Net-Philosophy.com is a site dedicated to the issue of Publicness. However, from the very beginning of our philosophical pursuits we became increasingly aware of Publicness' all inclusive nature. By the end of this description I will have hopefully accomplished my task of explaining our groups rationality for highlighting all of the philosophical issues related to Internetworking. Publicness, as is understood, revolves around issues related to Governance, Politics, and Political Discourse. All of which, and for obvious reasons, have become transformed by the advent of the Internet and the potentiality of its use. Nobody can dispute these facts. Just look at the evolution of American Politics over the last decade. In fact, one of the shining examples of such change (no pun intended) is the effectiveness of President Barack Obama’s camapign which utilized the Internet and various social networks. By the end of his campaign, Obama had raised over $500 million dollars online. Another Obama milestone came with his signing of the “Transparency and Open Government” memorandum which saw as a result the creation of Data.gov, a website devoted to opening up the lines of communication between Americans and the Government. The overall effectiveness of this website remains open for debate. Many argue that its a step in the right direction in terms of bridging the gap between government and its citizens. However, others believe it to be a opening of the informational floodgates. Given the sheer volume of information that has been made available and anybody's ability to spin the numbers, it's easy to understand, in retrospect, how counterproductive it might be. But, this is a discussion we will save for another time. For now I’d like to focus on the ambiguous nature of Publicness as an issue and its incredible ability to tip-toe its way into all of the other PHL 123 discussion topics.
Publicness is concerned with, above all else, the relationship between the public, the Internet and Government. And, to summarize, the the role of Government within in a democracy is to designate laws and regulations and thus, in an ideal world, operate in accordance with the best interests of its constituents. The problem arises, however, in the regulation and governance aspect of the debate. When it comes to imposing any sort of restriction upon the Internet, issues concerning Intellectual Property and Privacy are most definitely going to surface. In addition to, of course, the oftentimes overplayed and echoed arguments about the loss of competition and innovation. One could argue that it might even increase such aspects but, again, I digress. Our point is that any debate about Privacy and I.P. eventually finds itself at an epystomological crossroads with Knowledge and Identity. Another example, which is perhaps a ranking member of the more important arguments that orbit Publicness, is in regards to Intellectual Property and the institution of Journalism. Journalism, as both an industry and a delivery source of relevant and objective news, has come under heavy fire and destructuralization as a direct result of the Internet. Regardless of what anyone tells you, Journalists need to make money too and the move from print to digital forms of publication has jeopardized their ability to do so. Suffice to say that Information and news is on the cheap these days with the prevalence of the Internet. To put this into perspective, in 2008 Americans consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information over the web. Wondering what a zettabyte is? Well, one zettabyte is equal to one sextillion bytes. One sextillion, numerically represented, is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes, or 1021. Going a step further, if one byte represented a single foot, then 1021 feet would be equivalent to 189 quadrillion miles. The Internet has had an unprecedented impact on our comprehension of society, the natural world, politics, the future and self-awareness. Thus the issue of what ought to be done about it needs to include all the topics as well as pretty much everything in between. In moderation of course, we wouldn't want to be overwhelmed.
Essentially, we felt that the best way to represent the issue of Publicness would be to develop an open and unbiased website encouraging philosophical enquiry.
Net-Philosophy.com is an Internet web page that is designed to serve as an informational platform, a discussion board, and a blog. It provides people with content produced both internally and externally about the size and scope of the Internet as it relates to our five main categories of Publicness, Knowledge, Intellectual Property, Privacy, and Identity.