The question: "How can we ensure that our development as moral and social animals keeps pace with our rapidly evolving communication technology?"
My answer: Society adapts. I do not believe in predeterminism, whether we're talking the religious idea of it or simply in the sense of defining what we "absolutely need to do" in order to fix a perceive problem.
It is human nature. Man evolves to no longer have as long and shaggy hair to deal with the cold, so man learns to utilize the hides of kills for food and discovers ways to harness fire. Man and companions feel oppressed enough to fight out of slavery, they rebel and escape to start anew (or die trying.)
How does this come about with this particular problem of internet majority and personal news catering the the point it's entirely possible to erect blinders and stew in ignorance and hatred? I wish I knew the answer. I've been struggling to discover the reason behind why internet trolls and jerkfaces act the way they do because maybe if I understood their reasoning, I could say or teach or do something that would influence their behavior to change. Gladstone mentions as much in her book, suggesting the vast amount of people and response time people can get through social media and the Internet makes it too easy for folks to flock to just one mind set, which then breeds aggression and ignorance of anyone on the outside.
I see that effect daily. I've mentioned a hundred billion times I'm an avid gamer, but I'm also a guy who looks at the social effects any given game has on people. During this semester, there are two big examples I can think of off the top of my head showing just how nasty and vile people are.
First, Mass Effect 3's ending. I even wrote my own opinions on the game's ending. It was that polarizing. Every gaming blog on the planet had their take on how it made them feel. A large number of gamers felt cheated, that the ending of the game cheapened the experiences we've had in the franchise since the original title launched in 2007. An op-ed piece by Sparky Clarkson on Kotaku.com, Gawker Media's gaming blog, sums it up by saying the more a player knows about the game's universe, the worse the ending feels. I could grab a hundred other links; it was a really, really big stink.
If you want to see just how nasty the polarizing effect of mere opinion has, look no further than the comments on this piece. Some of the filth on there is just atrocious. It's clearly an opinion piece, yet there are those who rip into the author, and just as many who adamantly defend him. I was in the latter. I was adding to the problem, even though I was just trying to stem the tide of disgruntled people.
Secondly, I notice with alarm an increasing sentiment among players of Dota 2 that they have to type out their superiority to the rest of gamerdom by bashing imagined sleights and spouting tired internet memes. The game has a feature allowing players to watch top-ranked matches. There's even a ticker showing the game progress of the top 3 most watched games at any given time, and those ones on the front page tend to have anywhere from 50 to 600 viewers at any given time. It's a neat feature for those trying to learn the game or who simply like watching the professional players do their things, but those 600 viewers are allowed to talk to each other and boy does it get messy. I notice with alarming frequency unprovoked attacks against players of other video games which are similar to Dota. You'll have the 2 or 3 guys any given match who "broadcast" in the sense they like to discuss what's happening in game, then someone will inevitably come in shouting about how players of League of Legends, the big powerhouse breadwinner in that particular style of game, are "gay" or some sort of ad hominem attack which really shows more about the ignorance of the person posting than it says about the product they are bashing. The worst part is as soon as one guy start yelling and shouting and hating, everyone is forced into the conflict. It's either join up with the elitist who hate all things like Dota but that isn't Dota, or get trampled by expressing how silly it is to get that fired up other people enjoy some other game which isn't the one any of those particular group is possibly playing at the moment.
I actually believe the idea of "larger and richer webs of interdependence" is the root of the problem, not the solution. If the problem is large groups of people bandying together and then blocking out dissenting opinion, increasing the size of the pool doesn't dilute the waste inside. The internet was not always such a place of alarming polarization. I recall when I first started using it, IRC chatrooms were kind of a big deal, and the only social networking people did was simply fill up their entire AoL Instant Messenger friend's list with kids they knew from class. You didn't have these epic giant forums impossible to moderate because it was usually just a couple of friends who made some sort of internet chat for some common interest and it was just hanging out virtually. If a stranger walked in, people would greet and say hi and invite that person to participate in said common interest and if not, just move along and find the next chat room. I don't personally recall flaming hatred and anger toward anyone that had a different mindset back then in such a pervasive way it was all I could see.
I think it'd be neat to get back to that, and the way it has to happen is how it originally happened: People who were already united in the real world in some sort of common interest simply making an internet hang out. And, it needs to be policed. When someone comes in and starts spouting racial slurs and homophobic epithets, the people who run the place need to actually step up and say, "Not cool, bro." No one does that any more. I never read an internet opinion piece where the writer of it actually responds to any of the people in the comments section, and even exploring weeks old comments you discover none of the hateful filth was removed. That kind of laissez-faire approach breeds more and more people to behave in the same way. It's a Pavlonian response: Your opinion piece is the bell and their ignorant hateful drivel is the drool.
If the world is to be a better place, the people leading discussions have to dictate the way the discourse flows. You simply must do it. The way we handle online discussions should be the same way we handle them in our personal daily lives. If someone gets up and starts saying something offensive, you must let it be known that kind of talk will not be tolerated. We don't need the internet full of Taylor Grins telling the rest of society they are ignorant and stupid for believing in God even when that topic has nothing relevant to whatever discussion is going on. The person in charge needs to step up and say, "Knock it off or gtfo" and then actually back up the threat by removing the hateful messages.
