The arrival of the Internet -- #5 of the 5 forces that are changing us

A deep dive on the forces that have upended us

Apr 14, 2022

I don’t know about you, but I was super optimistic and enthusiastic about the arrival of the Internet when it first came out. The opportunity was there for everyone to have a voice and for a more open democracy. There were the marvels of social media helping to spread the Arab Spring, and in India (Shaadi) to get around arranged marriages. More prosaically, it was exciting to find ‘out there’ a willing buyer for a second-hand item; to publish my thoughts for public consumption in blogs; to buy items from the comfort of my desk; and to stay in touch with my friends around the world. But, little by little, my enthusiasm has been curbed and I’ve weaned myself off of a number of platforms. As with any tools, including the Internet, we humans are responsible for how they’re used. If we use a site, app or platform, we need to have our eyes wide open about their particular slant, for example about the business model, orientation and ethical line (or not). There’s good and bad on the Internet. It’s up to us to use it with as much care as possible.

In my earlier article, “How have we ended up with all this divisiveness and lack of proper debate?” I laid out five forces that have changed us, that have led us to this place of great division, where we are so deaf to one another and where dialogue is either ascetically sanitized or corrosively combative. I have been elaborating on these forces in longer form articles. I’ve already published the first four (links below):

I will now expand on the fifth and final force:

(5) The arrival of the Internet

The onslaught of new technologies, not least of which has been the Internet, has been disruptive across pretty much every industry, every profession and in every country. Even as the world scratches its head about NFTs, cyber currencies, web3, the metaverse and more, the impact of the Internet on media, entertainment and democracy has been dramatic, if not traumatic. This is important because it relates to communication, the lifeblood of any relationship, our wider society, in the military and at work. And the same is true of our lives, in general. We need to understand better who is speaking, listening, and shaping the narrative. Who is controlling what can and can’t be said? Ultimately, who are the custodians of our civilization?

Impact on media

The Internet has specifically enabled a democratization of knowledge and a diversification and amplification of our voices. The collapse of the old model of media – where a limited number of organizations basically controlled each country’s narrative – has been replaced by a small number of big tech players (i.e. the GAFAM* in the West or BATX** in the East). Unlike the old media players, the GAFAM’s reach is wider and more global. As a result, the messages are more diffuse, more varied and less organized. Traditional mass media had to adapt to a new business model, in search of clicks and eyeballs. This exacerbated a trend toward a more Murdochized approach where each media tends to a specific audience. As a result, we have seen public discourse become more unstable and more partisan. This has been amplified by more access to reader data, ever more prevalent algorithms, not to forget the risks of foreign intervention via new stealthy cyber modalities.

Whose line is it, anyway?

As much as we might all believe we have a platform to speak, given the cacophony, very few actually have a voice that rises above the noise. Furthermore, anonymity, while key in the democratic voting process, is all too easy online. This has given rise to much unbridled hostility through a lack of accountability. Along with the creation of fake accounts, bots and ephemeral avatars, it’s difficult to make sense of what is going on, where are the facts, and who is really controlling the narrative?

Disparity of sources and facts

As we’ve seen through the Russia-Ukraine conflict, there’s been a prodigious increase in cyber hacking, unabashed propaganda and fake news propagated through digital channels. As a result, it is all too confusing to understand what is really happening. Without grounding in a shared understanding of facts, it seems we’re left grasping at straws and uttering only opinions, unmoored from truth. And this has had disastrous effects on our ability, even desire, to have reasonable conversations.

Immaterial, individualistic, and speedy

While the Internet has enabled many outstanding advancements and sparked a wave of innovation, the darker side is that, despite being ever more connected, we feel supremely disconnected. So many things can now be done quickly, conveniently, and personally, that it’s bred a new class of narcissists. The Internet is as quick as it is consuming. We can get information at the snap of a finger (or more likely the click of a button). Everyone feels informed and entitled, each living in their own e-bubble. In a world of Instagrammable perfection, instant gratification, ultra-convenience and hyper-personalization, we seem to have created ivory towers around each and every one of us. We believe we have it right and find it difficult to cede to anyone, as if it were a threat to our very existence. The Internet is a tool – by us, for us and with us – that has unleashed this implacable and uncivil environment. Just as the founders of many of the GAFAM titans have forbidden or limited their own children’s use of these technologies,*** we all need to take stock of the impact that they’ve had on us and be intentional in correcting the course.

Spread of anxiety and paranoia

🎵 “This is the end of the world as we know it.” 🎵
-R.E.M. song

With the way the news cycle has been dominated year after year by cataclysmic events, it’s no wonder we’ve seen higher levels of anxiety, mental health issues and paranoia. The World Health Organization (WHO) and many national organizations had identified an increase of mental health problems well before the pandemic. The pandemic accelerated the trend. Social media has been cited as one of the key sources of anxiety among the younger generations. But mental health anguish isn’t limited to the young, although the older generations may still hold back on reporting of such issues. And the fearmongering has created paranoia, too. An article published in The Psychologist, written by Daniel Freeman (Wellcome Trust Fellow at the Department of Psychology) and Jason Freeman (writer and editor), suggests “that paranoia is on the rise, fuelled by disproportionate media coverage of the dangers we face from others; by increasing urbanisation; and by a range of other social factors including fear of crime.” It feels like, since 9/11, we’ve gone from one calamity to another, with little lulls in between. At least, that’s the way it feels if you follow the main news items. Not only have we more news stories stoking fear and anxiety, but mental health has simultaneously been given a lot of press giving it more room to exist. The combination of these issues is negatively impacting our ability to entertain civil and meaningful conversations.

A lack of meaning and meaningfulness

We will tackle in further depth the noxious role of technologies and how to deal with them in a later episode. At this juncture, though, I state my belief that the level of vitriol online and in society in general reflects a very real existential crisis that technology has exacerbated. It has come to the fore because of a pervasive lack of meaningfulness and fulfilment among us. As much as we might talk of progress and freedom, many (most?) don’t feel we’re better off inside. As Joseph Heinrich wrote in his book, The WEIRDest People in the World, “We WEIRD people are highly individualistic, self-obsesses, control-oriented, nonconformist and analytical. We focus on ourselves – our attributes, accomplishments and aspirations – over our relationships and social roles.” It’s this self-orientation and a lack of sense of service to others that has denuded so many of us of a sense of purpose, a higher sense of meaningfulness.

In addition, at work, where so many of us spend so much time, studies continue to show high levels (>70%) of disengagement. As Karl Marx predicted, there is a considerable alienation of the worker in their place of employment. In his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, Marx laid out his Entfremdung theory of estrangement from or loss of self. He wrote,

“The worker … only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself… External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self- sacrifice, of mortification… External labour, labour in which man alienates himself, is a labour of self- sacrifice, of mortification.” (p71)

To the extent we’ve subconsciously lost ourselves in and outside of work, we adapt by trying to find ways and solutions to feel alive otherwise.

Getting enlivened

Just as an angry teenager -- using a binary reading of the world -- will feel enlivened by rallying to a cause, crying out against an injustice, or falling for a singular fashion trend, so too adults are feeling a need to exist, to get excited by something. By jumping on one or other trendy cause célèbre, they become motivated and increasingly fervent. It’s at once highly irrational [which is totally normal] yet deeply understandable. The net of this is that people are feeling disassociated from their true core. They are creating an aura and persona that is not a true reflection of the self. If you run from yourself, hide from or are afraid of death, and tend to live a life based on extrinsic factors, it’s difficult to feel deeply fulfilled or to feel keenly alive.

The problem here is two-fold.

People are attaching importance to a theme or belief in lieu of working on themselves. Without connecting into their core humanity and deeper personality, their affiliation is untethered. They’ve displaced themselves and created meaning out of something that, all the while having its justifications, isn’t properly personal. The gap between the self and the image (read: mask) of the self is widening.
As opposed to the vision of a wide open web connecting everyone and everything, we have resorted to creating pockets of like-minded tribes, building up walls around ourselves, without tending to the roof over our heads, i.e., the broader community or country in which we live. This breakdown in community is a bad sign for our civilization and it’s also depleting us of having a more meaningful existence. A statement often attributed to Sir Winston Churchill (but incorrectly) says it succinctly: “We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.” As I wrote in You Lead, when I was running Redken, I loved the combination of pragmatism and promise that was held in our mission: “Earn a Better Living, Live a Better Life.”

As we know, the Internet provides access to everything and nothing. In the image of Wikipedia, it’s free but not free of bias. It’s open but controlling. It’s democratic yet run by oligopolies. It’s delightful and scary. It’s at once promising and hopeless. With the Internet, we’ve had much to be thankful for, but nothing fundamentally replaces the harder, more human work of knowing oneself, before even pretending to understand the rest of the world. We are fundamentally social beings and we come to understand ourselves in a context, in a social environment, and through the relationships we have. When we isolate ourselves (through technology) and deprive ourselves of in-the-flesh meetings, we run the risk of losing touch with ourselves and our deeper humanity.

As with any tools, including the Internet, we humans are responsible for how they’re used. If we use a site, app or platform, we need to have our eyes wide open about their particular slant, for example about the business model, orientation and ethical line (or not). There’s good and bad on the Internet. It’s up to us to use it with as much care as possible.

Your thoughts please!

Please do let me have your thoughts and reactions. I thrive off your comments. And I’d be happy to engage in a live debate! In my next piece, I want to look into another important issue, which I characterize as our loss of common sense. Essentially, it’s that we’ve lost our commonality and we struggle to make sense. Without a return to ‘common sense’ we’re bound to continue to claw at each other’s throats. Ready?

*GAFAM = Google, Apple. Facebook, Amazon & Microsoft

**BATX = Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent & Xiaomi

***As reported in Business Insider in 2020, the following well-known tech entrepreneurs and executives have limited access to phones, social media and/or the internet in general:

Steve Jobs, the late, iconic cofounder of Apple
Bill Gates, cofounder of Microsoft
Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor and star of "Shark Tank
Evan Spiegel, Snapchat CEO
Sundar Pichai, Google CEO
… and there are many others, some of whose children are too young yet (e.g. Mark Zuckerberg, cofounder and CEO of Facebook) to use the technology independently…