KBD47 wrote: ⤴Mon Sep 17, 2018 4:06 pmPre-Snowden I think many of us were in an ignorant bliss, not thinking of the negative side of the Internet, and not dreaming governments and businesses were hoovering up every bit of our Internet activity.
The pre-Snowden (and, I'd also argue, pre-Manning and pre-WikiLeaks) world had some signs pointing towards the nasty behavior of governments and corporations, but to be fair there's a difference between having (even very well founded) suspicions of actions and activities, and having actual hard evidence of those activities. In parallel with this is also the rose-colored-glasses factor, and generally a tendency to think any such suspicions (and even later for a time any such evidence) is just hyperbole. It also does not help that "most people" don't bother to lift their gaze from the day-to-day and look around them to see what's going on.
I remember wonderful, frank discussion I had with Internet friends on a variety of subjects that will never be repeated. I learned so much from others back in those days. One dare not express anything personal or ask any serious questions of anyone today. I'm disgusted at all parties who basically destroyed the Internet for anything more than casual conversation. The amount of paranoia we each most hold onto to use the Internet today is unforgivable because Big Brother is alive an well in more than one form.
I think it's fairly broadly accepted at this point that we have
never seen the sort of societal polarization before that exists at present. I'm 46, and while I certainly cannot claim to know everything about the goings-on of the world over
all of those 46 years, it certainly is the case that in my lifetime, what we're seeing today is something new, though I would hasten to add by "new" I don't mean the product of the last couple years, but new in the sense that each wave striking a beach is a new wave, with its birth occurring some considerable space of distance (or time) beforehand.
The thing which I find to be the most unfortunate is how politics in the sense of governmental/party politics has infected and permeated so many totally unrelated fields of endeavor. Because it is such a nexus for so many different areas of avocation or utility, technology's succumbing to political polarization and tribalism seems to be particularly acute. That we dare not talk to each other (as human beings) about a great many different subjects (whether technology is either a conduit or a destination) means we are becoming every more insulated from others and from the world around us. Being insular is not healthy. Mauling/being mauled
or distancing ourselves is both dangerous and represents a false dichotomy because we do not benefit from drawing blood nor becoming ever more ignorant about the world around us, and because those
aren't the
only two options.