THE INTERNET HOAX ***don't read this page***

The internet-hoax

¶Believe me, it is all a lie. The internet is not and in no way the true path to freedom and enlightment of all people, that some people want it to be. Or better: want you to believe you want it to be. “Where do you want to go today?” Well, actually, I’d like to stay at home and get some rest. “Endless possibilities” Hell, I can’t even handle the ones I have now. “Solutions for a small planet” I am sure looking, but I can’t find your solutions to the war in the Middle East, starving children in Africa or the exploitation of workers in Asia and Southern America. I wonder why all the fantasies and utopias created around the possibilites of the internet, cyberspace and virtual reality didn’t burst like the economic new business-bubble. Here I have jumbled together a few disconnected paragraphs about the internet. To open your eyes a little.

¶ I don’t want to bore you with how the internet developed from a tool designed by the military and the scientific community. More important seems to me the fact, that in 1995 the US-government turned over the handling of the main US-backbones (and most internet-traffic still routes via the USA) over to three giant, commercial companies, e.g. General Electric. European governments followed suit. So what we have today is, that the main structural hardware of the internet is open for and prone to commercial use. The government only secured its entry to all the important data, log files and servers of the internet-providers by law. From the viewpoint of the state, this is a smart move – leave the technical problems to those who can handle them (and big companies have the best manpower) but reserve the right to intrude at anytime and without any hindrances.

¶ Now the users. Whatever the statistics might tell you, the internet is still mainly a club for white, young boys with lots of education and free money. In a world in which still over 60 % of the global population hasn’t ever made a telephone call, the internet becomes really hilarious if proposed as a tool for development or education. In Austria 50 % of the population has access to the internet and about 38 % use the internet regularly. Which means, even in a country with one of the highest distribution rates in the middle of Europe, the Internet is still not a part of the live of the majority of people. And I can’t see my grandparents get into it any time soon. I can’t even see myself using the Internet to perform my democratic duty. I mean, I don’t even pay online, I still mostly fax my mailorders and stuff. Why should I trust somebody with my electorial vote. Which means that all the nice plans about “easy government”, which goes from the printing of forms to online-voting are still very much plans for the future and only beneficent for a minority of people.

¶ I have complained about the detrimental effects of digitalisation on the working life in other places already. In short, because data is digitalised and sendable via e-mail or obtainable via the internet, people think the can have anything at all right now and for free. Any information you want is right here in front of you and for free. Nobody gives a second thought about the fact, that someone has to make the information available and that some things might just take time. People have gotten very greedy and impatient in these last years. To think that not so long ago, it took two weeks until you got your parcel from the mailorder and that was considered speedy. The worst thing about this is, though, that on the one hand the workers have to live up to that speed, and on the other hand, that it ruins the economic basis of many companies. Take for example Napster: until now, nobody was able to tell me exactly how this software (and it isn’t more, really) was supposed to make money. As soon as it costs something people move on to similar, yet still free software.

¶ This might just be a minor problem, because as soon as the industry has found ways to stop digital piracy of content, a completely new area will start: paid content. In the best case this will mean, that you get basic information and trailers for free and everything else has to be paid for. Paying by the article you read, the picture you load down or the music file you copy onto your harddisc. In the area of pornography paying for content is already standard procedure and quite lucrative. I really don’t know why. Seems to me, that what you get for free is quite enough to have a fancy good wank.

¶ What about the other content? Well, “Information Superhighway” and Al Gore can kiss my ass. The internet offers way more information than you could ever need, want or are able to process. Plus, there is the problem of credibility and trustworthiness. Do you believe all the stuff I am telling you here? I wouldn’t if I were you. Sure, if you get a lot of information from all different sides, you can make up your own picture. But what if all the information you get is subjective, jumbled and manipulated? Are you sure you will it upon the truth by coincidence or average? I guess you will side by emotional rationality, which means, we are entering a time were truth or hard facts don’t count anymore, because they get washed away by all the rambling, ranting and raging. A time in which he, who is able to win most people for his side by pure gut-feelings and rethoric and target-group-marketing will have the truth (or at least the favor of the masses) on his side. I am afraid that will be Bono Vox and Fred Durst in the end. And maybe some supermodel.

¶ Let’s get back to the internet and to the trends at hand: centralisation of the hardware in commercial superpowers, government control and the growth of marketshare of the commercial content-suppliers. Maybe this is the part where it all comes together quite nicely. Big companies owning the internet backbones as well as the content-providers reach out to all those nice target groups (affluent, white, European) and up to this time women will have gotten up to the men in internet-usage and all the small companies have been wiped out by economic downfall. Look around you, the first signs are visible already. On-Line newspapers are trying to figure how to make readers pay for content, the best and most-visited sites concerning entertainment and news are of course belonging to media-companies (who also have the best means to make advertising).

¶ What does the future look like? If you ask me now, I’d say that the internet will become just another big-time-moneymaking-machine, selling digitalised stuff for virtually no expenses with a high profit margin to people who don’t know better or are just to lazy to do more than is necessary. My estimate is, as usual, five years. Give us five more years and let’s see if this page or something like it will still exist.