internet

The internet has failed

lurvspanking4 Comments

The internet has failed. Hasn’t it?

“A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” Spoken by King Richard III in the play of the same name by William Shakespeare

In today’s world, he would have said: “5G! 5G! My investment portfolio for 5G!”

What Richard was asking for was not a horse so much, but for information. An Information Superhighway that would save his life and his kingdom. Information that could best be transmitted by the Ferrari of the time with a one-horsepower drivetrain.

He failed.

Information is what enabled businesses, empires and religions to spread far beyond their origins. Information; the need to have quick and secure communications between leaders, is what drove infrastructures such as roads, canals, rails and shipping to ever faster and more efficient routes. An army couldn’t march if there was no way forward or no intelligence as to the whereabouts and intentions of the enemy.

The World Wide Web, as the Internet is now named, began as a better way to communicate; to pass information quicker and easier than letters and couriers. Academia saw it as a way to collaborate and research without sequestering in musty libraries. A few nimble businesses foresaw another way to reach consumers, but for most companies, it was just another advertising avenue and Madison was working out fine. Nobody, not even science fiction writers, came anywhere close to the reality of 2021.

When I was a wee lad, there was such an occupation as door-to-door salesman of encyclopedias. Normally bought a volume at a time on an installment plan. The standard pitch was a guilt trip laid on the parents so that Little Junior here had a chance to have an Ivy League [Harvard and ilk] worthy education for mere pennies a day. Implied was; as opposed to following in dear old dad’s footsteps at the greasy garage. Never mind that Junior had no shot at college unless via the military while Little Miss was expected only to follow mom into the kitchen and nursery.

Personal computers, routers and dial-up modems opened up the world… a curated world that’s true… but a world nevertheless heretofore unattainable for almost everyone. It was even free. An afterthought given away by telephone companies that had no idea how to market the concept. Thus the myth took hold that “information was free!” Free of regulations, free of restrictions, free of censorship, free of corporate control: freedom to create and connect and have a grand ol’ time learning about anything you wanted.

Sex.

That’s what everyone wanted to learn about. Sex.

What people forgot, or chose to ignore, is that information has never been free. Not to create, not to transmit, not to consume. The market, no matter the political rule, will always find a way to supply demand. Especially demand that is artificially created and stimulated in order to make money. “Social Media” is not new; only the platform is.

The internet has failed if you believed that freely exchanged information was supposed to bring disparate people together in celebration of their similarities. The internet has failed if you believed that creativity would allow everyone to be successful and financially equivalent. The internet has failed if you believed that the truth would become obviously self-evident.

The truth is that the internet is simply a tool; like a plow or a loom, it is how you wield it that makes it a success or failure. Without the internet, I wouldn’t have friends around the world, wouldn’t have published books, wouldn’t be able to follow whatever and whomever I choose. Without the internet, I wouldn’t have become such a diehard spanko.

That’s not a bad legacy.

 

The Wedding of the Century: Virtually

lurvspanking17 Comments

“The Four Horsemen Give Up And Retire” blared a satirical editorial supporting their decision and mocking the thundering sermons and condemnation from those warning the ‘End is Nigh’. Other platforms, especially those who existed only online, put up a spirited defense with phrases like: “Forget Mars! Webnauts are the future of humankind”. That was another debate that raged in forums and vlogs: What to call them? Besides webnauts; other popular names included netdivers, interspacers and haboob. The later an acronym taken from the Arabic name for a dust storm.

Not since the election had the web been so consumed with shouting an opinion, which was ironic [irony having passed away with the inexorable rise of social media] considering that the individuals who were being called—Human.Avatars.Blogging.Openly.Online.Bodiless—were in fact completely unknown. Some claimed they were constructs of the Deep State created as Artificial Intelligence to wrest the internet from the fingertips of the free citizens of the world. Still others pointed the blame at tech companies, or aliens, or any number of hostile governments depending on who was actually writing the post. In private chat rooms, science fiction writers smugly congratulated themselves on their perspicacity and simultaneously bemoaned the lack of comprehension by policymakers and brainstormed ways to cash in on the frenzy.

They2.0, which is how ‘they’ always referred to each other, claimed to be post-racial, post-gender and post-dirt humans. Despite the best attempts of hackers, both freelance and government sponsored, no one found any evidence to contradict ‘their’ claim ‘they’d’ uploaded ‘their’ sentience into the Cloud and then had ‘their’ bodies destroyed. And thus, on October 29th, in front of a worldwide audience watching live-streamed video on multiple platforms, two hologram avatars exchanged vows and were duly married by a flesh-and-blood minister. After the ceremony, ‘they’ invited selected journalists back to ‘their’ VR home via interactive headsets.

As one prominent reporter later said off-the-record, “It was the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever seen, but damn if it didn’t make me jealous to see the world ‘they’d’ created. ‘They’ll’ always be remembered for being the first to go, but I doubt ‘they’ll’ be alone for long.”

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