I used to think the internet was the greatest piece of technology ever allowed in the hands of us ignorant schlubs skulking around the planet. It used to boggle my mind that unfettered access to any information under the sun would be tolerated for even 5 minutes by our loving puppet masters. The talk of heavy censorship in China, Iran, or Sauda Arabia made me feel blessed to have so much data at my fingertips, even while paranoia fomented in my brain that we were being heavily monitored.
I foresaw restrictions, paid access, and outright connectivity refusals to become the dominant protocol of the system, but the situation that eventually unfolded caught me off guard. Me so dumb.
Internet information control has been a well-crafted and methodically orchestrated campaign that has undergone constant refinement since the cold war’s inspiration of the technology. There’s been nothing accidental about how this entity has been disseminated to the public.