…as there used to be a joke about USENET where topical groups were disparaged:
sci.physics: physics as understood by computer science majors
soc.politics: politics as understood by computer science majors
Etc; then, as now, this was not a fair characterisation but it had some truth.
Equally now, these books I’m reading can and should be (have been) characterised as:
Technology as understood by Law Professors
Internet Architecture as understood by Philosophy Professors
Software Engineering as understood by Activists who can do Excel
… but they have never been lampooned because the authors have power – or at least: barrels of ink and an audience who prefer to continue reading them rather than to hold them to account.
15 to 25 years is a hell of a lot of 20-20 retrospective, so what I am primarily learning now is not the future of the internet but instead: what it was that scared these boomers people. This leads me to a certain kind of empathy, but one so tainted with horror at the damage they did to digital rights activism and the political discourse, that is really hard for me to forgive them.
Leave a Reply