In the tutorial for the class a discussion arose on the idea of why the internet had not reached the utopian ideals envisioned by the early cyber libertarians, to which some people made a comment that it was a new technology or that it there was too much control being exerted by the government in an attempt to reign it in under their power.
This reminded me of an image that I found online a while backthat is far too long to be contained in this post. I’d recommend reading it before carrying on.
In order to attempt to try and understand what could have caused the cyber libertarian ideals to fall short I consider my browsing habits, what I use the internet for and the information that I tend to consume on a regular basis. When I’m bored I have access to millions of articles that I can read to further educate myself, I have methods of exposing myself to hundreds of new viewpoints and grow as an individual. But I don’t. Instead I go to reddit, click everything from imgur and spend the next two hours looking at pictures of funny cats or political commentary. Ironically this is how the above image was discovered – by chance as I was looking for something to entertain me until it was time for sleep, the next tutorial or whatever. I honestly don’t think that this is something that would be too uncommon to hear from other people except replacing reddit with facebook, myspace, or any other website.
What makes the issue complex here isn’t that there’s an antagonistic force at hand trying to remain in control that’s creating these distractions for me, but my love of distractions and indifference to bettering myself that restrict it, along with other people’s desire to be ‘internet famous’ through raising of karma (or whatever equivalent exists for your preferred time killing website) that does it. I tend to think that any government body secretly trying to control us could only do a worse job.
It is this love of distraction that I find so easily in myself and suspect many others have that leads me to the slightly pessimistic belief that the entire reason that the cyber libertarianism movement failed isn’t because of some limitation to the technology or restriction placed on the individuals by the government, but instead the limitations of humanity with the lack of desire in the majority people to see it through. Although this could very well be seen as an optimistic viewpoint, as if the restriction is entirely within our heads at the moment then there is the opportunity for change.
I admit that I agree with you about getting distracted by the numerous sites on the internet however, I don't know what reddit or imgur is so I go on Facebook and Twitter now that I have an account and browse GIFs for my weekly blog posts. Even though the GIF is the least important part of my blog I feel like I'm being productive when searching for the funniest one, because it feels like it's validating my time on the internet distracting myself from doing real work.
ReplyDeleteI've even gone so far to make status updates on Facebook proclaiming how little time i have left to do my assignment which in itself is wasting more assignment doing time.
The internet is the best procrastination tool out...get a hold of stumbleupon.com and watch the hours fly by. I get distracted by sites easily, occasionally getting a friend to change the password so I cannot go on to my facebook during a busy week. This works, but it doesn't, mainly because I find something better to look at. The internet won't reach the utopian level because control will never be possible. The majority of government programmers and developers started out as hackers, low level, high level...but all in all, hackers. So when they create something, they are not the best until it is proven unbreachable...something which is just too hard to ensure.
ReplyDeleteI feel all lame and consumerist now.
ReplyDeleteI love that illustration, where did you find it? I always thought "Brave New World/Bladerunner" was more likely than "1984"; you should check out a movie called "Brazil" which delves into the same sort of thing.
It's sort of sad when i look back at what i spend most of my time on when on the computer. i have the most ridiculously short attention span (I BLAME SOCIETY) and what i originally intend to use my comp for is never what i end up doing (usually ebay or tumblr: http://heartbleedspurple.tumblr.com/post/9121496597).
Barlow made me think that the internet could have a major affect on some third world problems, and it does in some ways, but not to the extent it could. Not to the extent of the first world problems, like buying new ray bans.