“I thought the internet is empowering and liberating people”, I said.
“That’s what we want people to believe so that they embrace it in their lives, and trust it with their information, locations, and relationships. It is essential that people trust handing over their data to corporations, which work with data brokers. We rely on this data to maintain control of society. However, there was a moment where we nearly lost control. There was a time when, the internet did have the potential for empowering people.”
“How so?”, I asked.
“In the early days of the internet, people built new digital communications tools, and were able to speak freely to each other without corporate mediation. The design of the internet itself allowed for everyone connected to it, to be equal in their abilities to communicate. Every computer could be a server. People were in a position to take advantage of this, because we did not have corporations in place to control the situation. Programmers built tools, which people could run on their own computers, and participate in publishing and communication.”
“By 2000 we were well under way to regaining control of communication. We had implemented emergency strategies like dynamic IP addresses for all consumer connection services. This hindered consumers from mapping a DNS name to a static address. With their internet address changing by the day or week, consumers could not reliably publish web pages, or take advantage of any other communication services, from their internet connections, like hosting email. They would have to buy or use free publishing services from a company, where they could be monitored and controlled. Corporations centralized email services through the likes of Hotmail and Gmail, so that consumers would associate email access with corporate services. At the same time, this gave us new windows into their lives. All of this information, provided by consumers, could be collected, collated, and searched. The corporations did not have to charge money, because they could sell the information in provided by consumers in their communications. By building these services through the web based APIs, instead of open protocols, we could both gather more information and restrict usage. Eventually, the programs would no longer run directly on individual computers.”
“By 2010, the vast majority of people joined our corporate infrastructure rather than creating their own. Social networks like Facebook insured that consumers did not explore any alternatives. It became easier to use the corporate service than to research alternatives, much less build them. We directed them toward streaming services, which we could control and collect data from. At the same time, we discouraged them away from downloads and decentralized tools."
"Later, We re-centered consumer technology on phones, and other devices, which were designed from the ground up for corporate control and surveillance. By controlling what people can install on their mobile devices, we ensure that some types of software cannot be utilized. We spread stories that the general purpose computers are out of fashion, and declining in use, in favor of better controlled mobile technologies. Those that continue to build on decentralized technologies, become increasingly isolated and disconnected. Social pressures force people to adopt the new corporate technologies and services.”
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