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The problems with knowledge and information in an online era

We are all familiar with the optimistic ideologies of cyber-libertarianism.  This new online space reduces hierarchies, and creates a freer, more equal world – eradicating geographical constraints.  The internet provides limitless amounts of information, increasing our ‘knowledge’.  Similarly, Neo-Luddites in the opposed corner, clings onto slower, more concrete methods of communication and knowledge sourcing – revering the printed book and face to face discussion.

However, there is no denying the time efficient benefits of immediate access to information regarding any query from a practical to a philosophical level.

Whilst in residence in China, my possibility for this common place dipping in and out of the internet for advice and knowledge was severely limited.  Not only social networking sites, but any page that contained text or visuals deemed inappropriate, was shut off by a government sensor.  Over time, I stopped trying certain routes or pathways for information, as I was repeatedly being denied access.  While I adjusted to the cultural changes in life on a physical level with social behaviour in my studios and within the local streets, I also altered my approach to my behaviour online.

Without looking back too nostalgically, my life whilst in Chongqing felt more ordered, streamlined and focused on the daily tasks at hand, and long term goals.  I was not regularly side-lined by twitter and chatter on social networking sites, and I did not spend time

looking through personal photographs of events I had never been and knew little of the people involved.  As research based websites for my project were restricted, I focused on conversations, observation and texts that I had brought with me or been given.  I did not feel ‘the guilt’, that outside of my own physical life, I was not constantly checking, looking and engaging with what is happening online,

feeling somewhere that perhaps I am missing out on new developments.  I just could not access it – so in many ways I was grateful for what the governmental control of the PRC provided for me through censorship.

Not all routes lead to home, spraypaint in HuangJePing, 2011

The internet undoubtedly has radicalised opportunities, movement, information, knowledge, time efficiency and communication.  But this parallel life online is often tiring, keeping up with constant engagement with ever pouring knowledge and information.  Often those I am physically with in a space, I do not focus upon them and vice versa.  Perhaps there is a requirement for judgement of the value of information online – which may be identified through alignment with our own personal set of values and interests.

However, in many instances places online link in with our everyday life so closely, it is hard for us to eradicate ourselves from them.  For example, friends send invitations to birthday parties within Facebook, meetings are agreed through email, job opportunities exposed through Twitter.  When I emailed artist Ellie Harrison in January 2012, I received an automatic response that informed me that as an experiment she would not use her email for the whole month.  This is a test which will surely provide interesting results.

Social networking sites provide a large amount of personal honesty and ‘truths’.  Confessions of the minutia of daily lives within programmes such as Twitter intrigue us in a similar format as would a reality show, or a Sophie Calle artwork.  Although I engage in Twitter, I am concerned and a little perturbed by the public’s willingness to communicate so much about their whereabouts, relationships and duties. For me, there is information that I simply want to keep to myself and those I am close to.

This is where we meet, Spraypaint in 102 Studios, Chongqing, 2011

Slavoj Žižek addresses this concern over ‘privacy disappearing in public’ in his essay, ‘Good Manners in the Age of Wikileaks’.  Following a narrative discussing respect for a person’s physical space being invaded, he alludes to –

“Appearance, the public face, is never a simple hypocrisy. E.L. Doctorow once remarked that appearances are all we have, so we should treat them with great care. We are often told that privacy is disappearing, that the most intimate secrets are open to public probing. But the reality is the opposite: what is effectively disappearing is public space, with its attendant dignity.”

I make decisions where I will go and what I will do on a daily basis.  I selectively choose what books I will withdraw from the library, knowing that there is a never ending supply of text, image and ‘knowledge’ awaiting me for when I return the next time.

Yet my decision making online is less confident.  I am swayed, brought in, tempted through boundaries by speed.  I need to become more assertive, and remember when to respectfully say ‘no’.  Or do I?

Certainty and fallacy….

What is certain, is that within People’s Republic of China, digital space is governed very similarly to physical space, with equivalent extent of constraints and laws placed and enforced in ‘real space’. In one sense, this approach is progressive as the PRC treat the unquantifiable notion of ‘digital space’ – which we often disregard in the West as not even ‘space’, or an ‘other space’, such as within Foucault’s definition of heterotopia [1].  This ‘other’ space, has become the space within our phone, computer, television and Kindle that we ‘occupy’ more and more – should we not abide the same courtesies and regulations as in everyday walled space?

As outlined as the PRC’s governmental white paper, which can be read on the PRC State Council’s web-site [2], the government communicates that it seeks to promote free speech, movement and exchange online. However, the situation online is very much one of close control and inspection as outlined in my last post. When internet users in the PRC attempt to enter Western social networking or blogging sites, or in fact any sites deemed with inappropriate content by the government, the user is re-directed to another ‘safe’ site, or a notice comes up advising the ‘netizen’ that the server has timed out. Similarly internal social networking sites in the PRC, are closely regulated by government officials.  What is certain and commonplace is that you will be regularly told such a fallacy about why you cannot enter a digital space.

Prior to my six week residency in China, I had researched into how historical architecture and town planning from the Ming Dynasty functioned on this system on this very system of hierarchical control. Within the PRC, Ming Dynasty town layouts from the Empire of the Great Ming (from 1368 to 1644) form the basis of many ancient cities and towns across China. The structure of the walled cities all follow a pattern similar to the Forbidden City in Beijing, which consist of an Outer City, Inner City, Imperial City and Forbidden City. Persons were carefully classed and kept strictly to movement within certain areas of the overall city, with only the most important people at the top of the social hierarchy being able to access the centre of the city municipality.  This walled formation still exists at many of the main cities and towns, although gateways and rules on physical movement are generally no longer adhered to.

In Sichuan Province, I spent time visiting the structures of the walled towns of CiQiKou and Huangdong Complex. The original structures of gateways still remain between separate areas of winding walkways in inner, outer and central sections, although people can move freely between physical spaces.
 

Similarly, I also visited the walled city of Xian, which was built in the Chang’an period prior to the Ming Dynasty, with the centre of the city formed around a walled rectangular configuration. Xian, in Shaanxi Province follows the structure of a series of external and internal walls, and historically entrances and exits were guarded with serious consequences. In many situations the walled structures, arenow glorified as successful tourist attractions, and are one of the few examples of historical architecture amongst the rapidly growing high rise skyscrapers.

In one sense, the situation of control over individual’s movement in the aforementioned walled historical cities would be deemed as truthful, as circumstances are made clear to all inhabitants of any cause and effect of movement, as well as awareness

of social positioning. The current situation of online control by the PRC appears as telling a recurring fallacy to its occupants when attempting to enter certain spaces online. However, all PRC nationals understand that the information given by the government is a lie; thus permanently reinforcing the dissolved meaning of any information labelled as a ‘truth’ or ‘fallacy’.

An original intention in my enquiry, was to highlight that within such an on-going situation of historical governmental control – history was clearly repeating itself from the physical to the digital. However, from the physical walls and barriers, to the current ‘re-direction’ and ‘network timeout’, it is evident that, as Mark Twain outlines, ‘History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme’[3]. There are patterns, and comparisons, but differing frameworks and social issues. But how does the control online change the experience of physical space and cities within the PRC?  How does this control of movement digitally enforce or dissipate knowledge in an online era?  And is there hope for

a democratic or libertarian approach to digital space within the PRC, or is this idealised notion of the internet outmoded and unrealistic anyway?