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With authoritarianism on the rise has the internet helped or hurt the cause for democracy and collective rule? (lemmy.world)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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As a follow-up, is there signs that the internet/technology may play a role in making a better society for all?

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I’m old enough to have lived through the advent of the World Wide Web. I was so enthusiastic about the potential of these technologies. It was going to finally democratize information and do away with misinformation and pseudoscience, and promote critical thinking, freedom and democracy. I crafted an entire career around my optimism about this stuff. It’s now obvious in retrospect that none of that happened and we have collectively regressed on all those fronts. I’m not making a causal claim about damage that the internet might have done. I don’t know if this stuff would have happened anyway. But, it certainly didn’t deliver on the promise we were so excited about. IMO it all went wrong when we handed the keys to the whole thing over to commercial entities.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm guessing I'm probably slightly younger than you, but I'm still old enough to remember how things were before the web took everything over. I definitely agree with some of your point, but I think there's some cause for optimism!

finally democratize information - Information really is more democratized than any other prior time in human history. There is a bunch of bad information mixed in as well, but that doesn't negate the benefits that the internet has brought in this regard. If I have the time and the motivation I can give myself a college level education just using free resources on the internet.
do away with misinformation and pseudoscience - this is definitely a problem on the internet, but I think if we didn't have the internet it would still be a problem. We have whole news networks that were founded specifically to pump out misinformation. That just happened to start around the advent of the internet but was not caused by it.
promote critical thinking - yeah, I don't think the internet has helped much on this front, but again I don't think it has actually made it much worse. People are overall much more educated today than they were decades ago. Their ignorance is just also much more visible.
freedom and democracy - the internet has enabled a new rise of fascism which is horrifying, but it has also enabled unprecedented coordination and strength in minority communities on a global scale. I think we would be much farther behind socially if the internet hadn't appeared.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

That's also my perspective, speaking as someone who also remembers the early days of the Net.