We have access to incredible forms of technology, including near instant access to computers across the planet from devices that fit in our pockets. We seem to have organized much of the internet in a way that doesn’t benefit us and often is straight up antithetical to our wants and needs.
How would you change the ways we use software, hardware, sensors, robotics, and all the other amazing tech that’s available today to make the world a better place instead of a place where people scream at each other and get spoon fed ads and information they never asked for?
What does your tech utopia look like?
You really need to break up Google, Amazon, Meta, and the other gigantic internet companies. There’s a relatively small collections of massive companies that have too much sway over how the internet works and are ubiquitous enough to facilitate mass surveillance and micromanaging what content people are exposed to. The reason the internet doesn’t benefit us and is antithetical to our wants and needs is because it’s setup to bring value to the companies’ shareholders.
All platforms must be decentralized and interoperable and fuck the algorithms.
My web would be a lot more focused on static content, aka text content and a less centralized one too. Making for a much leaner web (less resources wasted to load useless crap) while at the same time making for a much slower web to… consume as reading takes time, which also means the necessity to carefully pick what one will read instead of doom scrolling and also spend more time/attention reading each pick, one can’t just glance at a block of text).
Hopefully, a Web less self-centered, with less fomo/anxiety/hate/anger/stupidity/numbness. With more attention and awareness to the other(s).
Here’s the problem, for this to happen, we would first have to reorganize the economy/politics/society. Everything has turned to total shit because we live in a global capitalist plutocracy. Nothing is gonna get much better under that
True. I once asked myself why people have been so quick to fill the internet with garbage and ruin things for everyone just for a quick buck. The answer that immediately came to me was that they did it with the real world, so why not the virtual one?
IMO the big thing is just to broadly remove corporate influence and control. Almost everything that is wrong with the internet has roots in profit/power seeking megalomaniacs thinking up ways to make the technology we use serve their needs exclusively and manipulate everyone’s interactions to cater to that. Tech utopia would be everyone using systems that are designed for organic human interaction, organizing and information exchange, and the people who want to corrupt that being unable to do so.
It’s better to start over from scratch than it is to try to reorganize a huge code base.
Therefore, Internet 2.0, where it’s only IRC channels for support, forums as “social media”, and simple file sharing sites for your video and image content. You don’t need anything else.
Apply the Linux mentality to the Internet 2.0 and it won’t be so bloated with slop.
EDIT: Oh, and no JavaScript! That can stay quarantined with the Internet 1.0
I’d immediately outlaw the buying or selling of goods and services. The internet should be a free repository of knowledge and a communication platform. Not a marketplace.
Less popups. I don’t mind the banner style ads both horizontal and vertical but the pop-ups are annoying.
Public infrastructure, community hubs, better regulation of what algorithms can and can’t do, trusted networks, mesh networks, public knowledge bases, chronological timelines, innovation pushed over profit. It’s a tall order.
First off require all social media to have a reverse-chronological feed of who the users choose to follow front and center.
Abandon the Internet and create a global mesh network by and for the users.
Assuming I cannot change anything underlying like world’s government or economic system. I think banning social media that have millions of users (the lower the better) might be the best thing we as a society could do. Companies would be insentivize to breakdown each social media they created. They could have different instances of the same social media but has no way to interact each other. Though nothing stopping the user from registering on both. It is totally the opposite of fediverse. But this slows down spreading of misinformation. They would be categorized social media if they can potentially share ideas in a near instant way to an x amount of users from a single website or an application. This put off social media that don’t require registration so sites like 4chan would be insta ban. Likely won’t happen ofcourse just some wild ideas of mine.
