Net Futures

“Why are you doing it?

How much better can you eat?

What could you buy that you can't already afford?”

“The future, Mr. Gittes! The future!”

 - Chinatown, 1974

I was just wondering about the future of the internet in this country, the United Kingdom of England Wales Scotland & Northern Ireland, since we do appear to be going through a time of awkward, clumsy, embarrassing change.

My general feelings are, that in order for the government to create its sterile vision of the web, it’ll need to block all social media. That uncouth medium is the government’s real problem. It would really like to divide it all, down the middle, between adults and children, but I doubt that’ll be 100% effective. Social media, as worthless for socialising as it is nowadays, will just have to go. Leaving only companies and organisations that the government approves of adding/uploading content.

No regular citizen input whatsoever.

Whilst I am certainly no expert in business or sociology, I believe this may have a knock-on effect of general foreign websites blocking UK users in retaliation. This has already started to happen. It may also mean that UK citizens will have no more need for much of the internet-friendly technology they have become accustomed to. There will just be a basic laptop per household, on which to do the weekly grocery shop and book holidays on. Information technology corporations will not like this whatsoever. Given that corporations have a major influence on who’s in power, this will cause political problems and possibly lead to the UK devolving into an isolated state.

How this will affect our economy, I do not know.

Remember the panic over ID theft years ago? Our “responsible” government told us not to divulge personal details or official documentation to anyone. Now that same government is falling over themselves to instruct us to behave in the opposite way. Nothing has changed, of course, but people are making money from our identities being passed around like the last good spliff at a music festival.

Sell, sell, sell.

One solution could be, that the government turns its back and pretends that the last ten years or so haven’t happened, allowing the internet to return to its early “wild west” days, with little-to-no government moderation. Or it could make major changes to the laws governing social interaction in general. Or it could go down the IT-sterilisation route and annoy and alienate and bore 70 million UK citizens.

I dunno.

I’ve been thinking about all of this in my position as a shy, awkward, lonely nerd. The sort of person who now only finds deeper loneliness within an internet designed to help people like me meet friends, have a casual laugh, and maybe find love. Thanks to easily accessible wifi, smartphones, and monetisation, all the people that social media was invented to get away from have now piled onboard and taken over.

The emptiness is deafening, but here’s the real core of the problem…

…children are not responsible enough to own smartphones. End of story. It’s like putting a loaded gun in their hands. Instead, the government should issue them with a “brick” with numbers on it, that merely sends and receives phone calls and text messages. The government should also have an amnesty for current child-owned smartphones, offering cash compensation. Parents should then face penalties should they sneak smartphones back into their offsprings’ possession, and the government should apologise for not dealing with this growing problem sooner.

Saying all of this, I grimly suspect the whole IT-sterilisation route will continue to be taken, much to our dissatisfaction and suffering.

So, yeah, something for UK citizens to look forward to!

Do stay in touch, darlings.

Toodles!