I can still remember clearly as a highschool boarder in a dormitory in Bahrain, the moment the internet’s creation was first announced. Back then it was still called “The Information Superhighway”. We still read magazines back then and the articles that came out were explaining how this would completely change the way information was delivered globally. The magazine industry as a whole might have probably already been feeling the heat of this new technology, certainly the tech magazines at least. Indeed, a few years into the internet’s creation and the no.1 print tech magazine at that time, PC Magazine, essentially stopped all print form altogether, adopting the internet digitally 100%.
Across all industries and sectors, since the internet’s creation, innovation online is a daily occurrence, where whole industries find themselves shifting towards the internet in order to remain relevant. Social media for instance, myself coming from a pre-internet point of view, has totally resocialised society.
The internet has leveled the digital playing field, where any online moniker is in essence made up of the same ones and zeros as the next one. The internet’s early years were extremely jovial for digital adventurers who could make their humble opinions heard and take down entire powerhouses in just a few keystrokes. But things like free speech, email harvesting, mass mail advertising, all these things that were readily available for any geek online, nowadays faces too many hurdles and barriers to be of any use.
Today the internet’s true gatekeepers are the massive tech conglomerates who have bought up the whole internet and have devided it among themselves. The likes of Google, Facebook, sorry it’s “don’t be evil” and “Meta” haha.. they have taken all control of what people are permitted to watch, hear, and see, with their overpowered algorithms judging for us what is correct or not. Personally I prefer to judge entirely for myself what is correct for me to watch, hear, or see.
It is high time that these massive tech giants finally get “trust busted”. There was talk coming out of The States about this, but the talk has died down again. We don’t want talk now. We want decisive action for bringing our internet back ASAP.