The Dumpster Internet Theory | Hacker News Reader

The Dumpster Internet Theory

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3 pointsnbow4 comments

Interesting piece. I don't think what we're dealing online with is anything new per se. Neil Postman expressed a take similar to yours when he said, "Information has become a form of garbage" in 1992. Things appear to be developing as intended; encourage the general public to develop an appetite for junk, make its consumption highly accessible with financial incentives for its makers, blind the public of any notion as to what the meaning of "food" is at all, profit.

The graver thing to ponder over is that the distinction between garbage and what isn't garbage is progressively becoming obscured to many.

I think what I define as the "trash" in this is all the stuff the attention economy wants to boost. It's never stuff that makes you think or teach you something meaningful. All you need to do is spend 5 minutes on TikTok to get what I mean. That is certainly much different from the 90s internet. Engagement is the internet's biggest, heaviest ball and chain.

I think what happened is that during the 90s/early 00s the internet was too immature to be affected by the garbage/attention economy campaigns that took place in more refined mediums like television for example. The internet was not yet a part of mass media. It was more like a “walled garden” of a different kind in spite of how open it was within the walls.

Watching the internet change may feel different to some people because the relationship that they’ve had with it is more intimate than with their television. What we’re dealing with now is just the intended development of media in society courtesy of The Powers That Be ®.

In hindsight it was inevitable.

I wonder what your perspective would have been if you were living in the time of AT&T's monopolistic dominance. Would have that dominance have seemed inevitable and unchangeable?

I think it's better to not give into the hindsight bias and imagine an internet worth rebuilding. The giants who wrap their tendrils around our time and attention should be ripped to shreds. They don't deserve their power seeing as they use it to pedal division and addiction.

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