Let’s have a mind and raise flowers.

I’ve been thinking about the internet lately.
And I’ve formed some thoughts about it:
1) It could lead to a micro-response survey towards democratic progress. Imagine a service established where your local, state, and federal representatives are immediately notified of your daily wants, needs, annoyances, grievances. Of course, one would have to sign up for this service and as easy as it is currently to send an email to one’s politicians–apathy usually reigns supreme in democracies. However, with this, individuals could send up to the minute critiques and ideas to their representatives. This will require massive data banking and sorting on the part of the governments.
2) Elitist and exclusivist sects will have a harder and harder time of it. Imagine Scientology’s umbrage about sites like clambake.org, etc. The leaking of high Mormon rites and the disclosure of once occult knowledge will have to ‘change the game’ of how sects are formed and maintained. This goes for the communitas of religious sects also. Home groups and Bible studies being able to meet remotely will shift the expectations of worshippers. This remote worshipping and gathering isn’t so bad an idea for America’s penchant for superchurches. The feasibility for continued stadium-like gathering on a(n at least) weekly basis is unsustainable and grossly wasteful.
3) The nature of education must quickly shift. The fact that America is still beholden to a school model that was created under a rural agrarian culture reveals America’s convervative and regressive tendancies. What does a liberal education look like when one has access to all of the world’s accumulated knowledge? The emphasis upon critical thought and the formation of concise questioning must begin to occur. This no less than a traininng in ethics. The fact that America has fostered a largely imperial, colonizing, and Eurocentric foundation in their education is widely known yet has been completely repealed. Our young must not ‘learn history’ but begin deciphering the many histories and uncover the lost and marginalized histories and narratives that could bring revolutionary thought and action. The puritanical shackles on our public schools glare of hypocrisy and naivete when any youth with a computer can see infinite acts of violent or degrading pornography but must wait until the 5th grade to get a remedial and bashful sexual education.
4) Any individual who lambasts the “mainstream media” for being ‘slanted’, or ‘biased’ is uttering words of no worth. We all know that no report is ‘objective’ and no group, publication, or media outlet can possibly come close to offering ‘the truth of the matter’. Everyone is biased. If we’re to talk about bias, let’s take it beyond ‘liberal or conservative’ and look at biases of sex, gender, race, class, etc. And of course, we know that there is no mainstream media in the way that it is usually spoken of. There is now increasingly an information cloud and ‘news’ is necessarily becoming more opinion-entertainment. Why? Because individuals are becoming able to read and watch first hand accounts–from multiple sources. That any cable network is biased is a given. No individual in the internet age can expect to receive information about their world passively. The last and most important filter and search engine will always be the individual’s critical mind.
5) The internet as we know it now is scroll compared to the codex that’s coming. The enhanced reality applications will continue to increase as well as the ‘wetworks’ of cybernetic technology. This means that many will cease to distinguish between “being online” and “being offline”. There will only be the new way of being. In the rare occasions when Americans now are away from electricity, we make note of it: “I was off the grid on my hiking trip.” With the possibility of a near global wi-fi this phenomenon will may be even more rare.
6) Convenient access to the whole of the internet is a universal human right. (Listen up, China!) The Vatican and many ethicists agree: every person has the right to clean drinking water, health care, food, and the internet. This is a turning point in our human culture. This means that international labor unions will begin to arise through grassroots. The advocacy for non-toxic environments going towards permaculture that support dignified living will gain the support of all working class peoples and the production/consumption cycle will be uncovered for the exploitative system that it is. As Mother Jones said, “Organize, organize, organize!” The internet will allow for greater pushback against corporate greed and inhumanity.

The internet is profiting the possibility for greater ethical and critical thought and action to be forwarded by diverse laborers throughout the globe. It also carries the potential to decrease extremism in sectarian beliefs as veils of secrecy and isolated worship are overcome with transparency. More and more the internet will be integrated into our consciousness as a fork, spoon, shoe than a periodic tool used to access a web destination.

Ryan McGivern