10-20 years ago if you would have asked me about killing off the internet somehow I would have fought you tooth and nail. Now though, I think many of us agree, the internet has become a hellscape and it kinda needs to be changed or go away. So sad to see what so many of us hoped would improve the world be corroded in such a way. This article does a good job of summing up a lot of my feelings about where we are.
“Which brings us to the new economy of freelancers and gig workers, precarious, unprotected, and connected. Hourly workers fry their brains with images no one should ever see — information detoxification — working to meet bizarre and inconsistent standards handed down from a distant authority, and then melt down in filthy bathrooms. Harried subcontracted delivery drivers feel so desperate to meet overnight shipping deadlines they get in deadly crashes. Uber drivers, some of whom sleep in parking lots, have separate bathrooms than Uber corporate staff. These people, it stands to reason, might be alienated. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Meanwhile, the median home price is San Francisco is $1.4 million. This is where the Digital Nation mostly lives, in the most beautiful place in the country, profiting directly or indirectly off our participation in the alienating world they’ve built. Many of these people don’t want their children using the products and networks they build and sell. The people running the country don’t really care what happens to you.
Still, they’ll listen to you and spy on you for law enforcement. They’ll use that data, which they may or may not protect, to get richer. They’ll build special privacy schemes for themselves. Most people with power try to take advantage of people like yourself. Disempowered and unsure how to express it, you may take a strange comfort in the fact that there is another alienated human on the other end of your device. You’ll never meet them, but at least they will hear you.“