01 Aug 2020

What does the internet mean to you?

If someone asked you “what is the internet?” how would you answer that?

You could very easily say “The Internet is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices.” if your name was Wikipedia. And that could very well end the conversation right there (pssh neeeerd). But I challenge you to find 10 people that would define the internet in such a way. I will even bet that every person you ask will have something very different to say, and that creates the question “What does the internet mean to you?”

There are many ways to interpret the multifaceted behemoth of an institution that is the internet. And yes, I consider it an institution of sorts. Possibly the greatest institution to not really exist. It really is three things:

An institution of pure democracy.
The only truly human space.
The most advanced collection of human knowledge.

An Institution of Pure Democracy

Or just straight anarchy if you are on Twitter these days. By pure democracy I may be far from the definition but still capture the essence of the concept. In aggregate, you have unlimited rights on the internet. If you want someone to hear your opinion, you can go somewhere and be heard. If you want to learn something, it’s out there. There is no one or thing holding you back (and just about everything is free if you search long enough). Everyone has the freedom to say and do what they want in a purely human space.

The only Truly Human Space

Everything in the world is effected by every other thing in the world. Primarily, the forces of nature have the true sway over the world we live in. Weather, the food chain, environment all have a say in how your day and life goes. Further, everything that we make ultimately derives from nature. One could argue that our societal structures, hierarchies are truly human creations but they are not spaces. Also the desire for hierarchy, organization, is based upon inherited principles of species before. The internet has never been created before but there were tribes of monkeys and their internal hierarchies. You could say that the hardware that built the servers that host the internet is derived from nature, leave a big FU in the comments, and close my web page. OR we could allow that what I really mean is the ethereum of the internet, the “cloud”, the part that transcends the hardware. The web pages and applications, message borads, and search engines that are very much the creations of pure thought. That is what makes the internet the only truly human space. There is no other part of nature on there.

The Most Advanced Collection of Human Knowledge

This one is easy. The internet contains the sum of human knowledge minus that which has never been published in digital form. Which compared to the sum of human knowledge is small, so if there is some ancient text somewhere that is not on the internet, someone needs to get around to dragging it across a scanner. This is where the true power of the internet lies. You can learn anything because it is all there, and even better it is usually free. Coupled with cell phones and Google search, this is one of the most unprecedented times in human history. Never have people been so easily able to empower themselves. Most days I feel as though the evil of humanity finds its way to the internet (read: boogaloo boys, most of Twiter) more so than those wishing to use it for betterment. Still, the potential is there and there are billions of people using the internet to enhance their own lives and knowledge of the world. This ties into the democratic point, I believe that the unprivileged access to human knowledge will eventually assist in leveling the playing field of hierarchies. Or in Ameica it can help restore that good old social mobility they used to have in the 1950s.

Conclusions

So what does the internet mean to you? To me at the end of the day it is the only purely human thing in the universe and I believe it has proven and will continue to prove the most important force in our common evolution.

Or Facebook and Twitter can ruin our ability to have two-sided dialogue. Whichever comes first.