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Over the past centuries, technologies have
regularly come along that completely change
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how we connect to each other: the printing
press, the telegraph, the telephone; the newspaper,
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the radio, the TV.
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All are technologies that begin social
revolutions.
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We’re living through one such revolution
now. It started in 1962 with a humble, almost
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boring idea: connecting computers together.
Today, almost three billion people are connected.
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What kind of revolution are we going through?
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- Firstly, it’s fast. It took 25 years after
the Guttenberg Press arrived for the first
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English book to be printed.
In its first twenty-five years, the telephone
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reached just 10% of America.
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In 1995, less than 1% of the world’s population
was connected. The first billion was reached
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in 2005. The second billion in 2010. The third
billion at the end of 2014.
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The benefits of the Internet are obvious
and all around us. In a European-wide poll,
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people put the Internet at the top of their
list of daily essentials – ahead of the
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bath,the car and the television.
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But the risks and dangers are less obvious
and more subterranean.
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There are at least four.
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ONE - WE’RE ADDICTED
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In the UK, two in five of us recognise we’re
spending too long on the internet but admit
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we can’t stop.
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Three in five of us check the internet the
first thing in the morning, and the last thing
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at night - and put this habit ahead of interpersonal
communication.
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Two in five women say that one of the greatest
challenges of relationships has become how
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to prove more interesting than the partner’s
smartphone.
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Nine out of ten people would rather be surfing
the web rather than reading a book.
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Internet pornography has proved particularly
compelling: 60% of US adult males admit to
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using it at least once a month. 9% of males
classify themselves as spending between 10
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and 20 hours a week on porn.
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We are not neurologically designed to withstand
the temptations on offer online - and this
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suits a great many internet companies just
fine.
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TWO - WE KNOW TOO MUCH AND UNDERSTAND TOO
LITTLE
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The amount of information at our fingertips
is unimaginably large;
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every single minute of the day:
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Facebook users share 2.5 million pieces
of content.
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Twitter users Tweet 300,000 times. YouTube users upload 72 hours of video
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200million emails are sent. Apple users download 50,000 apps
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Between the dawn of civilization and 2003,
5 exabytes of data was created. That much
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information is now created every 2 days.
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There is so much data that we keep having
to come up with new words to describe it.
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The latest term is the yottabyte.
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This much data is overwhelming and asphyxiating.
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To manoeuvre, we have to rely on search engines.
Google makes 2.5 billion searches per day.
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But we forget that these search engines are
mechanical and highly coloured in their interpretations.
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For a start, they constantly direct our attention
to their products, sponsors, and affiliates.
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Imagine the Dewey Decimal system owned by
Coca Cola.
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A lot of the information is nonsense: during
the riots in London in 2011, the three most
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shared stories on Twitter were that the London
Eye was on Fire, the Army was on the streets,
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and that a tiger had escaped from London zoo.
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Because the internet is often a source of
reliable information, we exaggerate its accuracy,
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its importance and its wisdom.
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The 12th most popular question typed into
Google is:
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WHAT SHALL I DO WITH MY LIFE?
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It doesn’t know, but at the same time, it
constantly gets in the way of the conversations
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you might have with the one person who does:
namely, you.
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THREE - PRIVACY IS UNDER THREAT
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Thousands of ‘cookies’ track where
we go. Our mobile phones log data about our
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movements every five seconds, even when they
are ostensibly off.
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The head of the French police force proposed
it’s now almost impossible to commit a murder
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and remain undetected.
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We’re constantly leaving so-called digital
breadcrumbs on our online travels. Every year,
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in the UK, we leave up to £5,000 worth of
data online which is sold to marketing companies
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and harvested, filtered and cross-referenced
to provide detailed insight into our lives.
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Facebook will know you’re gay before your
mother does.
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70% of us admit to fearing how much we
have already shared. one in seven teenagers
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in the US has sent a compromising image over
the internet and had a sexual chat with a
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real-life stranger.
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A majority of European internet users are
under the impression that a security service
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has snooped into their conversations and activities.
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FOUR - ONLINE CRIME IS OUT OF CONTROL
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Over the last twenty years, crime has abated
in many countries. Since it peaked in the
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UK in 1995, it has fallen by 60%.
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But Internet crime is exploding.
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In 1990 the NSPCC estimated there were 7,000
known images of child pornography at large.
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In 2014, American law enforcement found 42
million images on just one server.
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The UK Government estimates 50,000 people
in the UK are actively involved in downloading
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and sharing images of child abuse.
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Online abuse and hate-speech are endemic:On Twitter, 10,000 uses of racist slur
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terms occur a day.
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And 2000 Tweets are sent containing the
word ‘rape’.
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69% of young people in the UK have experienced
cyber-bullying
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The police are overwhelmed. The Head of
the UK’s National Crime Agency recently
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said they would only ever be able to focus
on less than 1% of child porn users.
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CONCLUSION
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One view is that new technologies have always
brought anxieties with them, and that they
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always turn out to be groundless.
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Socrates in Plato’s Phaedrus warned that
books would promote forgetfulness. People
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would become the “hearers of many things
and will have learned nothing”.
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But that’s too rosy and too relaxed about
what we’re facing. Technologies can and
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do bring serious lasting problems. As the
residents of Hiroshima realised.
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The internet presents unrivalled challenges
to our abilities to:
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- interact deeply with our partners
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- keep our critical faculties alive
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- stop thinking that the answers always lie
‘out there’.
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- remain emotionally connected to real-life
people.
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- and make the discoveries that come when
we are bored and letting our minds lie fallow.
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We need to start to take active measures to
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educate our children in the dangers of this
tool
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reconnect with the natural world
talk to one another face to face
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stop downloading images of naked people
get bored
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and take regular digital sabbaths.
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We need to learn to control ourselves not
because the internet is so bad, but precisely
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because it’s so very very nice - in ways
that turn out to be deeply detrimental to
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our ability to flourish and function..
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We can accept that it is not a good thing
to let a fifteen year old boy have unmonitored
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access to the internet in his bedroom. Not
because we think he is wicked. But because
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we are generous. We understand that asking
for self-control in those circumstances is
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too demanding. A similar argument applies
if you happen to be twenty six - or forty
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six.
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The internet has unparalleled power to get
in the way of almost every other rather important
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and precious thing around - starting with
the rest of your life.
