Christopher Peterka - Your Choice

If 90% of web traffic flows through 0.1% of all websites, is that a problem? When everything works so well? Because that’s part of this reality: things work astonishingly well. The toaster you ordered yesterday does arrive today. The car you book on your phone in Shanghai does turn up, right where and when you expect it to. The flat in which you’re going to stay in New York is really there and ready for you, and it’s lovely. The meal you order in South Ealing from a Sri Lankan restaurant: it arrives and it’s delicious. Always using the same three simple apps. Anywhere in the world. So is there a problem? And is it my problem? Am I bothered by this dominance of a few genuinely well organised, professionally run set-ups, or does it just not really matter to me? Why would it? Why would it not?

Can there be a free, diverse, multifaceted, democratic Internet? And if the Internet is where we habitually, necessarily, spend our life, can there still be any such thing as a democratic society?

Should there be? And again, why?

Gutenberg made it possible for Martin Luther to put forward his radically different view of God and the Church to hundreds of thousands of people, and in the same sweeping development, ideas, knowledge, and wisdom were allowed to spread. And, yes, also misinformation, dogma, and propaganda: we do well to remind ourselves of this, always. But the central motion was one of power and control away from the few to the many.

Zuckerberg can access 2.7 billion heads a month. That’s minds, hearts, emotions, expressions, intentions, worries, and joys. And that’s just Facebook and its subsidiaries, such as WhatsApp and Instagram. Similar numbers hold true for Tencent with QQ. So we have reason to ask not only who is Zuckerberg, and what are his ambitions—will he run for president before long, for example?—but also, who is behind him; who are the ten, twelve most influential people with at Facebook, and elsewhere on the Internet? Who is in control of Weibo and WeChat?

If we are slaves to our digital devices, then who are the masters behind those devices and the software that runs on them?

To whom are we addicted?

It matters, because we’re talking about you and us as human beings. And that’s what we are going to do in this book: ask these questions, and also try to find some answers, now, in this reality that we’re in, about what makes us human.

ORIENTATION STATEMENTS

1.1

›We live in a new Renaissance.‹

Plot this value on: A, B, G.

1.2

›More than ever before, technological networks allow us to find fantastic solutions to urgent problems.‹

Plot this value on: D, E, F.

1.3

›Until now, we’ve been using the Internet too much for our own enslavement.‹

Plot this value on: A, B, F.

1.4

›We dramatically underestimate the value of information.‹

Plot this value on: B, C, G.

EXERCISE FOR CHANGE

Draw yourself in the year 2045 on a piece of paper.

If you want to share your drawing, you can do so here: https://twitter.com/C_Peterka

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