If: July 27, 1998 issue of New Thinking

July 27, 1998 New Thinking:
If

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July 27, 1998

If

By Gerry McGovern

If the Internet is such a wonderful and diverse environment then how come we’re all going to the same places. Yahoo, Netscape, AOL, Microsoft, Alta Vista, Excite, Geocities, Amazon and a few others command over fifty percent of Internet traffic.

If it’s cheap to develop for the Internet and it’s a level playing field and all that, then how come that cheaply developed sites aren’t attracting as much traffic as Yahoo? Sure it’s cheap to develop for the Internet; the cheaper the development the less people who visit and the less often you need to update your site.

If you publish something on the Internet and nobody except your friends and family read it then does that make you a publisher? It’s a bit like the tree falling in the forest scenario. If nobody heard it fall did it really make a noise?

If there will be 800 million documents on the Internet by Year 2000, then won’t we have reached the classic case of, ‘More is less.’ Unless we structure information in a far more efficient manner then won’t information start collapsing onto itself, each new entry lessening the value of that which is already there?

If information is the fuel that drives the digital age, then is information overload its pollution?

If the Internet does indeed create one truly Global Village, then will that ultimately mean an end to the diversity of language and culture? Is that a good thing?

If we cannot touch on the Internet, and if we spend increasing time online, will that mean that we will become less ‘feeling’ people?

If it’s easy to make a friend online, is it as easy to lose one also?

If the Internet shouldn’t be regulated just like the rest of society is regulated does that mean that it’s not like the rest of society? If it’s not like the rest of society, then what exactly is it like? (Have aliens taken over the Internet?) Or perhaps and maybe the rest of society shouldn’t be regulated just like the Internet shouldn’t be regulated and maybe anarchy is the best model after all?

If you don’t pay tax on the Internet and the Internet becomes a fundamental part of your economic and social life, won’t that be like all your Sundays rolled into one? Of course it will. Once your children don’t need education, once your country doesn’t need an army or a political establishment, once you don’t need your highways to be maintained, once you don’t need all the things that taxes are used for in the first place.

If Government should stay out of the Internet because it doesn’t know what it’s doing, then how come it was Government that invented and nurtured the Internet?

If the Internet is a wonderful advance for humanity, democracy and liberty, then how come humanity’s poorest have a zero chance of ever enjoying this wonderful advance?

If the Internet hadn’t been invented, would the world be a fundamentally better or worse place for the vast majority of people who live in it?

If the Internet helps us all to communicate more, then doesn’t that greatly improve our chances of working out all the new issues that face us as we enter the digital age?

Gerry McGovern

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If the Internet hadn’t been invented, would the world be a fundamentally better or worse place for the vast majority of people who live in it?