83 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
83 lines
4.3 KiB
Markdown
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tags: [socio-political, internet]
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created: Thursday, November 07, 2024
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---
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# 0716531c_rewilding_the_internet
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The following analogy can be useful in understanding how the internet has become
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such a negative environment, divorced from its original promise as a humanistic
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space that facilitated the connection of individuals with shared interests and
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values to an environment that is entirely mediated by capital subject to
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control, censorship and the violation of privacy.
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In the 18th-century in the northern German states officials decided to
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rationalise the production of timber to enable its systematic extraction as a
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resource. (Clearly a product of Enlightenment principles of applying reason and
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science to agriculture similar to Jethro Tull's invention of the seed drill and
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the suspension of three-field rotation to constantly exploit available land.)
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Instead of a sprawling forest ecosystem that had developed naturally over
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hundreds of thousands of years, which allowed for felling without upsetting the
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continuance of the system, the forests were stripped and trees were planted in
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rows and grids with the arrangement designed to maximise yield and access. This
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is broadly analogous to the factory-farming of chickens compared to free-range
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rearing.
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For the first cycle it appeared as if this restructuring was a huge success.
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Yields were high and the timber was of excellent quality. This was a false dawn,
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however. The subsequent yields were a complete failure compared to the past.
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Fewer trees grew and those that did had a reduced yield and were subject to
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disease. The overall health of the forests declined precipitously.
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What explains the initial success, however? It was made possible by the
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preceding centuries of free-range growth and husbandry. The seeming success of
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the new system was a product of the generations of investment in the natural
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ecosystem. This was exhausted in one cycle of the new regime.
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Taking this back to the Web, the analogy is that the web was initially a natural
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ecosystem of different communities and technologies developing organically out
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of the original open and decentralised protocols. From this diversity emerged a
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formidably rich informational space.
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Since then, the Web has become highly centralised and homogenised with a tiny
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cadre of corporations determining how individuals communicate, share and access
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information (Google for search, Android or Apple for phone, Twitter or Facebook
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etc.).
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The initial fruits of this centralisation (just like the forest 'optimisation')
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appeared to be beneficial in the initial 'heyday' of the 2010s when social-media
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was new and full of prospects (the political benefits of Twitter and enriched
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public sphere, the 'Arab Spring', WikiLeaks etc). But this actually proved to be
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the nadir. The vitality on display was a product of the preceding era of the
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natural growth of the Web ecosystem.
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This decline in quality should be apparent to any reflective user:
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- the saturation of advertising to the point where many websites are unusable
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- the confection of low-quality content to game 'organic' search rankings
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- the surveillance of users across sites and devices to enable the extraction of
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profitable marketing data
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- the censorship of political content for the 'violation' of bogus terms of use
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on social media platforms if it does not the serve the broader interests of
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capital and western imperialism
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- the saturation of pornography and dehumanising media more generally
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This has also involved the reshaping of Internet users themselves, from active
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and independent _agents_, to drone-like passive _consumers_ of drivel engineered
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to maximise 'engagement' (the monopolisation of attention), where users are like
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the viewers of _Infinite Jest_. See, e.g TikTok and its clones.
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There are many further points that can be made and ideas that can be
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extrapolated from this. Two examples:
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- the emergence of supposed 'AI' is going to lead to greater content
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homogenisation and the intensification of informational entropy since the
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technological mechanism consists in feeding the regurgitated content of the
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internet back into itself
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- reality itself has become infected by the disease that killed the Web
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(ecocide), since the distinction between offline and online is becoming
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increasingly hard to draw (politics - the normalisation and ascendancy of the
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far right and subsequent destabilisation of western states)
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