledge human personality. Hence, societies are formed and influence individual personality. It is a long term gradual process encapsulating two-way change e.g., societies influence individuals and individual’s personality combined with the other individuals determines society.
Internet’s deterministic power with reference to society
After having thorough understanding of internet and society, it can easily be observed that how both factors are interrelated to each other.
Flow Chart: This diagram indicates that internet—a medium of communication affects individual personality (based on the behaviorism), that in turn affects society (as it is the combination of individuals). Society then influences individuals to communicate in a certain way—and the endless series of dynamic change continues to exist constantly. This is how societies are changed using these platforms.
The next section will represent the annotated bibliography of two books and four research articles from peer-reviewed literature in order to support my argument.
Annotated bibliography
Bun-Hee Lee. “#Me Too Movement; It Is Time That We All Act and Participate in Transformation.” Psychiatry Investigation. Vol. 15, no.5, pp. 433, spring 2018. doi: 10.30773/pi.2018.04.30
In this article, author qualitatively explores the consequences of most recent ground-breaking trend on social media; #Me Too movement, consulting archival data from online newspapers and websites. People who suffered sexual harassment in any stage of their life were asked to update #Me Too status on their social media profile with the name of their predator. According to the author, his movement revealed that 30% of women and 4% men faced sexual harassment at their workplace. This was because they were provided with a platform to break the silence and as a result, most of the men intended to keep a fair distance from their female employees. This movement welcomed number of transformations within society including timely reporting and investigation system. Moreover, training and education about “which behaviors and gestures are considered harassment, assault or gender biasness” and “significance of speaking up against such happenings” was another revolutionary social transformation.
Charisse L Nixon. “Current perspectives: the impact of cyber-bullying on adolescent health.” Adolescent Health Medicine Therapy, vol.5, pp. 143–158, 2014. doi: 10.2147/AHMT.S36456
This article is aimed at exploring the effect of “online bullying or bullying through internet/social media” on the mental and physical health of adolescent population. It was a quantitative study having cross-sectional survey design. Two groups including victims and perpetuators were undertaken survey and correlational analyses found significantly negative association between cyber-bullying experiences and physical and mental health. Victims reported more depressive symptoms, anxiety, somatic concerns, insomnia, headaches, stomachaches, and lost appetite. Perpetuators reported more substance abuse, aggression and law-breaking behaviors. This article makes the idea clear that how internet (social media) acts as an influential medium to affect mental and physical health negatively.
Gunther Eysenbach. “Internet Health Information Seeking and the Patient-Physician Relationship: A Systematic Review.” J Med Internet Res, vol. 19, no.1, pp. e9, 2017, doi: 10.2196/jmir.5729
This study aimed at examining the impact of health information available on internet on the physician-patient relationship. It was a qualitative study including relevant literature on the concerned subject matter from 2000 to 2015 taken from online data bases e.g., PubMed other information systems. After deliberate painstaking analysis, it was revealed that patient’s healthcare information seeking from internet affects the physician-patient relationship positively. This is because patient is more informed and updated about his illness through reliable internet information that in turn enables him to discuss his ambiguities with the physician more precisely. Hence he can take an active part in healthcare related decision making—making the patient-physician relationship less critical. It can be concluded that internet has brought about revolutionary alterations within the healthcare contexts of society.
Deepak Goel, Alka Subramanyam, and Ravindra Kamath. “A study on the prevalence of internet addiction and its association with psychopathology in Indian adolescents.” Indian J Psychiatry, vol. 55 no.2, pp. 140–143. 2013. doi: 10.4103/0019-5545.11145
This study was conducted in India (South Asia) to determine the prevalence of internet addiction and its associated behavioral ramifications. It was cross-sectional survey study and sample of approximately 1000 students was drawn from the university population. Self report inventories for internet addiction and current quality of life (The Internet Addiction Test, Dukes Health Profile) were used to obtain desired data. Quantitative data analysis (using SPSS) found that approx 75% students were moderate internet users whereas only 0.7% students were found to have internet addiction with elevated symptoms of depression, anxiety or both. This periodical was added because it indicates the excessive use of internet and its social consequences on students with respect to their mental health and quality of life.
Darrell Keith B. “Issues in Internet Law: Society, Technology, and the Law.” Boca Raton, Fla.: Amber Book Co., 2006.
This book is written by a website designer and attorney Darrell B Keith, intended at exploring some legal issues in this internet era including cybercrimes, privacy, identity theft, online contracts and intellectual property. This book has seven parts containing seventeen chapters thoroughly presented with tables, figures and three indexes. In order to solve privacy issues Electronic Communications Privacy Act is a legal implication in this regard. Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 focuses more on copyright issues. A section “uninvited guests” confers unwanted intrusions e.g., spam, spyware and email spoofing. Another basic issue that she discussed is that information cannot be kept confidential between two parties during B-to-B or B-to-C communication. Law reinforcement agencies and hackers are always able to retrieve all the wanted information at any time. This book was selected because in addition to other social changes, internet welcomes legal amendments in society as well.
James Slevin. “Internet and Society.” Cambridge; Polity Press, 2000
Author describes the individual differences in using internet as a source of cultural variations. Three types of internet users are: all-consuming enthusiastic, moderate user and hesitant. All consuming users are highly reliant upon internet with multi-purpose approach, for moderate users, its use is highly context-specific whereas hesitant remain distant thinking that it will affect their real-life socialization. Slevin examined a bulk of literature from history and found that it either explains negative or positive aspects—he rather required a balanced perspective. He emphasized more on organizational culture in business and government institutions with the well informed and captivating examples. He presented many webpage links while putting any point forward. It can be concluded that his focus was centralized on how individuals react to internet use and form formal and informal interactions with each other, in turn how these interactions mold our thinking patterns and culture as a whole.
Conclusion—the Take Away
It can be concluded that internet has brought about revolutionary changes in our thinking patterns, sensations, intuitions, feelings, perceptions, emotions, preferences, outlooks, orientations, decision-making, problem-solving, learning, memory, intelligence, organizing, planning and behaviors. These changes work in biopsychosocial mannerism ultimately inducing gradual but obvious changes in society and culture. Hence thesis statement is well-supported by preexisting literature.
