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I find this post quite disappointing. I don't mean to come off harsh but it is quite naive and utopian and I cannot take the call to arms seriously. Saying the

by adim86 7y ago

I find this post quite disappointing. I don't mean to come off harsh but it is quite naive and utopian and I cannot take the call to arms seriously. Saying the internet went wrong is like saying the invention of cars went wrong cause we still have car accidents. For every powerful force in the world, it will be a source of good and bad things. The internet has changed the world, increased communication, allowed people in New York to learn and communicate with people in Egypt. Share stories, cultures, solve problems. A person in Nigeria can teach themselves Hindu, just from pure curiosity and no budget. No publisher needs to approve a book to be published or where it will be sold. We can make phone calls for free at any point in the day. We have Wikipedia, which for free provides more information than any human can process in their lifetime. For everyone who has access to the internet, the bulk of the world knowledge has been democratized and made accessible and something went wrong? Do terrorists use the internet? sure! Has consumerism hijacked parts of the internet? Sure! but these things are only symptoms of how powerful this tool is. Should we try to control and fix these problems of course! But for someone who created something so powerful, I am a bit disappointed at the negative tone of this post on the 50th anniversary of the first message.

_jgdh 7y ago
Small nit - a person can learn Hindi (the language) or Hinduism (the religion) but not Hindu.
- ianhawes 7y ago
  And there’s our smudgeness.
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    Is it smug? I didn’t know that. I have spent enough time in Hindu places that I think that’s good to know.
  - celticmusic 7y ago
    It's not clear to me how the correction of a cultural nature is being smug. The poster in question even admitted it was a "small nit", but it's still useful information for both the poster, and other readers.
    - wutbrodo 7y ago
      This is a quote from the Office, which leads me to believe it's at least a little tongue in cheek.
      - celticmusic 7y ago
        ah ok, I misunderstood then.
paulpauper 7y ago
agree. the inventor does not get to decide or choose how his invention is used I would also agree the internet has been a huge net positive.
- totally 7y ago
  "net" positive!
- JohnFen 7y ago
  > I would also agree the internet has been a huge net positive. I thought that not terribly long ago. I have to admit, though, that with every passing day I become less sure that it's really a net positive.
  - vasilipupkin 7y ago
    Of course, it is. Put it this way, there is absolutely zero evidence that it’s not net positive.
    - vasilipupkin 7y ago
      those who downvoted me, I am curious what evidence you have that it's not net positive. I've never seen any such evidence, only a list of problems, which of course exist with any human endevour.
      - JohnFen 7y ago
        I didn't downvote you, but I don't know what you mean by "evidence it's not a net positive". You determine whether something is a net positive or net negative by listing all of the negatives and positives and seeing how they balance out. With the internet, there are clearly both negatives and positives. The "evidence" either way is the full list of these factors. Do they balance out in the positive or negative direction? The answer to that depends on how you weight the various factors, and I rather suspect that different people will weight the various factors differently. In other words, this is more a judgement call than some sort of hard objective truth regardless of whether you consider the net effect to be good or bad.
themagician 7y ago
It’s more like inventing the bicycle and then having it evolve into a car, where your initial idea was for a safe, economical, sustainable way to get from on point to another. Instead we paved over all the sidewalks with freeways to make room insanely large vehicles that crash into each other and kill everyone involved. Sure, they get from one point to another faster and help you transport things larger than you imagined and further than you imagined... but that’s not why you designed the bicycle.
- briandear 7y ago
  Bicycles didn’t evolve into cars, horses and stagecoaches did.
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    Proving what I’ve always said, that bicycles are the chimpanzees of the transportation world. But yea, the overall idea here that this guy had the ANY IDEA of what the internet would/could become when he worked on it is ridiculous. It doesn’t make his opinion worth too much other than for a clickbait headline.
- airstrike 7y ago
  That's still not a valid argument. You're minimizing the amazing benefits created by near instantaneous transportation (or communication, in the case of the internet). How many lives were saved because ambulances exist? It's easy to cherry pick the pros and cons of any invention, but at the end of the day any attempt to do so is inherently biased. Society continues to evolve with nearly every economic and welfare indicator scoring better than 10, 50, 100 years ago. On average, inventions like automobiles and global communications must be contributing to this net positive societal gain. There's nothing glaringly bad about the internet or automobiles. Even if the internet is used for bad things at times, it's also created a shitload of good. Regardless, it is but a means to an end. People would do go on to do good or bad things even if the internet didn't exist, so we can't blame this one invention for the actions of humans.
  - 7y ago
wadkar 7y ago
Small nitpick : Hindi not Hindu. The former is language which one can learn. The latter is, depending on how you ask, is a (group of) religion(s)/way of life. On the other hand, let’s compare internet to nuclear fission. Clearly lot benefits can be drawn from the technology (assuming safety practices etc) but in our current world order it is primarily used as a deterrent. So I don’t think OP is complaining unnecessarily. We must strive to ensure technology is used for beneficial purposes. And in that sense, the call to arms is justified.
- UI_at_80x24 7y ago
  I have been a science and technology enthusiast all of my life. I started running my own BBS over 30 years ago on a Commodore64. To say that I am passionate would be an understatement. Alas, lately I am becoming a Luddite. Feature creep is the enemy. I don't want or need an 'info-tainment' screen in my vehicle. I refuse to join the Apple or Google walled gardens. The warnings from Science Fiction have been ignored, and we are wage-slaves to corporation-governments. There is a better way to live. We must take back our power. When does a tool become a weapon? When it inflicts harm. The internet has been weaponized.
  - wadkar 7y ago
    I would like to agree with you, but I am not sure I understand how internet has been weaponized. Can you please elaborate on how the internet is/can harm?
    - UI_at_80x24 7y ago
      -Election manipulation. -SWATTING of competitive Gamers. -Cyber bullying (not just limitied to those instances that end in suicide) -The stalking and death-threats to Black Lives Matter organizers. -China's "social credit score" -The need for Hong Kong protestors to hide their identity. I don't have time to post specific URL's to substantiate my claims, but I feel I've given broad enough categorizes to convey my meaning.
    - throwaway129917 7y ago
ArtDev 7y ago
You mentioned cars, which is good comparison. Obviously, cars are essential. But here is short a list of completely unnecessary issues brought on by greed and industry: * The health and societal cost of leaded gasoline and the industry resistance to transitioning to unleaded. * The Automobile industry purchase and subsequent removal of train and light rail tracks in the United States. * The Automobile industry resistance to requiring airbags. * The oil industry and it's war against global warming science. There are many more, these are just the ones off the top of my head. Point is, it isn't the technology but the industry around the technology that is the issue. Cars are useful and essential just like the internet. But right now, we have a situation akin to the early automobile industry. I hope that, with this technology, we can get some privacy laws/worker rights/better standards before we have another half-century before anything gets done about the Big Bad Corporate takeover of the Internet.
- reyqn 7y ago
  He mentioned car, which is an awful comparison. Cars should never have been invented and they are the worst thing that happened to humanity. Just imagine how much money has been wasted into cars, and roads, when any other mean of transportation would have been more efficient.
  - oblio 7y ago
    Just imagine how much personal freedom cars have brought, especially to disenfranchised groups. There's two sides to every coin and some sides have a lot deeper grooves than what can be seen at first glance.
    - blacksmith_tb 7y ago
      Disenfranchised groups who nevertheless could afford to buy and maintain cars? I wouldn't say cars have no positive aspects, but they have been heavily marketed on the idea that they give you freedom (few car ads will show a traffic jam, it's always a gloriously open road...), but their cost, in terms of pollution, urban sprawl, and injuries is quite high.
    - 7y ago
pastor_elm 7y ago
>A person in Nigeria can teach themselves Hindu, just from pure curiosity and no budget Again, these are poor examples. It's not terribly easy to learn a language for free using just the internet. Everything is freemium and it's only getting worse. It's arguably easier to go to your local library and use their resources. Many people have this idea that some things would be impossible if not for the internet, but that definitely isn't the case.
- cpitman 7y ago
  I've been using the internet to learn a language for a month now, and have had far more success then I had in multiple years of high school language classes. Between tools that provide Spaced Repetition learning, to websites that are basically textbooks, to youtube videos both meant to teach and others that are native media, and finally people who curate all these materials, this is way better.
  - behringer 7y ago
    Most of which are funded by showing you ads for things you don't need or selling your personal information.
    - oblio 7y ago
      And regular people would consider that a net gain.
      - behringer 7y ago
        Not one of the inventors of the internet. Whether it's money now or money down the road though perverse buying habits, you're still paying for it. It's not free.
reikonomusha 7y ago
How about the internet being used as a mass surveillance machine and the obliteration of producers in favor of consumers? That facet isn’t a drop in the bucket of internet usage. M I think focusing what it could be used for and what it has been used for isn’t the right way to approach thinking about it. The internet is by and large used for consuming content from a handful of corporations (disclaimer: I have no source to back up this claim), and a lot of negative consequences follow from that.
- lmpostor 7y ago
  >the obliteration of producers in favor of consumers More consumers begets more producers. I would assert you have better odds of producing in a wide variety of areas.
  - y4mi 7y ago
    No, it does not. everyone is just following the most popular producers and the rest are basically irrelevant. Just look at the follower counts and how it drops off on any of the popular sites such as YouTube, twitch, patreon etc We got more consumers than ever, but they're all following the same people, centralizing it even more
    - wvenable 7y ago
      That's not a problem with the Internet though, that's a problem with humanity!
    - spunker540 7y ago
      Direct-to-consumer businesses have taken off due to the internet. It’s never been easier to start a sock company or glasses company etc. Historically you had to get in to the big box retailers to sell anything non-local but the internet has flipped that on its head. Even big platforms like eBay and Shopify (and even Amazon) are offering small businesses and individuals way more opportunities to sell than they would have had pre-internet. Furthermore in a direct to consumer world, incumbency matters way less. People had fewer options pre-internet (whatever was at their local store) and now brands largely compete on quality (reviews/ratings) rather than pure placement and marketing.
wonton52 7y ago
I think he is afraid of the directionthe internet is taking. All the most important benefits we have gained from the internet will be undone if every nation and every isp censors and filters too much content. China is becoming a model for the rest of the world, and we are in danger of losing it all, or even worse; being manipulated into thinking we did not.
- hello_moto 7y ago
  It's tough, the internet is so open that there are people out there that are having trouble separating hoaxes/fake news with the real news. The spread of these fake news are even way faster than the "old media". You need to be a little bit tech literate in order to navigate the internet.
  - UncleOxidant 7y ago
    The epistemological crisis is really the worst thing the internet has brought us. When you have large segments of the population who believe in a completely different "truth" the future doesn't look bright at all.
- stale2002 7y ago
  It is a bit of the opposite. This guy is closer to arguing in favor of censorship, as opposed to against it. He thinks freedom is too dangerous, because I'd all the bad things that people do with their freedom.
pwthornton 7y ago
The Internet is not as bad as cars. That's harsh! Cars kill more than 1 million people a year, and are actively cooking our planet. On balance, cars -- at least our ability to use them -- has been a huge negative. The Internet is a lot more balanced, but both show how a lack of foresight and system design can lead to a lot of negative consequences. We could drastically cut down on the number of road deaths if we took it more seriously and made some big system design changes, but we haven't. We can also make the Internet a better place, but there will always be issue with all massive systems.
- criley2 7y ago
  Might be more accurate to say "contribute to cooking our planet" because if there were 0 cars, we'd still be cooking this planet, since all of transportation including planes, boats and cars is only 29% of total carbon emissions (US 2017 data) Even in transportation, only 60% is due to light duty vehicle, the other 40% being trucks and planes mostly. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...
- malvosenior 7y ago
  > On balance, cars -- at least our ability to use them -- has been a huge negative. Honestly there's no way this is true. How many people would die if they couldn't use an ambulance? How many people are surviving on goods shipped to them via trucks? Of course things can be improved, but there's no way the automobile was a net negative on humanity.
  - joshklein 7y ago
    What if the larger story of the industrialization enabled by that trucking warms the planet to the point that humanity goes extinct? Something to at least consider; unintended consequences are still consequences.
    - deleted 7y ago
mc32 7y ago
I think you’re right. If it didn’t “go wrong” it would have stagnated and not been very useful. Kinda like the minitel. It didn’t “go wrong” but it also went nowhere.
jueij9jk 7y ago
You and I had a very different emotional takeaway. This isn’t a call for idealistic utopia. IMO that’s what Facebook & AWS are pushing for: idealized world, organized around perfectly modeled hierarchy, using algorithms they control (aka traditional values belief in law and godhead, I digress). Yes the technological invention as a literal thing is incredible. But it’s almost entirely comprised of compelled speech in how we design the systems/code itself to support business goals, the most visible content bubbles up via paid ads, and conditioning to favor constant commercial trade. Is “constant feudal trade is good for us” a mantra like “war is peace”? Do we owe political deference to using humanities most important tool, the planet, to the demands of ideology that we know is materially destroying broader value of that tool? The internet has shown us it’s possible to believe very different things given the same access to information. Why is online discourse so often filtered to financial trade & wealth generation? It’s a technological wonder, but being used to conduct society in the same old way for the most part. IMO technologists have failed by jumping on the startup band wagon. Social pressure for conformity to finance won.
dxbydt 7y ago
It’s a particular point of view that obviously won’t find resonance in this HN audience. Were the author’s view to prevail, you would be out of a job. Vast majority of people here owe their livelihood either directly or indirectly to the democratization of the internet. But that doesn’t mean the author the author is naive. There are certainly (unvoiced) masses largely sympathetic to his point of view. Take the example you mentioned- cars. The Magnificent Ambersons garnered 4 Oscar nominations debating that very topic - should the automobile have replaced horses, and is it a net positive? Even at that time when the benefits of cars were clear, the audience found the film very compelling. Similarly, Robert Redford starred as a barnstormer in Great Waldo Pepper, which made a strong case against the Air Commerce Act, the sole reason we even have airplanes carrying passengers & goods in the air. Redford’s character is like Linus, feels airplanes are a hobby for having fun doing stunts. But the government spots the potential for a quick buck, shuts him down for good & soon airplane “industry” becomes a real thing, with mail carriers & passenger planes. Redford has a line in that film where the commerce regulator asks him to stop the stunts & just take a job as a airplane mailman - I’m not a fucking courier, I’m a pilot! William Goldman, who studied that period & wrote the film, felt it was his best work & should have gotten the Oscar. I am sure a decade down the line you will see a film about scientists harking back to the days when the internet was a curious lab experiment, not the giant teats of FAANGs from which the majority of this audience sucks it’s daily fill of milk while blissfully hawking knickknacks for the masses they would rather do without. Nigerian teaching himself Hindi, indeed.
- UncleOxidant 7y ago
  > Vast majority of people here owe their livelihood either directly or indirectly to the democratization of the internet. Is it the democratization of the internet, or the commercialization? I think it's more the latter you're benefiting from.
- fragmede 7y ago
  Those who teach history, as they say, are doomed to teach history. GP and parent's message will be hugely controversial for any whos online peers can reject its message (for various reasons), but hopefully everyone can acknowledge that it requires quite more wealth and access to be able to interview at a FAANG i the first place, than is ideal for humanity. (I was born with, and enjoy, that same privilege, mind you.) The Internet has done wonders to democratize the world (as elsewhere on this thread). It's brought people together that would never have found each other. That gay and sad teenager in Somalia who would have killed themselves decades earlier now has online peers. I am not sure that gay Somalia teen is not castigated among their peers for being gay, and even if they aren't, I'm not sure it's not due to the US's cultural export. What I'm sure we will see, a decade out, is the kind of unrestrained communication GP expressed without any sort of disclaimer. GP's comment is seen much more favorably when analyzed as coming from someone whos first and native language isn't English, and doesn't live under some of the demagogory that plagues some other Western Nations. Hopefully we can cleanup the mess we've made in the interim.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
LinuxBender 7y ago
It is just one persons take. I would take it with a grain of salt. Arpa wanted a mobile network that would be operational in all countries prior to invasion. At it's inception, the internet was everything SRI ever meant it to be. Everything the internet has become is just a side effect of what was created. It follows the principal of "a person will do what a person can do". It is the same as the DoD making interstate highways to allow troops to move across the country quickly. Everything else that sprung up along those routes was just a byproduct of the interstate highways. The good, the bad and everything in between.
UncleOxidant 7y ago
And yet, can you blame him for the negative tone? I'm sure he and his collaborators back then had much higher hopes. And indeed, until the mid-late 90s it seemed like we were getting that open internet. The internet has fostered an epistemological crisis that has recently led to the rise of tyrants in the US and elsewhere. I'd be disappointed too.
- NateEag 7y ago
  The US has a narcissistic jerk for a president, but he's not a tyrant. Wanting to be something does not automatically make you that thing.
dkonofalski 7y ago
>Saying the internet went wrong is like saying the invention of cars went wrong cause we still have car accidents I don't think that's a fair or apt analogy at all since, in most places around the world, there's still several barriers to entry for using a car - you have to be licensed, you have to be financially able, and you have to live somewhere where it's a benefit to have access to one. I think the central complaint is not that the internet has been democratized but, conversely, that, much like the United States and several other nations, it's become commercialized rather than democratized which is exactly the opposite of what was the hope for the internet. I think a more apt summary of the article is that, at the beginning, there was a barrier of entry to the internet that meant that the content was mostly educational, technical, informed, and a bit altruistic. The goal was to propagate knowledge. Now, literally anyone can put their thoughts online, no matter how banal, without any technical skill, education, or barriers and commercial entities have far more capability than the average person to control the flow of information. DMCA requests on YouTube can be abused by huge corporations to protect their profits but individual users have no such ability. This leads to a platform that, unlike its initial intent, is full of low-quality, low-effort information with the exception of content that is meant for sale and consumption. Unchecked capitalism may have ruined the internet but, hopefully, not past the point of return.
hexeater 7y ago
My impression is that the original author's views were crafted to celebrate prior work, and provide a platform for the new work to come. with a healthy dollop of self promotion.

by adim86 7y ago

_jgdh 7y ago

Small nit - a person can learn Hindi (the language) or Hinduism (the religion) but not Hindu.

ianhawes 7y ago
And there’s our smudgeness.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  Is it smug? I didn’t know that. I have spent enough time in Hindu places that I think that’s good to know.
- celticmusic 7y ago
  It's not clear to me how the correction of a cultural nature is being smug. The poster in question even admitted it was a "small nit", but it's still useful information for both the poster, and other readers.
  - wutbrodo 7y ago
    This is a quote from the Office, which leads me to believe it's at least a little tongue in cheek.
    - celticmusic 7y ago
      ah ok, I misunderstood then.

paulpauper 7y ago

agree. the inventor does not get to decide or choose how his invention is used I would also agree the internet has been a huge net positive.

totally 7y ago
"net" positive!
JohnFen 7y ago
> I would also agree the internet has been a huge net positive. I thought that not terribly long ago. I have to admit, though, that with every passing day I become less sure that it's really a net positive.
- vasilipupkin 7y ago
  Of course, it is. Put it this way, there is absolutely zero evidence that it’s not net positive.
  - vasilipupkin 7y ago
    those who downvoted me, I am curious what evidence you have that it's not net positive. I've never seen any such evidence, only a list of problems, which of course exist with any human endevour.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      I didn't downvote you, but I don't know what you mean by "evidence it's not a net positive". You determine whether something is a net positive or net negative by listing all of the negatives and positives and seeing how they balance out. With the internet, there are clearly both negatives and positives. The "evidence" either way is the full list of these factors. Do they balance out in the positive or negative direction? The answer to that depends on how you weight the various factors, and I rather suspect that different people will weight the various factors differently. In other words, this is more a judgement call than some sort of hard objective truth regardless of whether you consider the net effect to be good or bad.

themagician 7y ago

It’s more like inventing the bicycle and then having it evolve into a car, where your initial idea was for a safe, economical, sustainable way to get from on point to another. Instead we paved over all the sidewalks with freeways to make room insanely large vehicles that crash into each other and kill everyone involved. Sure, they get from one point to another faster and help you transport things larger than you imagined and further than you imagined... but that’s not why you designed the bicycle.

briandear 7y ago
Bicycles didn’t evolve into cars, horses and stagecoaches did.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  Proving what I’ve always said, that bicycles are the chimpanzees of the transportation world. But yea, the overall idea here that this guy had the ANY IDEA of what the internet would/could become when he worked on it is ridiculous. It doesn’t make his opinion worth too much other than for a clickbait headline.
airstrike 7y ago
That's still not a valid argument. You're minimizing the amazing benefits created by near instantaneous transportation (or communication, in the case of the internet). How many lives were saved because ambulances exist? It's easy to cherry pick the pros and cons of any invention, but at the end of the day any attempt to do so is inherently biased. Society continues to evolve with nearly every economic and welfare indicator scoring better than 10, 50, 100 years ago. On average, inventions like automobiles and global communications must be contributing to this net positive societal gain. There's nothing glaringly bad about the internet or automobiles. Even if the internet is used for bad things at times, it's also created a shitload of good. Regardless, it is but a means to an end. People would do go on to do good or bad things even if the internet didn't exist, so we can't blame this one invention for the actions of humans.
- 7y ago

wadkar 7y ago

Small nitpick : Hindi not Hindu. The former is language which one can learn. The latter is, depending on how you ask, is a (group of) religion(s)/way of life. On the other hand, let’s compare internet to nuclear fission. Clearly lot benefits can be drawn from the technology (assuming safety practices etc) but in our current world order it is primarily used as a deterrent. So I don’t think OP is complaining unnecessarily. We must strive to ensure technology is used for beneficial purposes. And in that sense, the call to arms is justified.

UI_at_80x24 7y ago
I have been a science and technology enthusiast all of my life. I started running my own BBS over 30 years ago on a Commodore64. To say that I am passionate would be an understatement. Alas, lately I am becoming a Luddite. Feature creep is the enemy. I don't want or need an 'info-tainment' screen in my vehicle. I refuse to join the Apple or Google walled gardens. The warnings from Science Fiction have been ignored, and we are wage-slaves to corporation-governments. There is a better way to live. We must take back our power. When does a tool become a weapon? When it inflicts harm. The internet has been weaponized.
- wadkar 7y ago
  I would like to agree with you, but I am not sure I understand how internet has been weaponized. Can you please elaborate on how the internet is/can harm?
  - UI_at_80x24 7y ago
    -Election manipulation. -SWATTING of competitive Gamers. -Cyber bullying (not just limitied to those instances that end in suicide) -The stalking and death-threats to Black Lives Matter organizers. -China's "social credit score" -The need for Hong Kong protestors to hide their identity. I don't have time to post specific URL's to substantiate my claims, but I feel I've given broad enough categorizes to convey my meaning.
  - throwaway129917 7y ago

ArtDev 7y ago

You mentioned cars, which is good comparison. Obviously, cars are essential. But here is short a list of completely unnecessary issues brought on by greed and industry: * The health and societal cost of leaded gasoline and the industry resistance to transitioning to unleaded. * The Automobile industry purchase and subsequent removal of train and light rail tracks in the United States. * The Automobile industry resistance to requiring airbags. * The oil industry and it's war against global warming science. There are many more, these are just the ones off the top of my head. Point is, it isn't the technology but the industry around the technology that is the issue. Cars are useful and essential just like the internet. But right now, we have a situation akin to the early automobile industry. I hope that, with this technology, we can get some privacy laws/worker rights/better standards before we have another half-century before anything gets done about the Big Bad Corporate takeover of the Internet.

reyqn 7y ago
He mentioned car, which is an awful comparison. Cars should never have been invented and they are the worst thing that happened to humanity. Just imagine how much money has been wasted into cars, and roads, when any other mean of transportation would have been more efficient.
- oblio 7y ago
  Just imagine how much personal freedom cars have brought, especially to disenfranchised groups. There's two sides to every coin and some sides have a lot deeper grooves than what can be seen at first glance.
  - blacksmith_tb 7y ago
    Disenfranchised groups who nevertheless could afford to buy and maintain cars? I wouldn't say cars have no positive aspects, but they have been heavily marketed on the idea that they give you freedom (few car ads will show a traffic jam, it's always a gloriously open road...), but their cost, in terms of pollution, urban sprawl, and injuries is quite high.
  - 7y ago

pastor_elm 7y ago

>A person in Nigeria can teach themselves Hindu, just from pure curiosity and no budget Again, these are poor examples. It's not terribly easy to learn a language for free using just the internet. Everything is freemium and it's only getting worse. It's arguably easier to go to your local library and use their resources. Many people have this idea that some things would be impossible if not for the internet, but that definitely isn't the case.

cpitman 7y ago
I've been using the internet to learn a language for a month now, and have had far more success then I had in multiple years of high school language classes. Between tools that provide Spaced Repetition learning, to websites that are basically textbooks, to youtube videos both meant to teach and others that are native media, and finally people who curate all these materials, this is way better.
- behringer 7y ago
  Most of which are funded by showing you ads for things you don't need or selling your personal information.
  - oblio 7y ago
    And regular people would consider that a net gain.
    - behringer 7y ago
      Not one of the inventors of the internet. Whether it's money now or money down the road though perverse buying habits, you're still paying for it. It's not free.

reikonomusha 7y ago

How about the internet being used as a mass surveillance machine and the obliteration of producers in favor of consumers? That facet isn’t a drop in the bucket of internet usage. M I think focusing what it could be used for and what it has been used for isn’t the right way to approach thinking about it. The internet is by and large used for consuming content from a handful of corporations (disclaimer: I have no source to back up this claim), and a lot of negative consequences follow from that.

lmpostor 7y ago
>the obliteration of producers in favor of consumers More consumers begets more producers. I would assert you have better odds of producing in a wide variety of areas.
- y4mi 7y ago
  No, it does not. everyone is just following the most popular producers and the rest are basically irrelevant. Just look at the follower counts and how it drops off on any of the popular sites such as YouTube, twitch, patreon etc We got more consumers than ever, but they're all following the same people, centralizing it even more
  - wvenable 7y ago
    That's not a problem with the Internet though, that's a problem with humanity!
  - spunker540 7y ago
    Direct-to-consumer businesses have taken off due to the internet. It’s never been easier to start a sock company or glasses company etc. Historically you had to get in to the big box retailers to sell anything non-local but the internet has flipped that on its head. Even big platforms like eBay and Shopify (and even Amazon) are offering small businesses and individuals way more opportunities to sell than they would have had pre-internet. Furthermore in a direct to consumer world, incumbency matters way less. People had fewer options pre-internet (whatever was at their local store) and now brands largely compete on quality (reviews/ratings) rather than pure placement and marketing.

wonton52 7y ago

I think he is afraid of the directionthe internet is taking. All the most important benefits we have gained from the internet will be undone if every nation and every isp censors and filters too much content. China is becoming a model for the rest of the world, and we are in danger of losing it all, or even worse; being manipulated into thinking we did not.

hello_moto 7y ago
It's tough, the internet is so open that there are people out there that are having trouble separating hoaxes/fake news with the real news. The spread of these fake news are even way faster than the "old media". You need to be a little bit tech literate in order to navigate the internet.
- UncleOxidant 7y ago
  The epistemological crisis is really the worst thing the internet has brought us. When you have large segments of the population who believe in a completely different "truth" the future doesn't look bright at all.
stale2002 7y ago
It is a bit of the opposite. This guy is closer to arguing in favor of censorship, as opposed to against it. He thinks freedom is too dangerous, because I'd all the bad things that people do with their freedom.

pwthornton 7y ago

The Internet is not as bad as cars. That's harsh! Cars kill more than 1 million people a year, and are actively cooking our planet. On balance, cars -- at least our ability to use them -- has been a huge negative. The Internet is a lot more balanced, but both show how a lack of foresight and system design can lead to a lot of negative consequences. We could drastically cut down on the number of road deaths if we took it more seriously and made some big system design changes, but we haven't. We can also make the Internet a better place, but there will always be issue with all massive systems.

criley2 7y ago
Might be more accurate to say "contribute to cooking our planet" because if there were 0 cars, we'd still be cooking this planet, since all of transportation including planes, boats and cars is only 29% of total carbon emissions (US 2017 data) Even in transportation, only 60% is due to light duty vehicle, the other 40% being trucks and planes mostly. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis... https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-...
malvosenior 7y ago
> On balance, cars -- at least our ability to use them -- has been a huge negative. Honestly there's no way this is true. How many people would die if they couldn't use an ambulance? How many people are surviving on goods shipped to them via trucks? Of course things can be improved, but there's no way the automobile was a net negative on humanity.
- joshklein 7y ago
  What if the larger story of the industrialization enabled by that trucking warms the planet to the point that humanity goes extinct? Something to at least consider; unintended consequences are still consequences.
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mc32 7y ago

I think you’re right. If it didn’t “go wrong” it would have stagnated and not been very useful. Kinda like the minitel. It didn’t “go wrong” but it also went nowhere.

jueij9jk 7y ago

You and I had a very different emotional takeaway. This isn’t a call for idealistic utopia. IMO that’s what Facebook & AWS are pushing for: idealized world, organized around perfectly modeled hierarchy, using algorithms they control (aka traditional values belief in law and godhead, I digress). Yes the technological invention as a literal thing is incredible. But it’s almost entirely comprised of compelled speech in how we design the systems/code itself to support business goals, the most visible content bubbles up via paid ads, and conditioning to favor constant commercial trade. Is “constant feudal trade is good for us” a mantra like “war is peace”? Do we owe political deference to using humanities most important tool, the planet, to the demands of ideology that we know is materially destroying broader value of that tool? The internet has shown us it’s possible to believe very different things given the same access to information. Why is online discourse so often filtered to financial trade & wealth generation? It’s a technological wonder, but being used to conduct society in the same old way for the most part. IMO technologists have failed by jumping on the startup band wagon. Social pressure for conformity to finance won.

dxbydt 7y ago

It’s a particular point of view that obviously won’t find resonance in this HN audience. Were the author’s view to prevail, you would be out of a job. Vast majority of people here owe their livelihood either directly or indirectly to the democratization of the internet. But that doesn’t mean the author the author is naive. There are certainly (unvoiced) masses largely sympathetic to his point of view. Take the example you mentioned- cars. The Magnificent Ambersons garnered 4 Oscar nominations debating that very topic - should the automobile have replaced horses, and is it a net positive? Even at that time when the benefits of cars were clear, the audience found the film very compelling. Similarly, Robert Redford starred as a barnstormer in Great Waldo Pepper, which made a strong case against the Air Commerce Act, the sole reason we even have airplanes carrying passengers & goods in the air. Redford’s character is like Linus, feels airplanes are a hobby for having fun doing stunts. But the government spots the potential for a quick buck, shuts him down for good & soon airplane “industry” becomes a real thing, with mail carriers & passenger planes. Redford has a line in that film where the commerce regulator asks him to stop the stunts & just take a job as a airplane mailman - I’m not a fucking courier, I’m a pilot! William Goldman, who studied that period & wrote the film, felt it was his best work & should have gotten the Oscar. I am sure a decade down the line you will see a film about scientists harking back to the days when the internet was a curious lab experiment, not the giant teats of FAANGs from which the majority of this audience sucks it’s daily fill of milk while blissfully hawking knickknacks for the masses they would rather do without. Nigerian teaching himself Hindi, indeed.

UncleOxidant 7y ago
> Vast majority of people here owe their livelihood either directly or indirectly to the democratization of the internet. Is it the democratization of the internet, or the commercialization? I think it's more the latter you're benefiting from.
fragmede 7y ago
Those who teach history, as they say, are doomed to teach history. GP and parent's message will be hugely controversial for any whos online peers can reject its message (for various reasons), but hopefully everyone can acknowledge that it requires quite more wealth and access to be able to interview at a FAANG i the first place, than is ideal for humanity. (I was born with, and enjoy, that same privilege, mind you.) The Internet has done wonders to democratize the world (as elsewhere on this thread). It's brought people together that would never have found each other. That gay and sad teenager in Somalia who would have killed themselves decades earlier now has online peers. I am not sure that gay Somalia teen is not castigated among their peers for being gay, and even if they aren't, I'm not sure it's not due to the US's cultural export. What I'm sure we will see, a decade out, is the kind of unrestrained communication GP expressed without any sort of disclaimer. GP's comment is seen much more favorably when analyzed as coming from someone whos first and native language isn't English, and doesn't live under some of the demagogory that plagues some other Western Nations. Hopefully we can cleanup the mess we've made in the interim.

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LinuxBender 7y ago

It is just one persons take. I would take it with a grain of salt. Arpa wanted a mobile network that would be operational in all countries prior to invasion. At it's inception, the internet was everything SRI ever meant it to be. Everything the internet has become is just a side effect of what was created. It follows the principal of "a person will do what a person can do". It is the same as the DoD making interstate highways to allow troops to move across the country quickly. Everything else that sprung up along those routes was just a byproduct of the interstate highways. The good, the bad and everything in between.

UncleOxidant 7y ago

And yet, can you blame him for the negative tone? I'm sure he and his collaborators back then had much higher hopes. And indeed, until the mid-late 90s it seemed like we were getting that open internet. The internet has fostered an epistemological crisis that has recently led to the rise of tyrants in the US and elsewhere. I'd be disappointed too.

NateEag 7y ago
The US has a narcissistic jerk for a president, but he's not a tyrant. Wanting to be something does not automatically make you that thing.

dkonofalski 7y ago

>Saying the internet went wrong is like saying the invention of cars went wrong cause we still have car accidents I don't think that's a fair or apt analogy at all since, in most places around the world, there's still several barriers to entry for using a car - you have to be licensed, you have to be financially able, and you have to live somewhere where it's a benefit to have access to one. I think the central complaint is not that the internet has been democratized but, conversely, that, much like the United States and several other nations, it's become commercialized rather than democratized which is exactly the opposite of what was the hope for the internet. I think a more apt summary of the article is that, at the beginning, there was a barrier of entry to the internet that meant that the content was mostly educational, technical, informed, and a bit altruistic. The goal was to propagate knowledge. Now, literally anyone can put their thoughts online, no matter how banal, without any technical skill, education, or barriers and commercial entities have far more capability than the average person to control the flow of information. DMCA requests on YouTube can be abused by huge corporations to protect their profits but individual users have no such ability. This leads to a platform that, unlike its initial intent, is full of low-quality, low-effort information with the exception of content that is meant for sale and consumption. Unchecked capitalism may have ruined the internet but, hopefully, not past the point of return.

hexeater 7y ago

My impression is that the original author's views were crafted to celebrate prior work, and provide a platform for the new work to come. with a healthy dollop of self promotion.