The continuing story

The above principles of action are intended as a guide to a proper use of and participation in cyberspace. It is important that everyone who participates does so responsibly, seeking to discover what it means to be fully human in cyberspace as in all other places where one walks and works. But everyone will have and play different roles in cyberspace. Christians will not make a stereotyped response to the issues they find in cyberspace any more than they have done in other places. Some might use the Internet to help release political prisoners, others to worry about child pornography, and yet others to create small, local support networks. The reality of being human means being situated in the world as it is, so that changes to that world, such as the development of cyberspace, affect everyone. There is not one answer to the question of how to participate responsibly in cyberspace, but many, just as there are many ways to live in accordance with God's will.

Probing

To consider intelligently our participation in the continuing development and use of the technology of cyberspace, we suggest three 'probes'. By probe we mean, as with its use in electronics, a device for measuring and testing. The probes are presented as questions to be asked as the new technology develops and is assimilated into practice. The questions should be relevant to anyone who wants to use the technology responsibly, regardless of their religious or moral basis.

• Whose problem are you seeking to solve by the new technology? Will it be solved by it? Email has become a vital tool for collaboration and information sharing. We could not have written this book without it. But many organizations embraced email because it promised an end to unnecessary paper memos. The problem of using too much paper was (purportedly) dealt with, but the reason for sending memos was not removed by the introduction of electronic communication. Now, because of the ease of using email, many more memos are sent and copied by, for example, staff who remain as anxious as ever to justify their actions in others' eyes.
  
  
• Will your use of cyberspace bring new, unscaleable problems that outweigh the opportunities? It might be good that elected politicians can receive email from their constituents, but at present they can handle the amount of mail they receive only because there is not too much. What will they do when they get thousands every day expecting replies? (That was the experience of members of the US Congress when they were debating whether to impeach their President.) Another example was of a boy who was dying of cancer. Members of the public were encouraged to send him emails, which they did, from all over the world. The tens of thousands of messages he received rapidly became meaningless and impersonal. The ease of communication devalued it.
  
  The year 2000 bug is another example of new technology bringing its own problems. It could have been anticipated and dealt with much sooner. But the cost of rewriting software and changing hardware when the technology to deal with the date change became available seemed too great.
  
  
• Are your problems important? You cannot find real food to eat or water to drink in cyberspace. Simple survival is the most pressing problem for the majority of humankind. In this perspective, computers and the self-fulfilment they might bring to their users seem trivial and selfish. Interest in the common good should take priority over individual goals if they ignore the rest of creation's needs. Nevertheless, cyberspace can play its part in serving the common good, and this can be discovered and used to the full.
  

The issues these probes measure and test are related to human frailty. It would be convenient to focus on human wickedness in some clear and abstract way as the source of the problem, so as to name and articulate it, and then deal with it. But it does not show itself like that. We can no more focus on human wickedness in the abstract that we can give moral evaluations of technologies in the abstract. Instead, we must look at technology as part of the continuing human story of which our times form one small part.