How About We Play Fair in 2021?
We need referees for the internet age
Long, long ago, in the 1990s, we spoke of the Information Highway
Many of us weren’t sure what that meant exactly, but it was going to make life bigger, better, and ever so much more exciting. Unlimited access to information, from everywhere, for everyone! The world at our fingertips! Knowledge, wisdom, and truth would expand our opportunities, our perspectives, our minds. Totalitarian governments wouldn’t stand a chance.
In 1995, William Gibson breathlessly compared the advent of the Internet to the birth of cities:
“It’s really something new; it’s a new kind of civilization. And of course the thing I love about it is that it’s transnational, non-profit — it isn’t owned by anyone — and it’s shape is completely user driven.”
That was a nice dream, wasn’t it?
Twenty-six years later is too soon to declare how the Information Highway turned out, since it’s still under construction. Certainly its effect on our lives can’t be overstated, from the way we work to the way we socialize and even the way many of us find mates. But a glorious, free-form exchange of ideas and viewpoints and increasingly intelligent conversation? Not so much.
