1) Technology makes bad people as efficient as good people. Let's define "good people" as honest, productive workers who value universal virtues like freedom, well-accepted scientific findings, and necessary progress. Now let's define "bad people" as selfish, dysfunctional news-site commenters who think Hillary Clinton is producing vaccines in a pizza shop on the moon, and demand that you equate their ignorance with your well-reasoned opinions.
2) Perhaps my most controversial assumption, the "everyman" that deranged populism appeals to tends to be more of the "bad person" than the "good person".
3) From 1991 to present, the proportion of "everymen" to "professionals" using the Web has steadily increased, empowering more "bad people" than "good people".
So is it any surprise then, that we're at where we're at? The problem isn't the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, the problem is that we don't seem to have the courage to admit that the vast majority of people we hoped would use it constructively have chosen to misuse it, empowering them even more to demand ignorance and fear be elevated back to the position of a movement demanding political power.
The problem is our so-called neighbours, and their jubilant disregard for everything that free society once stood for.
1) Technology makes bad people as efficient as good people. Let's define "good people" as honest, productive workers who value universal virtues like freedom, well-accepted scientific findings, and necessary progress. Now let's define "bad people" as selfish, dysfunctional news-site commenters who think Hillary Clinton is producing vaccines in a pizza shop on the moon, and demand that you equate their ignorance with your well-reasoned opinions.
2) Perhaps my most controversial assumption, the "everyman" that deranged populism appeals to tends to be more of the "bad person" than the "good person".
3) From 1991 to present, the proportion of "everymen" to "professionals" using the Web has steadily increased, empowering more "bad people" than "good people".
So is it any surprise then, that we're at where we're at? The problem isn't the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee, the problem is that we don't seem to have the courage to admit that the vast majority of people we hoped would use it constructively have chosen to misuse it, empowering them even more to demand ignorance and fear be elevated back to the position of a movement demanding political power.
The problem is our so-called neighbours, and their jubilant disregard for everything that free society once stood for.