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Veteran author and longtime Silicon Valley resident Andrew Keen has stepped up his criticisms of the Internet. Describing the net as a platform that has devolved from its initial ideals and promise into a vehicle of monopolistic, manipulative and exploitative practices, a Guardian article summarizes views now gaining traction. By using Amazon, Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber or any other online giant, are we striking a Faustian pact, behind which lays a mass of suffering, surveillance and ruthless harvesting?
Keen supports his arguments by mentioning that even online businesses that cite individual collaboration, those of the 'sharing' economy, are mere cynical fronts for firms already valued in the billions. As money has been sucked out of retail, transportation, photography, research and other industries into the coffers of new Internet giants, the net result has been losses of jobs and the compromise of working conditions. As for the Internet's much-touted 'individual empowerment', Keen counters with the rise of mob mentality - “Rather than creating more democracy, it’s empowering the rule of the mob. Rather than encouraging tolerance, it’s unleashed such a distasteful war on women that many no longer feel welcome on the network". Keen's book - The Internet is not the Answer - is, a touch ironically, available on Amazon.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SuperCharlie on Wednesday February 11 2015, @01:14AM
I've come to believe that like physics with its equal and opposite forces, that everything comes with an equal and opposite, a ying and yang.. Nuclear power? Nuclear bombs. Entire knowledge of humanity at your fingertips? Complete loss of privacy. Just about anything you can think of as good seems to have an equal and opposite bad... Just the universe keeping things balanced.
Remember..nature not only abhors a vacuum, but equally abhors excess.