The Internet is a collection of interconnected computers. The robust underlying design is basically that all computers pass on any message that isn't for them. The Internet arose from the fear that military communications would be destroyed by radio-frequency pulses from nuclear weapons in a nuclear war. A sprawling web of many military and academic computers obeying the basic rule to pass one messages was thought more likely to survive than strengthening of purely miliatry connections.
The military and educational sectors cohabited surprisingly highly successfully largely by pretending to "mutual invisibility". However, the commercial sector has recently joined these publicity shy lovers with the recognition that the Internet provides wide and cheap access to your data. This "data" can be text, numbers, graphics or any combination of these - anything you can create by putting together zeros and ones according to an agreed code. (Maths theory suggests that there is nothing we can comprehend that can't be represented this way.)
The new military, academic and commercial ménage a trois has flourished with the addition to existing codes and protocols of a code, "HyperText Markup Language", and a protocol which enables computers to exchange this. This development allows me to put this newsletter on a computer in St. George's and make it visible anywhere on the Internet.
This has led to a profusion of information being put on this "World Wide Web". Academics have put up things for other academics. Things I've mounted include the newsletters of: the Society for Psychotherapy Research (UK); the European Council on Eating Disorders; the Association of Therapeutic Communities; and the Cassel Hospital. The military have put up large collections of free software. (The "make-yourself-look-damn-useful-when-they-do-see-you-so-they'll-be-more-likely-to-turn-a-blind-eye-to-evidence-of-your-less-useful-side" exception that I think reinforces my general "mutual invisibility" rule.) Most recently, the commercial sector have put up advertising for a fraction of the cost of any other advertising medium.
What's forensically interesting is that some people, seeing an opportunity, mounted pornographic material and others flocked to look at this and a new porn industry was launched. The apparent anonymity and cheapness revealed some trends: a review notes that someone being prosecuted in the States found that a picture he initially described as depicting "oral sex" was accessed much more often when he changed the description to "choking oral sex". Depictions of bestiality and paedophilia also flourished. Although the actual traffic, as a proportion of that on the Internet, was minute, it is clear that the Internet revealed a very prevalent interest (at least among a broadly male, computer-oriented population) in sado-masochistic and other "perverse" sexuality. This probably doesn't much surprise forensic psychotherapists and it suggests to me that it is timely to have a Forensic Psychotherapy presence on the Internet.
After a while conventional media noticed what was happening and became concerned about the absence of the "top shelf" classification. (It occurs to me this may be a peculiarly British thing: in this country "soft" porn is restricted to the top shelves in newsagents as it is believed firstly that this puts it out of reach of children, and secondly, and perhaps more fantastically, that elieved it makes it less likely to offend non-purchasors. People realised that on the Internet pornographic material would be accessible to any child with an Internet connection and minimal keyboard skills. It was also noticed that increasing numbers of children had Internet access through their school. Once the issue was recognised it also became clear that it would be difficult to police and legislate this with the methods developed for other media.
I hope that mounting the newsletter on the net, minus any bits
that are clearly for the eyes of members only, will help to publicise
the discipline. The address or "URL" of the newsletter
and other IAFP material is to the right of this article. Spread
it around! My existing material gets about 400 visits a week so
this can be a good way to publicise an issue or an organisation.
I'll keep you posted on how this develops.
Chris Evans
C.Evans@sghms.ac.uk