Porn, the Internet and online journalism

Francis Fukuyama declared history, viewed as a clash of ideologies, has ended. He said “liberal democracy” of the type pioneered by the United States might constitute “the final form of human government.”

So what’s next? What is supposed to be the next organizing principle of history?

Cyberspace, of course, Internet enthusiasts say. The Internet is global and personal at the same time. With a computer and a telephone line one can communicate, and even have sex, with anybody around the world. The Internet is supposedly becoming a “new paradigm for human development.”

Nicholas Negroponte, in his 1995 book Being Digital, wrote:

“Computing is not about computers anymore. It is about living. As we interconnect ourselves, many of the values of a nation-state will give way to those of both larger and smaller electronic communities. We will socialize in digital neighborhoods in which physical space will be irrelevant and time will play a different role. Twenty-five years from now, when you look out a window, what you see may be five thousand miles and six time zones away. When you watch an hour of television, it may have been delivered to your home in less than a second. Reading about Patagonia can include the sensory experience of going there. A book by William Buckley can be a conversation with him.”

Media, of course, is in the forefront of this new world order. In the Philippines, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism has pioneered blogging as a form of interactive journalism. Other media organizations, like the giant broadcast network GMA and the Philippine Daily Inquirer, are preparing to plunge into new forms of journalism in the Internet.

Pornography, however, has been way, way ahead already and has become, for many people, the doorway into the online world.

In its latest installment of articles on addiction, the PCIJ printed a commissioned article I wrote on pornography. The proliferation of relatively cheap bootleg sex DVDs, as well as increasing access to the Internet, has made it easier for some Filipinos to get hooked on porn. To read the article visit GMANews.TV or the PCIJ website.