It may be unwise to proclaim that there is such a golden age at all pertaining to the Internet, even more to say that it has ended and the future is lost thanks to our immaturity. Immanuel Kant answers the question, “What is enlightenment”?, “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity”, in An Answer to the Question:What is Enlightenment?1784. To make this proclamation I must establish that there was such a Golden Age for the Internet and that the current and future path is leading to a degradation of the Internet as a fundamental whole due to “self imposed immaturity” by the user (Kant).
The Internet is a computer network established to provide services such as e-mail, chat and information from computers in education institutions, and government agencies, it is accessible to the general public via links, it is a “network of networks” (Wikipedia: Internet). In theory and in its early stages it provided unprecedented collaboration continentally in America and eventually internationally as the network gained more networks, silly it may sound but that is the core structure behind the Internet (ISOC: Brief History). As consumers, we did not have access to the Internet as it was for its first 20 years, until the emergence of the World Wide Web in the 1990s (Wikipedia: World Wide Web), we missed out (Lovink). The golden age of the internet is not a very concrete phase, there are several phases that can be considered for it; the Dotcom Boom or the dot-com bubble (Wikipedia: dot-co bubble) or the current Web 2.0 phase (O’Reilly, Tim) are two examples. The concept term ideology Web 2.0 has many disagreements as to what it means but it is fine to say that where as the dot-com bubble was a heavily commercialized phase, the Web 2.0 phase is an application centric era, that started around 2004 few years after the dot-com burst of 2001. But neither are an intellectual golden age, there is no enlightenment other than commercialization and application integration that leads to eventual commercialization. It should be noted that Wikipedia is one of the only web giants that is not commercialized, instead it has become a commodity that can not be bought or sold that is free (Sidener). I have noted Wikipedia so there would not be a long discussion about its presence as a source of enlightenment hence for the purposes of this paper Wikipedia is an anomaly.
The commercialization of the Internet started early as “dozens of vendors were incorporating TCP/IP into their products because they saw buyers for that approach to networking” in the early 1980s. (ISOC: Brief History) For all purposes this was the end of the Golden Age if there was one, it has become our “nature, [we are] fond of this sate and for the time being [are] incapable of using [our own] understanding” (Kant). Nevertheless its not true to say that there is a direct correlation between commercialization and immaturity in internet application platforms such as applications on the World Wide Web. Though an example application, the Twitter website, became a spam filled medium before it even attempted to become a profit driven venture (Pontin). The main problem with commercialization is the endeavor of customer satisfaction, the customer in this case is docile and immature. It is not the Internet’s fault, like the movie and music industry, the content becomes a bargaining tool for selling a product leading to users that are “harnessed” to the Internet. Kant was more positive, according to him the “public can attain enlightenment slowly” yet in the past 30 years the Internet has become a leader of monopolies and media conglomerates all concentrated in maximum profits. If there is such a stage where Internet applications will enable users to strive for enlightenment, that stage is not now, as many perceive it to be. (Sterling)
Unlike Kant, I am not optimistic about current Internet technologies. The massive globalization of popular applications such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other social media has not yielded equal or partial collaboration or other per se enlightenment activities. Everything worthy of consideration is too minor compared to the swarms of Internet users too docile to pause their unsatisfying hunger for degenerate entertainment. The user is becoming a producer, I am not objecting that, Internet technologies are allowing the user to produce self authored content (OECD) but this does not mean that the content is exemplary.
The current “guardians”, the Internet moguls, who have like in the past, “taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous” (Kant). The guardians now tell us to “argue as much as you want and about what you want”, they don’t even say “obey”. They provide us with tools to argue like video and image publishing, comment sections, easy to create blogs, and tools to share our creations and findings (Wikipedia: user-generated content) but the users continue to be materialistic. Following the rules of consumerism most of these tools are being used to review, showcase, promote products; for example endless customer review videos on YouTube and other video websites, Kant did not have this problem.
It is wrong to label all Internet users docile and unable to produce productive content but the phase of user creation as an enlightenment is ending. The technologies that once required formal education to use, such as early computers, have become oversimplified, due to customer demand. Their oversimplification has allowed illiterate users to gain access to once an exclusive environment. Cheap access points to the Internet have enticed global audiences to join the racket; web applications such as Facebook Twitter YouTube all have mobile versions allowing for cheap instantaneous access. (Giridharadas)
Facebook being so massive is an easy target, its faults are not its own, but of its users. As a platform, Facebook is great for communication and other social activities creating a semi virtual public space. However Facebook users participate in time wasting
“fun” activities ignoring the noble uses that Facebook offers. Users create and join all types of groups, such as relief, petition, political, education but they do not engage in these groups. Facebook users follow peers as they are invited to join and participate endless supply of groups and pages all with causes with or without validity and sanity, yet hardly any of the joined users participate in a productive manner (Davies). Most of the participation on Facebook is done in few arbitrary words such as “lol”. Unlike other Internet applications which provide anonymity such as 4Chan, where tasteless behavior by users is the norm, (Bilton) Facebook’s users are individually identified hence you would think they would use caution when participating, on the contrary Facebook users not only provide mostly factual information about themselves (Bower) but they also provide pictures and such where in many cases are incriminating (Perez).
Why would Facebook users participate in productive activities ? Why would any user? Its not the question of the user, its the provider. Facebook like other applications facilitates the user with an environment honed for “fun” (Nakamura). In such an environment meaningful engagement or collaboration is harder if not impossible. Facebook can not stop user generated content that is not worthy, its welfare is dependent on user generated content regardless of the contents value. Several decades ago such freedom, of speech would have been a blessing but the past generations did not envision the inelegant behavior of the users.
Kant predicted that the ways “for men to proceed freely in this direction [were establishing] and that the obstacles to general enlightenment” were diminishing, this said the obstacles have diminished greatly in the last 300 years and many had hoped that the Internet would be the safe heaven for intellectual prosperity. The Internet was and is such a place, a place for public discussion and interaction, only very few use it such. The user has imposed on her/him self an incapability for enlightenment and unfortunately the Internet services are indirectly aiding to this self imposed immaturity.
Fundamental functionalities of the internet such as direct networking have been replaced by services that provide a type of networking but with constrain and control. Facebook and Twitter are applications that adhere to the concept of networking, communication between users, but they also force the user to follow their rules and regulations. Where as early Internet users where free to network without constraint, they are now urged to use these applications, devoting their allegiance to virtual communities that are or will eventually be controlled and influenced by mega conglomerates. Facebook is already influenced by Microsoft (Ante) through advertisement that Microsoft provides on all Facebook pages. Once again the user falls under influence of a commercial giant, in this case Microsoft. Means in theory Facebook does not have to provide tools that help or support public discussion or a public sphere, it only needs to convince users to stay on its pages longer hence look at more advertisement. Luckily users are willing to spend “over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook” (Facebook Statistics) without any benevolent propositions from Facebook.
Its not all bad, there are internet applications that attempt to facilitate niche communities with engaging and meaningful collaborations; for example Open Source communities like WordPress or Canonical’s Launchpad. Though alternatives are present the overwhelming choice of Internet users is to engage mindlessly browsing on YouTube Facebook Twitter and such (Alexa.com). So its safe to say the user chooses to be immature, even when given the choice of an alternative activity, hence this is why I say the Age of Immaturity has began. The Internet is doomed not because of the lack of compelling applications that are engaging and supportive of collaboration but of the users that are lacking the assertion to choose to engage and collaborate.
Bibliography
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