Month: October 2024

I stopped to speak to Dean Dyson as he was packing up in East Street. I think it was.

I asked him if he uses the internet.

“Over 10 Million views on Facebook alone!” was the perfect answer.

A talented musician reaching out to a global audience without understanding how it is done. Something that just happened. Happened because someone he did not know, with a Facebook page he hadn’t seen, did what people do with Facebook pages. They created a market far beyond the crowds that drift by every day.

The essence of what it means to “go online”.

Talent spontaneously plugging into a global business without ever intending it to happen.

It is difficult to understand how a tool that facilitates the unrestricted exchange of information and know how, can so easily, be warped and twisted  into a threat to our freedom and well being.

But apparently, according to some of those who might know, we are already there .

The internet is not safe for kids let alone their more vulnerable and gullible elders.

Cyber bullying, shaming, disinformation, trolling, abuse and exploitation. All a part of our every day online experience. The messy bits we can see. But it goes deeper than this. A lot deeper, much darker and what is most disturbing is that, if there is a real threat, it is a mirror reflection of who we are and the society we are creating.

The social order we are responsible for.

A damning reality, yet at the same time, an opportunity to change the way we think, the way we interact and what we do.

Watching the inevitable withdrawl of NATO forces one can’t help thinking back to all the times before and the question which must be asked.

“What if they declared a war and nobody came to play?”

Similarly something has gone horribly wrong on the net. It all started with heady predictions of change. But no one anticipated the multi headed monster we have exposed and we still can’t quite put our finger on where it has gone wrong.

“We are swimming in an ocean of information and drowning in a sea of stupidity”