Autosave: 2024-11-07 10:52:09

neuron/4f6a220a-4604-42f9-ae3d-5d8dfeaa272e/0716531c_rewilding_the_internet.md

@@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
+---
+tags: [socio-political, internet]
+created: Thursday, November 07, 2024
+---
+
+# 0716531c_rewilding_the_internet
+
+The following analogy can be useful in understanding how the internet has become
+such a negative environment, divorced from its original promise as a humanistic
+space that facilitated the connection of individuals with shared interests and
+values to an environment that is entirely mediated by capital subject to
+control, censorship and the violation of privacy.
+
+In the 18th-century in the northern German states officials decided to
+rationalise the production of timber to enable its systematic extraction as a
+resource. (Clearly a product of Enlightenment principles of applying reason and
+science to agriculture similar to Jethro Tull's invention of the seed drill and
+the suspension of three-field rotation to constantly exploit available land.)
+
+Instead of a sprawling forest ecosystem that had developed naturally over
+hundreds of thousands of years, which allowed for felling without upsetting the
+continuance of the system, the forests were stripped and trees were planted in
+rows and grids with the arrangement designed to maximise yield and access. This
+is broadly analogous to the factory-farming of chickens compared to free-range
+rearing.
+
+For the first cycle it appeared as if this restructuring was a huge success.
+Yields were high and the timber was of excellent quality. This was a false dawn,
+however. The subsequent yields were a complete failure compared to the past.
+Fewer trees grew and those that did had a reduced yield and were subject to
+disease. The overall health of the forests declined precipitously.
+
+What explains the initial success, however? It was made possible by the
+preceding centuries of free-range growth and husbandry. The seeming success of
+the new system was a product of the generations of investment in the natural
+ecosystem. This was exhausted in one cycle of the new regime.
+
+Taking this back to the Web, the analogy is that the web was initially a natural
+ecosystem of different communities and technologies developing organically out
+of the original open and decentralised protocols. From this diversity emerged a
+formidably rich informational space.
+
+Since then, the Web has become highly centralised and homogenised with a tiny
+cadre of corporations determining how individuals communicate, share and access
+information (Google for search, Android or Apple for phone, Twitter or Facebook
+etc.).
+
+The initial fruits of this centralisation (just like the forest 'optimisation')
+appeared to be beneficial in the initial 'heyday' of the 2010s when social-media
+was new and full of prospects (the political benefits of Twitter and enriched
+public sphere, the 'Arab Spring', WikiLeaks etc). But this actually proved to be
+the nadir. The vitality on display was a product of the preceding era of the
+natural growth of the Web ecosystem.
+
+This decline in quality should be apparent to any reflective user:
+
+- the saturation of advertising to the point where many websites are unusable
+- the confection of low-quality content to game 'organic' search rankings
+- the surveillance of users across sites and devices to enable the extraction of
+  profitable marketing data
+- the censorship of political content for the 'violation' of bogus terms of use
+  on social media platforms if it does not the serve the broader interests of
+  capital and western imperialism
+- the saturation of pornography and dehumanising media more generally
+
+This has also involved the reshaping of Internet users themselves, from active
+and independent _agents_, to drone-like passive _consumers_ of drivel engineered
+to maximise 'engagement' (the monopolisation of attention), where users are like
+the viewers of _Infinite Jest_. See, e.g TikTok and its clones.
+
+There are many further points that can be made and ideas that can be
+extrapolated from this. Two examples:
+
+- the emergence of supposed 'AI' is going to lead to greater content
+  homogenisation and the intensification of informational entropy since the
+  technological mechanism consists in feeding the regurgitated content of the
+  internet back into itself
+
+- reality itself has become infected by the disease that killed the Web
+  (ecocide), since the distinction between offline and online is becoming
+  increasingly hard to draw (politics - the normalisation and ascendancy of the
+  far right and subsequent destabilisation of western states)

neuron/4f6a220a-4604-42f9-ae3d-5d8dfeaa272e/index.md

@@ -13,12 +13,13 @@ computer science.
 
 ![not-by-ai-badge](static/not-by-ai-alternative--light.svg)
  
-**Build ID:** 558c0727-0f83-47d2-a06f-ebf6f98e8821
+**Build ID:** 4f6a220a-4604-42f9-ae3d-5d8dfeaa272e
 
-**Published:** Thu 07 Nov 2024 08:09:39
+**Published:** Thu 07 Nov 2024 10:52:08
 
 ### Recent edits 
 
+- [[0716531c_rewilding_the_internet]] 
 - [[Using_SQLite_with_Python]] 
 - [[f6564af9_AOL_and_early_internet_enclosure]] 
 - [[241fe1a3_the_Web_versus_modem_BBSs]] 
@@ -30,11 +31,11 @@ computer science.
 - [[Additive_identity]] 
 - [[MongoDB_connection]] 
 - [[Commutative_Property_of_Addition_and_Multiplication]] 
-- [[Call_stack]] 
 
 
-### All notes (487) 
+### All notes (488) 
 
+- [[0716531c_rewilding_the_internet]] 
 - [[241fe1a3_the_Web_versus_modem_BBSs]] 
 - [[385af4b4_Baran_distributed_networks]] 
 - [[3f1b9fe5_motivation_Berners_Lee]] 

zk/0716531c_rewilding_the_internet.md

@@ -0,0 +1,82 @@
+---
+tags: [socio-political, internet]
+created: Thursday, November 07, 2024
+---
+
+# 0716531c_rewilding_the_internet
+
+The following analogy can be useful in understanding how the internet has become
+such a negative environment, divorced from its original promise as a humanistic
+space that facilitated the connection of individuals with shared interests and
+values to an environment that is entirely mediated by capital subject to
+control, censorship and the violation of privacy.
+
+In the 18th-century in the northern German states officials decided to
+rationalise the production of timber to enable its systematic extraction as a
+resource. (Clearly a product of Enlightenment principles of applying reason and
+science to agriculture similar to Jethro Tull's invention of the seed drill and
+the suspension of three-field rotation to constantly exploit available land.)
+
+Instead of a sprawling forest ecosystem that had developed naturally over
+hundreds of thousands of years, which allowed for felling without upsetting the
+continuance of the system, the forests were stripped and trees were planted in
+rows and grids with the arrangement designed to maximise yield and access. This
+is broadly analogous to the factory-farming of chickens compared to free-range
+rearing.
+
+For the first cycle it appeared as if this restructuring was a huge success.
+Yields were high and the timber was of excellent quality. This was a false dawn,
+however. The subsequent yields were a complete failure compared to the past.
+Fewer trees grew and those that did had a reduced yield and were subject to
+disease. The overall health of the forests declined precipitously.
+
+What explains the initial success, however? It was made possible by the
+preceding centuries of free-range growth and husbandry. The seeming success of
+the new system was a product of the generations of investment in the natural
+ecosystem. This was exhausted in one cycle of the new regime.
+
+Taking this back to the Web, the analogy is that the web was initially a natural
+ecosystem of different communities and technologies developing organically out
+of the original open and decentralised protocols. From this diversity emerged a
+formidably rich informational space.
+
+Since then, the Web has become highly centralised and homogenised with a tiny
+cadre of corporations determining how individuals communicate, share and access
+information (Google for search, Android or Apple for phone, Twitter or Facebook
+etc.).
+
+The initial fruits of this centralisation (just like the forest 'optimisation')
+appeared to be beneficial in the initial 'heyday' of the 2010s when social-media
+was new and full of prospects (the political benefits of Twitter and enriched
+public sphere, the 'Arab Spring', WikiLeaks etc). But this actually proved to be
+the nadir. The vitality on display was a product of the preceding era of the
+natural growth of the Web ecosystem.
+
+This decline in quality should be apparent to any reflective user:
+
+- the saturation of advertising to the point where many websites are unusable
+- the confection of low-quality content to game 'organic' search rankings
+- the surveillance of users across sites and devices to enable the extraction of
+  profitable marketing data
+- the censorship of political content for the 'violation' of bogus terms of use
+  on social media platforms if it does not the serve the broader interests of
+  capital and western imperialism
+- the saturation of pornography and dehumanising media more generally
+
+This has also involved the reshaping of Internet users themselves, from active
+and independent _agents_, to drone-like passive _consumers_ of drivel engineered
+to maximise 'engagement' (the monopolisation of attention), where users are like
+the viewers of _Infinite Jest_. See, e.g TikTok and its clones.
+
+There are many further points that can be made and ideas that can be
+extrapolated from this. Two examples:
+
+- the emergence of supposed 'AI' is going to lead to greater content
+  homogenisation and the intensification of informational entropy since the
+  technological mechanism consists in feeding the regurgitated content of the
+  internet back into itself
+
+- reality itself has become infected by the disease that killed the Web
+  (ecocide), since the distinction between offline and online is becoming
+  increasingly hard to draw (politics - the normalisation and ascendancy of the
+  far right and subsequent destabilisation of western states)