Dutch media and Internet theorist Geert Lovink believes that we may be witnessing the end of the Internet, calling for the restoration of the global network, which increasingly occupies space in our lives, and considers it in poor condition, and may have been affected by the collapse theories that have become present everywhere.
To clarify this issue, the French magazine L'Obs summarized an interview with this researcher at the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam, and the founding director of the Institute for Network Cultures, who recently published two articles that strongly question the current uses of the global network of networks, which predicted what could be said to be the end of the digital world.
This expert says - in the interview summarized by Jean-Paul Fritz - that the world today is living the end of the dream of an open, global and decentralized Internet, which is gradually being replaced by icon applications on smartphones, limited by the regulations of private groups and large countries that increasingly restrict freedom of expression.
We are all stuck
Lovink began his basic criticism from the deep shift between the ideal of the Internet in the 1990s, and the current market for applications, services and markets that are dominated by giants of profit on the Internet and are subject at the same time to the increasing control of states, "we are all - in his opinion - stuck" as if we are voluntary prisoners of this world, No matter how hard we try to erase the apps, the power of seduction reconnects us to them, making us “addicted to large-scale platforms, unable to return to the age of decentralized networks.”
The expert notes that "these platforms not only hold users hostage, but also hold society as a whole," explaining that technology giants use cunning techniques to make us visit their platforms for as long as possible, giving the example of Facebook, which only allows the expression of limited positive emotions, which makes people worried about the number of Followers and likes, and for them the fear of “canceling” becomes an existential threat.
Despite this gloomy outlook, it seemed as if Lovink left a semi-optimistic way out, shedding light on ways to regain control of the Internet, although he calls for letting the Internet die in the public interest, because it collapses due to its technical errors, and its seizure by the private networks that we call social, not to mention About the increasing control of states.
Plus control
The source of the problem - according to Lovink - is that the Internet is now in the hands of big technology companies, filled with addictive small applications that do not care about individual rights or even society, and therefore it is better not to try to fix it anymore.
The magazine asked: Why does Lovink think we are nearing the end?
This expert explains it, explaining that the average user who is less informed on the underside of the web has to "pay an increasingly greater price" for his addiction and "this price is psychological above all (..) our short-term memory is getting worse and our attention is becoming more and more Very precisely directed. Our supposed freedom of expression no longer exists.” Those who hold dissenting opinions and dare to share them suffer the consequences, discouraging them, he adds.
And all this - according to the expert - is combined with the increasingly current control: "In China, for example, you cannot take the train if you have a 'bad' opinion, and in the United States, you must share all your social media profiles if you want to apply for a visa. As for In Western Europe things are not quite that far, but your online activity is traceable and visible, and there is a real possibility that at some point people will not be able to travel or get a loan or insurance.
Loveneck expects the control to become worse than we can handle, and then "we end up moving away from the Internet. I think people will start to move away from technology, and they will start to act collectively when the climate crisis has reached a level that is beyond any possibility of addressing it."
Not just a fantasy
For Lovink, extinction may occur due to the permanent unavailability of some services, to end up with reduced access or even disconnection, and he imagines that the infrastructure needed to maintain the Internet may be intractable or only available through expensive solutions offered by technology giants, such as Elon Musk's satellites. for example.
The Dutch researcher insists that "the extinction of the Internet is not just a fantasy of the end of the world of digital technology, that it will disappear one day in a second by means of an electromagnetic pulse, fired by a weapon of mass destruction." Rather, the extinction of the Internet is the end of an era of possibilities and speculation when adaptation is no longer an option, and he denounces the state of confusion. Which leads to "technical atrocities, from far-right right-wingers to biased AI systems to fake news and deepfakes, so neither politics nor markets will be able to control these floods," according to the expert.
He says that "no one can escape the civilizational collapse associated with the climate catastrophe," explaining that "the end of the Internet as we know it, or more accurately the end of Internet cultures as we know it, will come soon, especially since over the past decade, it has rapidly deviated from being a wonderful, convenient service and solution, To become part of the problem, unable to reverse its destructive tendencies, means we may have passed the point of no return.
With all this, Lovink leaves some hope in his writings, envisioning that the solution is to "restore the Internet on our own terms," noting that building "alternative social media platforms that work in the service of society instead of the aforementioned companies is worth it, and that restructuring the Internet, especially the platforms is not Mission Impossible".
"Our role is to refuse to associate ourselves with billionaires and other authoritarian rulers, to fight technological nostalgia, and to try to push history back against the stream," Lovenc concluded.