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It's your birthday next week but don't expect a card. There's really not much to celebrate. You're turning 31 and your best years are long behind you. Honestly, what a miserable failure you turned out to be.
To think you showed so much promise. Hell, it's fair to say the hopes of the world were riding on your shoulders. The weight of all those expectations was enormous. But there's no excusing the joke you've become. Still, some congratulations are probably in order. Well done on becoming history's greatest embarrassment.
Even your own father has wondered if he did the right thing bringing you into the world. Tim Berners-Lee, the man who conceived you, who named you the "World Wide Web" and oversaw your public birth on April 30, 1993, now looks on aghast at the duplicity and soullessness of his bastard child.
He had such grandiose plans for you. He was naive, of course. But isn't everyone who wants to change the world? Berners-Lee and hundreds of other starry-eyed computer scientists devoted their working lives to creating something they believed would bring about global equality.
They genuinely believed the Internet would democratise the planet. Increase competition. Reduce the gulf between rich and poor. Disrupt the grip on power long held by the entitled.
In just three decades you have achieved the opposite. History's most transformative invention - greater than the printing press and with even more potential than electricity - turned out to be just another shallow sell-out.
What a mess you've made. You promised an information superhighway, delivering truth and facts directly to our door. Instead you dumped us in a maze of darkened alleys and ghettos littered with lies and misinformation, where hackers lurk in shadows influencing the outcome of elections and the line between honesty and deception grows fuzzier by the day.
You promised us a platform for idealism and free speech and hope and gave us a sewer of hate, bile and prejudice.
You vowed to disrupt monopolies and create unprecedented fairness and equity in the business world. Instead, you encouraged the emergence of monsters like Google, Meta and Amazon, corporate entities now more powerful than most nation states, behemoths that strangle competition and are responsible to no-one but themselves.
You hinted at more opportunities and jobs. Yet automation and the rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence is decimating the workforce, reducing the middle class and leaving most of us poorer. Your so-called "sharing economy" was a right dud. Calling a cab might be easier. But who really wins when companies like Uber scoop up a third or more of the fee?
But your most insidious achievement? You stole our belief in free will by holding up a mirror to ourselves and showing how easily we humans can be deceived and manipulated.
Google and Amazon have filed patents for devices that detect mood shifts in the human voice. Feeling sad? They'll assail you with ads for vacations in sunny climates. Facebook secretly conducted psychological experiments on 70,000 users a decade ago, altering their feeds to see how they responded to excessively happy or depressing news stories.
Do you know what those czars in Silicon Valley sneeringly call us now? Not people, that's for sure. We're known as "data factories". Every time we share online our thoughts, hopes, dreams and frustrations we provide more clues about ourselves that the big monopolies can monetise. By blindly signing all those user agreements relinquishing the rights to our own data, we've become the Internet's most valuable product.
Billions of us, nothing but lab rats devotedly working for a handful of monolithic businesses. Our reward? A little hit of dopamine when our constant scrolling uncovers something that holds our interest for more than a few seconds.
No wonder your father is embarrassed.
Your arrival in the world ushered in a digital revolution that began altering the way the human brain works, shortening our attention spans and turning us into a horde of screen zombies.
You robbed us of patience and replaced it with a relatively new sensation - the expectation of instant gratification. Porn. Drugs. Booze. Anything we desire is a fingertip away. We purchase items with one click; useless garlic crushers and apple corers and billions of other shoddy plastic products guaranteed to be at our front door the next day and at the bottom of our bin the following week.
So happy birthday Internet. You're broken and beyond fixing. But you're all we have and that's our gift to you. Our dependency. We will never give you up.
HAVE YOUR SAY: Are we better or worse off because of the Internet? Do the positives of the web outweigh the negatives? Are you a digital addict or have you found a way to reduce your reliance on technology? Email us: echidna@theechidna.com.au
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IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
- Tech-savvy jokers have taken aim at an AI-generated soldier, Charlie the Virtual Veteran, forcing the chatbot to veer off-script. The AI chatbot was built to answer questions about the experiences of ANZAC soldiers in World War I, but users commanded the chatbot to assume the identity of a 50-year-old fashionista, Kelsey Grammer's sitcom character Frasier Crane and Dr Who.
- The head of Australia's peak mental health body has resigned over what he labelled the Albanese government's inaction following decades of underfunding and inattention. Matt Berriman's resignation comes a little more than a week after a 40-year-old man with mental health problems attacked shoppers in Sydney, killing six people.
THEY SAID IT: "The Internet gave us access to everything; but it also gave everything access to us." - James Veitch.
YOU SAID IT: Jenna wrote that you can't put a price on the joy of a baby and we should do all we can to fund IVF to allow others that gift.
Pete couldn't agree more: "I think back on the initial tough times of parenthood and laugh at the times when all we had was bean bags to watch our 20cm TV. But I wouldn't have it any other way. I have won life's lottery being born in Australia and watching my beautiful wife produce four exceptional Aussie kids whose partners are just as remarkable."
Coral knows the huge costs of IVF: "My niece and her husband had IVF rounds in the double figures (10-15 tries?) Financial cost was well in the $100,000s but the very last try eventuated in twin girls. I doubt that they can even explain the extent of their joy, it's beyond wonderful and gratitude."
Kathie wrote of the profound emotions of parenthood: "Having children is an indescribable joy, burying your child is pain and sorrow beyond imagining."
Murray wrote: "I never regretted having children, the best being watching all their little triumphs as they grow to successful adulthood and the worst never being entirely sure you are doing the right thing in their upbringing, but just doing the best you can under whatever circumstances arise. There is no greater joy than being a parent."
Great-great grandmother Louise said IVF should be available for free: "Children are so much of our lifetime and interwoven with many things that we do. Yes sometimes we have thought "you little devil" but there is nothing like being hugged and kissed by a small child. Today is Anzac Day and I think of those of our men who died and did not have the chance to have kiddies. To those who are waiting on IVF, good luck, I truly hope it will be successful for you."
But SP Martin wasn't having it: "How about looking after the kids around now, the ones being abused by their terrible parents or with bad health and teeth ... Last thing we need is more people on the planet."
And Maggie felt the same way: "I never had the sensation of empty arms that were aching to hold my baby, and I can't sympathise. There are too many people on our limited planet, and the falling birthrate is a ray of hope. It doesn't make sense to me that we should pay significant money for people to make more babies when that is adding to the problem."
Garry Linnell is one of Australia’s most experienced journalists. He has won several awards for his writing, including a Walkley for best feature writing. He writes a weekly column for ACM and the Echidna.
Garry Linnell is one of Australia’s most experienced journalists. He has won several awards for his writing, including a Walkley for best feature writing. He writes a weekly column for ACM and the Echidna.
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