CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK
Fear, the New Virus of a Connected Era
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
n that distant world far, far away that was America before Sept. 11,
much was written about how the Internet and cable television were creating a
newly fragmented, decentralized world — a culturally splintered world of niche
marketing, special-interest publications and identity politics. As one 1990's
survey of Internet politics concluded, virtual communities "resemble the
semiprivate spaces of modern health clubs more than the public spaces of
agoras": "instead of meeting to discuss and debate issues of common concern to
the society, members of these virtual communities meet largely to promote their
own interests and to reinforce their own like-mindedness."
As a result, the cultural critic David Shenk wrote in his book "Data Smog," "It appears that rather than our world becoming a cozy village, we are instead retreating into an electronic Tower of Babel, a global skyscraper. Instead of gathering us into the town square, the new information technology clusters us into social cubicles. There are fewer central spaces, and not even a common channel."
All this changed in the wake of Sept. 11. The terrorist attacks not only unified the nation in obvious ways — provoking a shared sense of anger and grief, a rallying around the president and the flag, an initial urge to put partisan politics aside — but also created a ripple effect that moved across the land like a tsunami, revealing just how interconnected the country really is.
In the weeks after the World Trade Center disaster, Alaskan fishermen
reported a 15 percent drop in the sales of halibut, as high-end restaurant
orders contracted and shipments were disrupted by the temporary closing of the
Fulton Fish Market in Manhattan. Meatpackers and bakeries in Minnesota and dairy
cooperatives in Wisconsin were affected by the decision of Northwest
Airlines
Because all of America was affected by the events of Sept. 11, the Internet and 24-cable news shows quickly assumed the role of electronic town halls. But if those forms of communication initially brought the country together in displays of public grieving — through broadcasts of memorial services and Web site tributes to the victims — they have more lately become national forums for the expression of anxiety.
In the past, television brought the Vietnam conflict home to our living rooms, thereby accelerating, by many accounts, opposition to the war. With the Persian Gulf war, it enhanced an illusion of control and low-risk assault by showing us video- game images of smart bombs precisely destroying their targets. In contrast, the current war in Afghanistan has yielded fewer visuals, and talk on television and the Internet has focused more and more on fears of another terrorist attack at home — fears that have been magnified by the electronic media's dynamic of feedback and iteration.
In the first weeks after Sept. 11, images of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center, along with images of the towers collapsing, were played over and over again on television, goading people to relive those horrors. In the last two weeks (during which the F.B.I. responded to more than 2,300 reports of suspected anthrax or other dangerous substances) a new set of recycled images is being broadcast: shots of anthrax bacteria multiplying in petri dishes, and haz-mat inspectors in gas masks and protective suits examining suspected sites.
With 52 percent of Americans, according to one poll, saying they could imagine themselves or a loved one being victims of a terrorist attack, talk online and onscreen has increasingly revolved around worries of bioterrorism. On MSNBC.com, for instance, people voiced an imaginative array of fears that could easily prove contagious. Someone from Mesa, Ariz., wondered if "terrorists working as production workers" could "contaminate consumer goods" — like cosmetics, vitamins, baby powder — "during manufacture." Someone from Coral Springs, Fla., worried that smallpox could be spread by "suicide disease carriers" walking around and infecting thousands. And someone from Massillon, Ohio, raised the possibility of the white powder used inside latex gloves' being contaminated with anthrax.
False e-mail rumors — ranging from the loony ("Images of the World Trade Center fire reveal the face of Satan!") to the portentous ("blue envelopes from the Klingerman Foundation containing sponges saturated with a deadly virus are being anonymously mailed to random Americans") — began to circulate with such virulence that several Web sites (including snopes2.com and truthorfiction.com) set up special pages to assess the veracity of such terrorist-related "urban legends." And with his "Nightline Fact Check," Ted Koppel has repeatedly tried to debunk widespread e-mails, including one about a woman whose Afghan former boyfriend warned her not to fly on Sept. 11 and not to visit any malls on Oct. 31; and another reporting that more than 30 Ryder, U-Haul and Verizon trucks had been stolen, many by individuals of Arab descent.
"It's like emptying the ocean with a spoon," Mr. Koppel observed. "These are boom times for idiots with a misplaced sense of humor or malice."
They are boom times, of course, because in a day when the F.B.I. itself is issuing ominously vague warnings about imminent terrorist attacks, it's harder to tell legitimate worries from out-and-out paranoia. Given the discovery of anthrax in Florida, New York City, New Jersey and Washington, given the decision of the House of Representatives to adjourn for five days because of an anthrax scare, there is fear now in a handful of dust, in a handful of baby powder or pudding mix or artificial sweetener.
Before Sept. 11, it was easy enough for anyone with a little common sense to shrug off the nuttier rumors and conspiracy theories that flourish on the Net — the Area 51 UFO warnings, the Jimmy Hoffa sightings, the Hale-Bopp comet fantasies of the Heaven's Gate cult — but these days, when things once thought unimaginable (the twin towers' being brought down by hijacked airplanes, anthrax turning up in the mail) have come to pass, it's harder to separate the hysterical from the plausible. Indeed, recent television broadcasts by two usually sober news shows had a sensationalistic, what-if quality to them: "Nightline" staged a fictional scenario about an anthrax attack on a city's subway system, while "60 Minutes" did a segment on the dangers of a terrorist attack on the nation's nuclear power plants.
Uncertainty provides just the sort of environment in which rumors thrive, of course, and the Internet by its very nature tends to incubate ideas that might otherwise fade away. In Marshall McLuhan's terms, the Internet is a "cool" medium — leaving "much to be filled in or completed by the audience" — and by democratizing information, it gives equal weight to the opinions of specialists, ignoramuses and zealots, allowing users to pull in whatever data they want through their computers. Among the things that can be viewed on the Web today are recruitment videos from Al Qaeda and terrorist tradecraft tips from Osama bin Laden's followers, who have proven themselves remarkably adept at using the Internet to spread their message around the world.
What people tend to pull in from the Internet and television are those ideas and images they find most compelling; these "memes" — to use a term coined by the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins back in 1976 — then spread from person to person through conversations, e- mails, bulletin boards, chat rooms and instant messages. What makes a meme spread quickly enough to cause a cultural epidemic? In the book "Thought Contagion," Aaron Lynch suggested that anxiety-inducing memes tend to spread more quickly than others, because their carriers are driven by an urgent need to proselytize. And in "The Tipping Point," Malcolm Gladwell argued that the "stickiness" of an idea — its irresistibility — is a crucial factor.
The fear of a Y2K meltdown was a meme that flourished right before the millennium. The vogue for low- riding jeans was a meme that seized hold of teenagers. The fascination with Monica Lewinsky was a meme embraced by the chattering classes in a more innocent time.
The fear of anthrax infection is a very real and legitimate worry in an America still recovering from Sept. 11 and reeling from new reports of exposure. At the same time, however, it is also a remarkably hardy and widespread meme that has taken hold of the nation's collective unconscious — a mind virus spread by word of mouth and amplified by our electronic media, an epidemic that has united the country, but united it in anxiety and dread.
-- Anonymous, October 20, 2001