The Silicon Valley ideology: online bias and technology

[Starry Messenger]

http://peoplesworld.org/the-silicon-valley-ideology-online-bias-and-technology/

I wrote this. Give it some love if you like it. (Feminist Group post)

Digging deeper into two of the factors touched on in Amanda Hess' provocative essay, "To Understand Why Hate Thrives Online, You Have to Go Back to the Beginning, " published in Slate.com, may help to reveal the historical evolution of bigoted internet discourse.

On the one hand, Hess points to a philosophical position paper by John Perry Barlow, the Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, which celebrated the possibility of a communication space free of what some call "identity politics" - where all could be equal in colorblind/genderblind discourse.

"We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth. We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity."

Hess, secondly, points out the predominance of young white males in the internet space in the early days of the web, who embraced the flourishing technology of online communication, and who continue to find incursions of feminist or racial justice points of view to be a violation of their safe space and territory, reacting with negative communications.

<snip>