Is it possible anymore for any major event to occur without conspiracy theories appearing? What kind of future is this leading to where skepticism to the authorities either gets turned up to 100 automatically or any suggestion that there might be a coverup is immediately dismissed since there is a flood of conspiracy theories about everything?
In more ways than one, the internet has done far more to unravel society than it has to better it.
Amen to that. Social media is killing social skills. Online sales have killed many small businesses and local economies. Porn has contributed to fucked up relationships. Online news has given people trust issues. Online advertizing has incentivized clickbait over actual content. The internet is shortening attention spans and potentially selecting against people with good memory recall, all while serving as the post powerful propaganda and spycraft tool ever conceived of.
But hey, at least we have cat videos and free music!
>In more ways than one, the internet has done far more to unravel society than it has to better it.
Amen to that. Social media is killing social skills. Online sales have killed many small businesses and local economies. Porn has contributed to fucked up relationships. Online news has given people trust issues. Online advertizing has incentivized clickbait over actual content. The internet is shortening attention spans and potentially selecting against people with good memory recall, all while serving as the post powerful propaganda and spycraft tool ever conceived of.
But hey, at least we have cat videos and free music!
Where did we go wrong? Was it social networks? The commercialization of the internet? Anonymous profiles that have no accountability? Easy creation of troll accounts? Machines and bots that can impersonate as humans? Big data analysis to aggregate millions of humans' behavior? All of these, or something else that I missed?
I agree with this interpretation, and it is ironic that this is where we are since the promise of the internet in the 1980s and 1990s was to bring people together and achieve a sort of technological transcendence. It looks like all we've done is magnify human nature.
Where did we go wrong? Was it social networks? The commercialization of the internet? Anonymous profiles that have no accountability? Easy creation of troll accounts? Machines and bots that can impersonate as humans? Big data analysis to aggregate millions of humans' behavior? All of these, or something else that I missed?
I agree with this interpretation, and it is ironic that this is where we are since the promise of the internet in the 1980s and 1990s was to bring people together and achieve a sort of technological transcendence. It looks like all we've done is magnify human nature.
The commercialization of the internet?
This one. Or, at least the factors that lead to it. I've heard many attribute it to the first iphone. Suddenly all these people (who by default had disposable income) joined a network of people that had more ties to academia than anything else. Suddenly people were logging any time (any place) they got bored, which is an advertiser's wet dream.
In a broader sense, I think you're very much correct about magnifying human nature. We put ourselves into everything we create, but sometimes we create things that amplify those traits to the point of absolute toxicity. Government, nuclear bombs, the internet, guns, media, ect. None of these things is evil, but they enhance evil. Which is why (complete tangent here) AI scares the shit out of me.
>The commercialization of the internet?
This one. Or, at least the factors that lead to it. I've heard many attribute it to the first iphone. Suddenly all these people (who by default had disposable income) joined a network of people that had more ties to academia than anything else. Suddenly people were logging any time (any place) they got bored, which is an advertiser's wet dream.
In a broader sense, I think you're very much correct about magnifying human nature. We put ourselves into everything we create, but sometimes we create things that amplify those traits to the point of absolute toxicity. Government, nuclear bombs, the internet, guns, media, ect. None of these things is evil, but they enhance evil. Which is why (complete tangent here) AI scares the shit out of me.
You nailed it, more or less! Bots be true ... but as for the rest who are real folks ... before the internet the conspiracy theorists were out there, but considered nut jobs by most and had no platform to spread their 'brilliant insights' beyond a crazy letter to th editor. Now they have dozens of ways to spread ideas, and they find plenty more exceptionally gullible folks out there to grab on and spread the nonsense. In more ways than one, the internet has done far more to unravel society than it has to better it. A handful of fools can be openly quoted as some kind of grand authority on something, and the view of the vast majority is lost in the sauce and considered naive.