A trip down memory lane
Or, where did it all go wrong?
Last week I went to a discussion about a book called Digital Humanities and the Cyberspace Decade, 1990-2001: A World Elsewhere. This week, I vowed to stop shopping on Amazon.
These two things are inextricably linked in my brain because I started using the internet in 1998 and it was indeed a world elsewhere. I signed up for an Amazon account the same year.
It is incredible to me how far removed we are now from those halcyon days.
The author of the book, Professor Claire Warwick, spoke about how in the early days, the internet was “a world you could take yourself which wasn’t part of the every day, where you could have a different experience”.
I acutely remember that sense of freedom. A world where you could be a different person from the one you were known as ‘in real life’, where you could talk about what mattered to you and discover like minded others.
I made friends, I went on dates, I spent hours chatting on message boards with people I would then meet up in London bars for a night out with. The internet was a joyful escape.
And here we are in 2025 and tech billionnaires are using it to undermine Western democracy. It’s a far cry from the brilliant, hopeful platform that had so much promise when I was 18 and desperate to get out of my home town.
In this clip, Professor Warwick talks about why she wrote the book
So where did it all go wrong?
I’m no expert and feel awkward attempting to hypothesise in an article which started talking about a book by someone who has far more knowledge than me.
Professor Warwick spoke about Section 230, which was enacted a couple of years before I started exploring the internet and getting giddy about it. This law “provides immunity for online computer services with respect to third-party content generated by its users“, which is why Twitter (X) doesn’t get in trouble when people post false claims on it. The platform doesn’t face risk so it has no need to police what people are saying.
Dr Leo Impett, who was interviewing Professor Warwick, said there was a: “Fundamental debate about freedom under state forces and freedom under market forces.”
As a lay observer, it seems to me the technology moves faster than governments and individuals can catch up.
Social media went from a nice place to meet up with school friends to an addictive behemoth marketers saw as a new frontier of opportunity.
We all got locked in to dominant platforms as they became fused with social interaction. We all want connection, we all want to be right, and we all want the dopamine hit social media gives us with every ‘like’ and piece of content that reinforces our view of the world.
Recently I made the mistake of reading comments below a piece about a show I like and felt physically attacked by the negative comments. I was shocked by my body’s reaction to it and my instinct was to soothe myself by seeking out something in my comfort zone. I made myself log off instead.
Without rules around transparancy, bad actors have been able to use algorithms to their advantage, see what people were disposed to read and watch and feed them increasingly extremist viewpoints. People think: ‘It must be true, it’s on the phone in my hand.’
And this started happening at least a decade ago. Before Brexit. People who were quicker, who saw the opportunity, gamed the system.
Now, Musk has a megaphone and even if we all stop buying any of his products, he will still have enough money to bankroll whatever he wants, while other billionnaires focus on the money-making opportunities a libertarian government that sees the world as a Monopoly board can bring. Ethics be damned.
The system has been turned inside out. We have shifted to a world elsewhere. One unrecognisable from just 10 years ago.
I still love the internet. It does incredible things and I earn a living on it. But we need to be in charge of it, instead of letting it take charge of us. Sadly, I’m not sure we can put the brakes on long enough to have a long overdue conversation about where we are, how we got here, and what needs to be put in place to create a safe, fair, enjoyable online world going onwards. I also don’t know how you would decide who got a seat at that table.
Digital Humanities and the Cyberspace Decade, 1990-2001: A World Elsewhere is available to buy now. You can watch the conversation between Professor Warwick and Dr Impett in full on Youtube.
