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It's Official: The Internet is The Worst Thing Ever

The Atheist said:
Fits fine - sounds like a fun day!

It also raises the point that so many systems rely on the internet and have no alternative when their system crashes, as happened in UK recently with one of the credit cards being unable to be used for most of a day.

20 years ago, you just get out the zip-zap machine and away you go. No power needed, even. Even if your machine broke, you could write the details in by hand.

It seems logical to me to keep a backup in case this exact thing happens.
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That's why I carry two credit cards, a store card, and a debit card. Should that all fail, I have two twenties folded in my phone case and card wallet.
 
The Atheist said:
I was discussing that very point only a couple of hours ago, using flat earthers as the example. Pre-internet, flat earthers existed, but they existed in a sole bubble, never daring to air their views in public.

Now, it's almost a badge of honour to be "brave" enough to share your thoughts on it.
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No, flat earther groups weren't completely cut off from one another in the pre-Internet age. The dead tree newsletter was a thing. The USPS had a lot of crap floating in it back in the day.:rolleyes:
 
dirtywick said:
it's an old post, but the incredible advancements in advertising/marketing/manipulation and their role in addictive of smartphones, particularly in children, is to me a huge issue with it
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Children shouldn't have smartphones until age 18. During the childhood and teens, a dumb flip phone is more than sufficient to meet their needs. PC use at home should be monitored at ALL times as well.
 
The Atheist said:
He's quite right on communities, only it's becoming clearer that the kind of communities gaining the most traction are negative, and if you doubt that, take a look at the Brexit vote and who America voted in as POTUS in 2016.
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Trump wasn't voted in. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. There was a lot of :rule10 in the rigging by Trump's friend Putin.
 
Darat said:
That is a consequence of the dreaded "algorithms", we don't know that if away from the tuning the likes of Facebook and TikTok do to their networks that would be the case. The key metric they look at is "engagement" because that is what in the end they sell to the advertisers and certainly as an immediate reaction "negative reactions" will garner more "engagement" - it's the old trainwreck and watching part of human behaviour. But without the constant reinforcement by the networks of the next "negative reaction" there could be different outcomes in what sticks around.

ETA: And this isn't unique to the "internet", newspaper barons and the like have been doing the same for almost a couple of centuries. It used to take longer, and people did have time to think between "outrages".
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While the big dogs like Facebook and Tick Tok are aimed at getting eyeballs onto ads, for every Facebook out there we have little communities like this one who are intent on discussion and not algorithms and ads.
 
Nosi said:
The Internet makes it POSSIBLE for many disabled people to live independent lives. I can shop, pay bills, and socialize without leaving my home, which is a painful, drawn out process.
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I agree the internet is a useful tool. It's how I make all my income, for starters.

That doesn't mean it's a net benefit.
 
The Atheist said:
Having started off as seeing the internet as a fad that would fade away (apart from porno) then embracing it to the extent that I make all of my income through it, to now seeing it having taken over the world, I've finally reached the point where I think the internet is the invention of Satan.

Satan's rule is to divide and conquer - and it seems to me this has come to pass.

Douglas Adams had little time to invest in the internet before his death, but even in that short time, managed to get to the nub of the issue very quickly. Here is his view of what was happening: http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html

I think the most important note in that is his quote from Risto Linturi, research fellow of the Helsinki Telephone Corporation, who says: "Pervasive wireless communication will bring us back to behaviour patterns that were natural to us and destroy behaviour patterns that were brought about by the limitations of technology."

Trouble is, the behaviour pattern that we're going back to is tribalistic, and that appears to be exactly what's driving the internet right now - from fights organised by schoolkids to far-right troll communities disrupting elections, these things are growing around tribalism - the idea that "our side" is better than "your side". It also seems that there are only two sides any more - one is right of Genghis Khan, the other left of Lenin, and the positions are becoming more entrenched as the rhetoric ramps up.

Yet, that is only one of the many problems the internet has created. Others include:

Porno

I'm on the fence as to whether it's good or bad, and am open to evidence, but allowing an almost-infinite expansion in the availability or porn without a clue as to what effects it might have seems a dangerous thing to do.

Wasting time

10 hours a day spent playing on a screen isn't achieving much. https://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/30/health/americans-screen-time-nielsen/index.html

I'd like to find some statistics on productivity per hour from 2000 - present, but it's proving difficult, and I need the numbers because, anecdotally, people are spending time on devices at work that has to reduce their profitability.

Misinformation

The internet has allowed exponential growth in conspiracies and pseudoscience. I don't know that the link between the ease of spreading false propaganda and the rise of antivaxers has been proven, but the numbers indicate an awfully strong link: https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/2/15/14231266/anti-vaccine-movement-trump

Business/Education

While companies like Amazon & Google have risen on the back of the internet, and it enables efficiencies in accounting and other areas, I'm not convinced that overall, companies are more profitable as a result of the internet. The cost of security measures alone is more than most companies generate in additional profit from having internet-based commerce.

In education, the situation contains too many variables to say for sure that the cost outweighs the benefits, but a good example is my boy's primary school of 700 kids. They have two full-time IT workers, and I have yet to see any benefit from the school's connectivity. It doesn't seem to speed up or improve homework, and I don't see any way it saves teachers time, but it does mean they have two fewer teachers because the salaries go to a couple of backroom geeks.

Scams

This is the most human face of the harm, destroying lives and life savings - it's estimated that the UK alone is losing £10B a year: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37677446

That number is increasing and is already about the same as the UK's estimated illegal drug trade, and about 1% of GDP: http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/crime-threats/drugs

On that basis, we're looking at internet crime being worth around $750B a year, being roughly 1% of world GDP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product

That's all money that wouldn't be leaving the system if the internet didn't exist.

Wankers

I don't even need to add Zuck into this list, because the growth of the internet has given us a large number of people with massive profiles who would otherwise never have been heard of:

Peter Thiel
Elon Musk
Martin Shkreli
John McAfee, to name a few.

tl;dr
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I have to disagree, because while there are significant problems with the Internet, the Net has been a boon to me. It allows me to live an independent life despite being a disabled shut-in. I am able to get my grocery shopping done, visit many of my doctors via video visits, and conduct most of my day-to-day life's business online. Without the Internet, the likelihood is high that I would have to live in an institutional setting. As I age, the likelihood of my Internet dependence will only increase as fewer and fewer people are able or willing to provide me the rides I need to get basic things done as services are cut by the Trump administration.
 
Nosi said:
I have to disagree, because while there are significant problems with the Internet, the Net has been a boon to me. It allows me to live an independent life despite being a disabled shut-in. I am able to get my grocery shopping done, visit many of my doctors via video visits, and conduct most of my day-to-day life's business online. Without the Internet, the likelihood is high that I would have to live in an institutional setting. As I age, the likelihood of my Internet dependence will only increase as fewer and fewer people are able or willing to provide me the rides I need to get basic things done as services are cut by the Trump administration.
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Ironically, the pandemic made all that infrastructure easier and more accessible.
 
I haven't used social media much except for FB so I can talk story. But in the last couple weeks I've been using a certain social app and can't seem to stay away from it. The little dopamine hits when the Notification sounds are addicting because of their potential. (It doesn't hurt that I've actually made several contacts in that time.) I've thought about signing out for a time but I don't really see a need to, as I'm quite enjoying it.
 
arthwollipot said:
So, what do we do about it then?
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Nothing. When you've got a madman acting as president of the world, while another vile old man perpetrates genocide to save his own skin, things like social media destroying people's brains is fairly irrelevant, just interesting.

Nosi said:
I have to disagree, because while there are significant problems with the Internet, the Net has been a boon to me. It allows me to live an independent life despite being a disabled shut-in. I am able to get my grocery shopping done, visit many of my doctors via video visits, and conduct most of my day-to-day life's business online. Without the Internet, the likelihood is high that I would have to live in an institutional setting. As I age, the likelihood of my Internet dependence will only increase as fewer and fewer people are able or willing to provide me the rides I need to get basic things done as services are cut by the Trump administration.
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Yes, that's exactly what you said a page or two ago, and you're missing the point.

You could have all of those advantages without the toxicity and dominance of social media.
 
The Atheist said:
Still the worst thing ever.

And no, it can't be fixed.
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And this is why. The Internet is the worst thing ever because you (and others like you) are making it the worst thing ever.

How so? By spreading lies like 'the internet is the worst thing ever' and 'can't be fixed' and 'is the invention of Satan'. You talk about misinformation, and here you are spreading it.

What you are actually complaining about isn't the internet itself, but the content hosted on it - content produced by the people using it. The only valid point you may have is that the internet makes it easier for people to spread lies. But it also makes it easier to debunk those lies. Overall it simply means a freer flow of information, without the barriers of 'traditional' media.

If the internet is 'the worst thing ever' for the spread of misinformation, why was it so prevalent before the internet? Consider the most pernicious misinformation that has infected the world for thousands of years, religion:-

How U.S. religious composition has changed in recent decades
As recently as the early 1990s, about 90% of U.S. adults identified as Christians...

in 1996, the share of unaffiliated Americans jumped to 12%, and two years later it was 14%. This growth has continued, and 29% of Americans now tell the GSS they have “no religion...
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This report offers various explanations for the decline of religious belief, except the obvious one - the internet. Religious cults thrive when their leaders can control the flow of information and prevent their flock from doing their own research or conversing with others who have 'heretical' views. Of course they hate the internet.

I grew up in the 60's. When I started asking questions about God my mother said read the Bible, so I did. It was an eye-opener - full of nonsense from cover to cover. But I kept it to myself because I seemed to be the only one in the world who saw the truth. I didn't even know that my lack of belief was called atheism. Adult library books were restricted from me, and the school library was full of religious books donated by a local church (yes, in New Zealand!). There was nothing on radio or TV questioning religious beliefs either - that would be sacrilegious and nobody dared do it.

But that wasn't all the misinformation out there in the 60's. My mother bought kids magazines that were full of credulous articles about UFOs, ghosts, dowsing and other nonsense. Of course I believed all of it - why wouldn't I? There wasn't any way to check it until my mother managed to cajole the library into allowing me to take out adult books. But even then I wasn't out of the woods. Books by 'respected' authors peddled the same stuff, as did newspapers and TV. There were a few exceptions like Philip J. Klass, but they were rare and you had to hunt for them. The worst thing was that this information flow was one way. If you had any questions nobody was listening, and you couldn't easily discuss it with other 'skeptics' even if you knew who they were.

I haven't watched TV, listened to the radio or subscribed to a newspaper since the late 70's when I was working by day and renovating my house at night. But I've been into electronics since I was a teenager, and then computers since 1979. Any spare time I had went into that. In the late 80's bulletin boards became a thing, where you could converse with people all over the world via FidoNet. Then in 1995 the internet gave me access to Usenet where you could discuss any topic in near real time, like we do here.

However lately I have been getting the nostalgia bug, remembering that simpler time when I used to enjoy fixing up old valve radios and listening to them. Last week I saw a fake vintage radio on TradeMe that I always wanted. Now I am now reliving that golden age listening to the National Program on AM radio late at night when they play classical music. However one thing that surprised me was how shallow the news reports are on the radio. You get a few headlines and that's it - no opportunity to get more in-depth information or an overview of what's going on in the world.

That's how it used to be before the internet. There were documentaries and talks of course, but you had to know when they were on and be there to listen to or watch them, and no reviewing if you missed something. Newspapers were a little better but not much. Good magazines like National Geographic were expensive, only came out monthly and were 3 months out of date by the time we got them here. Before the internet we were literally starved of information, and what we did get was sanitized or manipulated by people with agendas.

You also talk about '10 hours a day spent playing on a screen' not achieving much. I remember spending many hours a day watching TV, and countless hours reading novels instead of doing 'productive' stuff. Others spent all their spare time playing sports, equally as unproductive. The old lady in the flat next door still lives like that today, playing golf once a week and spending the rest of her time watching sports on TV (she doesn't have a computer). And why not? It's not like we need more production in our modern world - most of us consume far more than we need simply because our economic system demands it.
 
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Roger Ramjets said:
And this is why. The Internet is the worst thing ever because you (and others like you) are making it the worst thing ever.
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Ignorance+naivety^stupidity.

Thanks mate - I was unaware that I was the problem. Silly old internet n00b that I am, I thought things like Brexit, Trump twice elected to POTUS, cybercrime costing $10T a year, misinformation on vaccines causing 80 children to die of measles in Samoa and enabling child molesters was the problem.

I shall immediately amend my wicked ways.
 
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