American Scientist

Life online, in many ways, reflects and extends our offline activities. Sociologist Christine Hine notes in her book Ethnography for the Internet that, although it would be a mistake to think of the Internet “as a straightforward mirror of everyday life...without distortion,” it’s a place that for many users in our age of social media “has lost its exotic edge.” Hine explains that, since “there is no strict, principled distinction between the Internet on one hand, and everyday life on the other,” most people who use the Internet regularly “think about the events that happen online as a part of everyday life rather than separate from it.”

So it only makes sense that as we go online we carry our everyday concerns, principles, and ideals along with us, and these show up wherever we do—whether it’s on the surface net (the part of the Internet easily reachable by search engines such as Google and Bing) or the dark net (the parts hidden from typical search engines and often accessed via Tor, free software that enables anonymous interaction).

In this way, points of cultural friction transfer readily to our lives online. And online a real tension has arisen, pitting advocates of individual privacy and freedom of information against proponents of security and law enforcement. The dark net lies at the center of this controversy because it offers a place for both both legal and illegal actions—pursuits that range from buying merchandise with bitcoins to organizing terrorist activities.

Author Jamie Bartlett spent many months considering this area of tension while researching his book The Dark Net: Inside the Digital Underworld. In this podcast episode, I spoke with Bartlett about concerns over surveillance, privacy, and security, and asked him to read a bit from his book.

Jamie Bartlett directs the Center for the Analysis of Social Media at the think tank Demos, where he specializes in online social movements and the impact of technology on society.