I was reminded again about the awful price we’re paying for the internet when I received an email from Amazon in my junk box this morning pushing a device I’d searched for a few days ago out of mere curiosity as to what it was. I had no intention of buying it, but for some reason Amazon thinks I will, so they’re going to remind me over the next few weeks until their algorithm gets the hint.
And that’s what life is now. We’ve flung open the windows, doors, and whatever other openings we can muster to continue this inundation of advertising and media drivel.
Click on a YouTube video and suddenly you’re branded – anything and everything related to both the content and the creator becomes your theme until you can counter it with something else. I’d love to turn off all suggestions. Can I? I doubt it — unless I pay them not to harass me by becoming a “premium member.” That’ll show them.
There can be no doubt that the internet has made our lives better in some way. But have we really done a good cost/benefit analysis on it? And do we even really know the cost? I can name dozens of examples of how my life has been enriched, but can I name how the internet has reprogrammed my brain? Or even less evident, how it’s programmed the brains of people who grew up bathed in it? As they say, “they don’t even know what they don’t know.” I think that I and at least my generation and older have an inkling. We remember what it was like in the dark days before a computer in every pocket.
But really, we’ve sold our minds to the highest bidder…and in many cases, not even bidders of much repute, but rather, those with far more nefarious intent. Get this: they truly and honestly don’t even care about you beyond what they can get out of you. It’s a delicate line for them to tread – how to suck the masses dry without killing them – but they’re actually getting quite good at it.
You might think me some kind of Luddite who can’t bear new technology and just pines for the olden days when a person could make it all the way through high school not even knowing how to type (me!). Not at all. What I actually can’t bear is the incompetent proctoring of what tech is bringing into our lives. Our wounds are self-inflicted out of gullibility and carelessness. And enough people gobble up the garbage to keep tech thinking that it’s a sustainable model – a kind of self-fulfilling suck that perpetuates itself for lack of demand of anything of better quality.
And it’s perpetuated too by the huge void into which our media believes it must pour as much content as possible, with no thought for its usefulness. Thus we’re overwhelmed with content that is mostly vacuous and utterly meaningless – the more outrageous the better. And yet there are enough suckers out there to keep it going. Enough suckers who love to have their world-views propped up and validated by what they’re seeing and hearing. They don’t seem to realize that they have so much content and freedom that they could go through an entire lifetime never hearing anything outside of their own bubble; meaning of course that they come to believe that their view is the only view. Sure, they may have heard of some fringe stuff, but to them it really is insignificant. Meanwhile, the guy on the “fringe” thinks the the same about everyone else. And on and on it goes. How does the expression go? Like looking at the sky from the bottom of a well?
So has the internet helped us? Yes, it has. I’ve enjoyed so much that I would probably never have seen and heard if not for the internet. I’m able to listen to Miles Davis. Or watch The Expanse. Or write. But it seems to me it could also be the end of us. As Uncle Ben would say, “With great power comes great responsibility.” In reality, with such a vast ocean of content in front of us, there should come also the great responsibility of being thoughtful and discerning in the way in which we swim. Could we someday have some sudden epiphany and come to a conclusion that it’s far too dangerous to even try?
Dare we? Or is it too late? Has the rip tide already carried us too far from the shore?
