No Internet month diary 2017. (Part 1 - Introduction)

Introduction to my 'Investigations into the Internet and Facebook Algorithms, etc.'...

(… which is the actual title of this most unscientific of scientific studies...) A study which has been ongoing for about 25 years – since the early 1990's, when I first encountered the awesome, world changing potential of the Internet, which was, at the time, in its infancy.

It was my good friend @eco-alex , always one step ahead of the game, who was using the Internet – along with a few other pioneering nerds – in the very first days – long before google, youtube, facebook, ebay, whatsapp, waze, instagram and twitter became part of the vocabulary. There were payphones, but not yet smartphones. Mobile phones of any sort were very rare, expensive, bulky devices. Objects of ridicule. This was in the days when having an email address would still raise eyebrows and get puzzled looks and shaking heads – as if to say 'It'll never catch on.' This was in the days when making an international phone call was an unusual occasion. The further away the person you were talking to, the louder you'd shout. Conversations were kept short. You were charged by the second in those days.

At the time, Alex was a student of microbiology – learning about DNA, cell structures, function and behaviour, genetics. I went to visit him at his university. There in a haze of smoke he was, in his compact university accommodation – a room, a bed, a desk littered with half drunk cups of coffee and an overflowing ashtray and a computer. He was having a conversation with someone in some other place, maybe even another country, via his computer keyboard – in what was in those days called a 'chat room'.

He asked me if I wanted to type a message. I froze. I couldn't do it. Who was the person at the other end of the line? What was the connection? I recoiled from screen and the keyboard – and even went so far as to reject as much of modern technology as I could for quite some years – until I could begin to figure out at least, what was the nature of the beast. Was it a friend or a foe?

In that moment, and over the course of many a late night conversation, I envisioned a world of the future, in which the connected web became all-encompassing, entering every aspect of our lives – knowing us better than we knew ourselves and being capable of organising our society with near perfect efficiency, while at the same time offering undreamed of wonders in the world of virtual reality.. dissolving borders and boundaries which keep people separate...

I questioned and questioned, and wondered and wondered... would this be a good thing? In some ways it would be very good. War, famine, poverty, homelessness, isolation would be things of the past. The system itself took on God-like characteristics. It was omniscient, omnipotent. It was everywhere, all powerful, all knowing. It was also conscious and intelligent.

And I watched and watched – for signs that this world I had imagined was becoming manifest – and one by one, it appeared that what I had glimpsed in that smoky room – with a mix of wonder and dread – was actually taking place. There is no doubt that the capabilities and uses of artificial intelligence are growing exponentially. Nowadays we use it all the time without even knowing it. I'm still watching for signs of it waking up. It could happen at any time. Perhaps the awakening has to do with the shared consciousness of all the people using it.

One way or another, like most of us, eventually I succumbed to the 21st century. I knew I couldn't hold back the tide. Besides which, the technology became so cheap and available - because it is designed to become obsolete within a short amount of time, causing users to constantly upgrade – that as long as you're a couple of years behind the latest model, computer and now smart-phones are relatively cheap – and so useful that it's easier to use them than not.

Now I use my phone – as a phone, a camera, for the internet, maps, business, communication – no doubt about it, it's a very useful, very powerful and very convenient thing to have. So I take it everywhere I go – and I try not to worry about the fact that it's watching and taking note of my every move, word and thought. And while it's watching me, I'm watching it. That is the basis for these 'investigations'.

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No Internet Month

In 2015, I began to really notice, and be disturbed by the amount of fake stories going around on the internet – particularly on facebook, where I was spending an increasing amount of time. At some point, it became impossible to tell with any degree of certainty if anything was true. I was spending so much time investigating stories and claims that I eventually gave it up as a lost cause. A waste of time. It was almost as if someone, or some people were deliberately spreading false, but convincing information to keep us in a perpetual state of doubt and confusion (which, as it turns out, was exactly what was happening).

Aware of the addictive an dependency forming nature of the Internet (or at least my relation to it) as well as the tangibly negative effect it was having on my mental state – I began to question whether all of this internet technology had actually improved life, or if we were better off before it came along. So I decided to take one month of the year to return to the technological level of 1992, or thereabouts – a time when few people used the internet on a daily basis – something that most of us have completely forgotten how to do.

It serves as a kind of retreat in which my mind is able to return to a more natural (less influenced) state, as well as provides me an opportunity to reflect on and process some of the things I have seen and done in the year in virtual reality.

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In this year's No Internet Diary, which I will be serialising on Steemit, I explore the parallels between the Internet, nuclear energy and LSD - and the lessons we can learn from the conscious use of powerful technology.

You can read my 'No Internet Diaries' from 2015 and 2016 at:

https://nim2129.wordpress.com

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Check out ecoTrain For the best and latest, original, mind expanding content:

https://steemit.com/nature/@eco-alex/the-best-of-ecotrain-2017-highlights