People Who Made Technology Great Again
The rise of disinformation, online abuse and extremism has shown the spider web isn't the glowing network of cognition, customs and togetherness we one time hoped it could be. Is there a way back?
The by 12 months have been a bumper twelvemonth for the cyberspace. Several billion people went online far more they e'er imagined. A US presidential election refocused the spotlight on disinformation, and how it might disrupt a democracy that was already shaken up by internet-fuelled alternative truths.
We've witnessed the rise of cults, the demise of advertizing, and the erosion of our mental health. By this account, it's not been a bumper twelvemonth for humanity.
The pioneers of the internet never thought their invention would exist at the centre of a global re-think. The internet projection was famously funded by the The states government, merely its outset utilize was to connect universities so they could share data.
At its heart, this is what the cyberspace continues to exist used for: information technology creates connections between people to share news, photos of cats and countless memes. Over the final few decades, we've seen it evolve from a functional infinite of academic collaboration, to a identify where people could find one another, to a battlefield for hearts and minds.
Computing historian Melvin Kranzberg one time wrote, "Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is information technology neutral." This, his first 'law', is especially applicable to the history of the internet.
"Technical developments frequently have environmental, social and human consequences that go far beyond the immediate purposes of the technical devices," he wrote in 1986. He believed that many of the issues we take with applied science are unanticipated outcomes from implementing them on a massive scale.
They may produce benefits – creating rich connections, transforming economies, holding ability to account, empowering the disenfranchised – but they can also expose the nasty stuff, like exploitation, cruelty and malicious manipulation.
Nosotros are at a turning bespeak with the information architecture of our global earth. After the year we've had, no ane can claim technological ignorance. The COVID-xix pandemic forced the states to embrace the tools and larn beginning-hand what the net actually is doing to us. With that knowledge, nosotros have a choice. Nosotros can keep with a broken status quo, or we tin can change the future.
And so, armed with plenty knowledge, what exercise we have to do to take control and make the internet great again?
8 experts reveal the web'due south biggest issues, and how to counteract them to build a amend internet.
Computer scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee is best known equally the inventor of the Globe Broad Web. Now, he has a new thought called Solid: a version of the internet that puts privacy get-go.
Solid allows the user consummate control of their data, and the platform is already trialling its system with the likes of the NHS, the BBC, NatWest and even the Belgian government.
- Interview: Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee thinks his cosmos is out of control. Hither's his plan to relieve it
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Slay the social media trolls
Tracy Chou is a software engineer and diverseness advocate. She has worked at Facebook, Pinterest and Quora, and now she has an idea to assistance the victims of harassment on social media.
She explains how the current system on social media requires the victim to bargain with harassment themselves, and she tells us about how her creation, Cake Party, could fix that.
- Meet the app developer creating a simple tool that could slay all online trolls
3
Replace ads with subscriptions
Tim Hwang is a author and a researcher. He is the author of Subprime Attention Crisis, a book most the bubble of online advertisement.
He explains why ads take taken over the internet – despite the limited evidence that they even work – and what an ad-free internet could expect like.
- Why the net tin survive without ads
4
Stop assuming digital is e'er bad for us
Prof Andrew Przybylski is an experimental psychologist at the Oxford Internet Institute. He studies how people interact with virtual environments.
He tells the states that, while it'southward often said that social media is bad for our mental wellness, the evidence doesn't necessarily support that.
- Why scientists don't actually know if social media is bad for you
5
Rethink how nosotros runway down extremists
Prof Neil Johnson is a professor of physics at George Washington Academy in Washington, DC. In 2016, he and his colleagues published a paper in the journalScience that used circuitous models to map the global network of extremist groups online, leading to what they depict as the 'gelation' theory of extremism.
He tells us about his team'south work to disrupt extremist networks online and why tech on its own will never be the reply.
- How a "new kind of physics" could track downwards extremists online
6
Build tools that will smash echo chambers
Dr Sander van der Linden is a professor of social psychology in society. He studies the psychology of social influence, risk, human judgment and decision-making.
He explains how social media sites make money from polarisation, and how we could use behavioural scientific discipline to create a platform that doesn't drive people autonomously.
- Social networks are built to turn u.s. against each other. Can we fix them?
seven
Educate people about misinformation
Nina Jankowicz studies the intersection of democracy and technology. She is the author of How To Lose The Data War: Russian federation, Fake News, And The Future Of Disharmonize.
She explains why disinformation is such a pervasive trouble, and how we tin take more productive conversations to gainsay false news.
- The simple reasons online disinformation may never be fixed
eight
Free the internet from the mega corporations
Dr Douglas Rushkoff studies human autonomy in a digital historic period. He is a enquiry fellow at the Institute for the Hereafter, and founder of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism at Queen'south College, City Academy of New York.
He tells us how we could get dorsum to the 'skilful old days' of the internet, where it was more like a public park than a tool for making coin.
- Breaking up the power: Does the net's hereafter accept to depend on a scattering of megacorps?
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Source: https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/how-to-make-the-internet-great-again-according-to-the-experts/
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