The internet – not as great as we all thought it was going to be, eh? Society is slowing souring on the internet, according to the latest research by Pew. While a majority of us still think that the global communications network has, on balance, been a positive thing, that number has slipped significantly in the past four years. Back in 2014, when Pew last asked roughly 2,000 adults across the …
Still the best that we can have because of Internet's enormous variety.
You can't have it with TV, radio, or books - they are almost universally controlled by someone.
I guess people are cooling down towards social networks and other social gatherings like reddit due to the barrage of trolling, hate speech, political agenda and many other similarly damaging things.
The Internet is great! The WWW less so. I think some things have become worse in the last 10 years
- Contacting a service provider, e.g. a bank. Pre-internet, you had to phone them during working hours (and they didn't patronise you with "Your call is important to us, but we're experiencing unusually high call volume at the moment"). Then came email and web forms. Now, you have chat & Twitter - but only during working hours. It takes ages to find a contact email address.
- Search. Google had it down to a fine art, then blew it. I regularly find myself going to the second page of results to get past the chaff. I was disapponted when Google stopped spidering Experts-Exchange, though I understood the reasoning. Now, there's a million websites/fora with a million uncurated and incomplete Q&As.
- Don't get me started on blogs, vanity sites, "fake news", website usability or influencers/followers. Suffice to say there's an awful lot of crap out there, and finding reputable sites is tough, especially as many of them are disappearing behind paywalls. Maybe AOL were right with their "curated portal" approach :-)
that' because you didn't call at 3am, their beancounters have worked out that they only need real staff to cope with the call demand at 3am, any other time and its an "unusually high call volume"!
I've been active on the internet from before the internet was open to the public, and have long been very bullish about it.
While I still think the internet, on the whole, is a good thing, I admit that I'm less bullish than I used to be. The corporate takeover of the internet has seriously reduced its value, and the increasingly ludicrous amount of surveillance that is done, mostly (but certainly not exclusively) by the likes of Google and Facebook, is also an enormous minus.
So, I'm sympathetic to the perspective of those who consider the internet to be a net minus, and have a bit of a hard time coming up with a great counteragument to that view.
So, I'm sympathetic to the perspective of those who consider the internet to be a net minus, and have a bit of a hard time coming up with a great counteragument to that view.
It could be the isolation factor mentioned in the article or the being burned by trolls, con artists, etc. While the internet is a good thing in many ways, there is much bad out there and it seems to be getting worse.
Yes, that's likely true -- but the issue with trolls, etc., is easy to handle (just don't go to the sites where they are a problem), so my gut tells me that there must be more to this than just that.
It isn't always that easy. Trolls aren't all shouty, racist, stereotypes. Those are easy to avoid. But on many mainstream, moderated forums, there are a selection of people who appear to have a whole lot of time on their hands, who are opinionated, borderline rude, sad-sacks who can't accept any view that differs from their own, regardless of the experience and qualification of other posters. By remaining within the forum guidelines, and often adopting a passive-aggressive method of communication, they shout down alternative views. Often they'll be obsessed about one or two particular issues, even if they actually know little about them.
To more robust individuals with a good view of how the internet works, these people are simply ill informed gob shites, who can only be dealt with by ignoring them. But for the majority of internet users, these people are intimidating bullies. In the UK we've had publicly funded schemes to get more of the elderly online (fuck knows why), but that introduces a lot of the people who fall into the opinionated bully camp due to time on their hands and deteriorating social skills, and introduces many more who fall into the role of "victim of opinionated bullies" because they don't understand that posting on the internet is shouting to the world, not a front room conversation with like minded friends.
I've seen this with my own elderly parents - with time on their hands they read a lot, they read the comments, they want to join in the debate, they join in, but they can't understand the minority of unpleasant, persistent, hectoring responses they then get to posts that really ought to be innocuous. The only solution I can see (when hell freezes over) is to introduce a universal block button, that enables a user to block a particular poster's responses and sub-threads, as well as blocking that poster from seeing comments (and subsequent sub-threads) that are made by the original poster.
WTF? Ignore buttons are the 101 of "going on the internet" and thoroughly ubiquitous, and wherever they don't exist you have the option of implementing them yourself abusing a crude Greasemonkey script. I've done it on a number of sites in spite of being literally hopelessly clueless about javascript - knowing how to Google, copy and paste is enough. JQuery, whatever that is, makes match-and-hide a one-liner job. Yes, you can end up with five hundred lines where only the match strings differ - but it _will work_. Although at that point you might start feeling a bit anti-social...
"there are a selection of people who appear to have a whole lot of time on their hands, who are opinionated, borderline rude, sad-sacks who can't accept any view that differs from their own, regardless of the experience and qualification of other posters."
I don't think those sort of commenters count as "trolls", but regardless of that -- my solution is just as effective with them as with unambiguous trolls: if they bother you, then find another forum.
Yes, that's likely true -- but the issue with trolls, etc., is easy to handle (just don't go to the sites where they are a problem)
This isn't true any more.
Usenet was public space; forums were private space paid for by individuals or small groups. They policed themselves, and they had to get the balance right. Too little policing and you got swamped; too much, and you got abandoned.
The net is now run by for-profit companies who are simply not taking responsibility for policing the space that they own. There's no longer anywhere for regular people to go. We nerds are ok because - and only because - we know where to look.
Of course, one way of moderating a forum is to just leave someone's posts in the 'submitted and awaiting moderation' queue for over 5 hours.
Not that I'm airing a grievance in public or anything.
If there's nothing nefarious going on and you're actually just still down the pub, then fine.
Exactly, I am in love with the idea of the internet, but what it has turned into, not so much.
Really, I'd be on board with someone building an entirely new network, especially if it was even slightly less dominated by the yanks and their propensity towards collecting data to spy on people and/or sell it to the highest bidder.
"Really, I'd be on board with someone building an entirely new network"
The old pre-internet methods (such as Fidonet) are still around. Also, there are several projects that are creating new networks that use the existing internet for the communications backbone, but are not accessible from the internet.
I suspect that we'll see more of that sort of thing as time goes on. My prediction for the internet services above the TCP/IP transport layer is that it will become essentially what interactive cable always wanted to be.
"Really, I'd be on board with someone building an entirely new network,"
Been watching Silicon Valley, have you? I think it paints a pretty accurate picture. There will never be a "new" Internet any more than there'll be a "new" road system. We patch up old roads and install new, faster and safer, ones, but the road system itself is not replaced. The Internet's the same. It's a bit different from when I first used it in the 1980s. The web's a bit different from when TimBL first showed it off or when Mosaic came out. Remember when Microsoft used to sneer at the Internet? Expect change to continue, but it will always be continuous change.
"Really, I'd be on board with someone building an entirely new network,"
Been watching Silicon Valley, have you? I think it paints a pretty accurate picture. There will never be a "new" Internet any more than there'll be a "new" road system
It seems it's the World Wide Web that's gone downhill. Like a failing Mall - or more like a huge Mega Global Hypermarket, which sounded really exciting when you first heard they were building one in your town, but after initial Wow! died down, you realised it was chock full of dour sales assistants named Manny or Chuck that followed you round at your shoulder all the time either in case you stole something or trying to suggest things you might like to buy, and you were never sure which. To add injury to insult, you caught something in their poorly cleaned lavs.
Maybe, if there's a not-http protocol, and we could convince the useful bit of the current web to move there and ban any base commerce.
Financing might be a problem though, it might have to be scaled way back and peer to peer.
If it's got no images, only text, the ad slingers will be harder pressed in infiltrate it.
Good, hopefully they'll all f*ck off and it can go back to how it was before.
Sure we had flamers and idiots but they were a better class of idiot and there was much more intelligent conversation and accuracy to the stuff posted. Now it's just mostly a cesspit where I wan't to shout get off my lawn. At least here it's still manages to keep high level of civility but then most here started on 9600 baud modems and below.
Maybe I'm just getting old.
"At least here it's still manages to keep high level of civility"
A million times this. One of the things that I love the most about El Reg is that the commentardiat here is very similar to what you used to be able to expect almost everywhere, back before "internet culture" started going downhill.
We're all old farts, that's why!
My first email address had the subdomain order the correct way around (unlike now!). To get to the internet I used to have bounce janet->earn->decnet->internet - and I was resposible for giving Alan Cox internet access back in Swansea uni, and for not killing him in a car crash on the occasions I drove him home (usually via the chippy at 2.30am), so you linux people owe me for that :-)
Oh, and my first modem was 1200/75 followed by 2400/2400 -- luxury!
And yes, I did sometimes upload stuff at 75 baud. Only slightly faster that typing speed!
--------->>>> OLD "get off my lawn" MAN icon
@Jamie
ah yes, my first email address was big endian too, and we used Vax/VMS and CBS. We didn't have our own Internet mail relay at that point though, so relayed through The University of Nottingham. Just took three levels of encapsulation to route through them and out to the internet ; -)
Everything is "different" while only a narrowly specialized class of people has access to it. Once everyone is allowed in, anyone expecting things to not change (and keep changing) is a damn fool; the second factor being the initial novelty and, yes, clueless innocence washing fast away - noble ideals may get the first drop on a new thing, but given some time human nature takes over.
And I'm saying that not in support of the idea of keeping "hoi polloi" out - on the contrary, I absolutely think it would be unconscionable to do so, especially just to have ageing early adopters having their fond memories unsullied; but giving access to the whole of humanity to something and then expecting it not to change to reflect that is seriously unrealistic. Especially considering I tend to swear at least as much myself as the the next guy. And quite possibly more...
The most damaging thing is how deluded / closed tech is. From Silly 'con' Valley to South Korea... Tech executives aren't deaf, they're deaf / dumb & blind, only ever following VC trends or Y-Combinator golf club chat! No one ever holds a 'real' poll anymore and asks for real customer views. Instead you're told what you want, or what's good for you, and like God you're expected to give thanks & praise. You expect that of Banksters, but where's the difference anymore. Unlike banks though, most of us on the Reg can manage fine with bare minimum tech or use it smartly, so it doesn't use us.
The problem is that as of lately it has a tons of minuses. I was here when the first browser came into being. Before that it was the lynx browser and of course the old Unix prompt. As it took off it became very commercialized and the Internet that I loved died. It became an interactive TV. I've noticed that highly intelligent people around me became dumb as soon as they entered the medium. Their speech became erratic and their thoughts were all over the place. I was fascinated by all this and at the same terrified. People were not thinking thing thoroughly and have become paranoid. A couple of known social people now stay inside and just do computers. The effect of the Internet on some people have become unhealthy. Someone I know, the family did a rescue by taking his computers and the connection to the Internet from him. Six month later he was back to his old self. It makes sense to me because if you think about it the consumption of news and everything else that appears on the web is detrimental to your minds health. I don't think our minds are ready for such an overload. Humans being humans tend to think they can handle it. Its just writing right? The brain is not being rewired, right? Yes, the Internet has its minuses and its pluses but for a huge amount of people out there only minuses showed up in their lives. I would love to take the mind temperature of people born into this brave new world of connection 24/7 in 50 years. How will their critical thinking be like? How will future generations will be bombarded with lies, commercial manipulations, political manipulations and so on at the largest scale all our cultures have ever seen. Grand experiment.
There are those who hate tech in general. But tech that comes with utility is enormously useful. Leaving social aside for a sec... Question: Does tech that's heavily reliant on being connected to the net with all the gotchas that now entails, have as much utility anymore versus the same that's offline...???
How many times have sites / services changed their look / T&C / revenue-model and alienated users.... Or just burnt their privacy wholesale! But that still can't stop the unstoppable trend. Lets connect everything to the net to solve everyday problems. We know that serves special interests, but the question is, does it really serve you and your family as well?
For me, the answer is no! I can get by with Office 2000 for example. That has utility. Would like I feel the same about Office365? No... Many websites are just a sad excuse for surveillance. Others? 5 minutes of imagination and Excel / LO-Calc could solve it. Personally for apps, the net never has the response time I want anyway, so I always use a laptop running local software or a phone with LibreOffice when traveling etc to get by...
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All the financial fraud / crypto-malware, plus dating & extortion scams
Leaky S3 Buckets, Medical record hacks, Equifax/Yahoo mega-breaches
Payment page web-cesspit: remote/local hosted 3rd-party script hacks (ba)
______
Subscription Models: Never own anything ever again - software to films
Forced updates onto stable machines / Win10 Spyware, Malware, Adware
______
Android Phones, open-prison ankle bracelets 24/7 indiscriminate tracking
Smart TV's that spy on you literally, with zero ethics,Vizio Smart TV crimes
IoT Smart toothbrush hell or any smart marketed surveillance / Car IoT
______
Snowden forewarned indiscriminate dragnet surveillance ruling EU 2018
Social Credit Score - China 2020 Dystopian Nightmare coming West!
______
The Web has grown from a moderately good idea to something which had every feature abused in terrible ways and lots of new terrible features added.
And with now most users being behind NAT, that keeps them from having their own websites without having to invest in hosting.
"What is stark in the survey is how much smartphones have become essential everyday tools in our modern lives"
............ NO....... THEY.......HAVEN'T..
Only really for a very small minority... Unless you mean how people consider them essential when they really aren't.
Hell, I've been "online via mobile" since the nokia communicator days circa 1997, but still, seeing how people are glued to their phones 24/7 is depressing...
But they have.
For a rather large proportion of poorer people, smartphones are their only internet access, and their only phone.
In other words, the only communication method they have at all.
To be honest that really surprised me, but it shouldn't have. In the US the broadband - or rather, fixed line - market has failed due to local unregulated monopolies.
"For a rather large proportion of poorer people, smartphones are their only internet access, and their only phone."
That's a damning indictment of the state of US infrastructure. Most places where mobile phones are the primary or indeed only methods of communication are 3rd world countries that didn't have fixed-line infrastructure in the first place and people went straight to mobile.
"For a rather large proportion of poorer people, smartphones are their only internet access, and their only phone."
This isn't really true -- what is true is that for a rather large proportion of the population, smartphones are the only means of broadband internet access. If you just need barebones internet access, you can get it extremely cheap (in many areas, for free) via dialup.
"This isn't really true -- what is true is that for a rather large proportion of the population, smartphones are the only means of broadband internet access. If you just need barebones internet access, you can get it extremely cheap (in many areas, for free) via dialup."
No, Internet full stop because for these people landlines aren't a given, either. For many people I've seen, the cell phone is their ONLY phone, wired or not.
The irony is that those people glued to their smartphones 24/7 are for the most part not communicating. They're either consuming, or just making noise. Input is 'Look at this'; output 'Look at me'.
Phone conversations we would like to hear, but never will :- 'Well, I'd better get off the phone now - I'm about to cross the road and there's a fucking great lorry coming, so I'd better be careful. Bye!'
Far too many people confuse the Internet with the Web, and the Web with social media, and social media with Twitter and Facebook.
Everything that has ever been possible with the Internet is still possible. Likewise for the Web. People are lazy and take the path of least resistance, so instead of setting up their own Web sites they do everything through Facebook. Then they complain that Facebook has too much control over their lives. Duh.
There is also Gartner's famous "Trough of Disillusionment" (everyone is right occasionally - even Gartner). In today's superficial, fast-moving, "I want it now" society, it's all about the latest and greatest thrill. Naturally, once the high wears off, the inevitable reaction sets in. The new Ferrari doesn't have a built-in winemaker and doesn't butter your toast properly. Nor does it tie your shoelaces (if you are wrinkly enough to have such things).
I have been following the Internet, and sometimes writing about it, since 1994. Had I not become hardened to stupidity and crassness, by now I might have died of the sickness caused by seeing rich people complain that the Web was not designed specifically enough to make them even richer without any effort.
The Internet provides us with a magnificent set of tools - not necessarily with cut and dried solutions. Of course, as Ted Nelson and others have pointed out, they could have been better - far better - if more imaginative designs had been adopted. Never mind - the best is always the enemy of the good, and we have the good now. If anyone wants to create something still better, perhaps along the lines suggested by Nelson, they are free to try.
I wrote an angry old man post about the decline in internet users manners and intelligence since it was made easy to access, and mentioned I'd first used it in 1985.
A youngster here agreed and upvoted me, but corrected my memory, "you must have meant 1995".
I let that slide to avoid accentuating my elderliness.
The whole "net value" is a crass fallacy anyway - any negative aspects of the Internet DO NOT "cancel out" its positives. Not even simple things like up/downvotes work that way - anyone who believes a post with fifty up- and fifty downvotes is the exact same thing as one with 0 / 0 needs to get their head checked. That's not how it works.
Yes, the nasty side-effects of the internet can be legion - but all the great things it made possible, including universal access to knowledge and, yes, the diversity of other people (not to mention getting almost everyone becoming able to speak to almost anyone else in the world!) justify any number of them. Someone playing PvP against other teams halfway across the globe regularly might end up hating the guts of those fuckers; but also, he would be _far_ harder to convince by convenient propaganda that those other guys eat babies for breakfast, lunch and supper.
Seriously, if I actually tried writing up all the marvellous stuff that no-one sane would have dreamed possible a century ago yet the Internet allowed, this would be a wall of text in no time. How many of us actually choose to take advantage of which ones does nothing to fault them. Yes, guess what, it can be used for things other than good - big surprise there, surely. Yes, for instance, biological weapons are a horrible thing. Does that mean we would be better off without all of modern medicine...? Really...? Some might think so, and I can't stop them. Then again, they can't stop me either from politely asking them to fuck right the fuck off.
"Yes, the nasty side-effects of the internet can be legion - but all the great things it made possible, including universal access to knowledge and, yes, the diversity of other people (not to mention getting almost everyone becoming able to speak to almost anyone else in the world!) justify any number of them."
For you.
For many people, the negatives of using the internet easily outweighs the positives. I personally know a few people who have forsaken the internet entirely because of that, and I know more people who are seriously considering doing that.
Might have been referencing the fact that jurors are not allowed to access the Internet, coz otherwise they might stumble across information that relates to the case that has not been washed through the legal system. This will be much easier for people that have never used the Internet in the first place.
- It's called a Mac. The "Macintosh" died two decades ago, around the Apple-NeXT acquisition and subsequently, Mac OS X.
- Don't bother marketing around these corners, because somebody who knows what NAT means already knows how to securely browse the Web (and probably uses Linux).
"And people still call them Marlboro Lights, even those too young to legally smoke when the name was legally changed (to Gold Pack). "
Wait, you mean they aren't called Marlboro Lights? I don't smoke, so evidently haven't kept up to date with name changes.
One of these days, I want to set up an act where someone goes to the store and insists on Marlboro Lights to the exception of all else including Gold Pack, when given a Gold Pack insists they're Lights to the point of spelling the letters out on the box where they used to be ("See, LIGHTS! L-I-G-H-T-S!").
Many people, it seems, bought the idea that all was wonderful and the internet was full of fairy farts.
But the internet has people using it and some people do not agree with others while others find destructive trolling 'a huge laugh'.
It is NOT and never has been a wonderful safe (and boring) place.
"Back in 2014, when Pew last asked roughly 2,000 adults across the entire United States, 76 per cent of them said the internet held a net positive benefit for them personally. In the latest survey, however, that has dropped to 70 per cent."
So have they asked the same 2000 people again or a different set of people? As this is a very small sample set compared to the millions of people who use the internet. And unless it is the same 2000 people, I would say this variation would be expected with such as small amount of people surveyed and be of absolutely no relevance to how happy people are with the internet.
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