Why Erase the internet? What went wrong?
The year was 1999, and the future seemed alive with possibilities. The World Wide Web was connecting the planet and after school (or work) we would would race home to talk to new far-flung individuals in chat rooms, on message boards, or via instant messengers. New ideas were everywhere together with weird ones, from TimeCube to Hampster Dance and The Matrix. Computers were being used to create incredible special effects for the first Star Wars prequel, and video games had entered the 3rd dimension with incredible new stories and worlds to explore. Sure, there were ads, popups, and viruses, but the web was an exciting frontier where people connected over things they loved.
And then something happened… a sickness appeared as corporate mega-entities took hold of the developing web. It’s now full of ads, scams, and bots, and the silliness and joy is gone. Search engines return products and scams instead of real results, and tech companies are firing humans and “hiring” AI. At university commencement speeches and on cable news, CEO’s say we just need to deal with it and adapt — that we’ll consume their content and pay for the electricity as they fine-tune AI to deceive us and to make us angry. Even human users are being replaced by scripts on sites like facebook on instagram.
Work itself, rather than sustaining humanity with a clean environment, artwork, and healthy food, has become a game of shuffling digital bits to extract value from resources and beloved institutions. Websites that are meant to be enjoyable now prioritize clicks, micro-transactions, and engagement, which in turn prioritize fear, addiction, and outrage. Gone are the efforts that once united and enlightened us. Now, humanity has entered the era of outrage and addiction.
It’s time to take a step back, abandon these sites for good, and embrace better models of communication. It’s time to delete facebook, put our phones down, and step outside for fresh air. When was the last time you stared up at the clouds or watched the sun set?
