I've had it.
I just don't like the internet. It's too much science fiction, but still...
Tyler Durden would be appalled. The internet is a tool: you use it, not the other way around, but it's somehow transformed itself into a Lestat-like sucker entity that hangs on your back like a Time Beetle and drains everything. Blake, Winston, Number 6 and the rest would scarecly be less impressed at a network which controls so much information.
And while none of them are sane individuals by any reasonable definition, the internet backlash is going to happen eventually and soon, and I want to be a part of it. Maybe it'll be when all the teens of our generation mature into adults and discover that fifteen years of their Farmville scores, IMDb reviews, Livejournal porn, music tastes, illicit youtube-video-watching, forum trolling rising from the grave to meet them. The internet keeps better account of my teenage years than even my diaries. For example, do you know what I had for lunch on the 4th March 2005? Search Ninquelosse here. It's also got an entry for the 2nd July 2004.
One of the big things today is "connectivity": the ability to link and syncronise your Spotify profile, Twitter account and baked bean collection via your iPhone or whatever and have everything in one place, but no one is stopping to thing that connectivity is an evil evil thing. I got halfway through making a beautiful, elegant website which linked to all my internet accounts and activities before thinking no, why the hell is connectivity a desired attribute? It's creating dangerous monopolies. There is now a function on Youtube which will automatically update Twitter, Facebook and Google everytime you sneeze on their site. And most sites have something similar.
The internet's benefits are so many, that no one is paying any attention to any number of dangers. I am getting out while I still can.
Take a look at the following
Net Neutrality
We have an intrinsic belief that the internet is a communal creation, equally supported by all: the ultimate Socialist project, if you like, where fools can rise, all are equal and information is not controlled. This assumes that the services we use are all as committed to neutrality as us.
Some things we didn't tell you upfront...
Most websites we use rely on our belief that they are intrinsically good - see Big Business above. For example, when you sign up to a Facebook application you must also agree to let them view your personal information - they always cite profile picture and friend data - so the app works. But when you click yes, it can see all of it - even though it doesn't necessarily need it. But you know how popular Facebook applications spread like influenza, and increasingly, "fun" applications are being designed exactly to syphon off your information to ad companies and the like. It's a rather fine sacrifice to make merely to bat some pixels around the screen - it'd be like giving the Disney Corp. all your personal details before being allowed to visit their parks.
My evidence is here
Illusions of innocence
There's increasing evidence that Facebook staff - who can look at anyone's profile and browsing habits - have been doing so. Now, while none of this can be conclusively proved, ask yourself this: if you were a Facebook employee, and you had this power at your disposal and knew you wouldn't get caught and prosecuted because it would damage the company's reputation, what would you do? Right then...
My evidence is here
Memory: part I
The internet seems safe. It isn't, and I'm not just talking about the Paedogeddon. Few people realise quite how fragile it is, so solid the presence of Hotmail in the morning. Here are a few examples.
From 1995 - basically the dawn of the internet - until 2007, Outpost Gallifrey was the home of Doctor Who on the web, and thus the combined geek opinion since that year, including the run up to the reboot, was all documented there. The owner decided to stop running it in 2007, and everything transferred to Gallifrey Base - basically the same website and forum. No loss - except he also pulled the plug on the server. It's no longer accessable, basically winked out of existance - and the Internet Wayback machine can't really help, it being a forum and all.
This could be libellous - so correct me if I'm wrong - but this was how things stood last time I investigated it. And I don't want to investigate too far, even if there is a way of finding it again, because the destruction of information really upsets me.
The decision did not lie in all 20,000 members, but with a single man. Well, that's very Doctor Who, but you can see why I am skittish?
Item two: Geocities. Another website there since the dawn of the web, and a repository for crap and bad graphics. It wasn't good, but it was a historical document of sorts - and for billions of readers and creators, it was their space after all. In 2009, Yahoo decided to get rid of it and that was that. I discovered this through a rather personal blow - the loss of the Genesis Tab Archive, which I had always visited via the site and never made my own copies of. Luckily, much of it was restored by Reocities - a project which has rescued as much as it can. It also has a blow-by-blow account of the week Geocities went down, which starts off as dull techhy stuff as the author configures his sub-etheric-ming-mongs to copy off as much as he can, but ends with real heart-in-mouth sorrow. The appointed hour comes when everything gets switched off, but GeoCities takes time to die and the crawlers keep going for a few hours finding less and less until it just shuts off and there's nothing any more. Reminds me a bit of HAL, and a bit of Miss Evangelista ghosting in Silence in the Library, and I actually get choked up re-reading it. Although the death of information is a touchy spot for me.
This isn't going to stop. More and more things we take for granted will evaporate, and we will never have the power to save them.
Memory part 2
Till now, this has been reasonable substantiated worries. The following is rather more hypothetical, but I still think it has validity.
Because ignoring Geocities, the internet has come to replace the "collective memory" of societies gone past. Now like never before, we can find half-forgotten childhood shows, photos of events we didn't record, transcriptions and records and bootlegs and the rest. This also relies on our belief that it is faithful.
Who decides what is recorded into the collective memory? Wikipedia itself acnowledges that there is likely to be more information on tiny American cities than important figures from abroad. The importance of information is incorrectly weighted on the internet, giving some a higher apparent value. This alone distorts it. A very good example would be any fandom wiki, say the Harry Potter ones, which are huge and meticulous.
It's also not necessarily correct, which is a problem when it is your memory. Much like you find memories of weddings resembling the wedding photos, and remembering being at events you weren't at - we know the memory is fallible and easily moulded. Why rely on a resource so easily moulded? We're talking of the collective memories of an entire generation. For example, I looked up Incredible Games - and it lists all the rounds I know so well, apart from the final round in the penthouse. I don't remember hunting for keys at all - but now I think about it, maybe I do? I can visualise it. But perhaps I think I should? I'd love to find out, but it'd be a bad idea to google "incredible games penthouse"...
My argument is, the internet doesn't just store memory - it also creates it.
Part 3
In a world where internet presence defines identity, what if someone had you deleted? So far, so sci-fi - but think about it.
If someone had the power to, say, remove Lady Gaga from the internet - and one day, someone will - it would effectively be like deleting her. You could certainly destroy a career or too, maybe of smaller people. I am particularly concerned that, in the future, the past could be controlled in this way. They do it in 1984, and the idea of them editing old papers and stuff sounded exessive; but the internet gives the means to very easily. After all, the truth doesn't matter - as long as the mass of people believe it to be the truth.
Advertising
Is there anything wrong with targeted advertising? On principle, if nothing else! Google accounts have a separate opt-out cookie you can download, to stop them using the information you get from their records of your searches; you can also see what other companies have tabs on you.
Everyone is fallible
I actually believe that Google's heart is in the right place. I shouldn't. The internet, a human system, is human imperfect. I do not believe that Google would ever maliciously release my information, but it could if it wanted to. Considering some of the things in my Google accounts, that is a pretty scary if...(PS - how many days do emails count as a "protected communication" under US law? 180. After that, Google has to hand it over to men with warrants. And how long can Google keep information on your searches? Until 2038.)
The "Tracy's face" test
The film Manhattan ends with the comment "sometimes, you've just got to have a little faith in people". And you do have to have faith, or go blind, to use the internet at all. Have faith that Google isn't recording what you search for, for example. Have faith that the security companies don't also create viruses to make their products necessary. Have faith that Facebook's new policy of making everything public by default isn't an attempt to attract traffic. Incidentally, go to account settings, go to privacy settings and then go to "search" - to prevent Facebook making all your personal information searchable via search engines. Shameless. Did you know that your Facebook photo albums are now able to view by everyone by default unless you go change it?
It's a bit like the raunch culture debate. Broadly speaking, is it Feminist or anti-Feminist to be slutty? Now, it is Feminist because it's taking advantage of free choice - but it is anti-Feminist because it encourages objectification, no matter why you're doing it. The answer is tougher than a simple yes or no. Women have the choice to be as tarty as they like, but they only have that choice because of women in the past - and their behaviour today influences the women of the future. It's selfishness verses selfishness, individual vs. crowd. Same with the coming out argument - we are only in a world where revealing or not revealing our sexual identities, whatever they may be, is a choice because people in the past have been open and confront-y about them.
Similarly, on a man-by-man basis it doesn't matter if you vote Charlie the Unicorn five stars on youtube, before commenting on your friend's music poll and updating your online film list. It'll probably never make a difference to you personally. But it's adding to the mass of information (as the two examples add to the mass of prejudice) which is already raked over by major companies. For example, you can sync now your GPS and Googlemaps - and this chap excitedly claims he used it to find an excellent BBQ place he had forgotten -which is a small, selfish decision for self-serving purposes. But it's part of an application which, if I've got this right, tracks your exact movements and then records them.
I am overreacting. There are a billion brilliant things about the web - like politics or religion it can be beneficial or baneful, and prone to the fallibilites of humans who put it to use. But I have to overreact, to make up for the sheer volume of people who are not thinking this through properly. And none of the points I have made are unreasonable, especially Facebook sharing your information.
You are perfectly safe so long as no one, in Google's words, decides to "be evil". In the very unlikely case that someone does want to be evil, though...
I want out.
I'm systematically deleting everything. Things I can't live without, I am creating with myriads of new identities which cannot be linked to one another. If you want to keep reading my blog: email me, and I'll give you the access code before I lock it to outsiders. You know who you are, you beautiful people. Goodbye, internet!
I just don't like the internet. It's too much science fiction, but still...
Tyler Durden would be appalled. The internet is a tool: you use it, not the other way around, but it's somehow transformed itself into a Lestat-like sucker entity that hangs on your back like a Time Beetle and drains everything. Blake, Winston, Number 6 and the rest would scarecly be less impressed at a network which controls so much information.
And while none of them are sane individuals by any reasonable definition, the internet backlash is going to happen eventually and soon, and I want to be a part of it. Maybe it'll be when all the teens of our generation mature into adults and discover that fifteen years of their Farmville scores, IMDb reviews, Livejournal porn, music tastes, illicit youtube-video-watching, forum trolling rising from the grave to meet them. The internet keeps better account of my teenage years than even my diaries. For example, do you know what I had for lunch on the 4th March 2005? Search Ninquelosse here. It's also got an entry for the 2nd July 2004.
One of the big things today is "connectivity": the ability to link and syncronise your Spotify profile, Twitter account and baked bean collection via your iPhone or whatever and have everything in one place, but no one is stopping to thing that connectivity is an evil evil thing. I got halfway through making a beautiful, elegant website which linked to all my internet accounts and activities before thinking no, why the hell is connectivity a desired attribute? It's creating dangerous monopolies. There is now a function on Youtube which will automatically update Twitter, Facebook and Google everytime you sneeze on their site. And most sites have something similar.
The internet's benefits are so many, that no one is paying any attention to any number of dangers. I am getting out while I still can.
Take a look at the following
Net Neutrality
We have an intrinsic belief that the internet is a communal creation, equally supported by all: the ultimate Socialist project, if you like, where fools can rise, all are equal and information is not controlled. This assumes that the services we use are all as committed to neutrality as us.
"Net Neutrality means that Internet service providers may not discriminate between different kinds of content and applications online. It guarantees a level playing field for all Web sites and Internet technologies."In other words, relies on Big Business playing fair. And Jack the Ripper was the Loch Ness Monster:
Read more: http://www.savetheinternet.com/The nation's largest telephone and cable companies -- including AT&T, Verizon, Comcast and Time Warner Cable -- want to be Internet gatekeepers, deciding which Web sites go fast or slow and which won't load at all. They want to tax content providers to guarantee speedy delivery of their data. And they want to discriminate in favor of their own search engines, Internet phone services and streaming video -- while slowing down or blocking services offered by their competitors[...]The big phone and cable companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress and the Federal Communications Commission to gut Net Neutrality, putting the future of the Internet at risk.
Some things we didn't tell you upfront...
Most websites we use rely on our belief that they are intrinsically good - see Big Business above. For example, when you sign up to a Facebook application you must also agree to let them view your personal information - they always cite profile picture and friend data - so the app works. But when you click yes, it can see all of it - even though it doesn't necessarily need it. But you know how popular Facebook applications spread like influenza, and increasingly, "fun" applications are being designed exactly to syphon off your information to ad companies and the like. It's a rather fine sacrifice to make merely to bat some pixels around the screen - it'd be like giving the Disney Corp. all your personal details before being allowed to visit their parks.
My evidence is here
Illusions of innocence
There's increasing evidence that Facebook staff - who can look at anyone's profile and browsing habits - have been doing so. Now, while none of this can be conclusively proved, ask yourself this: if you were a Facebook employee, and you had this power at your disposal and knew you wouldn't get caught and prosecuted because it would damage the company's reputation, what would you do? Right then...
My evidence is here
Memory: part I
The internet seems safe. It isn't, and I'm not just talking about the Paedogeddon. Few people realise quite how fragile it is, so solid the presence of Hotmail in the morning. Here are a few examples.
From 1995 - basically the dawn of the internet - until 2007, Outpost Gallifrey was the home of Doctor Who on the web, and thus the combined geek opinion since that year, including the run up to the reboot, was all documented there. The owner decided to stop running it in 2007, and everything transferred to Gallifrey Base - basically the same website and forum. No loss - except he also pulled the plug on the server. It's no longer accessable, basically winked out of existance - and the Internet Wayback machine can't really help, it being a forum and all.
This could be libellous - so correct me if I'm wrong - but this was how things stood last time I investigated it. And I don't want to investigate too far, even if there is a way of finding it again, because the destruction of information really upsets me.
The decision did not lie in all 20,000 members, but with a single man. Well, that's very Doctor Who, but you can see why I am skittish?
Item two: Geocities. Another website there since the dawn of the web, and a repository for crap and bad graphics. It wasn't good, but it was a historical document of sorts - and for billions of readers and creators, it was their space after all. In 2009, Yahoo decided to get rid of it and that was that. I discovered this through a rather personal blow - the loss of the Genesis Tab Archive, which I had always visited via the site and never made my own copies of. Luckily, much of it was restored by Reocities - a project which has rescued as much as it can. It also has a blow-by-blow account of the week Geocities went down, which starts off as dull techhy stuff as the author configures his sub-etheric-ming-mongs to copy off as much as he can, but ends with real heart-in-mouth sorrow. The appointed hour comes when everything gets switched off, but GeoCities takes time to die and the crawlers keep going for a few hours finding less and less until it just shuts off and there's nothing any more. Reminds me a bit of HAL, and a bit of Miss Evangelista ghosting in Silence in the Library, and I actually get choked up re-reading it. Although the death of information is a touchy spot for me.
This isn't going to stop. More and more things we take for granted will evaporate, and we will never have the power to save them.
Memory part 2
Till now, this has been reasonable substantiated worries. The following is rather more hypothetical, but I still think it has validity.
Because ignoring Geocities, the internet has come to replace the "collective memory" of societies gone past. Now like never before, we can find half-forgotten childhood shows, photos of events we didn't record, transcriptions and records and bootlegs and the rest. This also relies on our belief that it is faithful.
Who decides what is recorded into the collective memory? Wikipedia itself acnowledges that there is likely to be more information on tiny American cities than important figures from abroad. The importance of information is incorrectly weighted on the internet, giving some a higher apparent value. This alone distorts it. A very good example would be any fandom wiki, say the Harry Potter ones, which are huge and meticulous.
It's also not necessarily correct, which is a problem when it is your memory. Much like you find memories of weddings resembling the wedding photos, and remembering being at events you weren't at - we know the memory is fallible and easily moulded. Why rely on a resource so easily moulded? We're talking of the collective memories of an entire generation. For example, I looked up Incredible Games - and it lists all the rounds I know so well, apart from the final round in the penthouse. I don't remember hunting for keys at all - but now I think about it, maybe I do? I can visualise it. But perhaps I think I should? I'd love to find out, but it'd be a bad idea to google "incredible games penthouse"...
My argument is, the internet doesn't just store memory - it also creates it.
Part 3
In a world where internet presence defines identity, what if someone had you deleted? So far, so sci-fi - but think about it.
If someone had the power to, say, remove Lady Gaga from the internet - and one day, someone will - it would effectively be like deleting her. You could certainly destroy a career or too, maybe of smaller people. I am particularly concerned that, in the future, the past could be controlled in this way. They do it in 1984, and the idea of them editing old papers and stuff sounded exessive; but the internet gives the means to very easily. After all, the truth doesn't matter - as long as the mass of people believe it to be the truth.
Advertising
Is there anything wrong with targeted advertising? On principle, if nothing else! Google accounts have a separate opt-out cookie you can download, to stop them using the information you get from their records of your searches; you can also see what other companies have tabs on you.
Everyone is fallible
I actually believe that Google's heart is in the right place. I shouldn't. The internet, a human system, is human imperfect. I do not believe that Google would ever maliciously release my information, but it could if it wanted to. Considering some of the things in my Google accounts, that is a pretty scary if...(PS - how many days do emails count as a "protected communication" under US law? 180. After that, Google has to hand it over to men with warrants. And how long can Google keep information on your searches? Until 2038.)
The "Tracy's face" test
The film Manhattan ends with the comment "sometimes, you've just got to have a little faith in people". And you do have to have faith, or go blind, to use the internet at all. Have faith that Google isn't recording what you search for, for example. Have faith that the security companies don't also create viruses to make their products necessary. Have faith that Facebook's new policy of making everything public by default isn't an attempt to attract traffic. Incidentally, go to account settings, go to privacy settings and then go to "search" - to prevent Facebook making all your personal information searchable via search engines. Shameless. Did you know that your Facebook photo albums are now able to view by everyone by default unless you go change it?
It's a bit like the raunch culture debate. Broadly speaking, is it Feminist or anti-Feminist to be slutty? Now, it is Feminist because it's taking advantage of free choice - but it is anti-Feminist because it encourages objectification, no matter why you're doing it. The answer is tougher than a simple yes or no. Women have the choice to be as tarty as they like, but they only have that choice because of women in the past - and their behaviour today influences the women of the future. It's selfishness verses selfishness, individual vs. crowd. Same with the coming out argument - we are only in a world where revealing or not revealing our sexual identities, whatever they may be, is a choice because people in the past have been open and confront-y about them.
Similarly, on a man-by-man basis it doesn't matter if you vote Charlie the Unicorn five stars on youtube, before commenting on your friend's music poll and updating your online film list. It'll probably never make a difference to you personally. But it's adding to the mass of information (as the two examples add to the mass of prejudice) which is already raked over by major companies. For example, you can sync now your GPS and Googlemaps - and this chap excitedly claims he used it to find an excellent BBQ place he had forgotten -which is a small, selfish decision for self-serving purposes. But it's part of an application which, if I've got this right, tracks your exact movements and then records them.
I am overreacting. There are a billion brilliant things about the web - like politics or religion it can be beneficial or baneful, and prone to the fallibilites of humans who put it to use. But I have to overreact, to make up for the sheer volume of people who are not thinking this through properly. And none of the points I have made are unreasonable, especially Facebook sharing your information.
You are perfectly safe so long as no one, in Google's words, decides to "be evil". In the very unlikely case that someone does want to be evil, though...
I want out.
I'm systematically deleting everything. Things I can't live without, I am creating with myriads of new identities which cannot be linked to one another. If you want to keep reading my blog: email me, and I'll give you the access code before I lock it to outsiders. You know who you are, you beautiful people. Goodbye, internet!
Comments (3)
God, I hope you never discover Dark Web. You'd be terrified.
I am aware of Dark Web - you're the second in a few days to flutter it past me in a tantalising manner...
In the Internet we see the end of the "Grand Narrative". There is no longer a single narrative or a single truth; the internet is a bran-tub of views, histories and factoids which you can draw on more or less at random. Interesting to see how many vices are now blamed on the internet - it used to be TV that was turning us into monsters/perverts/couch potatoes/airheads.
The net has some awesome potential, but you also have the off switch which probably the ultimate line of defence if it is taken over by evil forces, or alternatively sinks into a mush of unattributable rubbish.