It has to be said: the cat pictures might not be enough. The internet definitively sucks sometimes. It’s a willing and fertile host to our most objectionable prejudice, anger and desire; an open marketplace for exploitation, child porn and illicit drugs and weapons. It provides a container for our greed, impatience and emotional evasiveness, and its liberating potential often feels like a false promise buried in a much larger mountain of disconnection, voyeurism and social media-fuelled narcissism.
Even the feelgood and useful bits are compromised – our tracked behaviour is sold to advertisers, while security agencies like the NSA have been found to spy extensively on … well, almost everybody.
Cory Doctorow
In that light, is it blind and foolish to defend the internet – or does idealism provide a corrective vision? What gives this incredible technological structure its potency? What does the internet offer in terms of political freedom and social mobility, privacy and big data, and broadcasting and publishing and political change – and what does it cost us?
Blogger, science fiction author, Electronic Frontier Foundation special advisor and Boing Boing co-editor Cory Doctorow speaks with multitalented and beloved broadcaster, writer and director Alan Brough about whether we should really destroy the internet – or whether it instead needs our protection.
Your tweets:
‘We have yet to articulate a coherent way of thinking about security and the internet.’ @doctorow #askinterrobang pic.twitter.com/0gaaUEKlRQ
— The Wheeler Centre (@wheelercentre) November 28, 2015
Lack of disclosure with digital security leads to failure. ‘This is how every alchemist ends up drinking mercury.’ @doctorow #askinterrobang
— The Interrobang (@askinterrobang) November 28, 2015
.@doctorow is talking about very surprising ways in which industries co-opt governments to protect their IP, and generate $. #askinterrobang
— The Interrobang (@askinterrobang) November 28, 2015
Computers in everything: digital locks for protectionist practices, anti-circumvention rules feed the beast. Ergh @doctorow #askinterrobang
— Kate B. (@eyeofbast) November 28, 2015
"We haven't reached peak surveillance. There's plenty of ways the internet could be creepier. Like wifi Barbie." @doctorow #askinterrobang
— steph harmon (@stephharmon) November 28, 2015
Mass surveillance operates on the principle that watching another…