Could toppling dictatorships be as easy as flying a balloon or lofting a satellite? Some of the proponents of schemes to provide global wireless internet from the skies seem to think so.
After all, we have seen the effect that a brief wave of uncontrolled internet access had in the Arab Spring. Imagine how much more lasting and eventful the effects of an internet largely outside of the control of governments who seek to censor it could be. These schemes are nearing reality, as indicated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX seeking consent last week to put 4425 base stations into orbit.
As societies in the West have discovered in recent years, however, unfettered internet access doesn’t just mean giving voice to the voiceless and a more diverse array of philosophies in the marketplace of ideas. It also means a cacophony of voices clamouring for attention by being louder or more outrageous than the next, a and division, and the ability to rapidly spread , images and videos that inflame the fury of the electorate.
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It turns out that, rather than being a force for unifying people, the internet in democratic societies has often been a tool for solidifying biases and deepening ideological conflicts. Giving voice to the voiceless can mean amplifying fringe conspiracy theories as well as providing community to shunned minorities.
The internet makes it comparatively easy to find an abundance of like-minded allies, so much so that it quickly becomes possible to only encounter opinions that agree with one’s own world view – a process some have begun to call .
Digital maladies
The various digital maladies afflicting netizens, from spam to fraud to malware, would find fertile ground in newly empowered users of a global internet. Many of these threats have been shaped over the years by a Darwinian environment of attack and counter-attack as they seek to evade and overcome the just-as-rapidly evolving spam blockers, antivirus packages and ad barriers. It’s easy to imagine the chaos that would reign in regions with sudden access to the internet but little or no online security measures, in particular the impact of millions of relatively unprotected new computers for distributed denial of service attacks.
None of this means we should halt plans to make internet access available across the planet through low-cost wireless technologies and microsatellites.
It will offer powerful tools for cooperation and organisation. Access to uncensored sources of information – even if flawed – will allow millions of people opportunities to see the world from entirely new perspectives.
But advocates for unleashing the internet everywhere need to temper their desires with a recognition that this could also result in political disruption, technical chaos and massive culture shock.
Not all of the outcomes will be happy ones, and more than a few of the groups and ideologies empowered by this will be opposed to the principles of free information access and global enrichment underlying these proposals.
Truly global internet access will, in time, be a very good thing and should be encouraged. But we must be clear-eyed as to the nearer-term consequences and opportunities for chaos and mischief that it will mean. As the last few years have amply demonstrated, the internet can be a powerful medium of disharmony.
