Face Me And Scream

Written by: Michael Enger

That’s what the internet looks like from space.When I was younger, a few years before the turn of the millennium, my school saw it proper to teach us about the wonderful world of the internet. They set up special classes where we could learn to navigate the amazing world of hypertext, where every link would bring us to another (hopefully not pornographic) part of the world so we could bask in the warm glow of unhindered knowledge. Back in those days, when high-speed internet in your own home was an unrealized dream, people were still optimistic about the internet and I was told that it was a world of information where anything that was ever created would be available to me by the touch of a button. However, that idea quickly devolved into hatred and fear when it suddenly became possible to get a hold of everything ever created; the world had suddenly become pirated.

For the sake of diversity, I am going to try to stay away from talking about the benefits of file sharing and my ideas for a better world where people are generally nicer and more responsible and I will try to focus on the idea behind the internet, or how it was perceived by my naive and malleable mind. For when I was first introduced to the internet it was actually presented as a global collection of works that defined our species where anything and everything was available to us. Perhaps it was in the minds of those who envisioned the world wide web that it would be a place where information would flow freely, breaking the barriers that usually stopped us from learning from each other. Whatever their initial idea was, the internet had become incredibly popular and soon everyman was sharing his knowledge with the world. Including me, who’s first introduction into web development was a Tripod account and their “Make Your Own Page” wizard.

The internet grew and I along with it, steadily learning to extract the information that I needed at a pace which my mother found profoundly impressive (and a bit disturbing, I would think). As I entered my teens the internet had become a comfortable place for me and I was using it daily, not only to look at pictures of naked women, but also to utilize a great piece of programming called Napster. Napster opened up to a whole new world of downloads and the internet had finally become the world of unbridled information that I was promised. Well, we all know what happened to Napster and after that nothing was the same. Proprietary owners were aware of the dangers presented by peer-to-peer networks and I had suddenly become a criminal.

Although this idea is nothing new (just in a different package) the world has become incredibly internet-savvy and the response from publishers was aggressive and direct: don’t download things, if you do you are a bad person. That makes me a little sad because it destroys the idea behind the internet that I was presented with when I first sat down in front of a web page. Information was no longer free and available, it was too valuable to give away and what we were left with was the scrap that nobody thought could be sold, which resulted in the information presented on the internet going from being useful to being questionable. You could no longer site a website as a source because, as we all know, all the good information is only that which you pay for.

I see that this trend of distrust has recently extended to Wikipedia; whereas a few years ago it was acceptable to use the information on Wikipedia it is now considered unprofessional and you are encouraged to use more reputable sources because somehow we have come to doubt the collected knowledge of the entire planet and rather favor the $2 encyclopedia you picked up from that creepy guy who sells old books outside the supermarket. Call me idealistic (or not) but I would like to think that free information is a good idea and can be trusted, we just have to get rid of this mentality that nothing free is ever good enough and that every contribution needs to have some monetary compensation.

PS: I know I promised that I wouldn’t talk about piracy but I just had to share this article and this video with you.