Many people thought the internet would bring a lot of good AND a lot of bad. Which is pretty much what happened.
David Bowie was one of them, even as he explained it to an incredulous Jeremy Paxman back in 1999… https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FiK7s_0tGsg
No other way to look at and label social media than as a failed experiment. We'd be better off if we knew less about people we know and didn't allow people we don't know to gain access to us. A vast majority of interactions taking place online have led us astray, not toward fresh solutions or grace.
There were many who thought humans' IQ would increase exponentially because of the access to all the information at your fingertips.
They didn't think much about the disinformation and how it spreads more rapidly than actual facts, and that certain political parties use it to their advantage. 🙄
Unintended consequence of the Internet: gullible conspiracy-theory prone people gathering into a self-perpetuating critical mass instead of individually sitting in rocking chairs on their front porch with their neighbors going by giving them a friendly, if pitying, wave.
Before the internet, the crazies had to work to spread their craziness. Printing pamphlets cost $$$, and they had to stand on streetcorners to hand them out, or spend more $$$ to mail them.
Now, anyone can have a website with a global reach, or self-publish a book on Amazon.
Sometimes I wonder what the internet could have been without late-stage capitalism manipulating everything we were fed in pursuit of clicks, views, and attention. Yes, the internet today indulges the absolute worst of human nature but that wasn’t by accident. It was for profit.
My husband’s been saying forever that the internet would be the downfall of society. I’d just laugh at him and roll my eyes. Until 2016 and it became abundantly clear he’d been right. (I hate it when he’s right.)
Not blaming the tool. Blaming the users. Many manipulated and abused it, and the rest of us collectively abdicated responsibility.
And agree it’s not the ONLY tool but it’s been the most powerful tool in the shed used to put the final nails in coffin, if we’re sticking with the analogy.
It’s such a shame bc the earliest versions of the internet were somewhat protected from pure capitalist greed, just because technology wasn’t advanced enough to enable it yet 😭
Someone on a podcast yesterday put it so well “I’m convinced the Tumblr porn ban is what killed the last promise of [a free internet that frees us in turn]”
Have had many long conversations about this topic lately. Truly crushing that this invention which should have opened the world and dissolved so many of these barriers has been perverted by social media into a giant, alienation engine.
There are ways to completely flip the script. Simple elegant. It all begins with providing true digital sovereignty. This change enables myriad instant benefits from disaster to commerce to accountable governance.
Im more worried about how the algorithms are affecting our kids and influencing us in a negative way. Most people don’t understand this and if they do…they still ignore it. We need to reshape this industry to be more healthy for us.
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Have since learned that every technological advance has just made things worse.
David Bowie was one of them, even as he explained it to an incredulous Jeremy Paxman back in 1999…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FiK7s_0tGsg
They didn't think much about the disinformation and how it spreads more rapidly than actual facts, and that certain political parties use it to their advantage. 🙄
Now, anyone can have a website with a global reach, or self-publish a book on Amazon.
Nobody could possibly have seen this coming - excuse me but "Forbidden Planet" (1956) is on and I'd hate to miss it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzX0EMLT0Vg
"The potential of what the Internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable.”
https://www.openculture.com/2024/07/david-bowie-predicts-the-good-bad-of-the-internet-1999.html
(…but seriously…)
Nothing crashed, but they may have had a point with the new Dark Ages thing.
We have failed this social experiment bigly.
The Internet's just a tool, those wielding it had already been corrupted, don't be one of those bad crafters blaming the tool.
And agree it’s not the ONLY tool but it’s been the most powerful tool in the shed used to put the final nails in coffin, if we’re sticking with the analogy.
If anything, the internet recreated society, loads of them, globe spanning societies.
It's not even fair to blame the internet's users, we/they'd been corrupted by other factors.
Prior to that, some effort was required 🫠