How the Internet Is Transforming from a Tool of Liberation to One of Oppression
Published on Thursday, June 5, 2014 by Huffington Post
by Astra Taylor
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/06/05-11
Remember when the Internet was going to fix the world? According to leading technology pundits, traditional dinosaurs were going to be "disintermediated" and "disrupted," freeing us all from meddling middlemen and allowing competition to flourish. We wouldn't need corrupt professional media makers anymore because we would all blog and tweet. Social networking would empower protesters and enhance democracy the world over.
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It turns out the old dinosaurs are adapting to digital life just fine. Legacy media companies like Disney, Time Warner, and CBS are doing great; their share prices rising. At the same time, a new crop of behemoths has emerged: Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google are now some of the biggest companies on earth. Google, Facebook, and many other major social platforms, are just as dependent on the advertising dollar as their network television and newspaper predecessors.
Only they are far more ubiquitous and invasive. They monitor our private thoughts and track our every move, sucking up our personal data in order to better serve marketers, who are the real paying customers. "Surveillance is the business model of the Internet," as technologist Bruce Schneier has said, and the NSA and other state agencies piggyback on these private sector practices. To put things in perspective, Disney didn't read your diary and your mail or follow you around the mall.
For too long we've been talking about what the Internet might hypothetically do. But the fact is that technologies do not emerge in a vacuum; economic forces in particular shape the evolution of our tools. Net neutrality is a prime example. The reason that cable companies want to offer two-tiered Internet service (a fast lane for those who can afford to pay and a slow lane for those who can't) is because they could make gobs of money by charging for preferential treatment. Though they already reap astounding profit margins on broadband, they are willing to dramatically transform the Internet and harm democracy (by privileging the communications of those with deep pockets) to generate more revenue.
Unfortunately, too much tech commentary shies away from this topic, focusing on individual use patterns instead of structural conditions. Consider the conversation about whether mobile gadgets and social media are addictive and make us distracted. If these goods and services are addicting and distracting, it is not some inherent aspect of smartphones or online socializing or a sign of our personal failings and inability to exercise restraint.
Rather, they are addictive by design, with even seemingly trivial details like color schemes underpinned by psychological research. The market encourages certain user behavior because data collection and marketing is the dominant business model. Countless skilled programmers, whose talents could serve far more productive aims, are employed to figure out how to get us to spend maximum time on websites, reveal as much personal information as possible, and look at ads. Progressive media critics used to talk about the media "manufacturing consent;" now it's about manufacturing compulsion. More clicks equal more money.
Much more....interesting read at
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/06/05-11
Astra Taylor
Astra Taylor is a writer, documentary filmmaker (including Zizek! and Examined Life), and activist. Her new book, The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age (Metropolitan Books), has just been published. She also helped launch the Occupy offshoot Strike Debt and its Rolling Jubilee campaign.