Lecture 15 Blog - Arguments About The Internet ​

In class on Monday, we thought a bit about whether the internet has actually made lives better and the main arguments were that (1) the Internet has given us access to an incredible amount of information, and (2), that it has also polarized people and increased the spread of misinformation. And both of those points do hold true, but I feel like we're missing something important here. These arguments treat the internet as if it were solely an exchange hub of human words and knowledge, where people post information (true or false) and consume said information.

However, the internet is much more than that. A lot of technology now relies on the internet. For instance, we back up our data to the cloud. We don't just use the internet to communicate with each other, it also allows us to store and retrieve our own information. As a result, we don't need our own massive hard drives because most of our data is online and if my computer dies, I still have a copy somewhere else.

If I didn't have the internet, I probably wouldn't have used a wireframing tool because it would have been too inconvenient to get one that's burned onto a CD, and I wouldn't have been able to buy my plane tickets without making an hour-long call to a travel agent. The internet is so much more than just an info hub, but our brains just jump to "social media" when we think of the internet.

That's not to say I'm entirely enamoured with the internet. I do believe that privacy is a serious concern, since it's very easy for our personal data to be collected and sold or stolen now. I also think that the internet makes it easy for young children to accidentally encounter things they shouldn't see. Additionally, the world's growing reliance on the internet means that places that lack the necessary infrastructure are left behind in yet another way, increasing inequality. But again, there are more reasons to be skeptical of the internet beyond causing polarization and exacerbating the spread of misinformation.