The Internet

It is hard to really appreciate the significance of an era in which one lives. The nuclear, space and computer ages are past and we are now in the internet age. Although closely linked to computers the internet is having a profoundly different effect on society than the advances brought on by computing. Computing gave humanity the power to store, manipulate and replicate vast quantities of data, upping the efficiency by which many jobs were done. The internet on the other hand, while facilitated by computers, has levied it's advances on humanity in the spheres of communication and knowledge. The most relevant era in human history that one can compare the internet age to is the development of the printing press, other similar comparable advances would include, in reverse chronological order; paper, written language and spoken language.

In times of change few people are happy, some fear the changes for various reasons while others anticipating the changes are impatient with the progress. This will help to confuse the society experiencing the changes as optimistic predictions fail to happen accompanied by a chorus of criticism. The internet started to really take-off in within my life, when I first heard the term used and inquired as to what it was I can remember being very unsatisfied with the answer, that I hadn't really understood, as I was expecting a thing that existed in a place. That was the early nineties, since then I have come to spend most of my waking hours within arms reach of the world wide web. In historic terms going from not knowing about a thing to spending a majority of time using it within the space of twenty years is incredibly fast, yet to me it was gradual and unnoticed.

Only very recently did it occur to me how significant the internet really is despite it having been right under my nose. As such I have come to write this article not to impart any relevant opinions or to provide any great insight but to simply express some of my shock at having been blind to such a powerful force of social change. The web is here to stay, as younger generations who have grown up with the net replace the older ones the internet is sure to become more engrained within society. It is wise therefore to consider some of the possible ramifications of this and, as ever, make some suggestions as to how the internet may be put to good use.

Before we move on to predictions it might be reasonable, if not obvious and redundant, to justify why I deem the internet to be of comparable significance to some of the previously mentioned human advances. The internet makes no new things possible, but then neither did language, animals with no developed languages are still able to communicate. Each new development provides the opportunity to communicate more accurately, quickly, durably, replicable, precisely, conveniently, widely and/or efficiently. The comparison of the significance of the internet against the others should therefore be between these aspects.

The internet allows for instantaneous communication, which admittedly the telephone provided before hand, the relevant differences between the telephone and the internet is the massive interlinking and passive nature of the latter. A phone call requires the participants to engage simultaneously in the event, where as the internet allows information to be presented for others to view at their leisure. The internet passively contains information which may be called upon as required/desired by individuals, the author is not required to present the information once it has been put on the internet. Prior to the internet and telephone communication was as fast as humans could physically travel themselves making it incredibly inconvenient.

The spoken word is as durable as memory, writing allowed humanity to increase the durability of the spoken word to that of whatever material was written upon. Largely this is plenty durable enough for purpose although there are some arguments to say that storing data on “the internet” will be more durable than a granite carving. This has more to do with the replicability of data compared to something like a book. Constructing a book requires time and resources, copy pasting something basically doesn't. The printing press enhanced mainly the replicability aspect of communications yet it had one of the most significant impacts of any invention upon humanity. The Renaissance was heavily fuelled by the printing press and the more widespread reading of books that the printing press allowed.

The internet, of all the methods of communication, provides the best or equal best accuracy, speed, durability, replicability, precision, convenience, efficiency and coverage. Humanity will need to transcend the use of language before we many be able to improve our ability to communicate much beyond the internet. Trying to provide a quantifiable measure as to the level of improvement of the internet compared to writing, speech, paper, the telephone and the printing press would be tenuous and imprecise. As I cannot quantify it, the assertion that the internet comes top in every category I can think to name, that would constitute an improvement to communication, is my justification of why the internet is so important.

Something is important in historic terms if it has a significant social impact, either it changes public opinions or causes the physical workings of society to shift. Examples of such events are the enlightenment and the industrial revolution respectively. Usually an event will cause changes to all aspects of society with most being very minor and just one or a few major alterations. The internet is set to cause a number of significant changes in all different spheres of society. To gloss over a few quickly we can look and see how many people attributed the largely successful and peaceful revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt to the internet. Impractical legal requirements like the recent super-injunctions were washed aside by the safety in numbers aspect of the internet. We can see how pressure from from popular internet forums (including the social networking sites) has caused enough advertising contracts to be pulled from the News of the World for it to be discontinued. It used to be the case that you had to infer public opinion from what the papers said and the views of a very small cross section of people, those being the ones encountered through the course of your life. The internet allows for the public to to provide enough individual opinions so that you are able to reasonable quickly gauge what the majority feeling is. Those industries where peoples opinions matter (which is all industries as far as I am concerned) would be wise to look into ways of using the internet to find ways of improving their operations.

The political power of the public has clearly been increased as the ability to reach a national or global consensus on an issue has been made easier in a number of ways. Essentially it is a combination of the vast number of people communicating with each other thus creating an exponentially greater number of communication links, the speed at which this communication occurs and the fact that geographic location has no impact on the communications. Because politicians know a public opinion formed with the use of the internet will be more representative and accurate of the population than the feedback they would get from the meetings they have in day to day life they are more liable to act upon them, hence the increased political power of the individual within democracies. The truth is quite easy to sniff out from the excuses, cover ups, distractions, linguistic tricks, slights of mind, boasts and blags. The advantage of free speech and a lot of traffic is that the truth will be spotted and spread like wildfire increasing the knowledge and freedoms of people. A secondary advantage to the free speech and lots of traffic is that in order to locate the truth for ones self you must approach new facts with cation and think about them. In school or on the television or in a book or paper we are somewhat more trusting of facts and, worryingly, opinions than we are from the internet. Questioning things and thinking about them has the effect of educating the populous and enhancing their intellectual prowess.

Although I hope for a second Renaissance that is ushered in by the internet age it is by no means assured, and even if it were there is nothing to say it will manifest in similar ways. It is conceivable that things will start to get lost in cyberspace. The sheer volume of data, opinions and so forth will obscure the most poignant and accurate from the larger audiences. This is not just the fault of the internet but also the result of a population boom since the first Renaissance. I do not know how to increase the chances of good things arising from the internet, all I am sure of is that the internet has a great deal of potential for social good along with a few minor areas of concern. Few people are unaware of the usefulness of the internet presently but we are most interested in what the internet may be able to do for us now and not what it may do for humanity over the next few hundred years. By being mindful of what changes may come about we are in the best position to maximise the advantages of the internet while avoiding any exacerbations of the problematic areas.

My first and only real prediction for now is regarding commercial areas of towns and cities – the CBDs, which in the opulent peak of the capitalist consumer boom have come to contain a very similar mix of shops, brands and products. The town I grew up in and the town I live in now are of similar size, over the last ten years they have had an uncanny resemblance to each other despite reasonably significant geographic and cultural differences. Over the last couple of years the resemblance they share is that of a thinning of certain shops. The feedback mechanism a free market capitalism has to equilibrate is that of the financial crash, it is not a mistake or something we can blame on groups or individuals, it is the natural cyclic progress of speculative money supply. The crash helps to cull the industries that are outmoded and unsustainable. My argument is therefore that exterior non-economic factors are the primary cause of the loss of many companies we are used to seeing in our high streets. The financial climate gave these businesses the final push over the edge but such pushes are inevitable under our economic systems, those companies may have survived if other non-economic changes were not also under way.

Clearly this non-economic factor, given the subject matter of the essay, is the internet in a lot of cases. For certain types of goods it is really not important to the consumer to be able to hold and inspect the product prior to purchase. Not having to pay high CBD rents or employ the number of staff required to operate many small shops means that the cost of such goods to the consumer can be significantly reduced if sold via the internet. The best examples of these goods are CDs DVDs and books where the consumer knows exactly what to expect from the product. As expected therefore, with the rise of internet companies who sell books, DVDs and CDs, the specialist shops who sold these products before the internet have had one of the hardest times in the current weak economy.

While CDs, books and DVDs may be some of the best example of products that are being purchased more and more online than from CBD retail outlets, and therefore also example of the kinds companies finding it hardest at the moment, the reach of the internet extends further and will likely alter our CBDs more as time elapses. Some of the various other markets that I deem to offer little as a retail outlet over an internet counterpart are; gambling, travel agencies, electrical equipment including computing accessories and so forth. Other sectors are able to transfer aspects of their service online such as estate agents, large super markets, banks etc. Essentially the only advantages physical shops have over purchases via the internet are the speed at which one can get the required item, the ability to inspect/try/feel/wear the product prior to purchase (which is important for many foodstuffs and clothes) or the human interaction, weather it be in the form of specialist advice or a specialist service such as a bike shop that also does repairs and servicing. Specialist advice and peer review is becoming more widespread and available online thus further reducing the need of a specialist provided by the retailer. People trust their own research more than possibly biased advice from a specialist provided by a retailer which is not an unreasonable position to hold.

I predict that as the use of the internet becomes more integrated throughout society that our CBDs will look rather different in a way that is probably for the best. As the need of certain kinds of shop diminish rents will decrease and space will increase thus allowing for more restaurants, bars, interesting shops and specialist service based shops to take their place. This is a natural progression as internet shopping is a more efficient means of distributing goods and thus a more advantageous thing to do for society. A CBD will come to be more and more a place of leisure. This in turn will also reduce the strain on such areas in terms of how many people they service and allow largely populated areas to operate more smoothly. The internet will decentralize commerce to an extent, indeed it may be one of the few modern social factors that slows the flow of population into urban areas.

I wish to end on a tangential utopian note regarding a new kind of theft that has arisen mostly alongside the internet. Copyright issues have existed for a while but are a far greater threat now that computing and the internet are so widespread. The issue is that it is very easy to replicate and use data that another's labours have gone into producing. Ethically such thefts feel different from thefts of physical objects, not because it is stolen labour and not stolen goods, but because after the theft the victim is in exactly the same position, they still have all of the things they previously did. I personally believe that people should be rewarded for their labours even if they may be used/consumed and enjoyed by others without removing that possibility from the “owner”, I also believe that the record companies have a negative monopolistic effect on the music industry. As producing and promoting music requires reasonable amounts of capital, and required more capital for production prior to the advent of digital formats, the record companies are able to offer contracts that are significantly in their advantage. That in turn allows record companies to ensure that success in the music industry without the backing of a record company is really hard. Copyright laws protect record companies interests and allow them to maintain control of the industry but without the laws there would be no financial incentive for people to create music. This applies to other industries that fall under the arts and culture umbrella but the negative aspects of capital based monopolistic control are most pronounced in the music industry.

Ideally therefore we would operate within a system that allowed the control of the music industry to be located in public opinion, while still providing the musicians a financial means to support themselves. My vision to solve this issue may be difficult to implement for many reasons, inclusive of objections from record companies. Essentially I think that a state based digital library would offer the best of all worlds. This library would offer citizens the ability to freely download films, series, music, books and potentially other goods that can be digitally replicated easily. The state would then offer the individuals or owners of the rights a flat royalty fee per instance downloaded. These royalties are funded by taxes but would need to be lower than they presently are to not cripple the state. The fact that it would be free means more people will obtain the media than they would if required to pay and those that would have otherwise acquired without making a payment would do so legitimately. This increased demand would allow a reduction in royalties needed to sustain artists and make such a system more financially practicable, sadly though the factors to facilitate the system are only created by the system thus creating a catch 22 scenario. The media downloaded would need to be free to remove the incentive to obtain pirate copies, the same is similarly true if all titles are not made available. Self production and promotion would be far easier as distribution via the digital library would also be offered to all artists for free and this would reduce the strangle hold the capital owners have on the industry. It has never really been the fear of the major record labels that people will pirate music online, it is their fear that artists will be empowered to bypass them altogether via the use of the internet.

This idea is quirky and logistically awkward to implement yet it is a way the internet may be utilized as a positive social force, which has been the underlying theme of this somewhat patchwork essay. The main points of relevance regarding the internet as a positive social force are that is is one of, if not the most, significant improvements ever made to communication and that it is here to stay. It will have effects that are political, economical and social, from improving democracies to altering human geography. The internet is still in it's infancy and has much untapped potential for both good and bad. We need to be aware of it's significance so we may find ways to promote the good and avoid the bad.