A few weeks back I wrote a couple of pieces about Facebook, Tweeter, Google, and the internet generally. There was a flurry of reaction and discussion, but nothing overly sustained. This was not surprising given how many issues, personal responsibilities, and agendas already occupy all our waking hours, particularly we on the left, not only trying to live lives, but also change the world.
Still, I continue to feel the issues involved are really serious and many leftists are involved and even complicit, whether we consciously intend to be or not, by virtue of our choices both as internet users, and, for many of us, also creators and providers. So I have been meaning to write again - yet I too, buried under tasks, have not gotten to it.
However, simplifying things, yesterday I received an email from a close friend, Stephen Shalom, conveying to my attention an article in a periodical called the New York Review of Books. The NYRB is a kind of "intellectual's" book review weekly, which, decades back, had a sincerely progressive tone and focus. They often run review essays, covering a few books that address one topic - and this email was pointing me to a review essay of three books on internet innovations.
Because I think many Z users around the world don't even have a chance of seeing the NYRB, and others, who do have proximity, are unlikely too, we are posting the piece on ZCom - despite its not being explicitly political - and I am going to also include it below to further the prospect people will see it. Because ZMI, Z's summer school on media and politics, begins today, all I can do is act as conduit. I hope others will address the implications - which, however, I think are pretty self evident.
The real issue is, what should we all do, as users and providers, in the face of what is becoming steadily more obvious. Should we deny or ignore the obvious not only dangers, but now horrible violations? Or should we point to them, explain them, understand them, and try to find ways people can navigate around them, or even develop alternatives that transcend the dangers?
Julian Assange pointed out not long ago that he thought Facebook and Google and so on were the most sophisticated spy tools at the disposal of state authorities. That is born out further by what follows. My own focus was on the way that using these tools - even ignoring motives of those controlling them - has harmful impact, and that too is further born out. Ditto for the extent to which they commercialize life and communication and invade and warp privacy on the road to profitable sale manipulation. Yet perhaps the most shocking news in what follows is not only further verification of the above ills, it is revelation that the Internet may well be becoming, horribly ironically and stealthily given how we all think of it, the most sophisticated tool out there - by a huge margin - for NARROWING the range of information and thought of users even as it continues to appear to be the opposite.
TV and news papers and journals are abysmal enough. Could the internet actually be a more powerful tool for limiting the reach of our minds and feelings, even while we think the exact opposite is the the case?
See what you think.
The article is by Sue Halprin and called Mind Control and the Internet.
And, oh hell - I have to run for ZMI, so - while I was going to cut and paste only the most damning bits for here, commenting a bit as well - I just don't time. So, I will just put the whole article. Pkease read through it...the opening parts are not the heart of it, at least in my opinion.
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