When we built the net, we had great dreams about every person on the planet connecting to each other and all the information they might need to make their lives better.
What we're actually building is something more like a cross between a tavern, a opium den, and a public square. People hang out in various random emotional moods, all waiting for something to trigger them into acting like a mob.
I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it's real. We are creating a system for over-reacting in a big way. Sometime -- sometime soon - some innocent person is going to get killed by one of the internet mob phenomenons. It's a miracle it hasn't happened already.
The interesting question is: what happens then? Does the net somehow correct itself? Or do the swings get wilder and wilder, ending up in 2050 or so with little bits of the net attacking little other bits in widely strewn locations? (What would be the term for this? Internet gangs? New nation-states? Niche warfare?)
This. I think the author really highlighted this well at the end of the article:
"Social media purports to connect us but it often does the exact opposite. The barrier, the anonymity, the lack of accountability; all encourage the worst in people."
Perhaps because of the sheer number of people the internet has connected combined with the bell curve of asshole-ness, we think humanity is stupider than it is. Anonymity, unaccountability may certainly make things worse, but a small fraction multiplied by an insanely large number will still give us a lot of crazies.
The attacking between different factions already seems to be happening, witness the 4chan vs 9gag raids etc. People seemed to hold out this irrational hope that the internet would somehow make everyone engage at a higher intellectual level, that part was clearly wrong..
I guess that's the nice thing about the internet in some ways though, it pretty accurately reflects real life, though the stratification is much more pronounced.
Actually, this has already happened a few times. There are a number of suicidal people that posted on various networks about their problems and people egged them on. I think I remember the most vivid one being on bodybuilding.com
What we're actually building is something more like a cross between a tavern, a opium den, and a public square. People hang out in various random emotional moods, all waiting for something to trigger them into acting like a mob.
I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it's real. We are creating a system for over-reacting in a big way. Sometime -- sometime soon - some innocent person is going to get killed by one of the internet mob phenomenons. It's a miracle it hasn't happened already.
The interesting question is: what happens then? Does the net somehow correct itself? Or do the swings get wilder and wilder, ending up in 2050 or so with little bits of the net attacking little other bits in widely strewn locations? (What would be the term for this? Internet gangs? New nation-states? Niche warfare?)