Criticism of the Internet

Two years away from the public Internet's 30th anniversary and the effects are clear: A dramatic re-channeling of people's energies away from their immediate communities. The global Internet as exists today results in a net loss of attention for the needs and concerns of your immediate residential community. Do the math. Every hour you spend living online, you spend mentally 'away' from your immediate local situation and the people in it. Your thoughts and interactions happen in environments pooled with everyone else around the world. Any amount of time you spend 'here' on the web, is time you don't spend 'there', in the actual place where you are ⇩ right now ⇩.

The Internet is the means for the global conversation, a critical venue to carry out the dialogues between the peoples of the world. Silicon Valley money turned it into a circus, thirsty for growth and user aggregation.

The Parallels with the Motorcar

• The negative impacts to American life and wellbeing that motorcars and the mass driving infrastructure built for them have caused.

• Consider the Interstate freeway system that split American cities in two. These mega freeways literally partitioned life and displaced thousands of families. There was an obsession behind, dictated outcomes

• The Internet tears through much finer things. Just as we needed car skeptics then, we need Internet skeptics now.

The Original Intentions of the Internet

• Does the Internet have an equivalent to America's 'founding fathers'? Who were the men and women that played a significant role in the creation of the Internet? And did they ever fear it could get this freaky? We wanted a garden library museum. Instead, we got a monstrous hybrid of a times square and a red light district.

February 21st, 2023