We should be ashamed to admit it but we helped create this cesspool called the Internet. We have not only created the false news, the filth and the ignorance, we wallow in it. Every morning when I turn on my desktop computer, I almost regret those efforts we made to keep the Internet free and unregulated. The facts are that the Internet today is often intentionally wrong, biased and vulgar. And as a reference tool, it has become less and less reliable.
I was using computer networks decades before the Internet. In a testing situation I had an Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (Arpanet) terminal at home that I was asked to also let my children use. I installed it in the kids’ playroom and like any seven or nine-year old’s, they quickly drifted from academic subjects, with which I tried to entice them, to the games that idle hands had introduced to the play list. At least, I knew the kids were using it; I often had to wipe the jam and peanut butter smears off the touch screen.
The embarrassing part was when I had to rein in the use by my son. He had discovered the communications part of the system. He had to be asked not to challenge people he found on the Arpanet to play computer games with him. What I found sometimes when using the terminal was university students communicating to ask for a rematch with my son. They had no idea that they had been beaten by a nine-year old. He still plays a mean game of Backgammon.
But what we did not expect in that early development of the Internet was its rapid expansion into the home environment. What used to cost thousands, you can now get on a smart phone for less than $200.
As for the Internet, it is nothing more than a series of protocols, relays and hubs. They connect our world. Today’s proliferation of smart phones, tablets, laptops and desktop computers has made them household items. Along with the good it has brought us it has also been a journey downhill into the depths. I sometimes wonder which is the most obnoxious, the pornography or the Kardashians, the social networking programs or the invasive and manipulated news of the search programs, the program traps for the unwary, or the egos of the blog writers who create just another tree in the forest.
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Copyright 2022 © Peter Lowry
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