"The city is not a concrete jungle, it is a human zoo."
— Desmond Morris
I write this not from the country porch, not with the backdrop of hazy hills or fields of crops, but within earshot of the railway line, the uncouth honking of motor cars and the hustle of town. In short, I moved back to the city after years of country living. It's been a journey, one that wrenched my heart and pulled at my spirit and comfort. But it happened and I am trying to be all Zen and shit.
For the moment I am staying with a friend, at his parents' house. It's a great place, roomy, light and airy. There is a sense of comfort in it, though I have sacrificed my quiet privacy. The real upside is that I have a social life again. The corollary to this is that I don't have to drive the better part of an hour to meet friends over a coffee or beer. I can have Real Life™ social discourse in the café or pub, and I can meet friends more or less at the drop of a hat.
So I have decided not to be sad about what I've lost, but rather happy about what I have gained. It's a win, and I can always drive out into the sticks to see a sunset when I choose.
So this morning I am sitting in a coffee shop, drinking espresso and chatting about the Internet, and how it has changed. And I need to get something off my chest.
Back in the days when the Internet was young, I was so optimistic and naïve. With the release of NCSA's Mosaic web browser in 1993 I was elated, and I had such great hopes for this technology; it was going to enable smart discourse, connect people to enable the exchange of ideas. It was going to bring peace and harmony, the lion would lie down with the lamb and cats and dogs would be living together. Then came the Eternal September. With the launch of easy-to-use 'net connectivity, along with seemingly several billions of AOL CDs, came the great unwashed. Suddenly the internet was not just for the technologically elite, the university students and other sundry tech-able folks, it was the masses, the hoi polloi. And they spoiled it all. Suddenly Usenet was full of "Oh, me too!" posts and tacky jokes and ill-informed opinion. Then of course came Facebook and the other "Web 2.0" technologies. Social media was born, and suddenly the final barrier to personal online presence was toppled. Anyone with a computer (and later, smartphone) and a few dollars a month could not only connect to others but drive the conversation. The echo chamber was now a thing, suddenly flat-earthers and sundry conspiracy theorists could publish their junk thoughts on a whim.
Of course the social media platforms took advantage created an environment that not only encouraged this behaviour, but mined the participants for all they were worth. Google dropped its "Don't be evil" motto and relegated it to page 14,988 of it's corporate code of conduct. Everyone and their grandmother's dog were identifiable and marketable; the user had become the product. The price of free internet services was being tagged and marketed to. Advertising revenue was driving the marketplace, and the marketplace wanted to target specific groups. Of course then the Big Tech Boys made it easier to feed that beast and keep everyone in their own social and media bubbles. Facebook in particular made it easy for people to be manipulated by their news feeds, and I believe that it changed the face of politics worldwide. Political discourse, ever fragile at the best of times, took second place to more conspiracy theory based on fear, uncertainty and doubt. There are people in our world who are so conditioned by this that they have become incapable of seeing truth even when hit over the head with it.
Colour me cynical, but I've been something of a privacy tinfoil-hatter for many years. Over time, I've removed myself from social media sites, and have reservations even about clicking links to that TikTok vidya you so want me to see. I minimise my use of Google, avoid Facebook like the plague I consider it to be, and have written about that here in the past. These days I would rather pay someone to handle my email, I use my own personal cloud server and minimise my exposure to anything that enables me to be tracked, ID'd, spindled or filed. Am I optimistic? No, I am not. These businesses in general (and at least in the US) are allowed and enabled to collect scads of date on us; they can scan our posts and figure out our ages, politics, pets, relationships, gender and sexual identity, wealth status and more. I would use them more if I were given the option of paying for the service but not having someone peering over my shoulder or looking to see what underwear I have on. It's not even as though I'm marketable-to, I block all ads online, I am not in a position to buy huge amounts of crap with a huge disposable income. In short, I don't belong in their world and they do not belong in mine.
"If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain."
— falsely attributed to Winston Churchill
I feel I should add something about The News. I tend to the Liberal end of the political spectrum. As a young man I was a member of the
Socialist Worker's Party in the UK. Weekends saw me hawking the
Socialist Worker newspaper outside the shopping centres of the East Midlands. I had
The Guardian delivered daily, but still read
The Telegraph in my local café and the
Financial Times at work. These days I still read The Grauniad¹, but also look to the
Associated Press,
Reuters, the
Times of India and am unafraid to read
Fox News and others. After all, not only have I mellowed some in my political views, but I have come to realise that everyone needs a balanced diet of news and opinion. After all, I believe in the concept of
lifetime learning and it would be hypocritical of me to ignore others' opinions.
I live in a University town, most of the people are liberal, but I find myself seeking out the others too. In fact as I started to type this, an old friend of mine hied into view; we spent a happy half hour discussing social issues and learning from one another. It's a refreshing change from internet discourse where most people hide behind their beliefs and are unwilling to discuss, understand, learn.
So I continue in my Taoist/Zen acceptance of what I cannot change, and seek to change only what I can. Only that way can I truly stay happy and sane.
¹ Private Eye referred to The Guardian thus, spoofing their propensity for making glorious tyops typos in their articles.
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