Caught in the Net

I can remember the promise of the Internet and then the Web .. originally conceived and developed by academics they were about connection and sharing for personal and common benefit. It was a really amazing feeling when I plugged the UTP calble into the router and our college local area network become part of the Internet ... part of a network of networks.  It was like opening a door to a new frontier ... like opening a door to SanFransico to bring in the "summer of love".

It's difficult to locate the point at which change happened - many point to the dot-com crash in the year 2000 and Google ... under investor pressure Google started to monetise their user data to boost revenue by selling targeted ads to those using its search engine. This new business model was so lucrative that between 2001 and 2004 Google's revenues increased by 3,590%. Capitalists took note .. the new frontier was bought, seed capital sown and money started growing on trees ... but that was not enough. Technology capitalists (as they became known) bought the new frontier and turned it into a farm to milk and fleece us ... that country smell of manure was in fact the smell of greed and the bullshit they told us about changing the world for the better. 

There was inertia, during the noughties we were still moving along from the momentum and potential of the early days but during the 2010s the summer of love turned to autumn ... memories of the good days were still fresh but there was no fresh new growth .. the Internet was dying and the chill winds of Internet winter could be felt. The Internet was private property - it had become a platform on to which we were enticed and the Web used to keep us there wriggling around frantically while the spiders watched. 

Internet winter is coming ... the spider is coming .... how can we escape?