China's "Netizens" number 130 million - and are growing 30% every year. Second only to the U.S., China is installing Broadband everywhere and internet cafes are the size of K-Marts and as abundant as Starbucks.

In 2005, Guo Liang of the Chinese Acadamy of Social Sciences published a study showing that only two thirds (and dropping) of Net users had email accounts, and of them, only a third check their email on a daily basis. Forty-two percent of Netizens did not use a search engine. Seventy-five percent had never made an online purchase.

Instead of replacing encyclopedias, newspapers, storefronts, travel agencies, yearbooks, and the U.S. Postal Service, Chinese people --both addicts and non-addicts-- were flocking to Video Gaming virtual worlds and million person-chat rooms. This is not the business-oriented Web of the West.

Guo's study explained that the Chinese internet user's online presence had very little in common with their real lives; they went online to escape. What and why?

The numbers of young people truly addicted to gaming and chatting spurred Professor Tao Hongkai to start a counseling hospital. His breakthrough came from exploring not what Netizens were escaping to, but instead what they were escaping from. The official State news take on this celebrity doctor is here. His explanation for why millions get violently addicted to gaming and chatting amounts to an indictment of modern Chinese Society.

But an American journalist went undercover and took the treatment and came back with some even harsher lessons we in the States can learn about our own society to understand why millions are flocking to our social networking sites.

[The Chinese Internet Doctor Tao,] railed against the one-child policy and the xiao huangdi (little emperors) it had created; children whose every material need was met even as spiritual needs were ignored. Instead of having hopes of their own, spoiled teenagers carried those of six other people, their parents and two sets of grandparents. They were over protected but underdeveloped, without discipline or a sense of meaning. "They have nothing to hold on to," he said. "They are empty inside."

As the State news agency spun the story away from the one-child policy, Tao speaks out against the new education system with it's heavy dependence on standardized testing.

Tao instead recommends a quality-oriented education, one which teaches youths how to become useful and successful adults. According to Tao, "the worth of an individual's overall character rests with psychological, professional and comprehensive qualities. It is not simply a matter of satisfactory test scores."

Tao notes that students being crushed by slave-driver teachers and the pressure of a single test, the gaokao for college entrance, have time for only rote memorization--not for singing clubs, or volleyball teams or after-school activities. You got that NCLB?

The most popular games in China are MirII and World of Warcraft, these are games not of gore but of wits and team-building and winnable battles. These games give the teenagers something society, and especially schools do not: freedom. "If they want to fight, they can fight. If they want to curse, they can curse. If they want to marry, they can marry. Back in real life, Tao said, "every child is a like a little donkey. The teacher grabs his two long ears and pulls and pulls. The parents get behind him and push and push."

In America, young Netizens are filling social networks. Why? What are they escaping from? What are they replacing online that is missing in their lives?

I would suggest lasting relationships.

Consider how the strength of a relationship in Social Networks is a function of the number of common "friends." It's a law like phenomenon, you could call it The Online Law of Transitivity. Stronger relationships can build greater trust based on common values, lifestyle, culture, and viewpoint.

The individual's identity is affected by participation in a self-governing social unit (in online social networks, the personal identity is important to understand, as I wrote previously). Our modern conception of individual identity in a self-governing social unit was formulated by Locke and Montesquieu -- you know, that whole "consent of the governed" thing.

The law of transitivity for identity is as follows: If A=B and B=C, then A=C. For example, if Bruce Wayne is Batman, and Batman is the Caped Crusader, then Bruce Wayne is the Caped Crusader.

Consider this law and how it figures into an application of Locke's theory of personal identity:

Locke's theory of personal identity is based on consciousness. Consider person A at time T1, and person B at a later time T2. We can say that person B is the same as person A only if person B has the same consciousness as person A. Specifically, this requires that everything that A remembers, B also remembers. If A remembers that she was bitten by a rabid dog when she was five, then B must have that memory as well.

"For should the soul of a prince, carrying with it the consciousness of the prince's past life, enter and inform the body of a cobbler . . . everyone sees he would be the same person with the prince, accountable only for the prince's actions: but who would say it's the same man."

Explanation:
Human Identity: same man (as for any organism or mechanism).
- same person (see the prince and the cobbler thought experiment).
- same soul or thinking substance
Personal Identity: "same [train of] consciousness":
"As far as consciousness can be extended backwards...so far reaches the identity of that person."

Ergo: The internet makes the above no longer a thought experiment. Strong relationships and shared consciousness is happening in online social networks and online communities.

This potentiality for Universal History is a thread running through large online communities such as DailyKos or YouTube where any thing must exist at some place in the hive mind, and by belonging to the hive, that thing, be it a film clip or a personal observation of a political phenomena, is embedded in the personal identity of the end user. With Google, 'as far as consciousness can be be extended backwards' is, well, all the way back.

This is something written about in one of the very few books (excepting, of course Larry) that contain new political philosophy insights resting on an understanding of the importance and actual function of the internet - this book about the roots of the internet and the Whole Earth Network, and the rise of Digital Utopianism. [hat tip to Stoller for the rec.]

I believe that what Americans are doing on the internet can be a great thing for our democracy, our communities and our relationships. Combined with a virtual-to-field plan of physical gatherings, it can save our Republic as well as restore our relationships with each other. Americans are going online to do this because these things were starving and being killed.

I believe the best on the net is an example of millions of us, not escaping, but restoring what was precious and nearly lost.