In defence of ignorance

It is a concept so vulgar and opportunistic, and yet with such pretence of genuine moral complexity that it can put you into a philosophical stupor if you don`t have your wits about you. The University of Calgary is running a course on coding viruses and Trojans, the "first ... of its kind in Canada".

A little knowledge can be dangerous. A lot of it in the wrong hands is fearful.

Carel Alberts, technology editor, ITWeb

What are we supposed to think? That Wits University was stupid not to think of it first? That the right to information is absolute and sacrosanct? That we`re beyond good and bad? That information in itself isn`t bad, and that the way we conduct ourselves with it is the true determinant of that, in the way that "guns don`t kill, only people do"?

Give me a break. The only way this is remotely all right is recognising that this sort of information, like information on the manufacturing of chemical weapons or explosives, is widely available at any rate.

The simple reality of the matter is that, even if you treat this as an ethical dilemma (protecting information assets versus the right to know), certain values are higher than others, and pragmatic ones highest of them all - not fairness, not liberal notions of self-actualisation, but practical considerations of self-preservation, safety and good sense.

My point is that some things are better left untouched, unlearned, unsaid and not rushed into by everyman. (And while this is a slightly separate issue, it might be instructive to look to the law as example. This kind of conservatism is what characterises many laws. Whatever our ethical outrage at being stifled, and our ideas about what we`re entitled to as intelligent beings, a study of the law - which prides itself on its ethical foundations - quickly reveals the expediency and conservatism of its, and our, make-up. And since it is about self-preservation, you could say "rightly so".)

Most commonly, we make rules, in law and in notions of accepted behaviour, that ensure our own progress, well-being and comfort. This is man at his most self-aware, which is not a bad thing. It`s a simple case of looking out for number one, the collective number one. It`s nice and practical.

And, to return to my point, that is why it seems pointless to me to embark on anything that might endanger our well-being, however indirect, such as spreading knowledge about coding viruses. A little knowledge can be dangerous. A lot of it in the wrong hands is fearful.

At the heart of self-reflective rule-making is the realisation that I don`t know what you`re capable of, just as you don`t know what I might do. No sense in putting too much power into too many hands. Those entrusted with knowledge are usually the ones who have proven to be ethical operators, dependable, of long-standing and genuine interest in the field they say they want to learn more about, and of some proven talent.

You don`t expect someone with literary ambitions to be immediately successful. If he or she wants to be the next Virginia Woolf, chances are they`ll first have to dream about it for 20 years or more, endlessly writing and re-writing their unformed thoughts and callow sentiments, being driven away by countless practical admonitions from friends and family, and suffering burning humiliation for their efforts.

Whatever their anger at being turned away by publishers who make millions out of sub-standard drivel, or at finding every second adult reading Harry Potter books - they can`t take it personally. It`s not an elitist way of rearing talent. It`s supposed to be hard.

In the same way, I`d prefer it if the real crackers out there, and the ones shadowing their moves in order to learn how to stop them, were lifelong cloak-and-dagger types, who hung around the TV repair shop in the seventies to check out the diodes and transistors, who studied towards technological mastery later on in life, or hacked around the applications at work that nobody else uses to their full potential, or exhibited some kind of fascination with the ethics of it, or went to the army for the cool equipment and talked to other like-minded individuals for years before they were actually allowed into the pantheons of secrecy.

Why do I say that? Someone once said if you gave a million monkeys typewriters and sat them down for a hundred years, they`d come up with Shakespeare`s words between them. And the Internet has proven this to be true.

Over-democratisation of the arts and sciences is not on the whole a bad thing. Instantly publishable works are what makes the Internet and other (relatively) cheap technologies like video cameras potentially great, and it gave us things like The Blair Witch Project and open source. But it also gave us 14-year-olds kiddie-scripting their way into servers with questionable motives and even sentience, Big Brother style entertainment of the masses that is ultimately an odious preoccupation with inanity, unrelenting Nigerian business proposals, fantastic amounts of messages in languages one doesn`t understand - and the list goes on.

I`d rather the same masses that brought us these fine things were not let anywhere near virus code. But what am I so worried about? You can find the stuff anywhere.