I thought the introduction to Grandma Toby’s post was well designed and got me thinking about the impact that the internet first had on my when I was a child. I also felt that it was presented in a generally positive light, and I don’t think that that needs to be flipped, but the way that this post addressed the problems of this perspective was important. My first thought in reading it was how my views on the internet have developed over time. I think, in some ways, that the internet has grown with me. It is not nearly as one sided as it once was, and now it not only supplies information, but as Grandma Toby pointed out, people have the ability to contribute their own opinions, feelings and ideas, and corporations have a heavy influence over who sees, and internalizes or dissents to them. It has become a more complex machine. This has made the internet an immensely cluttered space which, and I think Grandma Toby touches on this implicitly, makes it increasingly difficult to diagnose or even notice a problem in the mechanisms used to present problems. The corporations mentioned control any individuals accessibility to an issue or topic, and further intertwine capitalism and ideology throughout the reach of the web.
I found Milo’s response to be quite interesting, as well. It started off in the same way as Grandma Toby’s, drawing on early memories of the internet. It has always seemed to be an act of globalization, even before I was able to call it one, too. I found the reference to time-space compression interesting, because I think it preempts the idea of individualization as a kind of separate idea, but it supports it in a deeper way (perhaps just deepens the argument) than simply the normalization of people on platforms. It also normalizes people over a plane of distance and time. Conversations now not only last a few minutes, or hours, depending on how tired your mouth gets, but they can last months or even years as a post online is not less pungent when you read it years later. The words are still presented in the exact same format as they were in their first post. The context, however, does change, as the internet stays updated to the political and social atmosphere of the time or place. So, in some ways, I agree that time-space compression normalizes an individual’s internet presence, but it also removes people from each other by almost creating a vacuum, something I thought about while reading White Teeth. The words are all the same, but the environment they are consumed in is equally, if not more significant. I do acknowledge that I may have strayed from Milo’s original point, but I think that the overlap is significant and a discussion of such would bring light to this.
romaincrisis
jbbartram-illu
jacobvanloon