Freedom and Anonymity: Keeping the Internet Open

Freedom and Anonymity: Keeping the Internet Open (2webpages).

-- Tom

 

The Internet is like everything else in life: in the beginning only technically proficient geeks had access to Internet capable machines (say in the 70's- 90's). These geeks respected the freedom, exchange of ideas, and wealth of information the Internet allowed.

Then John Q. Public got on board. When crappy software and OS's were created to cater to John, everything went to hell. Eventually the politicians got around to taking interest in the general Internet (instead of only focusing on military networks like they used to) and, like everything else in life, can't let a good thing alone -- they must find a way to regulate it and profit from it. Most governments feel that they must be the overseers and arbiters of our lives and find it necessary to mire us down in volumes of new regulations like only good lawyers can.

 

I agree with a lot of what you said there, but I do disagree slightly with you that the public ruined anything. I don't think it was the "dumbing down" that lead the Internet to the place it is today. I think it was the total immersion with every day life that brought us here. I mean, look at us, if we're not sitting in front of a PC, instant messaging a neighbor who might be NEXT DOOR, we've got a tablet in our hands doing something else over the internet. Hell, our PHONES have internet connections. Our health records, everything about us is "online".

If the public did anything wrong, it was to, without thinking of any consequences whatsoever, allow more and more of their lives to be in the hands of others, to allow the internet to control more. Then again, the majority of the public will jump at anything shiny and new, so I'm not sure they could have been expected to do anything else. As far as politics, oh god yeah the internet is ripe for the picking. It's data paradise, and there are endless opportunities to control something, whether that be access, information, whatever they can use to benefit themselves.

I don't think today's population could survive the pre-internet period honestly. But no, it wasn't the public that messed anything up really. Something as powerful and useful as the internet was doomed to end up where it is, and where it will be.