Comment by digitalsushi
7 days ago
Our ability to filter and modify the content of the web constantly improves, and itchy trigger fingers might hover over many nation's "Great Walls", ready at the next galvanizing event to overnight change our relationship with this interchange we exist upon.
My current guess is that if things really went to hell with censorship and disjointedness, that we'd re-establish an ancient pattern - magazines. I recall as a child, my uncle would leave his "Big Blue Disks" around for perusing, and it was a magazine in the form of floppy disks, of various media - essays, games, primitive computer music.
The curation of these always struck me as a great favor. Perhaps not compatible with the current attention span, such a provision, in the absence of access, would, I believe, quickly become a surrogate for what we lost.
Of course, these magazines are editorialized, and so we're at the mercy of the editor's perspectives to discern the truth. I appreciate our current access to information, even in its weakening form.
But I suppose I'd prefer if we could not tinker more with censorship. I think I may be looking for a digital magazine in the next decade, or whatever else we can invent to replace our losses.
I'm under the assumption that the global, unfilitered Internet is on an irreversible course to lockdown and won't exist at all in its current form in 10 years or less. It's sad, and defeatist, but the forces on the lockdown side are too strong and will get what they want eventually, so I can either hit my head against a brick wall or do something productive for myself.
I've decided to deal with it by reevaluating the role of tech and Internet in my life. I certainly don't care about improvements to my residental Internet speed any more, or what the next wireless tech after 5G will be, or what protocols the IETF is working on, or net neutrality, because none of it matters to me any more. It's exciting what's going on with AI but it's all going to behemoths who will be able to tell the rest of us what we can and can't do with it. So... I don't care anymore. I can see myself honestly just not having a wired home Internet connection anymore in a few years and I would get rid of my cell phone if it wasn't necessary for day-to-day life. I don't need symmetric 1gbps fiber to stream the occasional show, text, and do normal-life things on apps.
But when you brought up magazines - it reminded me of that brief period of time of the late 80's/early 90's during the "multimedia" and "interactive" crazes; when BBSes were a thing--there were a lot of interesting CD-ROMs on diverse subjects.
I'm glad optical media hasn't completely died yet. Most new PCs don't come with one installed, but USB ones cheap and easy to find. PCs have come a long way since the early 90's. Fun fact, if your Android phone supports USB OTG I do believe a USB optical drive will totally work with it.
Well giving up is certainly an approach
It is inevitable that the "World" in World-Wide-Web will disappear and each major economy will have its own local "government approved" version of the internet with interconnects between the other local internets of the world to access only curated content from abroad.
This genie is not going back in the bottle unless future generations will get fed up with all the safetyism propaganda at the core of internet censorship and unanimously vote against this.
I'm glad I was young enough to see and experience the uncensored and unrestricted version of the internet. God speed for the future generation being subject to this nonsense.