Prisoners of the Internet

The beginnings of the Internet held such promise - the potential for being a vast repository of information, global in scope, freely accessible to everyone. It was seen as a wondrous tool for learning; for expanding the life of the mind; for fueling the imagination, and inspiring creativity. The possibilities were seemingly endless.

These conceptions offered the possibility of an unimagined potential to at last unite humans under the vast and all-encompassing umbrella of the human family through the wondrous unifying web of knowledge and truth - ever growing and ever prospering.

Not unlike the 1960s, this vision of a new world at peace where all of humanity would be connected with a singular resolve to make the human world a better place - this incipient hope quickly devolved into something entirely different.

Not long after its inception, the Internet began to be seen as having great potential in regard to its utilization in the arena of commerce – offering a nearly limitless capacity to generate great wealth. This new reality became an impetus for the fevered expansion of capitalism throughout the world.

This evolution, for me, was strangely comparable to the events that surrounded the evolution of television once it became implanted into so many millions of households throughout the United States in the 1940s and 1950s. In its infancy, television was the medium for innovative programming and creative experimentation within a brand-new media; until it became quite evident that it could be used as a lucrative marketing tool. Once this transition happened, programming became an adjunct to the selling of material products that soon became its primary focus.

The Internet is far more insidious on account of the spider-like threads that it weaves throughout individual lives and families. As a people, we are becoming progressively entangled in this virtual digital web with fewer and fewer escape routes. Online is the mantra; online is the goal. Bank accounts and finances and friendships and families and services and health and even the pursuit of happiness have become entangled within the fabric of this web.

We now swim in a collective sea of passwords and alliances and communications not born of human connection but rooted in the strangest kinds of associations within a virtual reality that exaggerates feelings of loneliness and abandonment.

In addition, many individuals, especially the elderly, have now become victimized by those who have the tools to undermine an individual’s hold on valuable personal information and actively steal huge amounts of money remotely and usurp personal identities with apparent impunity robbing individuals of their most intimate sense of personal safety. This widespread behavior negatively impacts the sense of trust that is an essential ingredient within any viable and sustainable society.

Sadly, this story does not end here. Currently there is growing financial investment in so-called “artificial intelligence” (AI) that if left unmanaged could ultimately replace creative imagination that drives true innovation with a sterile sameness that devalues essential professions and may result in creating an army of the unemployed within a social structure devoid of a safety net.

This would be a recipe for disaster. This mad rush to a totally unmapped future is driven by the powerful who have no apparent interest in the consequences that will necessarily materialize if this kind of “progress” is left unregulated for it is only through thoughtful and reasoned mitigation that the worst scenarios can be avoided.