Greetings. The amount of cynicism I see here about the Internet is really quite remarkable. Maybe it helps to have been engaged in this wonder of the world from the early ARPANET days (as I have) to fully appreciate what a fantastic tool the Internet is.
And yes, like any tool, the Internet can be used for good or evil. A hammer can help build a house for a needy family, or it can bash in someone's skull. The hammer doesn't make that decision -- the people using it are in control.
And so it is with the Internet as we stand on the cusp of 2023. Best, -L
I agree. The problem was that government got involved, the internet became commercialized, and now the majority of the audience is the entertainment audience, which means ads on everything and lowest common denominator content prioritized by business.
However, there is still a lot of good stuff out there, and I have not touched a phone book in years. That in my eyes is a positive advance.
We have degrees of government involvement.
ARPAnet was a military project. Then came the universities. Medical followed, and certain corporations related to telecommunications.
After that, a series of politically-minded government acts created the current situation, enabling monopoly conditions.
This is a minor problem compared to the nearly universal problem of the high cost of running wire.
Look at our options:
* Cable from the 1960s
* Phone lines from the 1950s
* AT&T using old permits to run new fiber optics
It's always the high costs keeping out new entrants that preserve monopolies.
It might be great if the FCC loosened up a bit on low-wattage pirate stations, because it might be better for the market to have real competition for content in there.
Then again, podcasts have kind of done that, and if self-hosted, are mostly censorship proof (until you get to the KiwiFarms level of extremity).
I remember in the mid 2000s Sirius was running ads about how Howard Stern uncensored is on our radio we're letting people listen free for a week or so to hear him. Nowadays nobody gives a shit about Howard Stern, Sirius merged with XM because neither could make a profit, and SXM has changed their business model hard because you can listen to any podcaster swear nowadays but you can't use a podcast app to get weather in an aircraft or play music in a store without having to pay for an extra performance license.
They no longer sell new Sirius devices anymore.
@pieist @amerika I'm writing essays here but that's just me. I try to avoid letting overly simplified analysis stand without amendment, because the details do matter.