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The internet is a melting pot of ideas and adverts. Credit: Getty
We lived, without knowing it then, on the other side of the digital chasm. I know the first time I heard the word “internet”: on a trek through Ness Woods in Northern Ireland. My father, self-taught and insatiably curious, told us about an invention that will “spread like a web across the planet, changing everything”. One of the requirements of parenthood is to be not only a rock but also a punchbag as your child tests their boundaries and pushes their luck. My sister and I, two diminutive harpies, immediately began teasing him about his crystal-ball predictions, which he weathered with his usual stoical roll of the eyes.
What fools we were.
Though Generation X were the last of the analogue humans, we had grown up with computers. But the internet was vast, exponentially so, and would impact every aspect of life. It was, to my young mind, an ecumenopolis, a colossal world city, incandescent with possibility. My first visit to an internet café was mind-blowing, as jerry-built as it was in retrospect. Long-used to relatives heading off to Boston and beyond and vanishing, it was astonishing to communicate with complete strangers in real-time, with ease and at little expense, on the other side of Earth.
It was an intoxicating force. But the rapturous delirium could not last.
The internet was to cause a rupture even deeper than the printing press, manned flight or mass electrification. And yet my feeling is that the real divide was not before and after the internet; but rather before and after its transformation from an ever-expanding cosmos of potential and its contraction into the global village where we’re now trapped. An expansionist universe collapsing into neo-feudalism. This is the story of how the market eats everything including our wildest dreams — and it does so because of a language trick that we cannot resist.
In pre-modern times, charlatans preyed upon superstitions, reading portents in comets or flogging bones. With the emergence of modern science came alchemists promising elixirs of youth or the transmutation of lead into gold. The Industrial Revolution gave rise to all manner of swindlers boasting mechanical and medical cure-alls. Oscilloclasts would cure any malady through radiowaves. Daffy’s Elixir could ease everything from the Vapours to King’s Evil. Coca-Cola was enough to dispel morphine addiction. Some innovators believed in their products, even when the costs were severe — the quietening syrups that sent Victorian babies into permanent sleep or revitalising Radium cures that caused jaws to crumble. Medicine shows are seen as the high-water mark of this tendency: travelling fairs of confidence tricksters who would alleviate locals of their money and naivety. Then they disappeared, absorbed into the unholy pan-global entity of 21st-century advertising.
It is difficult to accept, gazing down from the lofty heights of progress on the sinners and dupes of the past, that we reside in the Golden Age of charlatanism. We like to think we’ve developed a thick skin towards commerce — but objects are the least of our worries. It’s no longer a question of being sold dubious products.
Today’s corporations now deal in intangibles: lifestyles, philosophies, diets, self-image and ambition have all become marketable assets. They are promising us shortcuts to status, vital in an age of precarious hustling, as well as quick fixes to our innumerable economic, political and spiritual deficits. They’re selling the grift — or rather the prospect of escape from it. They’re delivered to us not by the outdatedly gauche media of billboards and television, but directly injected into social media, attuned via algorithms to our tastes and inadequacies.
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SubscribeI’ve long been of the opinion that the internet was introduced into the world by Satan to drive humanity mad.
I know you mightn’t have meant it entirely seriously, but we were already mad; the internet is just a reflection of our madness.
Both can be true. I know you’re a Materialist and don’t allow yourself to entertain the notion of God but its extremely difficult to grasp Human Nature without examining the concept of Imagio Dei. I’m not proselytizing, I would just encourage you to examine the concept from an intellectual standpoint.
Just curious, out of the three main social contract theories, which do you buy the most? Hobbes- In the state of nature it’s a war of all vs all so the State is necessary for security. Locke- in the state of nature, man is calculating and acts in self-interest and the State is only necessary to secure those self-interests or Rousseau- man is cooperative and harmonious in the state of nature. The State is only necessary to promote cooperation and the general will of the collective and in doing so, the collective interest becomes synonymous with self-interest of the Individual?
From a theological perspective (I know, I know. I just disqualified everything I’m about to say to a significant portion of people reading this), both almost certainly are true. The internet preys upon everything vile in the human spirit and can corrupt what is good into that vileness, which would certainly be the work of Satan. But at the same time, what is evil within humanity is only there because of Satan in the first place, having been the one who tempted Adam and Eve into eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil that placed within us the seeds of his own evil and the root of our corruption. The knowledge of Evil is what spurs us to such negative and destructive impulses, but the knowledge of Good would pull us towards something higher. This of course would be abhorrent to the Dark Prince, thus necessitating the construction of such and infernal mechanism as this to further debase and erode God’s creation, to ‘finish the job’ as it were.
I don’t know. Probably just me making fantastical assumptions about scripture that isn’t there. I’m very much a layman, and not even a practicing member of any religious denomination. But it’s certainly an interesting and striking metaphor for the nature of human consciousness, even for the irreligous or the non-Christian.
“I know you’re a Materialist…”
No you don’t; you’re just incapable of envisaging a spiritual life beyond the received dogmatic expressions and therefore use a term such as “Materialist” for want of imagination.
I used the term Materialist because I thought it was more descriptive than Atheist. There was no hostility in my comment. You took way too much offense to an inoffensive post.
I took your own words “I know you are…” at face value – would you rather i did otherwise? I find nothing offensive in the term “atheist” whereas “materialist” is both reductive and almost diametrically opposed to my own values. Take from that what you wish – but “know me” you do not. Your response just doesn’t wash.
I know your alter ego, Lancanshire Lad by what you write. I clearly don’t know you because I falsely assumed you had thicker skin.
If you’re going to regularly attack the sanity and/or intelligibility of “Dogmatic” Christianity than you should conceive the obvious relativism of Atheist “spirituality.” Unlike Materialism which is a coherent position, Spiritual Atheism has no foundation. It’s trying to square a circle.
You are an oxymoron !
An stimulating & fine bit of writing, though maybe a little pessimistic. It might be equally valid to see the internet as the new & improved Great Library of Alexander.
I think that was the hope, and of course it still is in part. But much of it is now the very mediocre and rather mindless library of Babylon. The big change was the rise of social media.
It depends on the company you keep.
Somehow I doubt that the Great Library of Alexander contained quite so much incest p0rn.
Yes, a really really disturbing feature of our time.
You are aware of the marriage practices of the Pharaohs? Not to mention the Book of Genesis?
I used to think so too until I read about how publishers can change the text in ebooks so as to reflect the mores of our times. Even before ebooks I remember a favorite author of mine having to change her novel because it portrayed evil homosexual characters which at the time was seen as an obstacle to the pride movement.
I wonder if the same can be done with digitalized textbooks and novels of the past through background updates and such.
And Winston Smith doing his endless re-writing of old news…
Or Borges’s library of Babel.
Matthew 18:3.
It’s no better with open editorials, no trace of objectivity but full of sophistry, just one “begging the question” article after another.
An otherwise excellent essay, only spoiled by the author’s desire to over-enrich every sentence. Does writing for Unherd draw contributors into this unnecessary style?
Yes, good point. Over-enriched sentences do indeed detract from an excellent theme; I must read Sagan’s book –
Over-enrichment and repetition does seem a house style.
While I enjoy, agree with, and am challenged by much on Unherd, I tend to skim read articles after I get the main point.
Oh I don’t know, I think it’s good that writers can stretch out a little in the online environment. I don’t think he overdid it.
I actually found the writing quite pleasing, but yeah the prose does make it a bit cumbersome to get to the substance of the point the author is trying to make.
Agreed, I began enthusiastically but had to return multiple times to finally finish the piece
The internet includes us all, no longer are people being excluded, hence the revolution in our politics and global politics.
The Charlatans are being exposed in a way they never could before .. its going to be a long lasting revolution.
What goes round comes round!
Great piece…thank you.
To merge him with Baudrillard, in Derrida´s old terms the ecstacy of communication is a gift – both a marvellous artifact seemingly bestowed upon us from above and a poison (das Gift in German).
For this ecstacy is also a pathology and one capable of remoulding the human mind. It has already reshaped the business of politics and political power, and may well carve out a radically different mode of educating the young, who will likely abandon book learning in the years to come and focus on more interactive digital resources, arguably produced by AI.
Hence, the world city is a digital-virtual concept in regard to which democracy will be the first casualty- at least in its former iterations.
“The meaningful chasm is between those who use the internet (and are in turn used by it in data harvesting, social engineering, surveillance), and those who profit from and stir the “culture wars” for our engagement and their profit. The Forbes’ list of billionaires is one place to begin.”
Does he think those billionaires do not use the internet themselves? Does he think we lowly users would not profit if we were able? Is this perhaps a standard Marxist critique, gussied up to address our current technological maladies?
There is no “chasm” between these two groups; indeed, there aren’t even two groups – just a constantly shifting line between people who produce and people who consume; we are all both from time to time, and often both simultaneously.
The problems inherent in these technological advancements demand much more subtle investigation and analysis.
But a chasm does exist in that the mechanism for participating in the very small world of hyper-wealth and power is not at all equally available. Even well-educated people outside the circular confines of venture capital, academic tech incubators (Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, etc.), or with social connections to them are excluded. By the time those start ups go public the big money has already been made and, as often the case with SPACs, the suckers are the ones buying long after the smart guys know the score and cashed out. Sure a few little guys get lucky here and there but the gulf between the hyper-wealthy and everyone else is exponential. If it were only about money and standard of living it would be mostly mimetic desire that disquiets; however, an ever shrinking number of powerful people are determining the course of humanity by using their wealth to manipulate nominally democratic institutions. Do you really believe that because Mark Zuckerberg and I both use the internet or that my willingness to profit as he has “if I were able” implies all is well in this neo-feudal racket? This isn’t the 19th and 20th centuries with the twin poles of Capitalism vs Marxism anymore. You need to read about Accelerationism and its proponents like Sam Altman of AI fame.
Huh? I hardly deny that Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth and position give him no more influence in the world than I have; obviously they do. The question is: who should have wealth and influence in the world and why? Mark Zuckerberg did (allegedly) create the world’s most widely used social network, which literally billions of people enthusiastically use to their own satisfaction and profit on a daily basis. I did not do that. While I think I am pretty awesome (and so does my mother), what have I done to deserve Zuckerberg-ian levels of influence or wealth?
There are already plenty of mechanism for ‘ordinary citizens’ to get involved in the political process – but they do require an extraordinary investment of time and energy… dare I say, an investment of time and energy not dissimilar to the one made by Zuckerberg in building Facebook. Are there people who think ‘political influence’ should be equally distributed? Do they think the bum on the street corner *should* have much influence in shaping public policy as we brilliant UnHerd posters?
You are making the very retrograde case for oligarchy. There was a time when, for the very reasons you profess to believe, the voting franchise in the U.S. for example, was not open to the elements of society deemed unworthy of casting a ballot. Voting itself was restricted by the very notion you express in disparaging “the bum on the street corner”. Back then land ownership was the epitome of wealth and power, and a surrogate for enlightened meritocratic “votership”. Hence, only property owners were allowed to vote. Women and slaves, who also did not possess power or wealth were likewise excluded. Your saying that wealthy and powerful people should wield disproportionate influence is a throwback to regressive ideals. Wealth and power will, by their very nature, axiomatically confer disproportionate influence upon those who possess them; which is precisely why, in matters of government, the franchise should be broad and mechanisms of governance crafted to prevent democratic ideals to be swallowed up by oligarchs like Zuckerberg. Perhaps you believe that such moguls arrived at their station purely by virtue of their merit and worth and therefore have much insight to contribute. But what happens when the scions of these wealthy titans, children who merely inherit power and wealth come of age without earning the privilege of power now available to them? Voila, feudalism; a permanent class of power and wealth that is no longer based upon merit but continues to exert disproportionate influence.
It doesn’t appear you answered my question… Who should have wealth and influence and ‘soft power’ in a society? The ‘Good’ I suppose? And how do we identify them?
The biggest charlatans are not on the net. The biggest charlatans are the tyrants trying to control the web.
Like fire (and alcohol), the internet is a great servant but a terrible master.
For all of its potential value, technology – perhaps the pace of it – has outstripped our ability to use it wisely. Look around at the people trapped, by choice, in digital worlds, transfixed by a small screen to the exclusion of the reality around them.
It’s in restaurants where couples ignore each other but not their digital friends. It’s in gyms where people go through the motions as quickly as possible so that they can return to what is obviously more interesting on their smartphones. It’s in the endless events unfolding before people’s very eyes, but they’re too busy wanting to record the scenes rather than enjoy them.
Also, the ease with which information can be found inversely correlates to the ability to retain that information. In the old days, when one had to go to a library, go through the catalog system to for the appropriate books, then find those books and read them, what was learned was not easily lost. It took too much effort to learn. Now, answers are instant and forgotten almost as quickly as they are found.
Let’s face it, folks. The internet is proof of that most distasteful theory; there is no free will.
Sagan? Really.
“We can pray over the cholera victim, or we can give her 500 milligrams of tetracycline every 12 hours.”
Carl, your list of fallacies doesn’t include the False Dichotomy, I see. How truly representative of our benighted time, to frame the problem thus.
The prophet we need is not Sagan, but Galadriel (Tolkien):
”And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge.”
I wonder how the seven deadly sins were formulated prior to the formulation of the internet. Perhaps the author is simply repeating an ancient plaint, attaching it to the latest new thing as generations before have cited whatever was their new thing.
As a Gen X, I first encountered the internet as an adult. I was… Sceptical from the off, and this was long before social media. One of the most important lessons I passed to my son – which applies both on and offline – is that when someone tells you something, question why they are telling you as much as what.
“We can pray over the cholera victim, or we can give her 500 milligrams of tetracycline every 12 hours”
Which is a ‘Black or White’ fallacy.
There is nothing new under the sun.
This is the constant refrain of the preacher, Ecclesiastes, in the Old Testament. He is expressing the belief held by ancient societies that all knowledge had already been discovered by the wise men of the past.
All that was necessary for the enquirer to do was to refer to these wise men, as one might use an instruction manual. The scientific outlook that always expects to find new things was absent from this.
This is how nomadic peoples, such as the Aboriginal Australians, lived. In such societies, the sum total of knowledge needed for everyday life was small.
For those interested in a couple of back issues on the topic:
https://staltz.com/the-web-began-dying-in-2014-heres-how.html
I wonder if our addiction to technology is about our feelings of control. It’s much easier to control what happens on a small screen than events taking place in the world around us.