The Cyberutopian (2014)

In the book "Principles" by Ray Dalio, he argues that when someone criticizes you or opposes your opinion, you should at least briefly consider the possibility that they are completely right and you are completely wrong.

Well, I may be misquoting him, but I remember getting the idea from the book, and I now find it hugely helpful to challenge myself like this when I find my opinion is in conflict with another person's. Working from "Am I wrong?" breaks down a of the ego barriers that are erected when you instead begin by defending a position you already hold.

I think I lost most hope a while after the Snowden leaks, when I realised that nothing substantial was really being changed or put into place to fix these things aside from what I observed to be token gestures.

I remember growing up on the internet ~1995-2010 and feeling truly free the whole time I was connected. Now I just feel trapped and monitored in a way that I don't know how to handle anymore.

Without sounding to crazy, basically anything internet connected I use these days appears to be designed to circumvent my privacy (to sell me shit) or to curtail my freedoms (government surveillance) and getting around those things is a game of cat-and-mouse and constantly requires my attention.

Depends on the degree of optimism, but in all I think the positives of the Internet vastly outweigh the negatives, and very much look forward to future developments. I would not trade instant audio/video/text communication with anyone across the globe, instant access to information (educational or otherwise), programs and media, and the ability to conduct fast-paced, global business from any location.

I very much look forward to future developments, which I think will come from VR & AR. Those will enable true face-to-face communication without the awkwardness of videochat, and allow people to collaborate in the same virtual environment as if they were in the same room, and that will be closer to the hyper-connectivity of cyberutopianism.

However I don't believe in the idea that a medium can dramatically change human nature for better or for worse.

It's more like I believe that the internet is becoming too much a cyberutopia in the sense of Thomas More. He stated that women had to be spanked to make it work. Turns out that men also have to be nudged into the right direction. If you look at facebook, google and apple, what else are they doing but creating an utopia for everybody? It's just not the men but the algorithms who do the spanking.

That said, it all comes down to discipline. There are people who don't need the nudging, who can follow protocols by their own choice. The internet allows them to find each other. That won't transform the world, but the internet will allow them to live their own utopia without bothering everybody else.

I personally don't and I never understood the argument that underpinned this idea of connectvitiy that the article hints at.

Hyper-connectivity between each and everyone to me never made sense, because it's a fundamental recipe for conflict. The notion that everyone gets along and is equal and that we just need to let everyone talk to each other because rational people always change their mind and come to conensus is a pie in the sky fantasy. People don't work like this. Some people should just not be in the same room because they'll hit each other on the head after five minutes of interaction.

That the constantly over-stimulated internet where people who fundamentally don't get along get to talk to each other leads to false realities, noise, and argument for argument sake always seemed extremely obvious to me.

The Internet looked like it had the potential to become a cyber utopia. Then the money and the regulators moved in. Now it looks like the Internet has just become, or will soon be, the next cable TV.