The New Wild West

Myths of the Internet

The internet is no longer a new tool, in fact it is an everyday thing now. It used to be an esoteric network for nerds and specialists, but that's ancient history. Nowadays pretty much everyone has access to the internet or uses it frequently. It's one of those technologies that is so pervasive that it has reached almost all people, rich and poor, young and old. It's a game changer we've adapted to but not fully adapted to. There are enduring misconceptions about the internet.

The internet isn't "real"
This is one of those weird kinds of myths that hangs around from people who use things without ever learning about how they work. The lack of information is replaced with vague theories. Sometimes you see this with people who don't know how cars work. The internet is of course very real, and a physical thing. Webpages are effectively made of 1s and 0s, all of which take up space. Your hard drive has limited space for all these files. When you connect to a webpage on the internet, the computer on the other end effectively sends you that file. It's a simple way of looking at it, but that's basically how it works. Nonetheless, the different parts of the internet are tangible in various ways.

The internet is supposed to be "free"
As much a myth as a social movement, the idea of an unchecked internet is a lot like the old wild west. There was a time centuries ago where north america had a lot of lawlessness. This wasn't a design of the wild west, it was just a reality of the fledgling government's limited reach. You can see the parallels between the wild west and the internet.

The internet is a place
Part of the emerging internet was the attention of movies and rampant speculation. Imaginations went wild with what the internet was and could be. During the 80s many examples came out of people navigating the internet with virtual reality. Later, the Matrix came out with its concept of an overarching virtual reality that played off the same idea. This formed the enduring image of the internet as a place instead of a network. A type of geographical area of its own that is above and beyond national borders.

Problems of the Wild West

Wikipedia has a pretty good summary of the wild west. Among the problems of the wild west we can see some parallels with internet issues. Lawlessness, abuse, extortion, and unchecked anonymity are all recurring problems. To use a very relevant internet concern we can look at feminist issues like rampant misogyny.

Opinions on what is misogynistic tend to differ even among feminists. There are feminists that think that prostitution should be a woman's choice and can be empowering, for example. Others think that all prostitution is the exploitation of women and inherently misogynistic. The Wild West featured blatant prostitution, and it could be argued that the internet features it as well. Lawlessness and lack of regulation permitted people to force, coerce, or choose to participate in various misogynistic activities.

Another prevalent problem in the Wild West was unbridled violence. Violence on the internet is a lot rarer than violence throughout history, but it exists. Just as the internet appears to us as a facsimile of the real world, violence on the internet has a similar bent. You wouldn't be able to say "fuk u im gona kill u" to someone in person because you would be held accountable for saying it. Even if you decided to mail a letter like that, you would eventually be held accountable when people looked up who lived at the return address. If you sent the letter or threat anonymously it would only compound the wrongness of the activity. Sending threats to people is illegal activity for obvious reasons.

How were the problems solved?

The problems of lawlessness are solved with laws. Regulating the internet is the key to solving its various problems and encouraging civility on the net. Each country will have different standards and thoughts on what is and isn't acceptable. To that end, we should pursue the nationalization of the internet. Websites are similar to establishments in that they serve the public, with servers sending information to personal computers. Websites should be held accountable for the information they host and the discourse they facilitate.

We have laws against different kinds of behavior. If you ran an establishment that allowed people to break those laws, you'd be held accountable. By connecting internet users and their identity to their ISP we can encourage personal accountability for internet usage. Anonymous postings or comments should be restricted until society is able to act maturely. Forming an "Internet User ID" for internet users would allow us to fight against the evils of the internet and bring meaningful consequences to those who go against our cultural expectations.

Internet User Identification can put an end to anonymous threats, anonymous exploitation, and a lack of sustainable personal accountability. Websites can be made to uphold the standards we expect of them and people in our society as providers of services and as places of communication. We can mandate that ISPs form more reasonable frameworks that take into account user identity, which can stop the epidemic of teens producing and distributing child pornography. There is no good reason that minors should be running unchecked across the internet when we have the capacity to enforce the law.

Fixing the internet and making it a workable part of mainstream society rests with you. Use the power of your vote to support a candidate that supports internet reform.