What If We Were Wrong About the Internet?

Are you including Fox News or SkyTV in this statement?

I am not including Fox News, or for that matter RT. Good point.

I’m not sure why you consider Sky News to be (substantially) biased, perhaps you could elaborate?

If a Civ game was real life, the Internet ‘national wonder’ would increase war weariness to such an extent that wars would become pretty much impossible.

No matter what ideology people follow(progressive or conservative) or what type of government they use(democracy or authoritarianism), easy access to the Internet makes wars extremely unlikely to be declared. No amount of propaganda, trolling or fake news can convince a population with Internet access that a large scale war is justified.

The best thing about the Internet is its effect on the pursuit of world peace. I would go as far as upgrading the old ‘Democracies don’t go to war’ to ‘Countries with easy Internet access don’t go to war’.

I want to agree with you, but then I read about the President talking about pushing the button and I think you’re wrong. One bad egg can honestly spoil the whole bunch.

I mean nuclear weapons did that before the internet did.

People are very willing to start big wars. Look at, well the entire GOP list of people running last time in the debates. Nearly all of them were talking about pissing off Russia and possibly starting a shooting war.

Or look at Russia who had no problem annexing part of their neighbor. Russians have internet, it didn’t slow Putin down at all.

I seem to remember a democratic country with easy access to the Internet getting into a few wars starting from 2001 and forward.

It might make it harder to have a war being popular, but it’s no impediment to starting one…

Putin, despite his control of all branches of govt. and 80% approval ratings did not go for the all out “open” war option like he did in Georgia. Doing so would have put a much larger chunk of Ukraine in his hands but it would have also resulted in more casualties and a surge of information impossible to contain even in the heavily controlled Russian internet.

As for 2001, the Internet was still in its infancy. If Trump starts a war now, everyone, from Congress to Breitbart to the NYTimes would be on him relentlessly, it would be a political suicide.

If anything, the internet has made it easier to spread the message of, unhappy with life, don’t like what you got, want more, struggling and angry… here, let me point out a target for why you feel this way complete with pictures!

The internet wasn’t really in it’s “infancy” in 2001. But if we’re talking about dumb wars then Iraq is a much better example than Afghanistan. That blunder’s not quite 15 years old; you can read all about it in the archives of this very forum!

The belief that a Republican Congress would destroy a Republican President over a dumb war doesn’t jive with my memories of the early 21st century.

The Internet reached adulthood with the rise of fibre optic, social media and smart phones. Prior to that, it was not the main source of information for most, except perhaps the young. The Republicans (and Democrats) who supported the Iraq war did so because they knew the reaction of the voters would be limited. They would see a footage here n there from FoxNews/CNN, they would hear commentators drone on about the same talking points but ultimately they would not care much about what’s happening in a desert on the other side of the world. It’s also relevant that young people, who were well connected to the internet back then, were also the most vigurous group to oppose the war.

Things are different now. Even the racists n xenophobes who scream about building walls and kicking people out do not support any form of armed conflict. And this is not happening only in the US, it’s happening in Europe, In India, even China. The internet put the horrors and costs of war in everyone’s pocket so it’s not surprising that fewer and fewer would support it.

The Internet isn’t going to get better because it is pull based. It will always be easier to insulate oneself from ‘upsetting’ news/opinions/facts as every bit of it has to be pulled in by the user. Even for social media like Twitter where there is a push component, the block button is only one click away.

My point being, if somebody chooses to set up an information bubble there is nothing the Internet’s social media can do to pull one out. Only real life events can do that and even that is a tenuous proposition at times.

Bubbles can’t fully isolate people and ideas, there are always cracks in them through which information passes sooner or later. If that hadn’t happened, Moore would have won by 50 points in Alabama.

Sure, there are always cracks. Push based social media still works until acted upon and if the deluge is large enough it cannot be ignored.

Still, wasn’t the Moore loss mostly thanks to a now-voting democrat base rather than a flipping republican one?

ISIS and Al Qaeda also did/do a lot of recruitment using the Internet, IIRC.

Yep… it’s a modern retelling of “You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.” But the idea that you can fool some of them all of the time is equally true, as evidenced by Fox News’ business model ;)

What was it Twain supposedly said? Something about easier to fool someone than to convince them they’ve been fooled?

This thread got me thinking, then I partway stumbled across this podcast with Cory Doctorow:

https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/10/21/69-cory-doctorow-on-technology-monopoly-and-the-future-of-the-internet/

I found it to be a pretty good listen. His notes about epistemology are spot on, to me.

I’m highly unlikely to listen to a podcast. Would you (or anyone else) be willing to summarize his points in written form? I admit to being somewhat curious, but not curious enough to listen.

I wanted to do this earlier but didn’t have time; he flips around a bunch of different topics at a rather rapid pace (as the host Dr. Carrol notes ahead of time).

Among other things he is looking at how anti competitive practices among tech oligarchies has given rise (or at least “credence”) to things like the anti vax movement, ufologists, climate change denial, et cetera. He isn’t belligerent toward the aforementioned as much as bemused/alarmed. He references everything from the Reagan administration to post-WW2 colonialism. He argues that concentrated wealth and power has given private corporations in the tech industry state-like authority when it comes to policing their users. This in turn erodes confidence in “processes” in favor of confidence in individuals (whether they are right or not; e.g. Trump), and also the very fabric of ‘knowing something’ as basic as ‘will I get sick from preparing food in such a manner’?

…and I’m out of time again, and probably did a terrible job of summarizing :-/

Talk of “pushing the button” got me thinking of the Martin Sheen scene in The Dead Zone where he goes crazy and ends the world.