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This is a very timely post for me, since I was discussing this idea with a friend just a few weeks ago. I left that conversation thinking that on the whole, ma
by acabal 9y ago
This is a very timely post for me, since I was discussing this idea with a friend just a few weeks ago. I left that conversation thinking that on the whole, maybe, just maybe, the internet is becoming a net negative force on society.
Yes, lots of good has been done--Wikipedia, other outlets of free culture, email and its decentralized model, etc.--but on the whole, I think that just maybe it's poised to do more bad than good. As this post mentions, the internet and its promise of a free and instant global megaphone for any idea whatsoever is a powerful tool for manipulation, deceit, and power struggle on a grand scale. The human psyche isn't yet ready for this kind of instant firehose communication, but it seems to crave it, and our darling internet megacorporations are happy and eager to provide it, carefully tuned to be as addictive as possible.
Furthermore the human population on a grand scale doesn't have the critical thinking and reasoning skills necessary to filter this firehose: huge swaths of people in the world don't have good access to education, and in the US at least, with our high schools already at the bottom of the barrel and our universities increasingly becoming diploma mills/expensive trade schools, I don't see the education situation improving. But critical thinking and reasoning skills, which are the foundation of a good education, are exactly what we need to combat this.
I grew up in the Bay Area, and my entire life has been centered around computers, the internet, and the good they can do. It was really saddening for me to reach this conclusion. I hope I'm wrong, and I hope we can do something to remedy things. But these problems are largely cultural/human nature problems, not technology problems.
- kingkawn 9y agoI think that everyone is collectively exhausting all of the cultural poignancy to the old ideas, and that soon something truly new will arrive.
- rtpg 9y agoThis isn't the first time it's happened. The printing press and radio both were followed by waves of "fake news", conspiracy and the like. But ultimately people stop buying the National Enquirer. The FCC shows up to enforce some basic rules about truth telling and libel. And... Facebook changes their algorithms to stop allowing crap to bubble up? Twitter decides to actually clean up their platform at least a bit? Places like /pol/ can exist without them being mainstream, but when mainstream platforms host fringe views because '1st ammendment lol', then you start having issues. In "the old internet", if people were being toxic, you'd just kick them off the forum, out of the chat.
- acabal 9y agoI don't disagree, but the difference with the internet is that it's so easy to be anonymous, or at least hard enough to unmask that it's not worth it, and the cost is almost nothing. With a printing press, you have to procure materials, a printer, wide distribution of physical items, etc., and all of those contacts mean that someone somewhere can probably point fingers if the law wants to find you. But try finding the people behind the 10,000 anonymous Reddit throwaway accounts, half in foreign countries. Or the guy writing fake news articles that get picked up by Twitter, who paid for his hosting account in Bitcoin and lives in Thailand. Radio is more anonymous, but can't be instantly shared in the same way things can online. A friend would have to tell you the frequency, you'd have to make time in your day to tune in and listen, and if a pirate station gets shut down there's not always another one lined up to take over instantly. That's the problem here--nearly free, instantaneous, global, mostly anonymous communication, that friends and family can share into your inbox instantly and effortlessly. Firehose after firehose turned on, aimed directly at you, by people wearing masks. That's why this situation is different from the printing press or the radio.
- jacquesm 9y agoAh good one, I totally missed out on the anonymous angle. Will update the post.
- rtpg 9y agomy theory has always been that 95% of the issues are generated by people not _that_ motivated. Like if you get banned from twitter a couple of times then you'll just kinda give up. Or you'll just say "twitter ain't for me, gonna go for nazi mastodon". Infowars exists, there's always going to be a platform for these people, but it's more about making their efforts less worthwhile in other parts of the net.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]