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by Anne Boysen
When the New Silents look back on the month of January 2012, they might recall a few contradictory events that had bearings on how they handle digital information. On January the 5th Sweden officially recognized
Det Missionerande Kopimistsamfundet (the Missionary "Copy-me" society) by granting it religious status, which in essence sanctifies the act of file sharing. This
political gift to file sharers can only be seen as endowing moral righteousness to an activity that usually is viewed as immoral and illegal. Contrarily, on January 18th websites like Wikipedia, Google, Reddit, Mozilla and others blacked out their websites in protests of the
anti-piracy bills SOPA and PIPA that were up for voting in the U.S.
Congress. Anti anti-piracy advocates argued the bills if enacted were flawed and would go far beyond preventing illegal file sharing, but in reality open the floodgates for internet censorship. After 4 million petition signatures and 250,000 messages to Congress, several legislators changed their minds and killed the bills. For now anyway. Yet the very next day FBI
The conclusions you draw are based on your initial perception[/caption]
After I wrote piece on generational archetypes and their characteristics for a newspaper a few years ago I was surprised by the number of animated reactions I received in the online comment section. People don't like to be pigeonholed, even under my pretense of doing social science trend research. It turns out that when social scientists and market researchers use demographic, economic and cultural data to glean insight into contemporary trends they are stepping on psychological minefields. Readers often feel stigmatized by the findings and believe this way of classifying people is just an intellectualized form of bigotry.
I understand this hesitation, but I feel strongly that the goal of a social scientist is not to compartmentalize certain types of people to solidify unfounded myths, but quite the opposite. When social scientists make generalizations it’s always – or should always be - based on value neutrality and scientific observations. Moreover the goal is not to neglect human agency and individual differences, but to say something about the general trends.
