The shackles of the modern internet

There was a time where the internet was a space of freedom and creativity, a space where you would go on for a short amount of time and explore the countless creative spaces made by individuals fuelled with passion. The internet was a brief escape from reality, a place of dreams and wonders. Everything ranging from design to functionality was made personally and artistically enabling the inner playfulness in its users. As time passed, with big companies getting bigger and bigger and power being more and more concentrated in the these companies the flame of a candle that was the internet was slowly fading away. Limitation of freedom. Repressive design choices. A focus on capital rather than enjoyment. All of these and much more have made what I would define as the shackles of the modern internet.

Did you know that the original idea for the internet was a decentralised space where everyone has their own website, their own space? So then why isn't that the case? For some this name might be familiar but for others it might not, Geocities. Geocities was a web hosting service created in 1994 where essentially different websites would create a sort of community or "neighbourhood" with your website essentially being a "house". Geocities was so special as it granted you infinite freedom to create your own personal space. Geocities was just so magical and full of love and creativity and passion from all around the website. At its peak, Geocities hosted over 38 million pages designed by 3 million users which considering this was the '90s was a big deal.In January of 1999, Yahoo! purchased Geocities. After acquiring Geocities Yahoo! had added a new rule to the Geocities TOS, “the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully sublicensable right, and license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed.” In simple terms this means that Yahoo! would acquire ownership of all content posted on Geocities without any compensation meaning that 3 million peoples hard work had just cruelly gone to Yahoo! Naturally the users of Geocities protested against this and in the span of 10 days Yahoo! reverted the TOS change. To no surprise, in 2001 Yahoo! released a premium Geocities service that allowed people more hosting and bandwidth. This decision created a massive gap in quality of experience between the premium and free service of Geocities. The premium service would slowly make the free experience practically unusable. Finally, in 2009 Yahoo! put Geocities out of service. It all ended. All the creativity, all the community, all the hard work was gone. All gone.

The case of Geocities isn't an individual one but sadly a common phenomena that occurred on the internet. Big corporations slaughtering spaces of passion for profit and control. Decisions that leave you empty and emotionless. Decisions that make you lose what makes you, YOU. Decisions that aim to gain profit from you and keep you hooked on the empty and bottomless pit that is the modern internet. Did you know that the infinite scroll wasn't always a feature? Before the infinite scroll you had control over where you go instead of being forced into this infinite flow of mind-numbing information condensed into a format designed to be addictive. The act of scrolling is not so much different from gambling. A scroll downwards is a hope of the finding of quality, "One more scroll, the next video is gonna be it, I know it!", an endless cycle of that. This is no different to a spin on a slot machine a hope of hitting a jackpot, "One more spin, the next one is gonna be it, I know it!". As I mentioned, all of these decisions aren't a fluke, its a way to trap you in a prison of endless flow of dopamine going through your brain over and over and over again.

Privacy is one of the most essential rights we have as humans. The ability to not be stripped naked of our thoughts. Have you ever tried clicking "do not accept cookies" on a site? If so, you must know how much harder it is than just clicking "accept". Cookies are small text files stored on your device by websites to track your browsing activity, remember your preferences. This data is sent to big corporations which shove ads down your throat asphyxiating you with these very specific things that you seem to want. Something as small as clicking a single button will put you on sale to all this big and ruthless corporations who just see you as nothing more than an opportunity to grow their multi-million dollar networth. In addition to the internet, your phone listens to you, every single piece of technology you own is most likely trackable. You are actively being dehumanised and stripped of something so important as is privacy yet its so subtle and so accepted that there's a likely chance you don't comprehend the extent to which this is the case.

The design philosophy of the 90s compared to the design philosophy of our modern society is very different. If you look back at how, for example, video game covers looked you will notice they differ quite a bit. Non-symmetrical, differing and artistic pieces of art made to challenge art-norms and to innovate on what has been done before creating a distinct identity. Now if you look at modern video game covers you will notice the exact opposite, symmetrical, generic covers. I believe this drastic change occurred as big companies are afraid to innovate and try and create something new and different so they cowardly stick to what is known to work on a surface level rather than, what happened in this 90s, to create something new and original, to try and challenge the concept of "cover art", to be unique. This can be seen in all art mediums such as UI design, fashion etc.

The internet has lost its fundamental purpose of being a place of individuality and a place for connection and it has been transformed into yet another way for big companies to earn more money. We as a society must fight back against it, be creative, be unique, be yourself. We must fight back by showing that conformity isn't what we want, what we want is to be free of anyone, to be ourselves and for us to have the space that we did many years ago where we could do that without the immense pressure and stimuli that is the modern internet. This is a time where the internet is suppressive, a place where you try to escape from but you cant, a place of slavery to the rich upper class, in their prison in shackles, the shackles of the modern internet.