the internet

 

now this can of worms could be expanded to describe it as a worm farm in its scope and depth. I am merely going to make mention of a few topics of concern.

do you remember when the internet first really took hold? The classic marketing slogan I recall was that it was a tool for helping children with their school projects. I had this vision of school projects of such scope and depth they could make the Manhattan Project look like a footnote.

other things may have happened but the first moment I felt where the internet was subverted was music - Napster. A platform that streamed music for free. It quickly became regulated and controlled, but invented a model. The record companies decided not so much to stream music for nothing but the next best thing for them as far as music royalties go - next to nothing. The companies take the profits for the streaming service but issue royalties in amounts of minuscule fractions of a cent. The classic example for me was in the form of one song, Baby I Love Your Way by Peter Frampton. For 55 million streams of the tune he he got $1700. I don't know if the model has improved but an associate moved to America and worked on a music project for 2 years. For his efforts? From streaming he made $27.

another area and I was late to the game; I joined social media. Of all the cold, indifferent, horrible and disgusting branches of the internet - this has to be the one. My naive vision of free and frank information, corrupted by news articles filled with lazy biases and affiliations; reducing the medium to gossip as philosophy. Dumb distractions of videos of animals doing cute things. Pictures of exotic foods I will never eat. Even the sponsored material has reached a new low as of yesterday - I got a post from the scientology people that I blocked as irrelevant. How desperate they must be to want the likes of me as a member. 

The myriad of memes. Then there is destruction of language. As a courtesy of respect to those I know I always communicate in full sentences. I never use intitialisms or symbols and would appreciate that others do the same. Or please, I beg of you - emojis.

Dismiss this post as a simplistic overview; I think of it as therapy.

I know. I am venting