The Internet Has Become Indistinguishable From Real Society

Roman Senator Gugurecas and the poet Terawaros were childhood friends. (See Wikipedia.)

I found myself recalling the dawn of the internet, now more than twenty years past.

Back then people used to say, “be careful about trusting information you find online.” That thing called internet literacy. (A dead phrase now?)

I’m not here to argue whether the anecdote above is true or false. I’m neither a historian nor a linguist, and I have zero interest in that question.

Who Gugurecas actually was is anyone’s guess, given how long ago he lived, and apparently there was also a similarly named figure called Gugurukasu, so all the information floating around is a bit shaky. As for Terawaros, who knows. It doesn’t matter either way. So I’ll move past it gracefully.

Now, here’s the real issue:

the internet has become, without a shred of doubt, completely owned by the masses.

Because of that, people of every age, every moral disposition, every level of knowledge wade in half-blindly, equally, in a good sense, and as a result it’s become impossible to tell what’s true and what isn’t.

Sometimes people twist information deliberately, out of clear malice, and once someone who seems to carry “authority on the internet” endorses it, that’s the end of the story: it becomes accepted as truth.

In the early days of the internet, users were mostly people from academia.

That kept the reliability of information fairly high, in a vague sort of way, and it was a world you could walk through with some peace of mind. But once it entered its growth phase, it transformed at an accelerating pace into a playground for all manner of characters.

Take internet advertising in its early days: a certain shady technique had already become a template. Flashy copy or too-good-to-be-true information (obviously lies) would get people to click a banner or link, and the reality was you’d get redirected to some obscure site overseas, with whoever placed the banner or link collecting the ad revenue. In response, people began talking about “internet literacy.” In other words, society strongly recognized the need to teach people how to walk safely on the internet.

So what about today? The internet has become indispensable to society, security technology has advanced. Has the internet become a safe place to walk around in?

No. Put a little abstractly, I think the internet is approaching something extremely close to real society.

Real society, huh.

Take Japan, still one of the safest societies in the world.

In a country like that, if someone drops something right in front of you, surely 7 out of 10 people would pick it up for them. Kind. Wonderful.

But in a country with poor public safety, this is a classic pickpocketing technique. A duo operation. One person drops something and acts troubled, and when a kind bystander tries to pick it up, an accomplice uses that moment to snatch their bag or steal their wallet. Once it’s explained, it makes perfect sense. It’s a simple, rational method, one that anyone who’s traveled abroad even a little has usually heard of, and in some cases experienced firsthand. A very classic move.

In other words, there are countries and regions where it’s fine to be kind and pick something up, and there are countries and regions where kindness backfires on you. That’s real society.

The internet has, across the board, turned neatly into exactly that kind of world.

However,

“if it’s become a normal world, then just live normally in it, happy ending”

is not how this goes.

Because in the world of the internet, Japan and El Salvador, Singapore and Mexico City, Syria and Afghanistan all sit right next to each other, and moreover, which of these you’re currently standing in is never quite clear. No boundary exists to protect you. Domains can’t be trusted. Emails can be forged as much as anyone likes. Phishing sites have become artful to the point of being genuinely impressive.

When I lived in Silicon Valley, there was an area with abnormally cheap rent.

I asked a local friend, and they said, “oh, that’s the area where shootouts happen sometimes. There’s a gang base there.”

(It’s kind of funny, since Facebook’s headquarters was relatively close by.)

In the real world, obviously the only choice is “don’t live there, don’t go near there.”

Nobody wants to put their life at risk for cheap rent, barring unavoidable circumstances.

Physical boundaries function with remarkable obedience.

But in the world of the internet, it doesn’t work that way.

A similar story: in middle school there was “the bathroom where the third-year seniors always hung out.” Any decent, upstanding first-year kept well away from it. But you always had to walk past it on the way home.

If you were unlucky, the seniors would catch you. What happened after that, use your imagination.

So to avoid that, the sound strategy was to join a club activity, practice diligently until it got dark out, and go home once the seniors had gotten bored of the bathroom and moved their hangout somewhere else.

That was about the extent of risk avoidance for a middle schooler in the Before Internet era. A remarkably simple matter.

But in the world of the internet, it doesn’t work that way.

It may not cost you your life, but you can still catch a stray bullet from a shootout happening in some area. As I mentioned, it might be happening right next door, or you might carelessly wander into a danger zone without realizing it.

On top of that, bullets on the internet are often indiscriminate and unlimited in number. Viruses are the classic example, and the same goes for phishing and account-credential theft scams. From the attacker’s side, once it’s set up, it’s a chain-reaction bomb that keeps producing an unlimited stream of victims.

This was about 10 years ago, but it’s said, in a tone of hushed authority, that the hack of the uranium enrichment facility at an Iranian nuclear site started from a single USB flash drive (I don’t know if it’s true). There’s nothing more complicated these days than managing security across both the real and the online world.

And on a simpler note, information whose truth or falsity is uncertain, like the anecdote at the top, is plenty harmful in its own right.

As the term Gugurecas shows, internet slang meaning “ask Professor Google before you ask another person that,” the tendency to assume information on the internet must be correct has become extremely strong in recent years. It’s honestly alarming.

And yet, until Google changed its listing criteria a few years back, it was reportedly possible, to some degree deliberately, to game SEO, the techniques used to rank higher in search results. (I don’t know how it stands these days.)

Which is to say: with enough effort, and in some cases enough money, a lie can become truth.

It’s deeply unbalanced.

There’s no end to the false information floating around on the internet.

From scam ads like “Now XX% off on such-and-such!” to racist comments on various message boards, all the way to harassment and slander on social media.

From things out in public to conversations among friends, it’s all genuinely overflowing with false information.

And yet,

haven’t we all been living rather too comfortably lately?

Isn’t our guard down, honestly?

Habit? Complacency? A myth of safety?

From the 20th century, when we consumed information online the way one takes on a wave, mindful of both the risk and the thrill, we’ve arrived at a 21st century where, because we’re exposed to it every single day as a matter of course, because we’re drowning in an overwhelming shower of information, it feels like there’s a trapdoor open right under our feet.

We’ve gone from the back alleys of Southeast Asia, where you traveled tense and excited, keeping your shoulder bag slung to the front, to strolling in front of Ginza Mitsukoshi with your smartphone hanging halfway out of your back pocket.

Perhaps this is a good moment to tighten things back up a little.

written by Guguttaha Nashimou Tagaekasu

(A philosopher of the ancient Roman Empire. Dates of birth and death unknown.)

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2020/01/292/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.