{"id":33784,"date":"2018-04-27T05:57:46","date_gmt":"2018-04-27T10:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33784"},"modified":"2018-04-27T05:57:46","modified_gmt":"2018-04-27T10:57:46","slug":"how-the-internet-turned-bad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=33784","title":{"rendered":"How the Internet Turned\u00a0Bad"},"content":{"rendered":"

How the Internet Turned\u00a0Bad<\/a><\/h3>\n

The 1990s Vision\u00a0Failed<\/strong><\/p>\n

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It has been 25 years since I formed my first impressions of the Internet. I thought that it would shift the balance of power away from large organizations. I thought that individuals and smaller entities would gain more autonomy. What we see today is not what I hoped for back then.<\/p>\n

In 1993, I did not picture people having their online experience being \u201cfed\u201d to them by large corporations using mysterious algorithms. Instead, I envisioned individuals in control, creating and exploring on their own.<\/p>\n

In hindsight, I think that four developments took place that changed the direction of the Internet.<\/p>\n

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  1. The masses came to the Internet. Many of the new arrivals were less technically savvy, were more interested in passively consuming entertainment than in contributing creatively, and were less able to handle uncensored content in a mature way. They have been willing to give up autonomy in exchange for convenience.<\/li>\n
  2. At the same time, the capability of artificial intelligence grew rapidly. Better artificial intelligence made corporate control over the user experience more cost-effective than had been the case earlier.<\/li>\n
  3. The winner-take-all mentality took over. Entrepreneurs and consultants were convinced that only one firm in each market segment would dominate. In recent years, this has become almost a self-fulfilling prophecy, as stock market investors poured money into leading firms, giving those firms the freedom to experiment with new business ventures, under-price competitors, and buy out rivals.<\/li>\n
  4. The peer-to-peer structure of the Internet and the services provided over it did not scale gracefully. The idea of a \u201cdumb network\u201d of fully distributed computing gave way to caching servers and server farms. The personal blog or web site gave way to Facebook and YouTube.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Blogs vs.\u00a0Facebook<\/h4>\n

    To me, blogs symbolize the \u201cold vision\u201d of the Internet, and Facebook epitomizes the new trend.<\/p>\n

    …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    How the Internet Turned\u00a0Bad The 1990s Vision\u00a0Failed It has been 25 years since I formed my first impressions of the Internet. I thought that it would shift the balance of power away from large organizations. I thought that individuals and smaller entities would gain more autonomy. What we see today is not what I hoped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1597,19949,17685,1339,1169],"class_list":["post-33784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-algorithms","tag-arnold-king","tag-hackernoon","tag-internet","tag-social-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33785,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33784\/revisions\/33785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}