Two decades of the web: a utopia no longer

Evgeny Morozov traces the development of the web from the laboratories of the Cold War to the world of venture capital and big money

by Evgeny Morozov / June 22, 2011 / Leave a comment

The “virtual community”: an idea that was the antithesis of Cold War paranoia

The internet is a child with many fathers. It is an extremely complex multi-module technology and each module—from communication protocols to browsers—has a convoluted history. The internet’s earliest roots lie in the rise of cybernetics during the 1950s. Later breakthroughs included the invention of packet switching in the 1960s, a novel way for transmitting data by breaking it into chunks. Various university and government networks began to appear in the early 1970s, and were interlinked in the 1980s. The first browsers came on line in the early 1990s—20 years ago this August.

Many seemingly unrelated developments in the computer industry played an important role. The idea of personalised, decentralised and playful computing was being advanced by the likes of Apple and Microsoft in the 1970s. In contrast, IBM’s idea of computing was of an expensive, centralised and institutional activity. If this latter view had prevailed, the internet might have never developed beyond email, which would probably have been limited to academics and investment bankers. That your mobile phone moonlights as a computer is not the result of inevitable technological trends, but the outcome of deeply ideological and now almost forgotten struggle between two different visions of computing.

Much of the credit for the technical advances of the internet goes to individuals such as Vint Cerf, creator of the first inter-network protocol, which helped to unify the numerous pre-internet networks; David D Clark, who helped to theorise the “end-to-end” principle, the precursor to the modern concept of “net neutrality”; and Tim Berners-Lee, who invented the world wide web.

But studying the history of the internet is impossible without studying the ideas, biases, and desires of its early cheerleaders, a group distinct from the engineers. This included Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly, John Perry Barlow, and the crowd that coalesced around Wired magazine after its launch in 1993. They were male, California-based, and had fond memories of the tumultuous hedonism of the 1960s.

These men emphasised the importance of community and shared experiences; they viewed humans as essentially good, influenced by rational deliberation, and tending towards co-operation. Anti-Hobbesian at heart, they viewed the state and its institutions as an obstacle to be overcome—and what better way to transcend them than via cyberspace? Their values had profound effects on the mechanics of the internet, not all of them positive. The proliferation…

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Hernanii
July 11, 2011 at 17:30
As usual, Mr Morozov gives scant evidence to sustain his sweeping claims. The funniest (saddest) thing of the whole is his assertion that the Internet needs a Jane Jacobs-style activist, when his (Morozov's) calls for more regulation and centralized decision on the web recalls precisely the efforts of Robert Moses, Ms Jacobs's archenemy. The web is chaotic, loud, banal and unpredictable. With all its problems, I'd like to keep it that way. (And I know how to manage my privacy options. It's not that difficult.) It's incredibly irritating that that Mr Morozov has so few positive things to say about the web. It shows that he's not serious about his work, that he just wants to go on banking on the apocalypse-agitating business that he's been into for the last couple of years. As long as there are magazines and editors that go along, thinking that Mr Morozov's ideas are more progressive than reactionary (they are not; they are profounly reactionary), Morozov will have a business. Editors have always loved doom-sayers and pessimists. It's actually not his fault. Cheers from Brooklyn, Hernán
goomball
July 11, 2011 at 17:43
This article is relentlessly negative about the future-- the author doesn't mention anything exciting or optimistic about the current and near future internet-- Arabs tweeting uprisings, augmented reality, Wikileaks, even Anonymous... not to mention that the ethos of Wikipedia can coexist comfortably with that of Facebook or Groupon. One model doesn't negate the other. If you want the flip view of things visit Kevin Kelly's website:
EM
July 11, 2011 at 21:21
"The idea of the “virtual community”—the antithesis of Cold War paranoia—was popularised by the writer and thinker Howard Rheingold. The term arose from his experiences with Well.com, an early precursor to Facebook." Bizarre. The Well is a pure text discussion system, not a vanity playground. It would be hard to find a part of the net less like FB. I have been a member for 16 years. And it's alive and, um, well today, owned by Salon.
SoItsComeToThis
July 12, 2011 at 22:51
The web was never a utopia. Does anyone remember those early days like I do? The web then was ugly, hardly connected the way we are today, slow, and static. And today isn't utopia either. Tomorrow will be better but not as good as the next day. The web is transforming the world and it's not going to stop. Sure, there might be some negative sides to it but if the bad outweighed the good, it wouldn't have gotten very far. I, for one, can't wait to see what happens next.
christopher marc
July 14, 2011 at 08:38
is this guy even aware that the majority of people, including myself, who are going to read it, find out who the author is, and never knew before, in addition to the publisher/magazine/organization that hosts it is . . . drumroll . . . ALL BECAUSE OF THE INTERNET??? i didn't read this in a library, buy it in barnes and noble nor find it at the supermarket but @ www.prospectmagazine.co.uk . . . if this gasbag really believes half of what he's whining about, he should ceast and desist from writing for an online content provider and go back to the typewriter.
LM Sacasas
July 14, 2011 at 16:00
Certain constructions of privacy and an aversion to personalization seem to sit uneasily alongside of a communitarian ideal. Pressed to their extremes privacy and depersonalization converge in anonymity. The early digital communitarian ideal appears to have been wedded to this vision of privacy/anonymity, and you are not likely to have anything like a community in a robust sense on those terms, at least not in a way that answers to the human social impulse. Social media has provided something like an experience of community precisely because it has been tied to personalization (all of its attendant problems notwithstanding). Maybe the problem with the early internet was its anonymity. Personalization, not regulation, may have curbed the sorts of behaviors and developments that Morozov laments. The unbridled pursuit of self-interest which is the enemy of community, virtual or otherwise, is typically abetted by the lack of accountability engendered by anonymity.
Phil Hood
July 14, 2011 at 18:17
Too relentlessly negative and he misses aspects of the problem. The biggest issue is that the internet is based on ad revenue. That's what creates SEO, that's what creates a lot of spam and link farms, that's what makes Google so voracious. Advertising, and I hate to say this after a lifetime of publishing, advertising dumbs down content. Books, movies, concerts, painting, and sculpture are media that are paid for by end-users/customers. And, there is no denying that they are deeper and more courageous than newspapers, magazines, TV, or commercial radio--media that are paid for by advertisers. Making our public squares advertising funded will have unintended consequences we may not have glimpsed yet.
Paul Bergen
July 14, 2011 at 18:55
I, for one, welcome any criticism of the web, and particularly, any attempt to publicize the idea that it is a tool which can be used for ill or good. This rush to adopt any and all new technologies without even considering that there will always be costs even if the benefits seem huge is a concern. One can see in the comments so far that true believers dominate the discourse. I find much about the web worthwhile but it does not quite measure up to real life. I know that on my deathbed I will not be fondly remembering online experience; I might be ruing how much it took from me.
W
July 14, 2011 at 21:44
It's interesting that most of the comments so far seem to back up what this artcile is saying! This is a pretty good potted history on the internet though I wish he'd spent more time on the 'start-up' boom. The point is that most 'free' resources gather information that they sell on, they're primarily a way of making money, not connecting people or sharing information. There are plenty of great places to buy things you would have difficulty doing before, but again the primary concern to that organisation is sales. That search engines like Google now skew their data by predicting what info they think you want based on data they have on you makes truly unbiased information gathering more difficult. It's like having a dictionary that bases its results on your political leanings. What I find interesting about peoples use of the internet is how limited it is, how narrow their use of the internet as a tool for connecting people & researching. When faced with so many choices they seem to retreat to what they know, always browsing the same online mags & papers as if the intrnet was a local papershop with limited choices. That & their Monty Pythonesque cries of individualism yet allowing their demographic buttons to be pressed so easily. The web was never a utopia but did have dreams of being something like it. It was slow, clunky, ugly & primitive but we'll be saying the same in 10 years time of now. But the internet is the best thing to happen to humanity since the printing press, maybe more so, we just have to keep it out of the hands of politicians.
ET Fonebone
July 15, 2011 at 04:24
The idea that the internets would be run any differently than Wall Street was delusional. It was subsidized and the public allowed to help build it. Then, once we were hooked, the gates went up and the user tolls started growing. Anomosity toward anything that smacks of anti-capitalism is not surprising or even interesting anymore. It's just more of the same.
electronicmuse
July 15, 2011 at 11:30
Yup, they laughed as I sat down at the piano, uh, I mean when I told them that ALL MASS MEDIA do one thing and one thing only: SELL. Those were indeed heady days when most people were duped into imagining that any mass medium had anything else in its future except SALES. There are tons of examples, but how about this for some risible comments: Herbert Hoover, when Secretary of Commerce, commented (approximately) that " . . . radio is such a noble medium, it could never contain advertising(!)" Anybody not convinced at this juncture? By the way, those "loyalty cards" at the supermarket will provide data for health insurance companies very nicely, thank you. Have another Twinkie! Remember: ever if you ARE paranoid, they could still be out to get you!
Edward Hibbert
July 15, 2011 at 19:04
Who is this article aimed at, exactly? It reads as though it's for people who've heard tell of this internet thingummy that's all the rage nowadays, and thought that they really must get round to finding out something about it.
Keith Kinsella
July 16, 2011 at 17:45
Of course not. When was the public space anything else but a marketplace?
Versus
July 18, 2011 at 08:10
Thank you for the thoughtful article. It always worthwhile to remind ourselves that technology is just a tool, and in every use of that tool, in every moment of every day, we are transforming and guiding the development of the Internet. Best that we do so with consciousness and conscience.
Mike Franklin
July 19, 2011 at 17:03
The concept of the Information Super Highway has been now replaced with a cyber uber-Walmart and the digital TSA. No more wonderland... just another bureaucratic pile of dooky.
Dave Lester
July 19, 2011 at 22:15
Dear Evgeny, As someone who was there -- on 't'internet -- nigh on thirty years ago I have to say: you're just making it up, aren't you?
cheap cable internet
August 4, 2011 at 12:49
Much better than Al Gore's version of the story.
Michael
September 26, 2013 at 09:57
I'm reading this in the wake of Snowden, and oh my does it read as QUAINT! Especially most of the comments. (I tend to agree with Versus and Paul Bergen.) I enjoy Morozov as a nay-saying cyberpundit and media theorist, but he's not exactly sanguine, is he? Let's keep following the story, but never forget to triangulate our thinking about what this 22 year world was, how it came to be, what it promised, where it didn't deliver, how it did deliver, how to fix it, when to EXIT, how to conscientious about its use as a tool, and the advent of understanding about it all under this, The Snowden Era.