Note: This is a rebuttal to this piece by Thomas J Bevan at The Commonplace.
Internet-addict culture (IAC) might one day die out, but it will take a major cataclysmic event to change it. Too much of modern society is chained to IAC for it to easily, or even naturally, go away any time soon. It will change. It will evolve. But the data-sucking will continue because it is extremely profitable for corporations and extremely beneficial to surveillance-state governments.
The Profit Problem
The so-called “big data industry,” which refers to companies that collect, harvest, and sell all the little bits of personal info you scatter every time you go online, is a nearly $300 billion industry. And that’s just the data harvesting. That does not include all the industries that data serves, such as e-commerce ($5 trillion), video games ($350 billion), and porn (nobody knows for sure, but it’s a lot), which all also harvest your data, too.
With all this money, there’s a lot of incentive to maintain the IAC. And even when you try to escape the digital noose, they’ll still make money. Have you ever talked about wanting to go hiking somewhere to get away from the screens and out into nature, and then an ad pops on your phone to book your scenic mountain adventure? You book it online (data), you use GPS to get there (data), you look for places to eat while there (data), and your phone tracks your every move the entire time, which leads us to the next problem. But the point is: You can get away for a little bit, but you’ll pay a toll - and never really get away. You live online.
The Surveillance Problem
In June, the U.S. government declassified a report that said it purchases private commercial data on Americans. As reported by NBC News, the report says this data:
“can reveal sensitive and intimate information about the personal attributes, private behavior, social connections, and speech of U.S. persons and non-U.S. persons…It can be misused to pry into private lives, ruin reputations, and cause emotional distress and threaten the safety of individuals. Even subject to appropriate controls, CAI can increase the power of the government’s ability to peer into private lives to levels that may exceed our constitutional traditions or other social expectations.”
This wasn’t a big reveal when the report came out. We’ve known the government has been collecting our data since Snowden told us back in 2006. And we’ve known they buy it from data brokers for at least the past three years after losing some Fourth Amendment cases in the Supreme Court, putting a few snags in their mass collection scheme (which I doubt they stopped, and use the data buying as a cover, but that’s just my opinion - I’ve nothing to prove that). This shows that the government has a keen interest in collecting your data, which means they want you to be online. An IAC is a controllable society. And governments throughout time have preferred a controllable society.
Loneliness Will Ensure Internet Addict Culture Continues
Being physically alone has become a necessity to make a living. This was already on the rise as people increasingly work jobs tied to computers. But with work from home becoming the norm, being able to socialize online, rather than in person, is not just for nerds anymore. On the contrary, it’s a straight-up business skill.
This means people will be physically alone for much of their day. And what do people do when they’re alone? They go online. They scroll. They entertain themselves with funny videos, music, and this Substack. They live their digital life, which is sometimes more visceral and meaningful than their physical one.
And as more people spend more of their lives online, the necessity to evolve the internet culture will get bigger. Games will get more immersive. Companies will make work more digital. Socializing online will feel more normal and, if it hasn’t already, become the norm.
People have laughed at the clunky fakeness of Zuckerberg’s Metaverse. But I’m a cynic, so I think the so-called Metaverse will become a significant part of our culture. If there’s any change to IAC, it will be in a more immersive way. We might one day scroll less, but we will be more immersed in a digital world.
What Can Change It?
I don’t know, but I think it will have to be something big. Something world-changing. And unfortunately, something cataclysmic - man-made or otherwise. We’re still in the early stages of the internet and, I think, IAC, too. And we’re not going to logout unless we absolutely have to. We won’t even cut back. We’ll be more sophisticated, but we will not become less “extremely online.” We will only be more dependent and more addicted to pixels on a screen.
As I commented on the original, oh, that this were true. The realist in me can see the $$$ involved and the addictive nature of the beast. I am bored with it tremendously but without alternatives and few who practice off line living , not to mention the necessity of transacting online, I don’t see it disappearing. I like to think that what time I spend here is a deliberate choice. I know better. This does not mean I resign. This means I try harder. I think there is a trend towards more deliberate usage, certainly a desire for it. For what it’s worth, today the algo brought your writing into my realm. I have read a small selection of your work and enjoy much of it. But not all of it. That’s ok, my views need challenged So maybe reading it means a little less boredom for me. I subscribed.