The term of word ‘balkanisasi siber’ was introduced by Cass Sunstein in 2002 brought the meaning on how the freedom has made a colony or a society to break apart and against each other due to their differences in thoughts or perception. This phenomenon could lead into the existence of the small groups with radical thinking and a possibility of violent actions by them.
The writer was trying to explain how this balkanization phenomenon that already happened in other part of the worlds had started to spread into our country Malaysia. The main focus of the writer is the unlimited freedom of the internet usage. As we all know, the internet is something that cannot be fully controlled by the government. So this is where the irresponsible parties took advantages by trying to perform the cyber balkanization towards the internet users.
Added to what the writer wrote, this cyber balkanization will affect the true meaning of the philosophy of freedom as the judgment of the society has been blurred by the information they received through the internet. These information from the internet are mostly with no legit sources, filled with defamation and been carried with the hatred towards the government.
How can this happened, said by the writer was because the internet has no filter towards those information. People can easily type anything that they wish to know in the internet and the Google search engine will provided it for them. Whether it was the correct or false information, people would not know as the internet displayed all that they can found regarding anything.
The writer said that there are a lot of causes of the internet usage that can be used but he preferred the one from the Cass Sunstein himself regarding this obsession symptoms activated by the internet due to its absolute freedom, no filter, very confidential and society are left alone with that much of information.
This is why the writer worry over the power of unlimited access towards the internet will jeopardize our unity of 1Malaysia as there are a lot of parties that would love to take advantages and trying to break through the peacefulness that we owned. He was worried on the possibilities of the 13th May, the incident of Kg Rawa and Kg Medan will be rewrite in our country’s dark history.
Through the writer’s research, there have already been the symptoms of the cyber balkanizations especially towards the Malay people. He gave the examples of the word search on ‘Melayu Babi’. There are more than hundreds thousands of variety piece of information that can be found by the internet only by that title itself. This issue has really clarify of what the writer was trying to explained, that there are more in the internet that we could never figure out until it is too late.
Writer had quoted from Mohd Hamdan Adnan, 2003:244, where it has been said by Hitler that even the lies that been repeated over and over again somehow eventually will be seen as the truth. True, most of the information we received are not all legit but when it has appeared too many times, we tend to believe it.
Most of the internet users seem to forget that spreading information without a legit source has violated the ethics in journalism, even most of them are journalist themselves. This and plus the government has no power to really controlled the internet usage making it more easy to poisoned the mind of public with all those crappy information especially the ones that against the government.
As for the conclusion, the cyber balkanization has slowly spreading throughout our country, affecting in a very high speed and will bring the downfall of our 1Malaysi unity without the firm action and controlled by the government. As for the internet users, they themselves need to be reminded that there are no such things as absolute freedom in Malaysia and all actions need to be accordingly with laws, ethics and a piece of mind.
leproudarina 