Inventing Reality

Yes, I am very familiar with the ideals of the early Internet utopians, and I consider them noble goals.

The Internet has undoubtedly advanced humanity in some ways. It has democratized knowledge and improved many things. At least for a time.

Nevertheless, in my view, its monetization according to the logic of capitalism has, in many respects, unfortunately led to the exact opposite of what the Internet utopians had in mind: Today, power is unfortunately concentrated in even fewer hands, because people, sadly, do not use the internet as a decentralized medium, but instead flock by the millions to the same centralized platforms—even when it is completely obvious who the inhuman individuals are who run them.

The best example of this is Twitter. This platform is under the exclusive control of Elon Musk. He uses it to achieve his goals, which are in complete opposition to the interests of the general public. Through it, he spreads hate, xenophobia, and misinformation. Yet people do not leave this platform.

This is just one example among countless others.

In short: It is by no means the medium itself that is harmful; it is the way people use it.

I myself have not yet lost faith in humanity, but I am also a realist, and therefore I can unfortunately only conclude that, on the whole, the internet has primarily served to make the exploitative elites even more powerful.

In the broader public sphere, in my opinion, it has unfortunately not led to the democratization of resources and knowledge, but rather to centralization and autocracy.

In my opinion, this will soon result in a civilizational regression—this seems to me the inevitable consequence of the widespread use of LLMs, as they will certainly be abused by those in power, which, in my view, is already happening. Again, Musk, with his blunt approach, is an illustrative example of this as well.

I'm afraid this is a pretty pessimistic outlook, but unfortunately, I have no reason to believe that optimism would be appropriate.