Y’internet

I wonder how the Internet will change the power of the state over the individual? It’s too early to tell as yet.

In the the previous era, the one since the start of the enlightenment, a fascinating battle has been won and lost by us all.

We managed to overthrow the hegemony of monarchs and the churches only to be captured by an artefact of the systems that we set up to ensure our own freedoms. That is, the processes that ensure our basic freedoms and rights are now being used against us all, by us all (although by some more than others).

Bentham’s Utilitarian rule of the ‘greater good for the greatest number’ has been used to justify a continuing tightening of what is acceptable behaviour in life. And this has been accompanied by a massive increase in life’s complexity because the controls in place to sheep-dog us into the acceptable windows of behaviours are so complex as to require continuous and universal education for at least the first twenty years of our lives.

So we have gained freedom from continual persecution by oligarchs only to land in the Truman Show.

The Internet will change this. On one hand it offers uncensored information and on the other unparalleled access, by any individual or agency, as to what we are doing and thinking.

My guess is that the Internet will simply accelerate the trend towards 1984 because there is more incentive for the few that profit in this scenario, and also because, with 8 billion people on this planet, we may have no choice.