On the dark side, the internet impinges perniciously on many aspects of society, including scholarship, morality, integrity, criminality, and irresponsibility. The argument against the internet is damning. It is a purveyor of unreliable data and occasionally deliberate disinformation, but camouflaged haphazardly with valid facts. Strict editorial disciplines are frequently eschewed.
Users of the internet are afforded anonymity that does abet fraud, incitement, enticement, libel, pornography, and paedophilia to be practised from the safety of covertness and distance.
Another deeply worrying facet of the web is the cavalier violations of copyright material, irrespective of whether literary, graphic, or musical. Such disregard for proprietorial rights is bound to have a damaging impact on serious creative activity.
Some other online fixations will have adverse social consequences, such as gaming and gambling. There is an addictive, insidious, and hypnotic dimension to a computer and screen allied to the internet that deludes and deceives individuals of a compulsive and suggestible personality.
Rarely is a development wholly benign, the internet is not an exception. Conversely the internet is a competitor to the printed word, even if disreputable on occasions.
Lawrence Wallis has held international pre-press marketing positions and is now a respected author and print historian.
Vices and virtues of the internet
My impression is that the internet exhibits a frustrating schizophrenic character. On the bright side, the web has a number of advantages. It is an efficient and global communications network; a facilitator of business and trade; a carrier of advertising and promotional material; a repository for vast amounts of information; a research tool; an educational forum; a portal to remotely sited and rare references; and a provider of an unregulated publishing environment. There lurk in some of these functions a number of demons.
