AUTHOR: Sarah Cove TITLE: The Internet as the Brothers Grimm of today DATE: 3/22/2006 09:40:00 PM ----- BODY:

So my friend John, sent me links to two sites. They were http://www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html and www.911Truth.org. The first site is a physicist who uses scientific analysis to question the story that the government gave about the fires in the WTC being the cause of the collapse. And the latter site's mission is to "investigate, unearth, and widely publicize the full truth surrounding September 11th, 2001." These two sites could be labeled as "conspiracy theory" sites. But what makes a conspiracy theory? And how is that changing with the Internet? In my current understanding, I would categorize conspiracy theories as stories which counter the story given by a government (or other offficial and powerful network) but either have no assertions to back them up and/or no power to bring the story into the mainstream. Perhaps there will never be a "full" concensus about what happened on 9/11. Perhaps this will be another JFK assassination, with conversations about conspiracy theories still happening 30 years into the future. But how does the internet and global communication affect this? Marginal stories have a space to live and breathe on the Internet that wasn't available to them before. You can find countless stories about everything and anything on the Internet. Two hundred years ago, the Brothers Grimm collected over 200 German tales, which was a huge accomplishment in that day. Now the Internet does not "collect" stories, it "receives" them. And there are about about 7 or 8 powers of 10 more stories now, the number growing continuously. And so the marginal "conspiracy theories" have a space to live. Will they be able to gain power, even without assertions? How has story-telling changed with the internet now? How will it change in the future? How can/will one person's story become the Snow White of the future? I'd like to keep these questions open right now and have conversations with those interested about them. One thing I'd like to add, which is connected to all of the above but from a different direction, is the story about the Tiananmen Massacre. For most people in the world, Tiananmen in 1989 was a visual display of the Chinese government as a dangerous fascist military force that would kill its own people to maintain power and "tranquility." When I was in Southern China, a friend talked to me about how he remembers it happening as he was a high school student at the time, but that none of my students were being taught about the event. Many of these kids had not been born or were a couple of years old when the event happened. Their generation might be the one that loses that story and, to them, "The Tiananmen Massacre" will be a "conspiracy theory." This happens all the time, sometimes on smaller scales, and sometimes larger. One story gains control in a "power struggle" and pushes all other stories to the margins or to extinction. Sir Isaac Newton's story about physics as "absolutes" was displaced by Einstein's story about "relativity." The local "religions" of many people throughout the world was displaced by Christianity or Islam. My story about the correct way to hang a toilet paper roll DISPLACED Tony's story (which was, increduously, that it didn't matter). I'm not clear about what questions come to me right now about this resolution and "mainstreaming" of stories, but leave that space open as well. How will patterns of the past appear in the future and in the emerging technologies?

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