The dark side of the internet in the future

We all use the internet without all that much consideration of all its pluses and minuses. Perhaps post Wikileaks and the Snowden revelations we are a little more wary of how secure things are.

This piece "They Have Seen the Future of the Internet, and It Is Dark" from The New York Times on a survey of what the future holds for the internet ought not give us much confidence that "life goes on" in the way we interact with the internet and our vulnerabilities to it.

"The Pew Research Center, one of the better-known think tanks, on Thursday published the third in a series called “Digital Life in 2025.” Even taken as a snapshot of today and not the world to come, the report, titled “Net Threats,” is pretty dark reading.

Pew’s Internet Project, in collaboration with Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center, surveyed 1,400 high-profile technology thinkers. Collectively, the experts posited new government crackdowns on online freedoms, greater surveillance and less trust online, and the squelching of individual creativity through control by big companies.

There are even dangers from the personalization of content: That customization, a way of limiting information overload, was also seen as a threat to healthy serendipity in what we read, watch and think about."

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Mahler's Prodigal Son

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