Would you shut down the internet if you could?
This is a question I constantly ponder “Would you shut down the internet if you could”. Living life pre-internet was a bit of a challenge but looking back I don’t think that it hindered me in any way. I travelled a fair bit and getting around was done with maps, I think perhaps it made me a lot smarter as I became quite learned in directions. Even getting around Melbourne with the ever-reliable Melways never let me down, the radio gave me constant information about accidents or road blockages. The internet may have made us lazy and complacent!
Arts have been the major loser with the internet. We often talk about why commercial music was so much better pre-internet. My theory here is that to release a record you had to be signed to a label, as there were not a lot of labels only the really talented artists got signed, though a few average ones did slip through the cracks the majority were talented. Competition always raises standards. Artists made money as we all had to buy the material and not stream it. Now with the internet, anyone can have songs out.
“According to Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, nearly 40,000 songs are uploaded to Spotify every day.” The internet has affected the culture of music by making it “cheaper”, easier to access.
Movies have also suffered due to this, “recent studies conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers suggest that electronic home video (streaming and downloading films) will overtake the traditional cinema as the biggest contributor to total film revenue in the US reaching a total of approximately $17bn.”
Photography, you don’t even have to know how to use a camera to be a photographer these days. Online software means you can make any picture look great.
Misinformation is a huge problem today as people tend to think if it’s on the internet it’s true. I’ve personally found so much incorrect information on pretty much every subject I look for. With social media, I fail to see any positives that come out of it. It’s people pretending to be someone else. Influencers buy their followers and likes, then they want to charge you for a post some over $5,000 just for a shout-out with little justification that they will sell your product.
We have also lost the freedom of free speech, if you write an opinion on Facebook and people don’t agree with you, they will block you and never speak to you again. Dating sites are a ridiculous charade with more fake profiles set up by the agencies to keep you reeled in. With the internet comes stalking, it’s way too easy to find out information on people these days and it’s seldomly put to good use.
The internet has its advantages like banking and shopping, I like most people like to get on YouTube and look at tutorials or old film clips. Having debates with mates and being able to get on google to check stats is handy, but I believe the negative far outweighs the positive. There is nothing you can do on the internet that you can’t do without it. I do believe people aren’t as social.
The world was a much more friendly and less selfish place before the internet came on. There weren’t as many scams or fake people as there are today. I could write a book on this, but this is just a brief synopsis of my thinking. What do you think?
I would shut down the internet if I could.
By Christian Bradley
