The state of things net/media/digitality - the sorrow of the thing

> We started this internet thing at a bunch of colleges where everyone was high and screwing and doing science all the time (or wishing they were) and no one worried about how they would PROFITS from it. ~ kerbaros[1]

This is a nice image, of a different time. As more and more develops in digitality and the everyday use of digital tech (by this I mean all this shit: 'metaverse', cryptocurrencies, W3, etc) it can get harder and harder to remember or have some vision into this old way of things - this way of the Internet before commerce, surveillance and social capital (all the reflections of state & capital, really) were the prominent forces in digitality.*

I say all that, but I certainly wasn't there either. I was born in the mid-80s, but I feel this was a time when the mainstream hadn't yet crossed over that first digital horizon, and possibilities were still open. I don't mean to dwell on the nostalgia of the thing so much as the reality of it: that Internet I discovered in the 90s was a cyberspace of anonymity, non-commercial interaction, education, information. In a world of other social problems as well, it also offered an opening to connect with people outside of your own home at a time when you may have had limited agency to do that in other ways (I mean as a kid or a young adult). What it wasn't: this shit-heap of exploitation via data extraction, surveillance, and other tech-bro fantasies. I watch those first few mins of that Zuckerberg metaverse intro video and I think a million things: firstly, how it's not going to play out quite like that (it never does), secondly, how inept an imagination do you have to have to extend *that* vision into the future? How little integrity, how little artistry or creativity, to have that much access to wealth and posit *that vision* as *the vision* for the world? It's embarassing and basic; the reduction of the human to the consumer-subject and the harvestable data-subject. With even just a tiny ounce more originality and integrity you could conjur a much more simple vision of a non-commercial, non-exploitative, re-cycle/re-purpose, lightweight solar-punk tech-future vibe (and that's not even the only way I'd want to reframe how we should be thinking about tech, so much as just the surface of an alternative easy vision). But thirdly, I also can't help but see how that actually *could* be a reality, for some, in a world of changing climates, where the super-rich are kept all safe and cool and separate, and able to wander freely in their digital farmville, choosing their outfits from high-energy-consuming servers streaming the reality of their desires to them, while the rest of the world is in turmoil.

This is a rant. And there are others out there who are better at articulating this all presenting a stronger critique, and in doing things about it through exploring alternative developements. But I just wanted to take a moment to express, really, my sorrow at the whole thing. Despite the promise and positivity of alternative media, non-commercial indie-tech and all the great things we're seeing in geminispace and no doubt elsewhere in the indie communities, and the attempt to foster caring communities, the fact remains that the prevailing application of technologies in digitality at the moment is harmful, *exponentially* harmful through it's souped-up, energy intensive always-streaming state of extraction. And this is something to be, quite simply, upset about; to be sad about.

I'm bummed out not only that the Internet we encounter isn't the one that matches the possibilities of those earlier visions, those earlier non-commercial, non-surveillance, sketches, but that I also can't quite figure what the solution of re-routing of what it has become *should* be. It's heartening that it can take such a small number of people to easily foster an independent community (I'm talking here solderpunk and the other gemini devs who have made this place possible for simple writers like myself), but the fact remains that the mass of people are swirling through that proto-metaverse of streaming media and the *always-on* crypto-toxic-waste of energy-intensive mainstream digitality - and I can't figure out how that could or should be re-wired.

~ flow

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*That said, a sobering pre-Internet read on some of the original 'tech bros' and their work to compete in the development of computer hardware is Tracey Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine[2]

the internet was a mistake (kerbaros)

The Soul of a New Machine (wikipedia entry)

Tags: #digitality