Moving Backwards with the Internet

Due to its nature as a communications medium, the Internet disrupts civilization’s progress by keeping popular ideas alive indefinitely.

The internet remembers everything

Humans like consistency. They like ideas that linger, ideas that grant understanding of the world, and ideas that bind the community together, and in this way the people can live with peace of mind. Over the course of history, such ideas have sprung up and then been published to the masses via the current popular medium of communication so that everyone can share in the ideology. Eventually new ideas replace the old, and the newcomer is spread to the people and the cycle begins anew. As we elaborate upon popular ideas and and replace old ones, we believe ourselves to be in a state of glorious progress, leaving behind the darkness of previous ages and improving our knowledge and quality of life.

However, in today’s digital age, this interpretation of “progress” is suffering. Leaving behind the past and moving unfettered into a new age was easier when the records of the past were perishable and few in number (as paper books are) and as new editions of books overwrite their predecessors and push them out of memory. But with the Internet, old information lingers for a long time because the Web retains all of its information and therefore ideas refuse to fade away. Due to its nature as a communications medium, the Internet disrupts civilization’s progress by keeping popular ideas alive indefinitely.

Rumors about vaccines and autism

Today there is a popular rumor going around which claims that vaccines cause serious mental defects in children. However, most of the hype over this topic comes from genuinely worried parents in online conversations, not from published reports from scholars and researchers. Where did this rumor begin? In 1998 Dr. Andrew Wakefield, a British surgeon and medical researcher, wrote an article for the medical journal Lancet and taught that certain vaccines cause conditions such as autism in healthy children. His article scared parents all over the United States, causing them to shun vaccines altogether and avoid vaccinating their children. Since then many concerned medical groups like Oxford Journals have done heavy research on the topic, and according to their results Dr. Wakefield’s claim was not true since he didn’t use enough participants in his study and then purposefully falsified his own results [Plotkin]. To better spread the truth behind Dr. Wakefield’s article many blogs and forums continue to hold long and detailed discussions explaining the research done to debunk Dr. Wakefield’s claims, such as the W.W. Norton Everyday Research Methods Blog, and others try to change the public’s minds by explaining the reasons behind the paranoia (Ropeik). However, despite all the research-backed proof behind these counter-claims, the belief that vaccines cause serious defects in children still scares thousands of otherwise well-informed parents today. So why does this rumor persist despite the arguments to the contrary?

Because the Internet, like the proverbial elephant, never forgets. Records of old conversations about Dr. Wakefield’s article – as well as the article itself – exist online for the curious researcher to stumble across, no matter how how long after that information was created. Blogs, forums and sites where worried parents share their thoughts on vaccines are open to the public. Unlike the words in a real-life conversation, or even scholarly claims over the course of several editions of paper books, the things we say online have a dual nature of both comments and permanent records. Those who participate in these online conversations in return might repost their findings and spread the message to their own networks, which can repost the idea again and again to continue the chain of communications.

This is proof that the Internet, aside from doing the same information-spreading as the printing press but on a larger magnitude, has a tool for spreading information that the printing press never did: an unfailing memory which is open for the public to access and spread. These factors keep an idea alive and well long after it would have otherwise faded away under a simpler medium. This isn’t always a bad thing, and in fact this idea-permanence has done a lot of good both in the medical field and in every other area, but often sensationalist ideas stick around much longer and tend to be more exciting than reserved, fact-based ones.

By historical contrast the printing press was a powerful engine for perpetuating ideologies since it frequently reprinted them in new, updated editions as they were developed upon. But the Internet is an even stronger means of spreading and preserving popular ideas because, unlike with the printing press, the information that is published online remains there indefinitely no matter how often it is “reprinted” or how long ago it was debunked. In addition, the entirety of the Internet’s vast knowledge is open to anyone with a connection: everyone can participate online, posting what they think about those ideas anywhere, anytime, for any reason, and without any authority figure to stop them from doing so. Through the combination of the virtually immortal memory of the Internet and the basic need of humans to communicate with each other, ideas can go viral and become deeply ingrained in a way no other medium could manage.

The printing press invents virality

Mass communication has been the primary vehicle for popular ideas throughout history, no matter what the medium. And even when conventional communications technology wasn’t as permanent or pervasive as the Internet, popular ideas persisted for a long time because they kept getting republished and their popularity was renewed regularly, as if it were a living creature that needed to be fed to stay alive. In Renaissance times and long thereafter, the most common medium of mass communication was the printing press: new discoveries were released in new editions of books, and each new iteration elaborated upon the previous one. Though books were replaceable by their descendants, as long as a series of book-generations kept talking about a given subject, that idea would thrive, for the lifeblood of an idea is communication.

During the 1400s, the printing press became an incredible tool that could spread ideas faster and more effectively than any technology before it. For a surprisingly small amount of time and money a publisher could produce hundreds upon hundreds of books, newspapers, pamphlets or journals. This was a wonderful invention, as it had the power to spread useful knowledge to the people; and since that knowledge was widely spread and reprinted rather frequently, it became popular. For example, Galen of Pergamon was a Greek doctor and medicinal scholar born in 130 AD whose ideas would essentially establish the European medical canon more than a millennium after his death. Galen wrote prolifically about the human body and the principles that it operated on (including the four humours: blood, water, black bile and yellow bile, the balance of which in a person’s body determined his or her state of health). He wrote hundreds of treatises and documents outlining principles and theories and in his own days was highly respected as a medical expert. However, due to the social taboos of his day, Galen was never allowed to dissect a human cadaver, so he was forced to work only with wounded gladiators, or with animals such as monkeys and pigs, and make educated guesses about the human body from what he learned. He made no secret of his speculations [Boorstin], and in fact he encouraged people to avoid blindly trusting in his works simply by virtue of his fame. He wrote:

If anyone wishes to observe the works of Nature, he should put his trust not in books on anatomy but in his own eyes and either come to me, or consult one of my associates, or alone by himself industriously practise exercises in dissection; but so long as he only reads, he will be more likely to believe all the earlier anatomists because there are many of them.” (Boorstin)

In an ironic twist of fate, during the Renaissance and the fanatical praise of Classical times that came with it, Galen’s works were discovered and reprinted with zeal on the brand-new printing press as the doctors and thinkers of the time, glad to be shaking off the ignorance of medieval times and obsessed with the ability to spread their newfound knowledge far and wide in a revolutionary printed form, ravenously studied everything they could that would teach them about the enlightened ways of Classical thinkers. Thus Galen’s ideas about the human body practically came to be worshiped by Renaissance doctors, despite being incomplete and incorrect in places.

This fanaticism got to the point where Jacobus Sylvius, a leading medical authority living in France in the 16th century, taught that “the most important contribution to a better knowledge of the human body would be a more accurate Latin rendering of the purest Greek text of Galen… Sylvius [also] shared a popular view that if a dissected body did not show all the features described by Galen’s text, it was because the human body had actually changed, and because, in the passing centuries, the human species had declined from the ideal form seen by Galen.” [Boorstin] Sylvius, as well as the rest of the Renaissance medical world, had blatantly disregarded Galen’s own advice to not trust authority but to discover knowledge for oneself. It wasn’t until several centuries later that the Greek doctor’s ideas would be refuted by modern technology and medicine. Eventually these discoveries created a new medical dogma to replace the one based on Galen’s texts, and in a relatively short matter of time Galen was made obsolete.

The internet vs the printing press

This example about the Renaissance devotion to Galen gives us a glimpse of how some ideas tend to get stuck in the people’s minds for a very long time, to the point where they become fanatically devoted to the idea of the idea rather than the facts behind it, as long as it is popular enough. It’s as if history were saying “Warning! This is what happens when an idea goes viral.” Fortunately, the overzealous fascination with Galen eventually blew over as people discovered new scientific knowledge, and that knowledge started getting printed regularly instead of Galen’s writings. Since then, the new information kept getting published, and therefore that is what remained in the minds of the people from then on.

It was possible for an idea to “go viral” in the days before the Internet; the only requirement was that the viral information had to be reprinted constantly in order to be fresh in the minds of the people. As soon as something else started to be circulated in its place, the old idea would fade away and give way to the new one. The Internet got rid of that trend. Now, even when an idea is “out of print” and is no longer producing more copies or versions of itself, the idea still exists online for people to discover and talk about; it no longer needs to be constantly reprinted in order to be kept in the public’s mind.

As I said before, humans like consistency. We like to believe that the world functions according to a fixed set of rules, making the universe digestible and comfortable. In addition, we tend to think that as long as enough people believe something, then it must be true, even if sometimes it is incorrect. For example, the rumor that vaccines cause autism – despite abundant proof to the contrary – is such a common idea and presents such a sensational threat to our stability and happiness that people become morbidly fascinated with it and support the idea in their minds even if their information is incomplete or imperfect. Their understanding of perceived danger makes them comfortable, especially when their friends and the forums and blogs they follow online are so willing to keep talking about it.

In conclusion, the Internet by nature as a communications medium disrupts society’s progress by disrupting the way in which information is spread to the masses. It changes the way that people see and trust authoritarian sources of knowledge, because old information can appear just as valid as the new and anybody’s opinion can be presented as fact, regardless of the author’s qualifications. And as long as an incorrect idea persists in the minds of society at large, especially if that idea refuses to disappear in the face of proof, “progress” of any kind will be very difficult to achieve.

Works Cited

Boorstin, Daniel J. The Discoverers. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. 1985. Kindle Edition. Chapter 45.

Everyday Research Methods Blog. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 20 July 2014. Web. 27 May 2015. http://www.everydayresearchmethods.com/2014/07/the-fallout-of-an-unethical-study.html

Plotkin, Stanley. “Vaccines and Autism: A Tale of Shifting Hypotheses.” Clinical Infectious Diseases. Oxford Journals. 14 October 2008. Web. 27 May 2015. http://cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/48/4/456.full

Ropeik, David. “On the Persistence, and Underlying Causes, of Vax-O-Noia.” Psychology Today. Sussex Publishers, LLC. 13 February 2015. Web. 10 June 2015. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/how-risky-is-it-really/201502/the-persistence-and-underlying-causes-vax-o-noia

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About the Author

Adam Burton