Building Global Citizens: Empathy, the Limits of Human Nature, and First Steps towards Social Equality through E-Learning Assignments

Introduction

The World Wide Web (WWW) and Internet have been harnessed to provide electronic government (e-government) services for local citizenry around the world. The perceived benefits of these technologies involve widespread access to relevant information (for knowledge and decision-making); low-cost information dissemination to promote free speech, and communication facilitation; the maintenance of human social relations unconstrained by space-time; community formation and social organization; production and commerce; leisure and entertainment; identity formation and psychological development; learning and cognitive development, and cultural understandings (Brey, 2005, n.p.). On the other hand, research has found a range of negative implications of this mass medium on society.

Brey has reviewed the literature and found 11 countervailing negatives: “information overload, false information, harmful information, harmful communication, harmful effects on social relations, harmful effects on community and social organization, harmful effects on production and commerce, harmful effects on identity formation and psychological development, harmful effects on learning and cognitive development, cultural fragmentation, and loss of privacy and private-public boundaries” (Brey, 2005, n.p.). More specifically, there are concerns about the loss of privacy protections, fraud, false identities, moral pollutants, hacking, anonymous postings, libelous information, support for negative addictive behaviors, and anti-social behaviors. The greater Net-enabled connectivity may be interpreted to enhance behaviors that are considered illegal and immoral as well (Caplan, 2009). Chopra and Dexter argue that software has philosophical implications that are social, political, and metaphysical:

Others, however, have argued that incorrect inferences have been made about the Internet promoting democracy or anything other than an anarchic environment. “There is little evidence that the Internet will create new communities to make up for the decline in civic engagement over the past four decades in the U.S.,” observes Uslaner (2000, p. 64). Millions turn to the Internet as a regular part of their daily lives (Iriberri & Leroy, 2009, p. 11:1), and the WWW is the backdrop for many forms of e-learning.

Understanding how those services and have been shaped and delivered will be important in first understanding the information and communication technology (ICT) affordances. Then, once the provincial applications have been discussed, this chapter will examine how the WWW supports the global citizen identity. If the Internet is a singularity—a point in space-time where gravitational forces are so infinitely dense and voluminous that space-time becomes distorted—then it should be harnessed instead of resulting in chaos. The collective creation and pooling of knowledge may result in increased “individual and aggregate capabilities,” optimally in a “virtuous cycle” (Flake, 2006, p. 2). These synergies cut across national boundaries and cultures, including developing countries (Alam, Ahmed, & Islam, 2008).