Does anyone want to talk about the direction the internet is going?

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   mega1posted 12 years ago

   I doubt anyone really will agree with me on this.  I think that originally the people who were shaping the internet were a bit altruistic - weren't thinking as much about money as about networking (hence the name "internet") and it was intended to be rather free, in every sense.  Of course, with technological advances and the graphic possibilities we have now, lots of money is made on the net.  But I sometimes really wish we could just share our images, our words and network the way it used to be without worrying so much about internet theft of "copyrighted" work.  So that is the way I basically use this medium - and I enjoy it this way.  But I'm an old hippy and everyday a bit less of a capitalist.  How do you feel about it?  Do you think there's room for altruism on the internet?

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      Stevennix2001posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I think there still is.  I think the problem is that the internet makes it easy for the flow of information, and sometimes misinformation, to leak out more frequently than society has been used to in year's past.  I have a feeling a change could be coming soon, as i know many government officials are trying to implement laws to control the internet better. 
      
      In fact, I know on sites like facebook, there's actually a few dummy accounts that belong to the FBI to spy on people that might display questionable behavior. Therefore, I think in the foreseeable future we can expect more laws for the government to have some sort of control over it. Not saying that it's something I'd be in favor for, as I think it's fine the way it is now.  However, with the recent events involving SOPA and PIPA, I think it's going to happen eventually...whether we like it or not....

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         mega1posted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Thanks, Steve - I think its a big old kettle of worms - remember TV and movies before there was a rating system?  In a world that likes to neatly compartmentalize everything and a somewhat paternalistic society that likes to "protect" us from ourselves, I wonder what form those laws are going to take?  And isn't it, as with most policy matters, a question of the people's attitudes towards free media?  I mean, if we publish our thoughts on the internet, there's no way we can go back later and say we didn't.  It's there forever.  And if we have to make money from everything we do publish, then there will be thieves.  (good title for a movie "There Will Be Thieves")  I'm concerned that people seem to be so worried that they might lose something from the nothing that they started with.  If that makes any sense at all to anyone.  In other words, I'm not really debating the necessity for control of the internet - I'm saying that people's attitudes about what and how much they put into the internet is what is the problem, or maybe the solution.  If we don't want government to censor the internet, we've already proven we can stop them.  But what we can't seem to do is control ourselves and our urges to have what we think and say out there for anyone to see and contradict - and yet we don't want people to "take" what we write and the images we make.  I think that's odd.  Isn't there a place on the internet somewhere devoid of capitalism (other than my hubs account!) where everything can be just shared freely?  It probably exists, I'm just not seeing it.  Certainly, facebook isn't that place.

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   paradigmsearchposted 12 years ago

   Society v Internet.
   
   Each a mirror of the other.
   
   Sometimes one leads.
   
   Sometimes the other.
   
   A tangled mess indeed.

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