Why did the internet fail “me”?
A rant about the pitfalls of the technology that could have changed the world
This text has been inspired by Patsy Fergusson’s article “Once We Dreamed the Web Would Connect Us.”
Like many other persons, I had a dream, too. In fact, several. I also believed I had been born at the right time for making them come true.
It turns out I was wrong: technology changed everything, but then it didn’t.
When I was young, I thought connecting people would solve most, if not all, of our issues. I believed humanity suffered from nothing else than a huge deficit of communication: because few had the privilege to travel, few had the chance to exchange ideas and thus find allies to build a better world.
As a teenager, I imagined the internet would finally bridge this gap by bringing together literally everyone: the lonely and socially excluded, victims and their defenders, innovators and entrepreneurs, scientists and artists, innovators and decision-makers, thinkers and doers, leaders and revolutionaries...
In my vision, the world could have upgraded to a stage where cultural and social barriers no longer existed as everyone cooperated with everyone. A dialogue-enabled real-time utopia that could have given everyone a voice and… a group of friends.
Of course, this never happened.
Some things never change?!
I admit that I ’ve spent most of my youth trying to come to terms with the reality that the early promise of the internet didn’t come true. Now that I am older and (almost) past the denial phase, I am trying to figure out the reason why it didn’t work.
I still wonder because I still believe it should have worked.
Some days, I even feel that it almost did.
But the achievements are modest compared to the groundbreaking nature of the internet and the way it altered our lives in every other aspect.
Just think:
Private life: transformed.
Work life: transformed.
Society: pretty much the same?! Same issues dragged year after year well into the next decade or…millennium.
After years of rubbing shoulders with nonprofits and human rights groups, I feel disappointed, tired and betrayed. Not only did society remain roughly the same, equally unequal and unjustifiably unjust, but it seems the internet ended up mirroring the world it could have transformed.
The “why, oh, why” of the triple “W”
Many things could be said about how this global technology can work for the benefit of the world.
It suffices for now to acknowledge that the WWW didn’t solve yet the most pressing issues it could have solved by connecting the dots: peace and intercultural dialogue, freedom of speech, democracy, gender equality, human rights, social exclusion, free and unrestrained access to education and cultural resources……the list is long. While many beneficent initiatives actually started online (and would have probably never taken off otherwise), by and large, there were no lasting social revolutions.
Leaving my youth years behind, I am still trying to understand where and why did this amazing technology fail me…
…and by “me”, I actually mean “us”.
Or did we fail it?
Is it because the tech giants stepped in?
Is it globalization, individualism, capitalism, totalitarianism, human nature?
Is it too early to draw a conclusion?
Or is it too late because we have moved past the “peace & democracy for all” ideal?
I don’t really know the answer. The only thing I can do at this point is to compile a non-exhaustive list of reasons why the Internet might have failed to help us move beyond the “insecure connection” stage.
7 Reasons Why The Internet Didn’t Work As Expected
- Centralization and control
Once upon a time there were as many web destinations as villages in the countryside. Now we “live” in a few closely supervised megalopolises. The giant websites that we use every day make the rules for the whole internet…and censorship is still in.
The consequences are dramatic, with the first and most obvious being the disappearance of anonymity. People were beginning to turn really vocal on the now defunct plethora of forums, chat rooms and media websites which enabled users’ comments. Sincere opinions, brilliant solutions, harsh critics and sometimes outrageous insults were thrown into these un-moderated online discussions. Users were not afraid to speak out because their names and photos were not public. Their private life was theirs. Their professional life was not online. One could tell the truth without fearing a backlash. This freedom has been completely lost in the Facebook era. Now everybody thinks twice before posting anything that could ruin one’s “reputation”. Self-censorship, yes.
But also classic, old school censorship, as the messages are moderated and this control over content is going to be further tightened under the pretext of filtering fake news. But even fake news can spark authentic dialogue. Not to mention that the “official” version of the truth may be biased as well.
The future could be one of digital dictatorship where we’ll cease to be independent internet users, reduced to the state of obedient civilians caught in a mass surveillance system which will control our data and threaten our freedom of speech.
The disappearance of privacy is one of the most worrying red flags. The rest is yet to come…if we agree.
2. Information overload
Popular social networks prove surprisingly inadequate when it comes to sparkling authentic dialogue and/or community mobilization. The reality is that media such as Instagram or Twitter haven’t been conceived for deep reflection, nor organized activism. True, at this point, people use them for both. But then again, due to information overload and addictive design, it is quite easy to lose track or momentum.
On the other hand, there is blogging which enables deeper, longer and more complex posts. But personal, non-commercial blogging has lost popularity. Community Forums which promoted thematic discussions that could span over months or years, have also been gradually replaced by social networks and instant messaging which are easier to use, but harder to follow. Of course, we share tons of interesting links through Facebook or Twitter, but the algorithms don’t always help and we don’t have time to read everyone that we follow. The apps have also quite overthrown email which was already replacing letters and phone calls. Now we are even faster with WhatsApp, but also less organized.
There is a lot of information. Staying on track is the challenge.
The truth is that the internet giants don’t care if we spend time watching junk or reading what really interests us. As long as we remain online, they’re happy. So it’s really up to us to make sense of this avalanche of information and it’s not as easy as it seems.
Which leads us to the third point…
3. Egocentrism
Facebook raised narcissism to the status of lifestyle. But I don’t blame Zuckerberg more than I blame all of us. The “me, me and only me” urge already existed within us. In the first era of the internet, the main attraction was getting away with it. Now the selling point for logging in is showing off… and incidentally, exposing everyone else’s flaws.
Even before the WWW, people wanted, on one hand, to be seen as greater than they really were, on the other hand, to be provided with a renewable fresh supply of information so that they could gossip about others. Facebook simply stepped in and fulfilled both of these “archaic needs”. Now we know how is everyone else doing, without even asking them.
But in exchange for a public profile, we’ve renounced the freedom to re-invent ourselves. Our virtual self is now identical with our offline persona. There’s no escape from whom we are!
By putting on an act, we’ve also given up the more caring, less selfish version of ourselves. We have agreed to an uploadable social status which must be safeguarded in the online world… at all price.
This is the reason why we are going to refrain from posting openly critical messages when our employers, peers or allies do something wrong in the “real” world. We are also going to avoid befriending online those whom we judge as inferior or less accomplished, unless the purpose of our action is clearly and visibly charitable.
Of course, cowardice and vanity are human nature flaws. These shortcomings have plagued humanity pre-internet and will probably continue to trouble us in the post-tech era as well, if such a time will ever come. My only objection is that we didn’t fully realize what we signed up for when we joined the Face-infused “boiling pot”.
4. Passive use & slacktivism
In fact, try as we might, there is not a lot we can achieve online at this point. Digital activism appears to be mocking real life action, yet is nevertheless gradually replacing it.
Let’s briefly compare the two.
The “digital warrior’s” weapons: sharing, taking a selfie, liking, voting, following, chatting, signing, forwarding, tweeting, tik-toking, occasionally posting a short message on behalf of the cause that they endorse.
The offline activist’s arsenal: yelling, singing, clapping, marching, doing a sit-in, meeting, talking, speaking, protesting, occasionally fighting police, writing a letter, an article or…a book!
Notice the difference in energy spending?
Digital activism started as a complement to offline activism, yet, in many cases turned into a not-so-funny caricature of it. However, the boom of online advocacy campaigns proves internet-based activism may actually be substituting, at least partially, physical activity.
Unfortunately, there is a catch. Digital advocacy leaves little trace once the initiative is over. Its impact is unclear, its focus blurred. Who gets the message? Who is moved to action as a result of it? The moment you turn off your device is the moment you might realize you have done nothing to change your actual life.
Unfortunately, we have already started to live in the Meta. Perhaps there will be no “real life” left after all?
5. The psychological fracture between “the real world” and “the virtual world”
Everything that we do online is of course, real, and it is subjected to the same (un)ethical rules as our offline actions.
Nevertheless, while increasingly being pressured to give up our personal data, we are simultaneously encouraged to see the digital world as a parallel, enhanced universe.
The virtual world is becoming our hiding place and we become good at keeping it free from worries and struggles. The internet provides a lot of escapism opportunities in terms of games and entertainment and we feel we should take advantage of it when off-duty. It would feel outrageous to keep working after work. Not to mention the exhaustion caused by long office hours. But even though we feel tired, we don’t disconnect. What we chose to do instead is to try separate personal and professional life by delimiting internet use. Thus, after work, we tend to be more passive, less reflective and more in the “consumer mode”. We watch movies, listen to music, play games, chat- all in the attempt to relax before the next busy day.
Meanwhile, burn out is turning into a real issue. As technology advances, the time spent in front of the screen at work should decrease. On the contrary, it increased. This is the reason why we are left with so little time for actually using the internet! (Notice the 17%? That’s us, Medium users!)
6. The lack of free time
The disappearance of unstructured time is an issue in itself. When I assumed that the internet would change the world, I also wrongly assumed that people would have the time to use it in this way. It turns out that this reserve of free, unstructured and unconstrained time no longer exists, at least not in the regions that we like to call “the developed world”.
The erasure of “thinking and acting” time is primarily due to long working hours, fast-paced routines and the “for profit and in comparison with” lifestyle. Making money is a full time job. The little leisure time left to those stuck in the rat race is idly spent recovering in bed or in front of the tv. Or partying…for those who are still young. This is the reason why there is no longer an appetite for debating for the sake of it or for connecting to people outside one’s narrow social circle. In between job and family responsibilities, studying, working, dating, having fun and recovering from it all, activism remains an afterthought.
7. Exclusion and marginalization.
This should have been the first point on the list. The reason why I’ve included it at the end is because exclusion takes us back to the non-digitalized world, the world as we know it.
There are still 3 billion people who have never gone online. This is due to access issues such as poverty and lack of connectivity, but also restrictions caused by illiteracy and language barriers. Indeed, 60% of the internet content is in English. With so many people still excluded or poorly represented, there is no wonder the online world is not yet inclusive.
But even those who do make it online sometimes feel unwelcomed. As many newbies discover, in many cases, gender, racial, cultural and social inequalities simply got copy pasted on the WWW. These manifestations may not be obvious at first, but think of paywalled content, traffic restrictions, biased moderation, and of course, the online harassment–>censorship cycle. The more aggressive internet users, the stronger the reasons governments can invoke to restrict our freedom.
(This reminds me of primary school. The moment the teacher was out of the classroom, the kids went wild, screaming, running around and fighting with each other. I rarely moved from my desk. I was just observing and I used to think this quick disaster was quite funny. It was a huge release of energy. Sometimes children got hurt, sometimes nobody got a scratch despite the general onslaught. But the moment the teacher returned, it was “Judgment Time”. Do you think the adult ever tried to find out who started, who did the worst things or who was the most affected? Nope. The only thing the teacher did, over and over again, was to tighten the disciplinary rules for all of us, even for those who, like me, had never risen up from their seats. I always ended up frustrated and even more afraid to play during breaks. This is how I see internet regulation and this is why I don’t endorse it).
On top of that, there is the unresponsiveness of power structures which have conveniently moved from ignoring loud phone calls to ignoring silent text messages. In fact, it is just as easy as before to maintain one’s status by force and manipulation.
The internet didn’t challenge the existing social hierarchy and as it grows older and more controlled, it might even lose its ability to engender protest. The future is #MeToo, yes, but one can be blocked or deleted whenever ranting out. What guarantee is there for freedom of speech?
In conclusion…there is no conclusion. These seven arguments are in fact interrelated. They determine each other in terms of cause and effect. It would be hard to say which one happened first or which one matters most. The ultimate “why?” probably resides within us.
The internet is still under development and we are still learning to use it. Compared to the emergence of other revolutionary inventions such as print (1440), electrical light (1878) or photography (1826), the WWW is a shockingly recent innovation. Unfortunately, our lives are short. Online or offline, we are always compelled to make decisions. Hopefully, we still have time to make the right ones.
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