STRANGE things have happened on the Internet.
People have auctioned themselves, used servers to erase their virtual lives (accounts) in order to quit their addiction to social utilities like Facebook, and sold their grandmother for a song – well, not quite, but you get the idea.
But the strangest thing yet will happen if the Internet wins this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
That’s right: The Web is among a record 237 individuals and organisations nominated as a potential Nobel laureate for peace. It had two proposers: the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and the founder of the $100 laptop project Nicholas Negroponte.
Meanwhile, the Italian version of Wired magazine is championing the choice, saying that the Net has had a hand in advancing "dialogue, debate and consensus", the BBC News quoted it as saying last Wednesday.
Hmmm.
Let’s throw political correctness out the window for once, and give the gut reaction: “What!”
And that’s putting it mildly.
What was Wired thinking? Is it not aware that for every ounce of healthy discourse held in cyberspace, there is an ounce – probably much more – of diseased vitriol?
Whereas Nobel laureates have won for their far-reaching impact in chemistry, literature, physics, physiology or medicine and, of course, peace – the Internet can be cited for a list of counter virtues. Pornographic smut, money scams, paedophilic preying come easily to mind – and that’s just for starters.
Also, how do you reconcile the fact that the Net is a harvest ground for terror cells and networks? People go online to learn to how to make bombs with which to blow up themselves and others. Or has the irony been lost on those who have supported the proposal too?
Yes, the Web is a neutral tool, and it’s up to the people who use it to make good or bad of it. Yes, the largely uncensored nature of the Web has levelled the playing field – and created brave new winners.
For instance, once unknown artists – indie bands like the Arctic Monkeys – have put their recordings online and become famous.
But the Infobahn has also given room for cowardice which, to me, is its greatest letdown.
I’m talking about blogs, personal walls and portals – or any hate site – where people do not own up to who they are but assume anonymity under a pseudonym.
At these sites, the fraidy cats – masquerading as free-speech machos – leave their paw prints of sarcasm, slurs and smears. To add insult to injury, their rants are often just nitpickings or baseless, but foment discord all the same.
So, to award the Internet the Nobel Peace Prize? Good grief.
Let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that it does win. Who from the amorphous, 40-year-old entity will take the limelight on prize day, marked for Oct 8?
Will it be the Father of the Internet, Dr Vinton Cerf? Or will it be Mr Leonard Kleinrock, a computer science professor at UCLA, whose team – in October 1969 – sent the first computer-to-computer message on the Arpanet, now known as the Internet.
Last year, US President Barack Obama took the 10 million Swedish kronor (S$1.97 million) prize. It is likely the amount will be about the same this year.
Well, Mr Internet has seven months to prepare for the big night. I wonder what he will look in a tux.