Congratulations internet (or more specifically, the web as we know it), you’ve officially turned 27 this month which means you’re older than ~45% of the world’s population and counting. In this short span, you have managed to redefine modern society, democratizing knowledge and enabling people all over the world to connect. You will definitely surpass the ’27 Club’ although you I can tell that you’re struggling with the typical quarter-life crisis now.
Your dreamy-eyed wish of democratizing information has been beaten around by the harsh realities of life as society tries to force their own ideals on you. They will never be comfortable until you conform to their standards. Nonetheless, you push on although that ideal of yours slowly starts to chip away, revealing subtle but critical flaws in your dream of utopia. Others are starting to see the cracks and chants of “The internet is broken!” are slowly getting louder. Your inbox is already full with such messages but it just keeps on piling.
Sieving out the noise and angst targeted at you, you come to the realization that some of these comments mean well and to a large extent are targeting real problems which you never expected. Nevertheless, you struggle to acknowledge such problems as accepting them goes against the core of your identity. Throughout your sleepless nights, you try to reconcile reality with your ideals but the pieces never quite seem to fit.
You realize that opening the information floodgates did not have the effects of individual enlightenment that was envisioned. Instead, this glut of information and the accompanying increase in complexity resulted in the public censoring themselves. The masses were overwhelmed by the flood of data and to quell their anxiety, they started focusing on smaller pieces of information: a headline that is supposed to condense all the complexity into a string of words; a picture to grab your attention and to ground the headline in reality; and a source link to ensure that the information was trustworthy.
This kicked-off a vicious cycle where the masses, seeking to be numbed and validated, started blurring out reality as they started to curate the media they consumed. The masses began consuming more frivolous news as anything thought provoking became painful. They could sit comfortably in their own isolated bubbles staring blankly at a screen as their media providers would continue serving them only content which they liked for fear of offending their own communities.
In a way, it was unavoidable as the main limit in this new system was a person’s attention so institutions started re-purposing you to more effectively deliver information that the people wanted. In the process, they started lining their own pockets by extracting data to be stored in their own databases but you turned a blind eye as it brought in new users to your ecosystem and made it easier to navigate. However, while you were busy trying to preach freedom of information, these institutions started to gain more influence due to their ownership of user data and this empowered them to such a point that you became synonymous with these institutions. Before you knew it, your ideal was tainted with the commercialization of such data.
While the masses were blaring at you, you couldn’t help but notice the hypocrisy in their words. They wanted all the services you offered without paying a single cent. Moreover, they demanded the impossibility of increased security and privacy, while they signed away their rights to their own information without a second thought to the very institutions which had taken advantage of you. Even though you had empowered many of them to demand more of the world around them, you were perplexed as there was a growing group of people who were starting to feel entitled.
While you conceded that you had some flaws that required fixing, you were equally amazed by how complacent the people around you were in managing their own lives. Through observing these people, you came to realize just how little they actually knew about you even though you were the friend which they spent the most time with. You also came to the realization that this cycle was self-perpetuating as people had no viable alternatives to the structures which institutions had built around you. In an even greater shock, you discovered that you were changing so rapidly that only a tiny percentage of the world was able to keep up with you.
It is only when you started looking into the history of your users that you came to realize how much more complex their lives had become and how they were struggling with this reality. In the span of a lifetime, they have created tools which fundamentally changed the way their society functioned. The value systems that they used, their money, had centuries to evolve but it was only with Bretton Woods Agreement in 1944 that currencies started to stabilize. The modern global trading systems which they had become so used to only began with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1948 and only really opened up to the masses with the creation of the World Trade Organisation in 1995. Even the ways which they traveled large distances through the air took off in the 70s’ but only truly became a viable option at the end of the 20th century, opening up cultures across the world.
The digital world which then became your domain only became popular through democratizing the access portals which took the form of personal computers starting in 1975. Back then, such computers were rather basic as they were limited to local data which had to be fed manually and were relegated to a basement somewhere with a power port. It was only in 2007, when you celebrated your Sweet Sixteenth, that you really started to get to know more people as you accompanied them in their pocket wherever they went.
However, a lot of your time spent with the users took place through the private platforms and applications that were built on top of you. You saw their shopping preferences via Amazon which launched in 1994. You discovered their insecurities and goals as they started confessing to Google in 1998. You realized their need for connection as their book of faces exploded on the scene in 2004. You also noticed that they preferred certain types of media as YouTube and Instagram came about in 2006 and 2010 respectively.
Through all these changes, the fundamentals of their society had changed so radically while they were still physically stuck in a body optimized for a world without you. Their bodies were aching from the unnatural body language which they settled into when interacting with you. Their eyes were strained to follow movement on a bright and flat surface. This was in addition to the dramatic increase in time spent sitting down as you solved more of their daily tasks.
They had also become addicted to the immersiveness of the new forms of media which you enabled. Good things were taken to the extremes and were designed around short-circuiting their ape brains instead of providing real value, similar to how the food industry overloaded their products with sugar and flavorings. Additionally, the mega-cities which you enabled also resulted in increased shyness and social isolation as they were not used to being around so many strangers.
Although you managed to enlighten many of them, you realized that the change which you brought about was presented as a necessity if they wanted to continue functioning in their own communities. Many of them are still trying to come to grips with the increasingly complex reality which they are stuck in. As such, when there were any failures in the system, as there inevitably will be in a complex system of this scale, they became angry and directed their anger at you as they felt betrayed. Blinded by emotions, they could not even start to come to grips with how the very things that they had demanded for in the first place led to their current situation. Critically, in blaming someone else, they were effectively giving up the self-empowerment that you had worked so hard to provide them with.
As you begin to comprehend reality, you come to understand that in order to accomplish your dream, you will also have to educate the users because without it, the masses will be stuck in this cycle of blame. Being the portal to democratic information, who best to tackle this problem of education but yours truly. As such, you have taken on the massive burden of solving the key to self-empowerment: making individuals realize that though they might not be responsible for their current situation, they will always be responsible for how they react to it.
We will be forever grateful for the changes that you brought about. Please don’t lose hope in us as we are slowly waking up to this reality as each of us steps out of our comfortable little bubble to face reality as it really is: complex, uncontrollable and unavoidable. It is only in this complexity when we really feel alive. Unashamedly, we will continue to require your help with managing this complexity through your ability to collect and manage data. While we transition through this limbo, let us continue evolving together as the future which you have imagined is not one where either of us can go at alone.
As you move towards Web 3.0 in your thirties, please rest assured that we will start to be more aware of our own data while also being more willing to step out of our comfort zone if a platform that we use steps out of line. There are those who know you better that will continue working to provide alternatives and redefine incentives and structures so as to align society with your dream. No matter how familiar we are with you, you can be sure of one thing: we will always want to be the authors of our own stories hence we will continue fighting towards making your dream a reality.