As the Internet pioneer Ethan Zuckerman of MIT recently wrote, “It’s obvious now that what we did was a fiasco, so let me remind you that what we wanted to do was something brave and noble.” What they wanted to do was to create a communication system that was decentralized and cooperative. One of the early networks that Stewart Brand and Ken Kesey built was called the Whole Earth Lectronic Link. That’s how utopian their aspirations were. But today there is a growing understanding that the internet has morphed into an insidious surveillance and propaganda machine.
Yes, and also the place where critical thinking and the skill of deep reading have gone to die. Not to mention the deaths of so many small brick and mortar stores, and most of all, book stores.
And, honestly, the soullessness of trolling seems to herald the death of civility.
It's insidious.
