The rise and fall of the Free Information Age

I have always felt like I was brought into life at a special, and now even significant era, one that feeds my hopes, and challenges me to battle my fears. An era that has provided a unique perspective, and the tools to express, and explore. This feeling has been reaffirmed, as my birth falls within the narrow sub generation that has been dubbed “Xennial” or, the “Oregon Trail generation”, No I am not a western pioneer, it’s a reference to an early educational computer game that my generation got to experience. It was third grade, half way through the year, when my class was the lucky recipient of one of the handful of computers our school purchased as the result of some fundraiser, that's right I never even saw a school computer till third grade, even then it was not common for all classrooms, I literally grew up alongside computers, not WITH computers. As part of this sub-generation I learned to first type on a typewriter, a year later and a few towns away I was in a “Computer Lab”, practicing typing, and learning basic PC functions. About that time was the rise of home internet, “Information superhighway” was the buzzword of the time, there was much talk of how this new technology would change the landscape of our country, in retrospect they really got a lot of it right, many saw the potential it had on commerce, and dissemination of information. “By the late 90’s “The Information Age” was in full swing, at that time it was still just a new avenue for existing power players mainly, entertainment, and news outlets were trying to carve out their niche in this new landscape, we did witness the birth of today's online commerce giants, like Ebay, and Amazon, and some motivated, and inclined individuals did start to make use of web building sites such as geocities, allowing for new, individual, and not for profit perspectives to be available to those who knew how to find them, most often spreading via word of mouth E-mails, as there was no real social networks yet.

It wasn't until 2001 when popular search engine, and Email provider Yahoo! Launched Yahoo! Groups, which was fueled by their popular chat service Yahoo Chat, I will say this was the Birth of the “FREE Information Age”, other providers followed suit such as AOL, these were free services that were very popular, it allowed people to connect, and share ideas like never before, it was beautiful, it was largely anonymous, it became a threat to the established power structures. I have always thought independently, and outside the box so naturally I chose the monikar “Antithesis”, there was virtually no doxxing, people only knew what you wanted them to know about you, it allowed for a certain freedom of thought, and expression that we have lost in this Facebook era, Ideas were largely allowed to stand on their own, you could not discount them cause a person was a specific race, or gender, or age. You could go into a chat room that was full of people from your town, or you could visit one full of users in a far away country, you could chat about your favorite music, or sports team, or you could get into spirited political debates, I did all of these things, I was able to meet people from all over the world, palestinians in Beirut, black Africans, Israeli nationals, hip hop fans from London.

What I found was we all had common ground, sure there was plenty of differences of opinions, and alternative perspectives, but at end of day we all just wanted “Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of happiness”, very few of us were inclined to defend the actions of our governments, I never met anyone who felt they were represented by their public officials, even the democratically elected ones, no one wanted war, no one was particularly mad at another nation.

I found it personally eye opening, and relieving, provided me with hope, that we one day could come together as humans, move past race, and borders, and all the artificial constructs of separation that man had created to war with, and control one another. I don’t think was the only one who saw this possibility, I’m afraid some saw this, and deemed it a threat to American Hegemony, and devised a means to put an end to the free flow of borderless communication, and exchange of ideas. I’ll try to not get to “Conspiracy theorist”, and allow you to decide who would have such motivations to narrow the broadband, into “Internet ghettos”, and the relevance of the CIA’s investment arm In-Q-Tel’s relationships with today's tech giants, and internet gatekeepers like Facebook, and Google.

Suffice to say the landscape has changed, we no longer have anonymity, we have all been encouraged, or even forced to provide our government names, and personal information like phone numbers to engage in social media. We no longer have an easy means to connect to those we don’t already know, or anyone in other nations for that matter, how often has your suggested friends on facebook for example included someone from Russia? Or, China? Or even Canada for that matter? Where would we even go to find such connections, the internet has been balkanized by algorithms, its been transmuted into a divisive force, a means of censorship, a tool of control.

It’s no secret that we live in a plutocracy, where corporations have more power than the the people, now even more power than the government they effectively own. As a consequence we now are witnessing corporate ability to monitor, and shape opinion, via SEO, or outright banning “Dangerous ideas”, or Thinkers from “their” platforms that a vast majority of us use, without viable alternatives. I don’t think they have been as successful as they had hoped in moving the needle, or inciting violence, and are now moving to the next phase, which is put limit the power, and reach of dissenting ideas, presumably to do their dirty work in the dark, without the pesky light of truth to disturb them.