Modern Lessons from Descartes

The only thing of which one can be certain is private subjective experience. ~Descartes
The above mentioned quote is taken from; Dreyfus, H. (2000) Telepistemology: Descartes Last Stand In K. Goldberg (Ed.) The Robot in the Garden: Telerobotics and telepistemology in the age of the internet (pp. 48-63). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
The above mentioned quote was penned years before the internet. Yet it is the standard by which a responsible individual must live by while communicating in cyberspace. No matter to the extent of which an individual has used the internet as a tool to communicate with another individual, that person must realize that communication is not a private subjective experience. What this means is that because you are not there to witness the other party in your communication, you cannot see the other party, the other party surroundings, along with many other variables unseen, your conversation is more readily susceptible to being partially or completely a farce. This possibility of deception can have many negative uses.
Electronic communication can be used to hide a person's physical features; the most common perpetration would be online dating sites. Electronic communication can be used to hide the number of individuals privy to a conversation, such as blind copies of confidential emails. Electronic communication can cause someone to believe they are talking to one person they may trust, but in reality they are really talking to someone they may not trust with access to the trusted individual's account. All of these deceptions have led to severe negative circumstances. People have been duped into a date with someone they have no interest in what-so-ever, employees have been fired over leaked discussions they trusted to be private, and now one of the most disturbing trends is that kids are committing violent crimes against themselves and others based on cyber bullying from trusted sources of electronic communication violated by would be bullies. An example of this, would be the story of Phoebe Prince, Prince was an exchange student in a Boston High School. Prince became so emotionally distraught from other students cyber bullying, that she took her own life.
With cyber communication, a little goes a long way. I do not believe that the good done by social networking sites, outweighs the negative aspects. It is not necessary for people to know what I am doing every minute of every day. I also feel, there needs to be regulation on the consequences of electronic communication, because the ability one has to manipulate the conversation. But the true lesson that must be ingrained in the thought process of all who would utilize electronic communication is, once you put it out there, you cannot take it back and you have no idea who may come across it. So use technology at your own risk, and understand that unless you can see and understand the exact situation in which your communication exists, you cannot be certain of anything.
Nick