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You may sometimes hear people say that the Internet has lost its innocence. It’s debatable how much of an ›innocence‹ it ever really had. Its immediate precursor, and the technology from which it has directly evolved, was the ARPANET. In this acronym, NET simply stands for ›Net‹, while ARPA stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency. This was part of and funded by the United States Department of Defense. As a research project, the Net received ARPA backing in 1966, going live for the first time in 1969. By the time it was switched off in 1990, its principal structure and its model for communication protocols had been adopted into the network of networks that is the Interconnected Network, for which we simply say Internet.

This military progeny notwithstanding, it’s true enough to say that the Internet started out with many good intentions, and largely as a commerce-free zone. As late as 1990, Microsoft founder Bill Gates considered the Internet to be for geeks. Between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s there was a virginal adolescence to the Internet, during which it was almost entirely free. There were few pictures, so there was no porn, and there were no merchant tools, so there was no sell. There were mostly people sharing hyperlinks to text-based articles, and newsgroups where the hot topics of the day were discussed. Then, the Internet was ›discovered‹ by business, and brutally commercialised.

But even those days look tame now by comparison to what we have today. Because what we have today is a monstrous manipulation of our ›voluntary‹ behaviour, by corporations and political agitators alike. We’ve hinted before, as many others have said: on Facebook you are the product. For Facebook read Weibo, Instagram, QQ. The reason all these platforms are ›free‹ is that they monetise you. With every picture you upload, every comment you post, every like, every emoji, every interaction, you are being observed. So, yes, the Internet and much of what you find on it is ›free‹, but you’re not. You are being watched. More closely, more intimately, and more pervasively than anyone ever has been, at any given time in history.

[YOU HAVE YOURSELF A WHOLE NEW ORDER OF ORWELL.]

You’ve heard and read stories of surveillance under draconian regimes. They existed and they still do exist to this day, and they’re serious situations where many people suffered and continue to suffer immeasurable deprivation, loss, and hardship. So we don’t mean to belittle or trivialise them. But none of the systems of surveillance of the past came close to garnering the level of personal information that we give away voluntarily all the time now. We have, within two short decades, accepted as normal a reality which another decade before would have horrified people. Then think of what happens when our voluntary behaviour and addiction meet with a Social Credit System and a political model like that of China, and you have yourself a whole new order of Orwell.

And so this is the first question we want to put. To you and to ourselves, because there is no simple answer, and anyone who pretends there is one is either lying or doesn’t understand the issue: what’s the real deal here?

This unbelievable, genuinely amazing convenience that these apps and these networks, these handhelds and these laptops bring me: what do they ask in return? What do I have to surrender? And what does that do to me? Is it necessarily a bad thing that I have no private sphere to speak of? Maybe it isn’t. Maybe it is the case that social cohesion and a code of ethics can in fact be negotiated, even in this world of total voluntary as well as involuntary surveillance. Maybe if everyone knows everything, there opens up a new space for individuality and freedom that we haven’t as yet explored?

And what about the nuisance of being bombarded by ads all the time, intrusively, systematically, obnoxiously? Does it matter? Or is this a small price to pay for free, time-unlimited communication across the globe, with chat, pictures, and video? Is it all right with me if somebody knows and records and analyses and then utilises everything I do, every search term I type, down to the vocabulary I employ in my strictly private messages? Where do I draw the line? Do I have to draw a line?

If 90% of web traffic flows through 0.1% of all websites, is that a problem? When everything works so well? Because that’s part of this reality: things work astonishingly well. The toaster you ordered yesterday does arrive today. The car you book on your phone in Shanghai does turn up, right where and when you expect it to. The flat in which you’re going to stay in New York is really there and ready for you, and it’s lovely. The meal you order in South Ealing from a Sri Lankan restaurant: it arrives and it’s delicious. Always using the same three simple apps. Anywhere in the world. So is there a problem? And is it my problem? Am I bothered by this dominance of a few genuinely well organised, professionally run set-ups, or does it just not really matter to me? Why would it? Why would it not?

Can there be a free, diverse, multifaceted, democratic Internet? And if the Internet is where we habitually, necessarily, spend our life, can there still be any such thing as a democratic society?

Should there be? And again, why?

Gutenberg made it possible for Martin Luther to put forward his radically different view of God and the Church to hundreds of thousands of people, and in the same sweeping development, ideas, knowledge, and wisdom were allowed to spread. And, yes, also misinformation, dogma, and propaganda: we do well to remind ourselves of this, always. But the central motion was one of power and control away from the few to the many.

Zuckerberg can access 2.7 billion heads a month. That’s minds, hearts, emotions, expressions, intentions, worries, and joys. And that’s just Facebook and its subsidiaries, such as WhatsApp and Instagram. Similar numbers hold true for Tencent with QQ. So we have reason to ask not only who is Zuckerberg, and what are his ambitions—will he run for president before long, for example?—but also, who is behind him; who are the ten, twelve most influential people with at Facebook, and elsewhere on the Internet? Who is in control of Weibo and WeChat?

If we are slaves to our digital devices, then who are the masters behind those devices and the software that runs on them?

To whom are we addicted?

It matters, because we’re talking about you and us as human beings. And that’s what we are going to do in this book: ask these questions, and also try to find some answers, now, in this reality that we’re in, about what makes us human.

ORIENTATION STATEMENTS

1.1

›We live in a new Renaissance.‹

Plot this value on: A, B, G.

1.2

›More than ever before, technological networks allow us to find fantastic solutions to urgent problems.‹

Plot this value on: D, E, F.

1.3

›Until now, we’ve been using the Internet too much for our own enslavement.‹

Plot this value on: A, B, F.

1.4

›We dramatically underestimate the value of information.‹

Plot this value on: B, C, G.

EXERCISE FOR CHANGE

Draw yourself in the year 2045 on a piece of paper.

If you want to share your drawing, you can do so here: https://twitter.com/C_Peterka