Ralph Breaks the Internet is a funny movie about a serious topic. It’s not a movie for little kids, by the way. I’m sure they’ll have no idea what a TED talk is, and young computer users will also have no idea about the many references to general culture, social media, and websites contained in the movie (have they seen King Kong?) Maybe the movie is for computer-savvy young adults from a certain age on to where we find elders who aren’t computer users beyond email and maybe Skyping with family and friends. The mix of real and fake internet companies can be confusing to most of us computer savvy people too. But breaking the internet is a moot point—it’s already broken!

Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t attend an EU meeting about excesses in social media—doesn’t even bother to cancel. Sheryl Sandberg launches a secret campaign against George Soros to investigate his finances—he committed the sin of attacking Facebook. And Facebook has been caught using the information it’s gathered to favor friends and punish enemies.

Google is fined by the EU for a multitude of reasons. Facebook and Twitter put profit over morality by letting real fake news be plastered on everyone’s feeds, including that from the Russians designed to disrupt the U.S. electoral process. Wikileaks releases thousands of emails Russians hacked from DNC servers. At this writing, the RNC is claiming some unknown hacker invaded their databases.

Data mining firms collect information from your social media presence, text messages, and emails, and that list of data mining firms includes big names like Facebook, Google, and Twitter, who also sell your information for profit. In fact, that’s their general business model; all those annoying ads flashing on your screen represent only a small part of their profits.

We can do a few things to stop this. Boycotting the internet doesn’t seem to be a good solution; reforming it should be our goal. In many ways, it’s run by immature sociopaths who gleefully do anything they want to anybody and everybody. Reining that in would help. In my case, I will no longer use my personal feed on Facebook until they fire Sandberg for her campaign against Soros. I’d like them all to also exercise a bit more maturity and show more morality—maybe zip-tie the sociopaths and turn the site over to responsible people?—but that’s probably not going to happen. Silicon Valley is dominated by sociopaths and narcissists who aren’t much better than the one in the White House when it comes down to the nitty-gritty. And conservatives shouldn’t scream that they’re under attack from progressives—look at Sandberg!

Emails are a big issue, from Hillary’s to Ivanka’s and everything in between. I use Google, but I don’t use Gmail. I’ve learned to not trust the latter, but I’m guessing the former sells my click history to the highest bidder. Is Microsoft Live Mail used the same way by Bill Gates and his cronies? I’m leery of their OneDrive—the only files I have there are PDFs people can download for free. No way am I going to store critical data in anyone’s cloud! Maybe I’m just old-fashioned and paranoid, but are people monitoring everything I do and type when my laptop is on? (I’ve taped over the built-in camera on my laptop.)

The internet is broken, and Ralph isn’t the culprit. It took several villages to break it—most of them are found in Silicon Valley, but that real megavirus of exploiting users is spreading fast. Recognition of this decreases with age—millennials don’t seem to think twice about sharing their personal data all over the internet while older people are more conscientious. Identity theft, always nefarious for whatever reason, is rampant. Corporations like Marriott don’t seem too concerned when 500 million records are swept into the Dark Web, and government punishments for their lack of security are either minimal or non-existent.

Today writers must use the internet. It’s the best way to reach out to thousands of readers to let them know our books exist. But what one author does, so do many thousands of others. Each one of us becomes a drop of water in a huge tsunami of books that constantly bombards readers, helped by online retailers like Amazon and Smashwords. And however you view this tsunami, whether reader or writer, you know that personal touch is missing, as it is all over the internet.

Reading a book is like a meaningful séance for the reader run by the author, a session of exploratory wonder on the part of the reader and an offering of literary ambrosia on the part of the writer. Does the internet destroy this mystic bond? Or does it just debase it, making it something vile in its rampant commercialism?

When I talk to a reader, I feel there’s something wonderfully primal going on between an old storyteller and those who listen to his stories. I feel that we’re participating in a ritualistic communion from prehistoric times, and this should eternally be part of what makes us all human. I’ve never felt that way on the internet. That’s not necessarily a negative, but it’s different.

What is a negative is not knowing who to trust. Crowd funding this, crowd marketing that—that says it all. When you’re in a crowd, you don’t know who to trust. The internet represents the biggest crowd there is. And there seems to be a lot of distrust now.

Where will it all end? Maybe the internet will become the soma in this Brave New World of the internet age and everyone will be happy, happy, happy as a consequence. I’m not so sure, but I don’t have to worry about it much longer. Hopefully younger people will, if only for the future of the human race.

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Comments are welcome!

Rembrandt’s Angel. Miss Marple + Hercule Poirot = A-team! 21^st versions of Dame Agatha’s sleuths, that is. Pursuing a missing Rembrandt leads to uncovering a neo-Nazi conspiracy that threatens Europe in this mystery/thriller novel. Esther Brookstone, Scotland Yard Inspector in the Art and Antiques Division, becomes obsessed with the painting. Bastiann van Coevorden, Interpol agent and Esther’s paramour, tries to keep Esther out of trouble. Join them on a chase around Europe and South America. Available in ebook format at Amazon and Smashwords and all the latter’s associated retailers (iBooks, B&N, Kobo, etc) and in print format at Amazon or at your local bookstore (if it doesn’t have it, ask for it). “I recommend this book; it was one of the best efforts from the author.”—Debra Miller, in her Amazon review.

Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2018 at 3:30 am and is filed under Technology, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.