I have a lot of thoughts on the internet. Some good.
Mostly bad. In the case of much of the "mainstream
internet (social media, web 3.0), I have nothing
but loathing for it. I am a firm believer in the
concept of "Enshittification", wherein the internet,
under the thumbs of corporate entities, has
progressively become more and more of a shadow of
itself. In fact, it has become such a terrible place
to roam, many have reverted to old-style websites like
Neocities in order to experience a more wholesome,
genuine experience of what the internet could and should
be. Yet the internet also provides a major paradigm shift
in the human experience. The internet has become a sort
of artificial collective uncounsciousness (Why yes, I have seen Lain, how could you tell?),
and it is only the beginning. Because of this, corporations
and governments are racing to stake their claim on this
so that they can control this. Censorship runs rampant across the
enshittified wasteland of much of the surface internet,
and bots and AI accounts continue to multiply and infest
these spaces; continuing to make what was once a vector
for human expression, less and less human. Additionally,
valuable information becomes more and more gatekept by
corporations, demanding you pay up for information which
should be given to all. It is commonplace for one to
search for an interesting article, click on it, read
about 5% into it, and then be confronted by a paywall
notification, demanding you pay an exorbitant fee to
read their likely mediochre articles. It doesn't help
that Google, a horrid amalgamation of an awful search
engine and interesting things that they bought and
ruined (See: Youtube), promotes these while sidelining
actually useful sources for information.
The internet could be something drastically different.
My dream for the internet is that of John Perry Barlow,
when he penned The Declaration of Independence of
Cyberspace.
The internet should be an autonomous entity, separate
from the governments of the world and their agendas,
uniting us as a people. Corporations and governments
have tried to stifle this; to kill the dream that is
the true internet. They want to use the internet as a method for control. Don't let them. Break free from your
algorithm, go outside, see the stars.