Perhaps the optimistic, utopian visions of the early internet were only ever truly accessible to a tiny core of hyper-connected, mostly wealthy, mostly white, mostly men.
But in 2017, any semblance of a wide-eyed innocent web was swept away. Nazis on twitter, fake news on Facebook, as well as holocaust denial and conspiracy theories at the top of Google search results 鈥� these are becoming familiar sights.
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It can be confusing that tech giants can develop self-driving cars, facial recognition, and maps of the entire planet but can鈥檛 make a dent in online abuse and misinformation. In fact, many of these problems are solvable 鈥� some are even solved.
Twitter successfully blocks nazi hate speech in Germany to comply with local laws (victims of targeted abuse often choose it as their location to get some respite). But it chooses not to do so elsewhere. Why?
Attention economy
The answer emerges from increasingly loud critiques of the fundamental principles on which the tools that dominate our web experience are built. Web services fund themselves by selling our attention to advertisers. In this 鈥漚ttention economy鈥�, web services succeed by grabbing and holding our interest (often easier to do with an argument or fake news that seems to confirm our darkest prejudices than with high quality content). And they spy on us as we browse, tweaking content and services to be ever more addictive. We no longer simply buy products; in 鈥淪urveillance capitalism鈥� data about us is the product.
Former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya described 鈥渢remendous guilt鈥� at the impact of Facebook on civil society, and claims it and other platforms are 鈥溾��. Former Google product manager Tristan Harris says social media platforms are 鈥溾��.
At a talk introducing his 2017 book Dawn of the New Everything: A journey through virtual reality, Jaron Lanier posited that the very idealism of internet pioneers caused our current crisis. Early users got accustomed to free, openly developed and shared services, so as the web grew and spread, it was difficult to charge for products.
Instead, platforms began to collect data on their users to improve targeted advertising. Reliance on advertising made it critical to capture and hold attention. Addictive design, heated arguments, shallow clickbait news 鈥� these are not bugs but features of a web powered by the attention economy.
Pinpointing the problem
Alternatives are emerging. exhibition at London鈥檚 Gasworks in December offered inroads to understanding our current mess, and potential routes out. On the wall are a number of critical definitions of the internet in web-safe font, for example:
鈥�1. An architecture or structure of power coextensive with the space of the social鈥�
Blas鈥檚 pieces are not subtle. If the work can feel like an introductory text, it is one we urgently need. Sentences like the above give us the tools to articulate a problem that arose so quickly we struggle to describe it.
How is it that our relationships, our work, our thoughts can be so distorted by tools that provide us with convenient services for free? Because by shaping our social behaviours they inculcate us with their makers鈥� underlying philosophies: that attention is a commodity, that relationships are data points, not long, awkward, wonderful ropes which tie us together through continuity of presence and care.
Digital ritual
Beside the wall boards are videos recorded from computer screens; social media posts are imported into photoshop and literally erased or rendered transparent. A book of radical economic theory is brutally hacked and plagiarised; find-and-replace 鈥渃apitalism鈥� with 鈥渋nternet鈥�. A bastardised quotation appears repeatedly: 鈥淚t is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of the internet.鈥�
It is simple, it is repetitive, but it feels vital.
In another room, the message distorts. Blas鈥檚 film begins with philosopher Ayn Rand extolling her familiar principles of self-interest: 鈥淚t is only with capitalism that we can truly exist as free individuals.鈥� Projected in a room stamped with mysterious black on black glyphs and crystal balls glowing with abstracted circuitry, the message takes on ritualistic bent. These are occult words of power; promising us freedom, while catching us in a mysterious trap.
After Rand comes an AI prophet: a silver body on a neon landscape, describing the collapse of the neo-liberal superstate. She abruptly ends and begins to dance. It is, frankly, bizarre: alien and incomprehensible, uncomfortable, impenetrable. But perhaps a new vision of the kind we need is exactly that difficult to imagine.
Internet 2.0
Other groups are waking up to the need for radical new internets in more practical ways. I was delighted to take part in early development of the think tank Doteveryone鈥檚 new project , which hopes to engage a broader set of voices and visions in shaping a diverse and inclusive internet. The European Commission is funding research into a Next Generation Internet that reflects human and societal values. These projects suggest concerns are giving way to action.
At the time of writing, news had just broken that the US鈥檚 Federal Communications Commission had voted to end net neutrality. This is a move that many say will fundamentally change how the internet works, benefiting monopolies and making the kind of innovation and radical change we desperately need more difficult.
Clearly, the next year will be a critical period for shaping the future of the internet and society.
ran at Gasworks, London, to 10 December. It shows at , New York from 27 January to 7 April 2018, and at , Eindhoven from May to July 2018
