It’s an honest question.
When do we appraise this thing that’s been built?
Have you answered this question for yourself?
Have you taken the time?
And are your answers the same now as they’ve always been?
In 2010, would you have said: ‘You know, we need to appraise this thing we call the internet as soon as it’s used to polarize a populace and install a leader with authoritarian tendencies in the US?
‘That’s when we’ll do it.
‘No more fooling around.’
In 2012, would you have said: ‘We need to take stock of this thing we’ve all built when the prospect of net neutrality is threatened.
‘That’s when we’ll do it.
‘Seriously.
‘No more messing.’
Perhaps you realized we needed to appraise the situation when Edward Snowden appeared on the scene.
Perhaps it was when you realized some of the websites of your favourite small businesses could soon be loading at a slower rate because they can’t pay for preferential treatment.
(Perhaps it’ll be that moment when you’re sitting looking at a screen waiting for that boutique’s page to load and you’re thinking: Is there something wrong with my connection? What was net neutrality, anyway?)
Maybe it was the moment you tried to pinpoint just when, during the day, you weren’t interacting with Google in some way.
Maybe it was when you loaded up Facebook for the twenty-seventh time in a day and whispered to yourself: What am I doing?
Why am I acting this way?
Maybe it was that moment you looked at Mark Zuckerberg’s face during congressional hearings watched by millions.
You thought: Why do I have to live in your world?
Out of all the people out there, why do I have to live in your world?
You thought: Could you do yourself a favour and blink once in a while?
Dude: blink! Your eyeballs are drying out.
At one point, maybe you read a news story about Cambridge Analytica.
You really tried to figure out what was going on with that scandal.
You took a break to check social media.
You took a break to pay a bill.
You took a break to answer an email.
You thought to yourself: Why can’t I just read one news story all the way through?
Maybe you considered the possibility of an appraisal of the internet when you fully comprehended the Cambridge Analytica story.
Or maybe you thought: I’ll give it one more scandal.
But that’s all you’re getting, internet.
One more major privacy scandal.
Maybe you ignored Equifax.
You’ve got stuff to do.
Or maybe it was the moment you were hacked.
Or the moment you thought: Have I been hacked?
Or the moment you caught yourself saying: ‘I don’t really care if I’m hacked.’
Or you heard someone say: ‘If you’re not doing anything wrong, why should you even be worried?’
When you consider Instagram, perhaps you thought to yourself: It is crazy.
Imagine going through adolescence assessing your self-worth every ten minutes.
Offering up all this free content, photo by photo.
Imagine the upkeep.
Imagine trying to negotiate this perilous, ever-shifting territory.
And doing it every day, on top of everything else.
Then you think of your own Instagram habits.
The jealousy.
The petty emotions that flare up.
You say they don’t.
They do.
You’re not a teenager.
Maybe you thought: We should take a look at what Instagram is doing to our society as soon as I start acting like one of those teenagers.
And while you were thinking this you liked a few photos.
What’s your uncrossable line?
When do you say okay, wait a second?
Is it when a metaphor actually makes sense to you?
What we’ve created is a gilded cage?
What we’ve created is a candy jail?
Maybe it’s when you heed the words of David Berman, the greatest unsung songwriter of our generation.
He wrote the song ‘Candy Jail’:
Life in a candy jail / With peppermint bars / Peanut brittle bunk beds / And marshmallow walls / Where the guards are gracious / And the grounds are grand / And the warden keeps the data on your favorite brands …
When is it?
When is enough enough?
When self-regulation has obviously failed?
When equality has disappeared from this realm too?
When the internet where you are is no longer the same internet as they’ve got in Ghana?
When Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the worldwide web, shakes his head woefully?
When will you finally be ready for some sort of change?
Maybe never?
How’s never for you?