Evgeny Morozov: The Net Delusion

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Just a few years ago, all anyone could talk about was how to make the Internet more free. Now all anyone can talk about is how to control it.

Book and newspaper publishers look for ways to protect their original content. Parents seek to shield their children from cyberbullying. Legislators explore mechanisms that will defend people’s privacy. Governments try to find the means to keep classified materials from leaking onto the Web. Entrepreneurs and public figures struggle to keep rivals or enemies from slandering them or their businesses. And more and more of us are terrified of being watched, filmed and uploaded, about as terrified as other people are titillated by watching, filming and uploading.

The miraculously convenient technology of the Internet has created an unprecedented simultaneity of moral functions. Julian Assange of WikiLeaks is like an incarnation of Shiva, the Hindu god of creation and destruction. It turns out that what was recently considered a brave new age of information was actually the first spasm in a long process of cultural realignment. We are all used to thinking of Google as though it were synonymous with the word “future.” In 50 years, people will be talking about Google the way we talk about the East India Company. We are still wobbling in the baby steps of the Internet age.

Additional Reading:

Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage

The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World

The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies

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