Internet y control social: Entre rizoma y Gran Hermano

Gran hermano y rizoma son metáforas cada vez más utilizadas cuando se habla de Internet. En la red estamos continuamente monitorizados: se recogen y catalogan datos e información como si se tratase de un cyberpanopticón: de ahí la metáfora del gran hermano electrónico. La red siente la necesidad de imponer un control cuyo objetivo es uniformar el comportamiento de los usuarios. Pero Internet es, además, una estructura rizomática difícilmente encajable en modelos rígidos. Internet rechaza, por su propia naturaleza, la centralización del poder en beneficio de la autogestión. ¿Cómo pueden coexistir un sistema de vigilancia tipo gran hermano con las características rizomáticas de la red? Estas este artículo se analizan ambas metáforas y se busca una síntesis de ambos conceptos. Big Brother and Rhizome are both metaphors often used when talking about the Internet. On the web we are monitored and observed as personal data are catalogued and recorded as in a cyber-panopticon. This ever-present monitoring of Internet behaviours gives rise to the metaphor of Big Brother. As the aggregate of human communication, there is the need to impose social control on users on the web, specifically with the aim of creating uniformity of social behaviours. However, the Internet also has a rhizomatic structure, which does not conform to a rigid scheme of uniformity of behaviour. The Internet circumvents the centralization of power, just as it avoids the typical methods of vertical control and superstructure. Indeed, the Internet favours elf-regulation, preferring a central and horizontal relationship. This article explores how it is possible that these potentially contradictory Web schemes exist: the one favouring a system of surveillance as Big Brother, and with the democratic, rhizomatic‟s characteristics of the web. Are these metaphors antithetical or coexistent in their integration? Or, perhaps there is a need for a new all-embracing metaphor that synthesizes these two aspects of behavioural regulation in the Interne