The Peril of Open Space

Some liberals and mindless people are wildly applauding the birth of open space on the Internet. To them, tweeter, facebook, YouTube, or whatever websites that network people and bring about flow of information is good. The logic is simple and powerful, tyrant can be exposed and freedom can be achieved through unstoppable penetrating information network that equalize every netizen who uses it. It is a dream of the liberal ideology, a representation of individual liberty, and ultimately a weapon of change. And yet, we are nervously witnessing the rise of a new monster unfettered in the global open space. Millions of people are feeding this monster everyday with lies, misinformation, bias, prejudice, venom and hatred. Since it supposed to be a people's democratic space, authorities are intentionally dissolved and earthly powers are dethroned. As a result, a recipient could also be a fabricator, flooded could also contribute to the flood, and no one could challenge the righteousness of this openness.

The myth of civil society is widely celebrated in this case. Any attempt to regain control of this monster would be deemed as a provocation or repression against social justice. However, in this seemingly chaotic realm of open space, a force of evil is disguised as an angel of truth and a liberator of the mind. It is so easy to establish a duality, a schism, a dichotomy between good and evil, right and wrong, free and slave, liberty and tyranny that each time a complex issue is presented in the unregulated open space, a clear public opinion is formed, reducing all historical complexity into simple moral stands. Then, social mobilization is completed in such a short temporal and such a wide spatial setting, all previous mechanisms are dwarfed.

Now, it is morphing into another prison in which the bars are the social conflicts created by the past and projected into the future. The giant monster feeds on the new opium of the West and becomes addicted to the illusion and false consciousness. The blood is now shed and the real criminals are faceless. Justice is locked up by the roaming mob in the open space where police has no control and innocent people pay the ultimate price.

In the era when all the other globalizing forces are criticized, only the jewel of the crown, a power deeply rooted in computing, escapes the gaze and has even been treated as a counter-globalization force. When the peril of open space grows quicker and larger than the "civil society", we will lose peace and prosperity before we enjoy them.