Unforeseen Consequences

While reading The Internet Apologizes by Noah Kulwin, I couldn't help but to stop and think for a moment on how much the internet has evolved from its humble and well-intended beginnings to the insanely large, worldwide community that perpetually exploits and watches its users.

The internet began with intentions of being a place where users with like-minded ideas and interests could support each other, but due to the simple fact that the world does not only comprise of like-minded individuals, that idea did not quite pull through. The internet began to be used by corporations, political parties, and extremist groups to spread and push their ideas and intentions onto the international community.

There have always been critics of the internet, but now, many who have been crucial to the initial and further development of the World Wide Web have stepped forward and expressed their worries and concerns regarding the internet's inevitable influence in the future. They have further explained the process that caused the internet to reach the extreme point that it is currently at, and many have apologized for the havoc that it has wreaked and the shielded and secretive manipulation of its users.

The new internet, with its innocent intent to spread information and connect with others, became a place of pop-up ads, enticing and enraging stories, and media platforms for the social elite to promote their political and religious stances. Further, though it seems like opposite intentions, the technological elite aspired for the internet to remain the free whilst simultaneously generating profit, thus spurring on the development of extreme advertising and the use of algorithms and cookies to “spy” on internet users and place the most desirable products and opportunities on their screens.

Rather than uniting the world and the various people that inhabit it, media platforms and the internet have focused on harnessing outrage, anger, and shock to increase engagement and involvement on certain websites and apps, as creators of such platforms and forums have drifted from the honest intentions of the early internet to growth, profit, and revenue. Jaron Lanier, who worked at Atari and Microsoft, stated that though the internet has been and can be used for positive attention and raising awareness of necessary organizations and movements, such as the Black Lives Matter movement, the internet can be exploited to promote propaganda, fake news, and spread fear, empowering the alt-right, neo-Nazis, and other groups and individuals who are motivated by hatred.

What I found especially frightening was the realization that there is a way and reason that the websites I visit display ads that perfectly match the Amazon products I was just browsing. Internet sites and media platforms are collecting our information every day and are using that data, our personal data, in exploitation and to support themselves. Perhaps what is even more surprising is that though we are aware of these actions, we do little to nothing to combat it. We proceed to allow Snapchat to have access to our location and for Facebook to know our birthdays, where we work, and where we grew up. The internet has blown up far beyond its original intent and expectations, and we can only imagine how much it will grow to dictate our lives in the future.

- Hannah Kline